Posted on 05/09/2007 9:27:02 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) condemned the Iraqi government for its failure to resolve security and political problems more expeditiously and predicted that, unless the current troop surge succeeds, U.S. policy will be changed by year's end either by President Bush or congressional action.
McConnell, in an interview for washingtonpost.com's PostTalk program today, offered a harsh assessment of the Iraqi government's performance and made clear that neither the American people nor elected officials have unlimited patience for the U.S. commitment there.
"The Iraqi government hasn't done anything it said it would," McConnell said, pointing to lack of progress on oil revenue sharing and reducing sectarian violence. He added, "I don't think there are many Republican senators who are happy with what happened."
The Republican leader said the GOP's poor performance in the 2006 midterms elections resulted almost entirely from public dissatisfaction with the lack of progress in Iraq and implied that his party would suffer again in 2008 if that election becomes another referendum on Iraq.
"I think the Democrats would like to have another election on Iraq and Republicans would like to avoid it," he said.
The interview, in McConnell's Capitol offices, came hours after he met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten to discuss possible compromises on an Iraq funding bill.
Bush vetoed the first version of the bill because it included a timetable for beginning a troop withdrawal and White House Press Secretary Tony Snow warned today that the president will veto a new House Democratic bill that would provide the requested funding in two stages.
McConnell said he remained optimistic that the funding bill can be approved by the end of the month but offered few details of a potentially workable compromise...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Well, that's interesting. I haven't seen anyone say anything like that before. I assume you mean Sharia law. Do you think that would help us in Iraq? Or are you just annoyed about it? (I am.)
How do you “take them out” if they own the cities (which they will if you run away).
Ask the people of Dresden
Annoyed about it? When they first wrote their constitution, I screamed about it then.
Well, so did I! That makes two of us. Everybody else was all warm and fuzzy about purple fingers. I wanted to tear my hair out. Sharia is particularly offensive -- and superceeds the rule of law. It doomed any hope of a Democracy.
The imperialist model WORKS, while the Wilsonian "soft touch" does not and never will. Coaxing gradual addiction to the fruits of individual liberty and free markets (which are the keys - not democracy) also seems to work in isolated cases (as evidenced by Dubai and Abu Dabi, where there is relatively little "easy money" to be made from oil); democracy/populism is apparently not only unnecessary, but counter-productive in some cases, because it forestalls and/or outright impedes the establishment of the natural aristocracy based upon the notion of individual merit. But these are the exceptions, not the rule.
Americans, and all others in the West IMO, do not have the stomach for the full-blown imperialism necessary to dissolve the cultural toxic waste that permeates most Muslim lands. And for as long as we depend upon these backward malcontents for their oil resources, they will be insulated from cultural change. No amount of Wilsonianism will change them. The unfortunate thing about the idealists pushing this trash is that idealists, as a rule, have a problem with learning. No amount of history will be enough to show that even the finest sculptor cannot carve anything of even modest beauty out of the most gangrenous of materials.
Which is why it does not belong in America.
“And for as long as we depend upon these backward malcontents for their oil resources”
Who is going to use public transportation tomorrow? Are working moms going to start staying home?
/SARCASM
When you are standing there and seeing all the buildings falling down around you, and you “say so” — the dictionary definition for that is “realism”.
If you are standing there and seeing all the buildings falling down around you and you say, “well, maybe they will miraculously be back up and standing tomorrow morning...” — that is called “optimism” (if you stretch the definition)...
Or we could play a little word game and simply say — ostrich, head, sand... and let it go at that...
Thats not optimism, thats hallucinations.
LOL...
I think Sharia law is a Sunni thing. Won’t apply in Iraq run by Shiites.
Wrong
We made plenty of mistakes in Iraq. I believe the first one was moving too quickly having elections. You cannot expect a population of people who lived under tyrannical conditions to all of a sudden understand freedom. It’s not a snap of the fingers. We really didn’t take hold of the situation and prepare the Iraqis to take over. You don’t give your teenage son the keys to a Ferrari without first teaching him to drive.
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