News – A ceasefire crucial to recent security improvements in Iraq was today under severe strain after Moqtada al-Sadr called for "civil revolt" following a crackdown on Shia factions in Basra. Iraqi security forces in the southern Iraqi city encountered heavy resistance as battles broke out with gunmen from Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
The sad thing is: I don't really believe a word of anything the press reports concerning Iraq. I have come to the conclusion that they - for the most part - simply parrot whatever line of Bul!sh!t the Pentagon is handing out this week. It DOES seem as though this al-Sadr guy has an inordinate amount of military effectiveness for a so-called "cleric" though. Why, I doubt if the Poop himself could raise as much hell as Moqtada, and he has MUCH fancier headgear. If it were up to me, I'd stop calling this guy a "cleric" and start referring to him as "warlord" al-Sadr or some such. Cleric my as*.
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This is evidence that al-Sadr has far more influence on violence in Iraq than any surge.
That being the case, we'd better prepare the mother of all surges.
I was thinking how to say exactly the same thing but can't improve on your analysis!
This is a turn of the screw which has been waiting to happen.
The main problem with the surge was that it did virtually nothing to win hearts and minds or to create any confidence in Iraquis about the future.
Has anyone heard of refugees flocking home?
Most of them are still dealing with great hardship in unwilling-host countries rather than take the risk of coming home.
gama,
The surge was like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. Besides, it was too little and too late. Perhaps our "King" George could quote The Bard's Richard I like this:
"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front,
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute."
Loverman - nice quote, a few caveats..
First its from Richard III.
But more significantly the current Pretender "capering nimbly in a lady's chamber" doesn't resonate - especially the nimbly.
Dumbly, jumbly, numbly.. Capering.. well..
Also from Richard III: "I will converse with iron-witted fools" seems relevant.
But I'm sure that Shakespeare wouldn't have omitted a flatulence reference to the current Emperor George - he was seldom shy of doing so:
'A man may break a word with you, sir; and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.' ("Comedy of Errors" - as opposed to the unwritted "Tragedy of Errors" which might have been his title for the GWB in Iraq saga).
Thanks for references to:
http://www.davyking.com/fart.htm - which merits a ****gross warning!
For his post-Presidential career - forget a LIBRARY - the Moulin Rouge awaits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pétomane
.
The `surge` was 100% successful.
It bought the Bush admin enough time to keep the killing and dying on both sides plus the unfunded theft of our treasury going through the end of this term.
Now, the Bush admin and cons are going to try to forever blame any future terror on the Dems, especially if the next prez is a Dem. This was nothing more than a winning battle in the blame game for the Republicans, a strategy to try to avoid accountability for Iraq. So far, it is working well enough and you can bet they already have the next blame game steps planned because they are very concerned about their legacy.
Ah. So yet another turning point goes around the wrong corner. How many turning points have we reached now in the past 5 years?
Yeah, we won WW2 in a shorter time than this, so far. This IS clearly another "Viet Nam."
No you did not win WW!!;..you helped win it! And WW!! was a different ball of wax, countries and armies fought each other.
Iraq as a country is defeated along with whatever army it had....now you are fighting against an idea and religion and an army can not beat those.
No Iraq is fighting al-queda and trying to not slip into civil war. We'll see if they can succeed. For their sake I hope so.
Baloney. After all the string of lies, you still believe the talking bush?
There are less than 6000 Al Qaeda operatives in a country of 26,000,000 people. Al Qaeda is a problem, and needs to be eliminated. But they are a bogeyman the bushies constantly trot out to suit their purpose. We have Al Qaeda on the run, and must stay the course. OR... If we withdraw now, Al Qaeda will take over Iraq and launch nukes to Washington and New York tomorrow morning.
Sorry, but both can not possibly be true. And since nothing else bush has put out has proved true, might as well assume both of these are lies too.
no Iraq is fighting al-queda and trying to not slip into civil war. We'll see if they can succeed. For their sake I hope so.>>>>
WHAT? They're IN a civil war! And what there is of al qaeda there, is helping the Sunni's against the Shiites, on top of attacking out troops. How can you be so wrong? I'm seriously worried about you.
Looks more to me that "they" are trying to slip into civil war and "we" are the only ones trying to stop it.
You can't, just like you couldn't in Vietnam, only both Vietnam and Iraq are making a select few very rich
160,000 of the world's best trained soldiers supported by a huge force of private armies and several billion dollars a month...And, after five years of the battle against Al-Qaida Iraq, the enemy is at about the same strength (perhaps a few thousand, but nobody knows for sure) as shortly after the Invasion began (it did not exist prior to the invasion).
Do you see any problem with this picture crghss?
HannibalBarca: "now you are fighting against an idea and religion and an army can not beat those."
yep, but mostly we're fighting a hostile home team, what we call militia, offended by us crashing into their country, breaking the furniture and acting liking we're doing them a huge favor
How true, and somehow those that support this action have no problem with this, bunch of NUMPTYS
WE won WW!!, without the Americans all of Europe would be speaking German as we Speak, I cant stand you pretentious and revisionist arses. You were getting your asses kicked until the Americans came so hush!
Get your head out of your butt and go back to the books and read.
Where were the Russians on D-Day fool....the polish border and were facing a strong but defeated German army.
Your self righteous, holier than thou, looking down your nose at the rest of the Allies is what gives Americans a sh itty name....Thank the Lord and all the Saints that you are a flipping minority...you are just a John Wayne wanna be, and he got excused from military duty so he could make movies....HaHaHa
I will ask a simple question since you seem to have problems with deep thinking...Would you have won the war without the Americans?
Now for the Russians, they won nothing the Germans defeated themselves by not preparing for the cold weather. They got caught in one of the worse storms of that winter and that was their demise nor any fancy fighting by the Russians whom has always been overeater in my eyes! I understand where revisionist history helps you to get over the fact that you were pass over by a so call colony and saved by them...
Black,
I think that you need a bit of a remedial history course as regards the Second World War.
Suffice it to say your mistaken comments about the Russian victory over the Germans during the Great Patriotic War belies a significant gap in your knowledge base.
During the autumn, Zhukov had been transferring fresh and well-equipped Soviet forces from Siberia and the far east to Moscow (these troops had been stationed there in expectation of a Japanese attack, but Stalin's master spy Richard Sorge indicated that the Japanese had decided to attack Southeast Asia and the Pacific instead). On 5 December 1941, these reinforcements attacked the German lines around Moscow, supported by new T-34 tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers. The new Soviet troops were prepared for winter warfare, and they included several ski battalions. The exhausted and freezing Germans were routed and driven back between 100 and 250 km (60 to 150 miles) by 7 January 1942.
And of course as we know the German's reached the zenith of their advance into Russia in the fall of 1942 (some 9 months after the Soviet counter attack of December 1941). The Germans clearly were not beaten in the winter of 1941/42.
The turning point, as I'm sure you will agree, was the defense of Stalingrad, followed by the encirclement of Von Paulus' 6th army. Even so it took a further 2-1/2 years of vicious fighting before the Russians got to Berlin's gates.
Your description of the Russian counter attack notwithstanding at no point was the German army routed. Individual units may have been, particularly the minor Axis partners (the Romanians and the Italians), the German army as a whole maintained fighting discipline to the very end of the war.
More generally I take issue with your claim that the Russians were secondary to the Americans in influence and effect on the eventual German defeat. That is simply not true.
No not really because 6 months later the Germans mounted there last major offensive attack,,,Kursk, the largest tank battle the world had ever seen to this day,
The Russians had a fantastic spy ring in Germany, some speculate that Borman was a Russian plant but whoever he was the Russians were prepared for all of Germany's attacks
If they Russians were such a poor adversary for the Germans, then why was 75% of German war material and men sent to the Russian front.
And you need to figure out...how did a country and army that in 6 months of fighting and having lost over 12 mill soldiers either KIA or POW's, losing most of their industrial land stop both Army Group North (1000 day siege of Leningrad)and Army group Center ( defense of Moscow) and a year later give Army Group South a sh it kicking at Stalingrad, 240,000 German causalities (Paulus's 6th Army)
I bet you still believe in the tooth fairy don't you.
And remember Stalingrad was over Feb 43, where were the rest of the Allies, Britian and the commonwealth in N Africa and USA at home.
What is the "idea" we are fighting? If you consider power and wealth to be "ideas", I suppose you have a case.
It seems to me we are fighting power grabs by a variety of entities... some of those from outside Iraq. Those attempting to grab power by force who are exclusively from within Iraq are bolstered by ethnic, tribal and cultural variants of the same religion. The stakes are extraordinarily high to those players in historical terms because if any one faction gains control, they control a resource that, in the context of any conflict through history, has extraordinary value. In an apt metaphor, oil will continue to fuel the fire for a long time.
We are not fighting an "idea", nor a religion. Military force IS necessary.
When one of the concessions the Iraq gov has to bow to is give 70% of their oil to 6 international oil companies, then I see an idea
Give? LOL
Turning point: going round in circles OR trapped in a maze.
That being the case, we'd better prepare the mother of all surges.
And how EXACTLY do you suggest we do that since we literally have no MORE troops we can send in there?
Easy.
We'll hire Blackwater at $500 an hour per mercenary.
Get yer stock now!
Blackwater is going back in?
Raise the Nazi flag.
Sorry, I forgot myself!
Aw raats, you think that the right of this nation has a brain...you overestimate these people, they are as dumb as dirt for the most part so let fools bray, for the end of their rain is near and swift on the wind of change and none too fast.
One would be careful of this news it could be a farce an attempt to scare us citizens into keeping the idiots in place...it's a craze person that does the same think and expect a different result every time! If you walk in circles around the bushes all you will do is walk in circles around the bushes don't expect triangles like our self righteous friends on the right!
raats6662 wrote: "That being the case, we'd better prepare the mother of all surges.
And how EXACTLY do you suggest we do that since we literally have no MORE troops we can send in there?"
Anybody feel a draft?
That's a GREAT idea. That WILL be the final nail in the coffin of the Republicans!
Well, let's just surge on outta there.
Tell me again why is this murderous sob still allowed to exist free and undermine Iraq? Bush is the traitor of his country that engaged in a criminal invasion. The crime was not against the people of iraq. The crime was against the prosperity of americans. Contrary to those that hold americans responsible for the deaths in iraq i hold responsible first the Iraqi people and leaders. Regardless of the fact the invasion was wrong , a moronic choice that likely was the result of a money oriented enterprise to exploit the emerging crisis(clue yourself why EXXON and the rest of the guys deserve 100 bil$ per year profits today) the ultimate truth about iraq is that it has failed because its citizens have failed themselves first. Bush is criminal because he should have known that a country is not ready for democracy until it first spills its own blood for it. Iraqis are not fighting for democracy today. They are fighting because they lack national identity and this is the root of the problem.
Bush should have known that this would happen. One can only hope that he and his architects are simply inept at game theory logic . The alternative is that a treasonous set of people became the government and decided to bankrupt their own country in order to enrich their friends and personal money interests.
This war never made any strategic sense either from a humanitarian or a cold hard cash point of view. Unless one looking for benefits is not the US as a country but only a subset of its business money culture. Then this war makes immense sense. The hunt for personal money/power above and beyond ethics or ones own country's prosperity is the source for all this mess.
Why cant iraqi people rise up and proclaim enough is enough we love our country, lets all unite and show americans they can leave us because we can save our own homeland! They cant because they are beneath national identity. They cant because they allow pathetic theocratic murderers like Sadr to even be relevant.
Where are the leaders? Where are the leaders here and there? Where is the inspiring Iraqi leader that will become the new father of modern Iraq, that will rise up and ask his/her citizens to embrace the opportunity for democracy that the invasion provided for them? Where is the iraqi that will love all kurds, Shias and Sunnis and demand from them to do something for their land and embrace a future of peace .And where is the american leader that will monopilize the Iraqi TV channels for a month if needed and talk directly to iraqi people , explain that his country has no financial gain or exploitation in mind and demand from them to rise up and prove their national identity. Where is the guy that will offer iraqi people a contract with the future? Where is the leader that will engage them all and demand from them to unite and reject alcaeda, reject sectarianism, warlords and embrace instead a properous future for their kids free from Saddam and free from US generals. WHERE?
The surge ended about six months ago.
This is just another layer of right-wing BS that steals our money to put in the pockets of the already rich & powerful using the ever increasing number of people they sent to their deaths as the excuse.
As long as Americans are so gullible they continue to take money out of their children`s future to reward the people who are stealing their freedoms, nothing will change.
McCain 2008! (just kidding)