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But there still is death and violence, undermining surge! What the devil could he possibly mean, “Either we’ll succeed, or we won’t succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence … ”
What do you think, this is about fighting a war? Please.
Bush on the ropes as Democrats, flashing defiance and bristling, retreat on surrender initiative!
Chimpy, “I’m the commander guy,” still saying funny things! Woe is us! Who does this guy think he is, emperor or something? ”When will he get it?”
We win, they lose? Get real! Only by losing can we win!
Hey, how come you losing-loser winner guys don’t start a draft if you want to win so much! The only way to win is to surrender! (caution: enraged lefty potty mouth)
Allah be praised! Iraqi debt relief a trickle.
Rice sees light, capitulates to Pelosism. Must be a trick!
Iraq pleads for funds to rebuild
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Iraq's prime minister has appealed for other countries to write off its debts, at the start of a summit called to try to rebuild and stabilise the country.
Nouri Maliki urged delegates at the talks in Egypt to help "build a united, democratic and federal Iraq".
Rich nations and regional powers are meeting for two days of talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Those so called Blue Dog Rats elected last year may be in real trouble in some districts if they voted against President Bush.
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All Eyes on Baghdad
All the pros and cons on the war have been aired. We’ve read all the tell-all books by Woodward, Ricks, Gordon, Trainor and the rest that now contradict the arguments and theses of what they wrote about the 1991 war—that then we should have done what we are doing now, which in turn should now be what we had done then.
All the once insider geniuses like Clark, Scheuer, O’Neil and Tenet have sold their tell-all accounts in which they were brilliant and all else obtuse. Feith has been called a dumb _____ by almost everyone in DC. Libby is facing jail for something or other, but most certainly not what the Special Prosecutor was supposed to be looking for; Wolfowitz faces an ouster: so much for bringing up to your board that you might have a conflict of interest down the road.
We’ve suffered through the distortions of Michael Moore and know that Cindy Sheehan once thanked President Bush for meeting with her. We’ve heard that the US military is akin to Saddam, Nazis, Pol Pot, or Stalin from the likes of Sens. Durbin and Kennedy, that America is a pariah from Sen. Kerry, that the war is lost from Sen. Reid and Howard Dean, and about everything imaginable from poor Sen. Biden.
We know that the Clintons once tried to restore their fides on national security by railing about Saddam’s WMD program, both before and after September 11. There has been a revolt of the generals and CIA operatives, that in addition to demonstrating opposition to the war, showed just how angry top brass are at our restructuring the military and /or intelligence agencies.
The Celebs have weighed in, and now we know that the Dixie Chicks, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, Rosie, the Donald, and Alec Baldwin are as ignorant as they are vehement and vicious in their pronouncements.
We’ve seen all the supposed landmark stories come and go: Dick Cheney’s shotgun, the supposed flushed Koran, the forged memos about Bush’s National Guard service, the doctored photos from Beirut, the slips from CNN brass about bias, the implosion of Dan Rather, the blood lust for Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, et. al. None of them did anything illegal; all of them were hounded by the press to resign—all of whom Republicans thought if these just go, the Left will stop, when in fact its appetite was only fed.
All that has come and gone, and we are left in the end with the verdict of the battlefield. The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw. For all the acrimony and hysteria at home, that in the end is what we face—the verdict of all wars that ultimately are decided by the soldiers, and then either supported or opposed by the majority at home with no views or ideology other than its desire to conform to the narrative from the front: support our winners, oppose our losers. In the end, that is what this entire hysterical four years are about.
Win Iraq in the sense of a government stabilizing analogous to Kurdistan or Turkey, and even at this late hour, pundits and politicians will scramble around to dig up their 2002-3 quotes supporting the war, while Hollywood goes quiet and turns to more sermons on Darfur.
Sad, but true.
The Republicans Don't Even Want to Win This War
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If you really wanted to win this war (whatever the hell that means), you could put some real effort behind it. Twenty to thirty-thousand more troops? Who are the Republicans kidding? If you really thought we absolutely, positively had to win this war, you'd start a draft and put a million guys smack dab in the middle of Iraq.
Were we having questions about surges or drafts in World War II? No, we put on our boots and went to kick some Nazi ass. Why aren't we doing that here?
Because the Republicans are full of shit. They don't really think this is an "existential" war. What a laughable thought. What, if we don't win in Ramadi, we're going to cease to exist here? Why aren't these guys laughed out of the room already?
Here we are negotiating with contemptible fools. How much of a surge would you like? How long would you like to stay? Oh really, you think the Iraqis might take over Cleveland if we leave?
"They are going to follow us home." John McCain says this. God, remember when John McCain was a man. He was a damn hero, a patriot and as honest a guy as you could find in politics. Where have all the heroes gone?
If John McCain and Bush and the whole Republican Party thought they were actually going to follow us home - that the Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis would get on a boat, come here and fight us in San Antonio and Detroit and Boca - they'd start a draft in a second. And so would I.
If we had a real existential war and we would be taken over if we lost, who wouldn't fight? Really, Iraq is going to take us over? Come on, who but a contemptible fool would say something like that?