Example
Posted on 11/18/2007 7:55:35 PM PST by devere
We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we're hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw. No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7... Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone. Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians. "Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage... You may not be aware of the calamities that have befallen al-Qaida, because our news media have paid scant attention to them... Rich Lowry agrees. "The United States may be the only country in world history that reverse-propagandizes itself, magnifying its setbacks and ignoring its successes so that nothing can disturb ... the 'narrative of defeat,'". If what Mr. Peters, Mr. Benedetto and Mr. Lowry suspect is true, it must have pained The Associated Press to see a correspondent write Wednesday: "The trend toward better security is indisputable." It'll be interesting to see which newspapers run the AP story, and where in the paper they place it. "We've won the war in the real Iraq, but few people in America are familiar with anything other than its make-believe version," said the Mudville Gazette's "Greyhawk," a soldier currently serving his second tour in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
More or less, a few elections will not change the tribal nature of Iraq, sort of “They can do what they want in Baghdad, out in the field it’s a different story.”
Once the Tribes coalesce around a position, a sudden “breakthrough” will occur..hopefully...
A man after my own stomach.
“We then checkmate that goal with minimal loss of life.”
If only that were so. For complex reasons we have yet to deal with the main source of Islamist terrorism, the Wahabbi Imams of Saudi Arabia, who are still spreading their poisonous ideology worldwide, including here in the USA. And then there is Iran, a difficult problem if there ever was one.
So as an old chess player, I don’t see a checkmate, just an initiative. It’s going to be a long struggle.
As it is impossible to know what drives men, we don’t know what a Presidernt Gore would have done. Probably some limited action in Afghanistan. To send a message, you know. Probably would be at the table with the Taliban right now.
So you think that it was a mistake to attack Iraq, but it would have been a good idea to Saudi Arabia and Iran? Given that Iraq was firing missiles at our pilots in the leadup to the war but Iran and Saudi Arabia weren't, what would have been your grounds for going to war against those two countries?
‘Special Report’ Panel on Majority Leader Reid’s Latest Tactics
Friday, November 16, 2007
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311939,00.html
This is a rush transcript of “Special Report With Brit Hume” from November 15, 2007. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN HARRY REID, SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, D-NEV.: The marines can go until sometime in March, and the army can go until late in February. And those are very conservative figures.
I am confident that if we did not give them another penny, they could go for another six months.
ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The high degree of uncertainty on funding for the war is immensely complicating this task and will have many real consequences for this department and for our men and women in uniform.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIT HUME, HOST: So what are these guys talking about? Well it is this — the Congress has passed and sent to the president something like a $470 billion Appropriations Bill to cover the Defense Department generally.
This war, however, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being covered separately on separate funding measures, and the president has asked for something along the order of $200 billion for those, and he is not, apparently, going to get it.
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They are passing pieces of it, which contain restrictions that he finds unacceptable, which can’t even really pass the congress as a whole, and they are holding back the funds, Harry Reid arguing, and Nancy Pelosi as well, one presumes, that they can reprogram some of this other money and keep the whole thing going. Some thoughts on this whole controversy now from Fred Barnes, the executive editor of The Weekly Standard, Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and Mort Kondrake, the executive editor of Roll Call — FOX News contributors all.
Let’s talk a little bit about this issue, where it is going, who it is effecting, and who is right in the argument over whether holding this money for now affects anything.
MORT KONDRAKE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ROLL CALL: It does affect things. The Pentagon can reprogrammed some money in order to keep the troops supplied for awhile without this bridge money being passed, but the, as Harry Reid even acknowledges, the money runs out, and the troops are in danger.
Basically what the Democrats are doing is playing chicken with the lives and well-being of our soldiers in the field, ultimately. And Bush already plans to do one of the things that’s required in this, and that is to start redeploying troops.
HUME: One unit is already home, I think.
KONDRAKE: Right, exactly.
So the issue is over whether you set a goal of everybody out by the end of 2008. Even Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama acknowledged that all troops will not be out of Iraq by even the end of their first term, they’re not even saying.
So this is more extreme than even with the Democratic presidential candidates are saying. And I believe Dana Perino is exactly right —
HUME: White House spokesman.
KONDRAKE: White House spokesman — that the Democrats were going to drop this whole matter. Then Moveon.org and Code Pink started blaring at them, and they decided that they had to revisit this thing again and impose more restrictions. And it is unconscionable, frankly.
MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I do think the Democrats are caught between their inability to actually stop the war — and they certainly have tried enough times, and we’ve established the fact that they do not have the votes to do that — and the desire of their base, which is unhappy.
And one of the reasons the congress is so unpopular is because the Democratic Congress has lost a lot of support among liberal, antiwar voters who thought they were elected to end the war.
HUME: We have a couple poll numbers that are relevant to what you’re saying, Mara. This Fox News opinion dynamics poll on the congress’ job approval shows that it’s virtually unchanged since less than a month ago. The disapproval number appears to have kicked up.
Let’s look at this on the troop surge, which a lot of people were very skeptical of for a long time. Back in September you had a small plurality saying that it had led to improvements, with fully 45 percent saying it made no difference.
Look at now — 59 to 32 improvement over not made a difference. So public opinion on that appears to be shifting.
I wonder, Fred, if the political hazards that the Democrats face here- -and, obviously they are caught between the fact that the left does not want them to give an inch on this, and that public opinion may be shifting on whether the war is going better — that they may be it in real trouble here politically.
FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, WEEKLY STANDARD: I think they are in real trouble.
I happened to be at the lunch three or four weeks ago when Nancy Pelosi announced that they would not have any more Iraq votes. They had tried, but those horrible Republicans had blocked them, and they were going to move onto other issues.
And now they’re back again. They’ve had their chain jerked by some of the lefties in their party, and they responded.
Historically, though, let’s just remember one thing. In the 2000 election, Democrats did not run on a promise of ending the war in Iraq.
HUME: In 2004?
BARNES: No, they never ran on that in 2006. They were critical of the war. They never said they would “Vote for us, we will end the war in Iraq.”
LIASSON: Plenty of Democratic candidates did say that.
BARNES: I do not think many did at all, and, certainly, none of Rob Emanuel’s favorites, all these moderates.
Some of the Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, are in a state of total denial. They pretend that the civil war is still going on in Iraq full speed — of course it is not. They pretend that Al Qaeda is still a huge force there — they have practically been defeated. Al Qaeda has no strongholds anywhere in Iraq anymore.
It still exists, and they can still kill —
HUME: So what are the political consequences of this? How is it going to play out?
BARNES: The political consequence is, if the progress continues, and we are a year from now when the election comes up, and Democrats are still pretending like the war, as Harry Reid said six months ago, is lost, they will have no credibility whatsoever.
HUME: Do you agree with that, Mara? Do you think that is a danger for them?
LIASSON: I don’t know. I think if things really changed, and these improvements continue to grow, it could be a problem. But I think the Democrats have plenty of time to adjust.
KONDRAKE: I agree with that. There is a long way to go. There has to be some political progress on the ground, or else the public will be turned off to this. But if there is, the Democrats are in bad shape.
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Were you sleeping when Bush told the whole world that six years ago?
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Saudi Arabian Wahabbism is the root of the Islamist problem, and on 9/11 we were attacked mainly by Saudis. We could do a lot more to restrict prosletyzing by Wahabbi Imams, without actually going to war. I do like Tom Tancredo’s idea of pledging to destroy Mecca if any American city is nuked (mutual assured destruction works). Saddam was an evil bloodthirsty tyrant, but he was also a secular figure who served to restrain Iranian ambitions. It’s a nice thing we did for the Iraqi people, but I’m not yet convinced it was a good thing for the American people. Anyway, I hope that my doubts are proven incorrect. Time will tell!
It’s hard to read his lips, but he’s either saying “we’ve lost a record number of troops in Iraq this year” or “AWOL’s are up 80%”. Both of which are true, but also have no bearing on the current situation in Iraq, with the exception that a lot of our brave young men died during the surge that caused this peace to come about.
The History Channel just had on some special the other night with lots of footage from Baghdad. Of course it was quite dated by now as it showed Saddam’s statue coming down, the car bombs going off, militia in the streets, how the Sunni’s and Shia were fighting each other in Baghdad, etc. Of course it is the “History” channel, but so many people will take it as current news.
I did see that show on the History Channel. Ironic that our troops paid tribute to journalists killed at the start of the war and now its the mainstream media journalists that have been constantly trying to kill our troops mission.
It’s one of those deathless Dim-o-crat phrases, like “Jobless Recovery” and “it’s for the children”, and “No blood for oil” and “What if they gave a protest ...and nobody came to throw trash everywhere?”.
Well-put. There are so many people who still believe you can get something for nothing, that you can surgically attack enemies and ONLY make the precise, specific actions that will get the job done, that there are perfect, PC wars if only we'd try hard enough.
We have had short-term damage done to our rep overseas among those who already hated us, and we've given the Left the opportunity to bash the country during wartime as they would have had the communists in the USSR not decided Hitler was a bad guy.
But years from now, people will say, "Yeah, it was the right thing to do," I believe, because thinking people will realize that in an imperfect time, with nothing but bad choices, we made the best of it, our troops did their jobs, and leaving Saddam in power was simply unacceptable.
1) It would mark the official end of the Iraqi war and America's involvement against Al Qeada in Iraq
2) As such it can be pointed out as a victory for the coalition of the willing
3) The Republican politicians, the military and many supporters can point to an indisputable victory that they so valiantly fought for over the many years
4) Iraqis can mark it to celebrate the coming together of their nation against the anti-democracy forces of radicalism
WWII had its day of celebration (VE Day) and it is important psychologically for the nation to recognize it and move forward.
And they are led by Osama bin Laden and go by the name of Al Qaeda.
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This is a good thing for all of us to remember. If things continue to go well in Iraq, we won't be hearing congratulations to the troops from the traitorcrats, we will instead hear silence as they change the subject.
I hope all of us will keep writing them, and doing all those morale boosters we can do.
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