"The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it."

The author of this lost a son in Iraq last year iirc.


Surge to Nowhere
Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page B01

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working.

In President Bush's pithy formulation, the United States is now "kicking ass" in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that "we are winning in Iraq." While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain's remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons.

From the hallowed halls of the American Enterprise Institute waft facile assurances that all will come out well. AEI's Reuel Marc Gerecht assures us that the moment to acknowledge "democracy's success in Iraq" has arrived. To his colleague Michael Ledeen, the explanation for the turnaround couldn't be clearer: "We were the stronger horse, and the Iraqis recognized it." In an essay entitled "Mission Accomplished" that is being touted by the AEI crowd, Bartle Bull, the foreign editor of the British magazine Prospect, instructs us that "Iraq's biggest questions have been resolved." Violence there "has ceased being political." As a result, whatever mayhem still lingers is "no longer nearly as important as it was." Meanwhile, Frederick W. Kagan, an AEI resident scholar and the arch-advocate of the surge, announces that the "credibility of the prophets of doom" has reached "a low ebb."

Presumably Kagan and his comrades would have us believe that recent events vindicate the prophets who in 2002-03 were promoting preventive war as a key instrument of U.S. policy. By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html

him with a passion. They will also be very vocal when his name is mentioned. Firemen hate him the most. :dem:

:shrug: Why would that be?

I'm originally from NYC and to this day, I never refer to him* as anything but moron*, even in mixed (political) company.

I turn off the radio and TV when I hear his* whine.

I loath the CT bastard with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

I wouldn't piss on him* if he was on fire and I would throw him a life preserver if he* was surrounded by sharks.

You know what happens when spoiled little rich boys break their toys, don't you? They get bored with it, leave it in the middle of the living room, and go make a nuisance of themselves somewhere else. I saw some clips of Bush's interview (with Terry Moran of ABC?) last week. He was sitting at an angle, frat boy smirk working overtime, and ridiculing or batting away Moran's questions like so many bothersome flies. It was like he could hardly be inconvenienced to sit still for the interview. Fortunately, for all his too-full-of-himself-by-half demeanor, Moran couldn't quite bring himself to follow up on any of the smartass answers, or reach across and smack Bush's pointy little head until his teeth rattled.

was asking him anything, and he clearly couldn't be bothered to answer. It's so past time for him to go. :grr:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7201237.stm

<snip>
A suicide bomber has attacked mourners at a funeral ceremony in northern Iraq, killing at least 15 of them and wounding a similar number, police say.

The bomber walked into a tent where residents were mourning the relative of a provincial security chief near the city of Baiji, an official said.

Northern Iraq has been the scene of a number of recent bomb attacks.

The Repug & Dem Leaders want to maintain the US Occupation.
They want to keep the Fiasco going to finalize that Oil Deal.. The Repugs & Dems are afraid that they will be blamed if they force the end of the US Occupation,Iraq goes down the tubes, the Oil goes to other countries, & Iran gains major control in the ME.

only proves how little people understand how riddled it was with holes.