Iraqi elections a test of American faith

MichNews.com ^ | Dec 13, 2004 | Kathleen Parker

[RepCath]

Despite the advance of America's holiday season, we seem to be a glass-half-empty nation.

Even as Afghanistan was swearing in its first popularly elected president, Hamid Karzai, American news was dominated by grim reports about worsening conditions in Iraq.

On the very Tuesday that Karzai was to be sworn in, the New York Times, for example, opted not to give it any play. Instead the front page featured a story about two reports from the Central Intelligence Agency warning of deteriorating conditions in Iraq.

No one's suggesting we ignore the reports -- or that they be spun for optimism -- but a fair reading of the Times story suggests a few questions: Who didn't know? So what? And why now?

[rudypoot]

I was watching Meet the Press this weekend and Timmah had on a panel of retired generals. This one general said we definitely need more troops there for the elections to take place. But the fact that foreign troops are there is a major irritant to the general population and if we increase troop strength we have a bigger target for the terrorists to attack us. This would further irritate the population. But if we don't increase the troop strength then we risk having an illegitimate iraqi election then we fail. At the same time we cannot train enough iraqis to take our place and the ones we do train suck anyways.

His solution to the situation: nothing. Typical talking head: Pointing out the mistakes with 20/20 hindsight without offering any solutions. He could've used the one word answer, 'quagmire', and just shut his pie-hole because he had nothing else to contribute to the discussion.

This is probably the same general that said we'd have 10k deaths trying to control Baghdad.