So much for that "Surge" (1 Viewer)

wamland

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Things are about to get very, very ugly......

"BAGHDAD — A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.
<!-- story_videobox.comp --> <!-- /story_videobox.comp --> Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown in the face of warnings by Sadr's followers that they'll fight government forces if any Sadrists are detained. By 1 a.m. Arab satellite news channels reported clashes between the Mahdi Army and police in Basra."

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 03/25/2008 | Is of U.S. surge in Iraq about to unravel?
 
In your haste to denigrate you failed to notice that this is an Iraqi Army operation exclusively (on the ground at least).

No US troops involved.

That means the Iraqi government is confronting its problems in Basra on its own, without our help. The Brits are providing aerial surveillance only.

I suspect that, instead of a mark of failure, it is a test to see how the Iraqis do on their own.

If this operation is even moderately successful we should all be very happy.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq forces battle Basra militias
 
In your haste to denigrate you failed to notice that this is an Iraqi Army operation exclusively (on the ground at least).

No US troops involved.

That means the Iraqi government is confronting its problems in Basra on its own, without our help. The Brits are providing aerial surveillance only.

I suspect that, instead of a mark of failure, it is a test to see how the Iraqis do on their own.

If this operation is even moderately successful we should all be very happy.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq forces battle Basra militias


Thank you. However it is funny you don't see success stories, but when 1 thing gets off track, here comes the LEFT!
 
Thank you. However it is funny you don't see success stories, but when 1 thing gets off track, here comes the LEFT!

Yes its good to see a positive story once in awhile instead of all of the epic failures of this administration.
 
Yes its good to see a positive story once in awhile instead of all of the epic failures of this administration.


You make my point for me. I am sure you were in support of the Iraq war in the begining and I am pretty sure you voted for Kerry and Gore and will vote with the Dems again.

But guess what neither of the 2 great ones on the left are going to pull us out anyway.
 
You are wrong. I voted for neither and never supported going into Iraq. I actually voted for Bush in 2000.
 
You are wrong. I voted for neither and never supported going into Iraq. I actually voted for Bush in 2000.


Sorry it was a mistype on my part I meant to say NOT IN SUPPORT. Did you vote for Nader?
 
i didnt support the war yet dedicated 33 months of my life over there...
it was a stupid damn war and now we have to remain so that we can fix what we messed up...

there was absolutely no reason to go to iraq...
and its folks like you that make it a dem/repub thing that really turns my and many others who have served or are serving's stomach. why must everything be polarized by the simple minded???

newsflash, absolutely nothing in this world is black and white. if you view things like this you are either misguided or lack education and the ability to think on your own. the world is shades of gray, none of which is properly represented by our current dems and repubs (not that there is a GOP anymore). sheeple!!!
 
i didnt support the war yet dedicated 33 months of my life over there...
it was a stupid damn war and now we have to remain so that we can fix what we messed up...

there was absolutely no reason to go to iraq...
and its folks like you that make it a dem/repub thing that really turns my and many others who have served or are serving's stomach. why must everything be polarized by the simple minded???

newsflash, absolutely nothing in this world is black and white. if you view things like this you are either misguided or lack education and the ability to think on your own. the world is shades of gray, none of which is properly represented by our current dems and repubs (not that there is a GOP anymore). sheeple!!!


Thank you for your service. I however am not as nuanced as you. I don't see shades of gray when it comes to policy. After 911 this was not a polarizing political issue. However the left has made it that way. I am not sorry for being a conservative and proud of it. I am EXTREMELY proud of our military and our country.

I am not asking that you feel that way. Heck that is why you guys are fighting for our freedom. I do take it offensive that you attempt to challenge my intellect as well as insinuate that I can not make up my own mind. That is poppycock!

I agree with the lack of leadership in the GOP, refer to my statement on conservatism above.
 
if you were conservative, you would be OUTRAGED at what the current administration has done!!!

the large centralized government goes directly against the tenements at which the conservative movement was built. instead of these tenements, the current administration decided to follow the teachings of leo strauss and scare the hell out of americans. the Dems didnt make 9/11 a polarizing issue, but they have pointed out that there is ABSOLUTELY no link between 9/11 and Iraq or a link between Iraq and OBL.

and if you dont see shades of gray when it comes to policy, then i suggest you re-examine your current views on the world and our place in it. oh, and be proud enough to join and serve...

oh and the surge has and will continue to work. we should have listened to the MILITARY leaders and sent 400k instead of that "CONSERVATIVE" Rummy...
 
if you were conservative, you would be OUTRAGED at what the current administration has done!!!

the large centralized government goes directly against the tenements at which the conservative movement was built. instead of these tenements, the current administration decided to follow the teachings of leo strauss and scare the hell out of americans. the Dems didnt make 9/11 a polarizing issue, but they have pointed out that there is ABSOLUTELY no link between 9/11 and Iraq or a link between Iraq and OBL.

and if you dont see shades of gray when it comes to policy, then i suggest you re-examine your current views on the world and our place in it. oh, and be proud enough to join and serve...

oh and the surge has and will continue to work. we should have listened to the MILITARY leaders and sent 400k instead of that "CONSERVATIVE" Rummy...


I am not totally happy with the administration. Specifically on immigration, education bill, mccain feingold, medicare.....

As far as being polarizing, should I pull up the comments of Pelosi, Reed, Murtha, Kerry and how many more. These people called you a MURDERER and savage. This sounds pretty polarizing to me. How many conservatives can you name that have polarized this issue?

But as far as the war, I disagree with your assessment. I think the only thing the government should do is protect us with the BADDEST military in the world. We can argue the leaving the borders of our country and would be happy to if you would like.

I agree with you on the surge. Rummy, should not have capitulated to the media and cry babies. I agree that Rummy was a conservative in his dealing with the Reagan administration.
 
Thank you for your service. I however am not as nuanced as you. I don't see shades of gray when it comes to policy. After 911 this was not a polarizing political issue. However the left has made it that way.

Disagree. Completely.

There is a huge problem when people look at complex issues as entirely one or the other. You might not be nuanced, but that doesn't mean that something like the current war is not nuanced. The entire nature of the struggle, even if you agree with it, is rife with complexities, issues that cannot be accounted for in "love it or leave it platitudes."

From its inception, this war and the rationale for going to war has never been about an issue that is black or white. What can you possibly boil this conflict down to in terms of singularity?

I am not challenging your intellect or anything - I am genuinely bewildered at how you can look at this war which is full of complexities, most of which we are probably not even aware of, and reduce it to something so simple.

The war has changed fronts. The war has changed primary targets. The war has changed objectives. The war has changed alliances with respect to our recent generational history in involvement in the Middle East.

And I would challenge, heartily, the assertion that this war was not polarizing after 9/11.

This is a DIFFERENT war. We had a target identified as being responsible for 9/11. He and his group took credit. That is who we were targeting. There was a national solidarity in seeking reciprocative justice for the terrorist attacks.

The war then shifted to Hussein and WMDs and everything changed.

This was not an abstract construct of the left.

Any national cohesion that existed, and I believe it did, after 9/11 as we involved ourselves in the search for Bin Laden was erased once the administrative manipulation began and the murky accusations that changed the site and motive for being at war. There was a great deal of doubt and questioning that, retrospectively, ended up being absolutely reasonable.

And that had as much to do with departmental policy as with any media bias.

To remove blame from the administration and place it all on this "left media bias" for the current of anger and rise of protestations is an injustice, I believe. It's a gross oversimplification.

I am reminded of a very very poignant passage from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried as the narrator thinks about the people around him after he received his draft notice for the Vietnam War:

At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d sometimes carry on fierce arguments with those people. I’d be screaming at them, telling them how much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic acquiescence to it all, their simple-minded patriotism, their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, how they were sending me off to fight a war they didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. I held them responsible. By God, yes, I did. All of them – I held them personally and individually responsible – the polyestered Kiwanis Boys, the merchants and farmers, the pious churchgoers, the chatty housewives, the PTA and the Lions club and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the fine upstanding gentry out at the country club. They didn’t know Bao Dai from the man in the moon. They didn’t know history. They didn’t know the first thing about Diem’s tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French – this was all too damned complicated, it required some reading – but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous ***** if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.
 
you fail to see that IRAQ had absolutely nothing to do with the war on terror. 9/11 was not polarizing as there has been no talk about leaving afghanistan, where the power base of Al Qaida existed. the issue which has been polarizing, is a stupid war that now we must continue because its the right and moral thing to do. we can not leave a country that is completely decimated by our activities. and to visit the war let us look at a few things.

saddam was a *******, no doubt but he was secular, and was a sunni leader in a shia marjority country. by removing him and installing a weak and incompetent democracy, we effectively created an ally for a fundamentalist country in Iran. I saw this on march 14, 2003 as a lowly enlisted NCO but Rummy had no clue???

What Rummy attempted to do was gut the military. his thought was that we did not need support personnel eating at resources such as retirement and medical benefits and we could effectively replace these people with contracted employees which do not receive long term benefits. he wanted to create a fighting force without support personnel. that means infantry, artillery, MPs, and SF units. common sense tells you that this wouldnt work, especially with a long fight, but Rummy thought the money spent in such a conflict would be saved in times of peace. this is a page straight out of the Leo Strauss guide to screwing Americans...

what you should truly be upset about the administration has nothing to do with immigration, but more to do with faith based initiatives, and a bloated centralized government that has stripped states of their power and ultimately wiped their rear ends with OUR constitution...

i cant wait until McCain or Obama gets elected, assuming McCain doesn't pick Mitt Robot or Huckleberry and Obama picks Edwards. We can finally get back to being respected in the world comminity and ultimately get this budget back under control!!!

conservative my ***!!!
 
Disagree. Completely.

There is a huge problem when people look at complex issues as entirely one or the other. You might not be nuanced, but that doesn't mean that something like the current war is not nuanced. The entire nature of the struggle, even if you agree with it, is rife with complexities, issues that cannot be accounted for in "love it or leave it platitudes."

From its inception, this war and the rationale for going to war has never been about an issue that is black or white. What can you possibly boil this conflict down to in terms of singularity?

I am not challenging your intellect or anything - I am genuinely bewildered at how you can look at this war which is full of complexities, most of which we are probably not even aware of, and reduce it to something so simple.

The war has changed fronts. The war has changed primary targets. The war has changed objectives. The war has changed alliances with respect to our recent generational history in involvement in the Middle East.

And I would challenge, heartily, the assertion that this war was not polarizing after 9/11.

This is a DIFFERENT war. We had a target identified as being responsible for 9/11. He and his group took credit. That is who we were targeting. There was a national solidarity in seeking reciprocative justice for the terrorist attacks.

The war then shifted to Hussein and WMDs and everything changed.

This was not an abstract construct of the left.

Any national cohesion that existed, and I believe it did, after 9/11 as we involved ourselves in the search for Bin Laden was erased once the administrative manipulation began and the murky accusations that changed the site and motive for being at war. There was a great deal of doubt and questioning that, retrospectively, ended up being absolutely reasonable.

And that had as much to do with departmental policy as with any media bias.

To remove blame from the administration and place it all on this "left media bias" for the current of anger and rise of protestations is an injustice, I believe. It's a gross oversimplification.

I am reminded of a very very poignant passage from Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried as the narrator thinks about the people around him after he received his draft notice for the Vietnam War:

Excellent, excellent post Razor. Yeah, Tim O'Brien's book on Vietnam is a great read. :9:
 

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