Iraqis May Offer US Deal to Stay Longer

What, we don't have enough client states in the Middle East that we are supporting now?

Doesn't mean we can't use a few more. Rome had plenty and it lasted more than a thousand years. ;-)

The difference was Rome received tribute from client states it didn't pay out it's treasury to them.

You make a salient point, luckydog.

Tribute doesn't sound that much different than "preferential treatment for U.S. investors"

In that case, Sam, we may get the same result from Iraq that Rome received from its protectorates. All I know is that we have an obligation to keep around 26 million people safe since we invaded their country, deposed their government and, thus far, have failed to put down an insurgency and terrorism that is killing a great deal more of them than it is killing of us. My view is that if we can establish a safe and prosperous democracy while fostering trade with Iraq that benefits both of our countries and creates a strong ally in the heart of a region that is hostile to us, it is in our best interest to do so and we should do so with all due speed.

Not exactly. Some provinces were more expensive than their tribute. Judaea, for one, required constant flogging to stay in line. Those floggings got expensive.

Under the Republic, provinces were annexed as equals: if you didn't put up any resistance to Rome, you got all the benefits without the sacking. It was such a good deal several kings willed their territories to Rome.

Once the Empire began, then the predations and pillaging began in earnest. Conquered peoples were not treated as equals. Rome went from a society of free men to a society of slaves, more an ant hill than a civilization.

Rome went from a society of free men to a society of slaves, more an ant hill than a civilization.

Welcome to the new ant hill...

Yes but, but, but.. In the time of Rome, the Earth was safe, and now we know that the world has been destroyed by cars and industry. Chaos! We're all going to be drinking acid rain! Lions and Tigers and CO2, OH MYYYYY!!!!

Also, if we were alive in Roman times, would not Rosie O'Donnell and most other liberals have been placed in the iron maiden by now?

And lets also not forget that Rome can not be looked at as a model to follow. They didn't exactly build the empire on sweat and hard work, more like blood and tears. The lesson to be learned is in how Rome fell. It was surely destroyed from within. But why? I would love to see the timeline of events for the fall of Rome. There was quite a bit of industry and development back then, was it global warming that destroyed Rome?

Also, if we were alive in Roman times, would not Rosie O'Donnell and most other liberals have been placed in the iron maiden by now?

Yeah, Caligula was a staunch Conservative. Rome was well-known for being almost identacle to Evangelical Conservatism, orgies and all. Find a better vehicle for your one-liners, Collin :)

Hey Collin, didn't Europe enter the "Dark Ages" After the collapse of Rome?

Yes but, but, but.. In the time of Rome, the Earth was safe, and now we know that the world has been destroyed by cars and industry. Chaos! We're all going to be drinking acid rain! Lions and Tigers and CO2, OH MYYYYY!!!!

Well, each era has its battles, lead poisoning and the plague played a role in Rome's demise also. Not downplaying our own problems, but empires tend to be blind to anything but whatever sustains their elite for the next round of parties.

Rome fell around the time christianity came about and the Romans turned on the gods they'd used for thousands of years....since their empire began.

Just sayin'.

Now why would the NeoCon puppet, begging the US forces to stay and resist a coup, smell fishy?

What a cute name, hello, this just jumped out and its clever too, nice pick NiteQwill!! :~)

Why?

Why would we want a long-term security role in Iraq?

Sounds to me as though they're begging us to do something that they need to learn to do themselves.

Assuming this means the Surge is working (I'm not sure how it's related, but...) it also seems to mean that we're not really driving home the concept that they need to step up to the plate or, put another way, that our mission to train their army isn't doing very well at all.

You might want to give that some time observer and see if this a ploy before declaring victory.

Observer:
To any student of counter insurgency operations, they expected The Surge would work in Baghdad. And it has worked, in Baghdad. There is no reason to admit that The Surge has worked because it has not done what Bush said it would do which is calm the country enough for the government to take root and be able to protect itself. As a matter of fact, Iraq asking us to stay for the long-term to provide their security is an admission of failure of the purpose of The Surge if anything. If the Democrats are going to play this they must play it from a "We're going to fix this even though we don't believe we should have gotten involved because that is the best thing for America and for the Iraqis that we now have responsibility for." Success? No, certainly not.

Sounds to me as though they're begging us to do something that they need to learn to do themselves.

Sounds to me like Europe.

YEah I guess we have tyo admit amission was accomplished too or that the insurgents are in their last throws
Observer you do know that 2007 was the deadlyest year for us soldiers and we still have two months.. and remember way back when when cheney said no americans deaths were worth the life of one saddam hussain?????
And just as the markets returned to normal last week a bomb went off, leading most people to say the strategy is to wait for calm and then start up. (of course we blame iran and the iraqi gov sticks up for iran and says no way.. calls us progandaists and this is our ally lol) Most said including the iraqi pm that the surge is only for temporary safety, and that the terrorist who KNOW FOR A FACT that we can only afford the surge without a draft, until april of 08 and all they have to do is hold up and wait.
It would be nice if you could observer without your koolaid colored glasses on.

and about the so called surge working.. so what.. women now way more opresssed than when saddam ruled, iraqi way more no secular, the surrounding countries are struggling with the mass influx of iraqis, who are competing with for jobs.. ok observer i know you hate mexicans.. er i mean immigrants.. now imagine a war in mexico and havign millions of them come accross the border, would you be happy? how do you think jordon, syria and such feel?

Yeah I'll admit the surge is serving it's purpose, create temporary peace to hold the crys for bush's head until he gets out of office.

last a government that needs the us to protect it from it's own people is a puppet government.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
how we forget these proud and string words.

wake up observe, bush is the worst president we have ever had, makes carter look like reagan.

Brian Ford...Sounds to me as though they're begging us to do something that they need to learn to do themselves.

I agree with your comment but would add that "they" here is the puppet installed by the NeoCons. Just as Bush doesn't reflect the will of the Americans, his hand picked man in Baghdad may not be the choice of Iraqis and this is just a politically diplomatic way of staying put. Occupation is support, but only for PR spin.

Let's see Pamela. A Shiite politician with deep ties through his party to Iran is a "neocon puppet". Incredibly stupid analysis. If we were going to install a puppet, Ayad Allawi would have been elected come hook or crook.

Bill Harrison...Incredibly stupid analysis.

Bill, as always the full impact of your brilliantly articulate summary of the situation and links to add credence are up to form. Oh wait, no, it's snarky name calling that you like to share, good to jog my memory about you.

Pamela:
I'll agree that saying it was "stupid" was uncalled for, but if you look back at what you said as compared to the facts of the situation we chose an incredibly bad puppet. The fact is, we chose the first guy that served, he ran, he lost to al-Maliki. We promised a democratic election, we couldn't figure out how to rig it and now we are stuck with Nouri al-Maliki and he with us like Balki Bartakamos and Larry Applegate on Perfect Strangers. He has to do certain things to keep us happy or we can upset his applecart and he has to do certain things to keep his Shia supporters and Iranian masters happy or he will get assassinated by an insider. Saying Nouri al-Maliki is our puppet is like saying that our government orchestrated 9-11: neither one makes enough practical sense to pass muster for a joke much less a valid theory.

is like saying that our government orchestrated 9-11

We clearly have radically different views of what powers are at play. I do not see "our government" as an entity with actions in my behalf. I see a collection of CEO's who have spent decades doing International business deals, who have employees and agents in every corner of the planet. I follow the money and see who were the winners and losers in real dollar terms, in market share and in power's intangible forms. This skips the BS put out by the CEO contingent in the media operations as a source for content. It's don't ask, don't tell

At the heart of the Businessman's Club are the Poison Ivy Gang. The ones of Harvard and Yale, with MBA's and law degrees who play by their own insider rules. Their actions get a shield of National Security and they are as criminal and involved in every fiasco as can be. They weild the power of my America but they are the cancer that strangles the heart of Democracy and they are very much a factor in every deal that is made, every sleazy manuver, every grey area created by legislative loophole.

Our "Government" was "unable" to defend the Pentagon when it was believed the Nation was under attack. Holy hell, open your eyes, most of this is like a Hollywood blockbuster script. The CIA created the terrorist organizations under Osama with Operation Cyclone. They have been dealing with the drug lords in the region since the days when Forbes and Russell won the Opium Wars. It's all business and if the US didn't have him in their pocket at the get go he is under their thumb now with the cya, please stay and help.

Only Congress has the power to make treaties but the bait and switch going on now with the White House pronouncements of support in response to the Maliki please smells to me like a way to do the will of the Bonesman in Chief by doing what he has done for 7 years, Imperal decree. I continue to stand by my belief this is home cooking, maybe not a puppet for starters but a political patsy now.

I generally didn't agree with most of what you said and I imagine if you knew that the people you don't like too much in "National Security" are, many times, the only thing standing between you and someone interested in killing you either for what you own or because you are an American it would probably scare the heck out of you.

As for al-Maliki, I never said that he and the White House didn't learn to work together to get what they both wanted. In fact, you essentially agreed with my opinion when you said he wasn't their choice but they're working together now. They are working together now, however, it's a little more adversarial than collegial as opposed to what you have said you believe to be the case.

Scott, welcome to PamelaDrewWorld where all of the world's evils can be connected to a cabal of Wall Street Ivy Leaguers. Have her tell you about Operation Northwoods some time. I don't know how many times we've been treated to that old canard, "the CIA created al Qaeda" bs here on Newsvine. I've lost count. It's highly amusing but it displays a vast gulf of ignorance vis-a-vis the US involvement in the Soviet-Afghan war of the '80s. Yes we did funnel arms (largely through the one-man efforts of one member of Congress, TX-D Charlie Wilson. But the real movers and shakers in the muj were certainly not guys like bin Laden and the rest of the imports but homegrown Afghanis like Rashid Dostum, Ahmed Shah Massoud, Rabbani and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar who distrusted bin Laden and his foreigners and were archenemies of his latter day buddies the Taliban, then taking root in Pakistani refugee camps. The real shame on the US during all of this was not its role in supporting the muj but its abandonment of Afghanistan once the Soviets withdrew and turning a blind eye to the Paki ISI's installation of the Taliban in power in the country which as we all know would eventually lead to them offering safe haven to bin Laden after he was kicked out of Sudan.

I pretty much agree with your assessment of the situation Bill. On a side note, the primary way that I knew Bin Laden was responsible for 9-11 immediately after the second plane hit the second tower was that two of his suicide bombers had posed as a camera crew and assassinated Ahmed Shah Masood on September 10, 2001. "The Lion Of The Panjshir" was the greatest general of the muj as well as the most able commander in the Northern Alliance. Bin Laden knew we would ally with the Northern Alliance if he successfully hit us and we busted the door into Afghanistan and he wanted to deprive us of what he clearly felt was his greatest Afghan threat and our best asset to topple the Taliban with native Afghan forces. Turns out he was wrong, but the absence of Masood did make it more difficult than it would have been if we'd had him as an ally in a post-Sept. 11th world. I'm not sure of his tribal affiliation but if the tribal politics had worked out I think Masood might have made a good president. At least there is Hamid Karzai... he looks like Abraham Lincoln compared to Nouri al-Maliki. *shakes head sadly*

Nice at smear by association, Bill, but as long as you linked to Wikipedia's article on Charlie Wilson let's take a look at their article on Operation Cyclone, the anti-Soviet CIA operation dreamed up at first by Jimmy Carter's Zbigniew Brzezinski and then expanded greatly under George HW Bush. Under Cyclone the CIA funded the construction of terrorist training camps in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, with help from the ISI, Pakistan's equivalent to the CIA, and Saudi fund-raiser and construction engineer Osama Bin Laden. Some $6 billion later the Soviets were out on their ears, but in the meantime Osama had ideas of his own - and the remains of the MAK fund-raising network at his disposal. Once the U.S. established a permanent presence in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War his objectives were clear - he would target the U.S. The ISI-backed Taliban government eventually helped OBL by giving him protection in the chain of training bases that he had formed with CIA backing.

So yet again we're dealing with the after-effects of Cold War junkies who hate to admit that they f'ed up in being overzealous in their pursuit of the crumbling Soviet empire. I agree with your assessment that the U.S. fumbled Afghanistan badly after the Soviets left, considering it old Cold War news not worth funding any more, which left the dangerous power void that the Taliban were only too glad to fill with ISI backing. But the question becomes, I suppose, who else was ticked off about this power vacuum in Afghanistan? Could it not have also been the Western oil corporations, who had wanted to accelerate the exploitation of oil fields in the "Stans" north of Afghanistan via pipelines? And if Texans were willing to fund a whole war of terrorism against the Soviets, what would be the harm in a little coup by ISI-supported interests to stabilize Afghanistan enough to get to the point of having a government with which to negotiate - negotiations that Condoleeza Rice bungled badly in 2001, unintentionally or otherwise?

Now, what industry is it that you lobby for, Bill? Just curious.

Massoud was defense minister of Afghanistan for a time in the Rabbani government after the Soviets bugged out. The chaos attendant to his reign was the proximate reason for the Taliban's emergence to bring stability to the country. Massoud was a great military commander and charismatic figure. He was an ethnic Tajik, however, and largely Pashtun Afghanistan will never accept a central government headed by an Uzbek or Tajik. In fact, Afghanistan will never accept a strong central government period. It's been that way for hundreds of years and will continue that way for probably another couple of hundred. Great profile of Massoud in the New Yorker by Jon Lee Anderson in June 2002. Alas, it's not yet available in their archives.

Thanks Bill, I believe I'll go to the library and photocopy that for a reading and possible scanning into PDF at home.

LOL. That old saw about the US energy companies and the Taliban is as old as the hills. I'm surprised anyone with a brain still gives it any credence after the demolition the Nation's David Corn did to it several years back. But if you insist, here's the story. Thanks for making my point though about what a minor leaguer bin Laden was in the Soviet-Afghan war. Here's a newsflash for you and Pamela. Bin Laden's rich and comes from a very well-connected family. He hardly had any need of any special aid regarding funding back in the '90s.

" Bin Laden's rich and comes from a very well-connected family. He hardly had any need of any special aid regarding funding back in the '90s. "

Sounds like Bush.

Bill, his lack of need doesn't mean he didn't receive aid. Maybe he was a budget freedom fighter.

...alas, the endless war... so, here we are. What would a United States of American victory look like? A stable Iraq? A stable Middle East? Democracy in the Arab world? A stable M.E. would leave us with secular gov'ts, Ba'athist in Syria and Iraq and Egypt and Fine kingdoms in the Gulf States and the KSA. These nations all have Islamicist organizations that can not be hammered down like teh nail that sticks up.

Here is a history on the estimates of Bin Laden's net worth revisions. Anywhere from $50 to $300 million with varying amounts of annual stipends coming from family members.

An interesting day when you're citing a David Corn opinion piece for authoritative insight, Bill. Interesting debunking of Corn's non-informed opinions here. Interesting excerpt:

Since 1996, and despite the Taliban's murderous regime and its obscene abuse of human rights, several US oil companies including Unocal have been pushing for a political stabilization in Afghanistan in order to implement an oil/gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea region to Pakistan and the Persian Gulf through Afghanistan. For that purpose, a memorandum of understanding between the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan was signed in March 1995 and a consortium of international companies was formed in October 1997.

Their officials had publicly stated that to achieve this goal was in both the interest of the United States and the Afghan people. In 1996, Chris Taggart, vice president of Unocal Corporation, described the Taliban takeover of Kabul as a "very positive step" and urged the United States to extend recognition to the new rulers in Kabul and thus "lead the way to international lending agencies coming in."

Corn's opinion piece also sheds no light as to why and how the Taliban got into power in the first place. With the Cold War over and the oil of the former Soviet states beckoning, the Taliban looked like the West's best bet via "ally" Pakistan's influence to introduce some stability into Afghanistan. Oil corporation operatives have their fingerprints all over Afghanistan politics - including Condoleeza Rice, former board member of Chevron and former ISI operative and Unocal "consultant" Hamid Karzai.

You missed the point on Bin Laden altogether - besides his independent wealth he had become a major fund-raiser for Jihadist movements - he was their Jack Abramoff and their Charlton Heston all rolled into one. So when the U.S. ticked him off and his family cut him out of his inheritance he didn't need them any more - and had the training bases and Taliban support already in place. With big oil eager to get their hands on the 'Stan oil and dumb as a bag of hammers about the Taliban and their motives, they were all too glad to keep the heat off Bin Laden if would help to get the oil pipeline deals done. Realistically they thought that he was loose change, a minor player - as you yourself have characterized him. Memos stating explicitly that he was determined to strike the U.S.? Come on, Bin Laden's for wimps like Clinton to worry about. But in the meantime somebody knew better.

So far you have nothing but love for any and all theories that let big oil off the hook - which pretty much answers my question as to who you're lobbying for.

The conspiracy theorists have taken a grain of truth (the interest of cutting Russia and its pipeline system out of Caspian oil moving to the West) and built around it to a high level government conspiracy where everybody and their brother is involved. Except, that is, the people putting forward the theory. ;-)

Scott,

The funny thing is that I am not talking about 9/11 - this is just the basic machinations of our government for the past fifty years. We're locked into this routine manipulation of countries, events and people to benefit U.S. interests, our principles be damned in the process. It has nothing to do with grassy knoll shooters or cutter charges set in WTC towers - it's just what we do as a matter of course. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's just fact. Our government's mechanisms were fine-tuned to win the Cold War at all costs - and those mechanisms are still in place, doing things that have nothing to do with "evil empires" but everything to do with U.S. global dominance in political, economic and military spheres. Any one who doesn't acknowledge that is just spinning PR for the people who do these things.

You really are a lightweight. Putting up some bilge from the two hacks who Corn eviscerated is "proof" of that he's incorrect? If you were in my graduate colloquium you'd get an "F" right then and there. For those who are interested, here is Ruppert's speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in which he accuses the US government, British government, the Israeli government and Rudy Giuliani with planning and carrying out the 9/11 attacks and says he it will prove it conclusively. Of course he's done nothing of the sort being a graduate of the Partisan Hack School of "We Don't Need No Stinking Evidence, Innuendo is Quite Enough". Pathetic.

Bill,

As usual you love to dodge the issues. This isn't about 9/11 - this is about American policy in Afghanistan over the past twenty-seven years. You're trying to cover the Cold War and post-Cold War manipulation of Afghanistan during this period for the geopolitical and economic gain of the U.S. with cockamamie tin foil hat nonsense. If you were in my graduate colloquium you'd be awaiting the security guards putting you in a strait jacket.

So if you're ready, Mr. "Scholar", please refute these pieces of information provided in Brisard's article:

Since 1996, and despite the Taliban's murderous regime and its obscene abuse of human rights, several US oil companies including Unocal have been pushing for a political stabilization in Afghanistan in order to implement an oil/gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea region to Pakistan and the Persian Gulf through Afghanistan. For that purpose, a memorandum of understanding between the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan was signed in March 1995 and a consortium of international companies was formed in October 1997.

True or untrue? Based on what evidence?

In 1996, Chris Taggart, vice president of Unocal Corporation, described the Taliban takeover of Kabul as a "very positive step" and urged the United States to extend recognition to the new rulers in Kabul and thus "lead the way to international lending agencies coming in."

True or untrue?

Just ten days after the Taliban seized power in Kabul in 1996 Zalmay Khalilzad, former National Security Council official, Unocal consultant and current US special envoy to Afghanistan, argued in a Washington Post opinion article that the United States should try to work with the mullahs and form a broad-based government that included other factions, adding that "the Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran--it is closer to the Saudi model...." And his conclusion was that "we should use as a positive incentive the benefits that will accrue to Afghanistan from the construction of oil and gas pipelines across its territory." He added, "These projects will only go forward if Afghanistan has a single authoritative government."

True or untrue?

In November 1997 Unocal invited a Taliban delegation to the United States in Texas, and in early December the company opened a training center at the University of Omaha, Nebraska, to instruct 137 Afghans in pipeline construction technology. The company also donated $900,000 to the Center for Afghanistan Studies of the University of Omaha, Nebraska, for a humanitarian project controlled by the Taliban. As recalled John Imle, CEO of Unocal, the company spent between $15 million and $20 million to make the CentGas Project go through to promote the project and finance the regime.

True or untrue?

We could go on, but the point is clear: when facts don't look good to you you'd rather smear than engage them.

All of that is true and proves nothing whatsoever except that the Taliban was ruling Afghanistan. God you're dense. Brissard and Ruppert's thesis is that the Taliban were reneging on some kind of deal that Cheney and other sinister forces had cooked up so these sinister forces (which btw included the government of the UK and Israel) decided to stage 9/11 as a way of taking them out. These two douchebags also insisted that the US provided some a $41 million bribe to the Taliban to forestall this despite the well-documented fact that this was food aid following a severe drought and it was distributed by that nefarious blackops outfit known as the United Nations.

Well, if you're agreeing that Brisard had authoritative information relating to the Taliban's intimate relationship with Unocal and other oil interests, then I assume that you're in agreement with Brisard's other assertion that there were negotiations to have the Taliban allow or enable the removal of Bin Laden from Afghanistan in exchange for finalizing pipeline agreements - agreements that went south in spite of some efforts at threatened coercion by the Western governments and oil interests. And in fairness Brisard does not connect the dots to a Cheney-led "conspiracy" that led to 9/11. In fact, he is careful to avoid such an allusion. He says in his document:

I wouldn't speculate on whether the Taliban regime and its Al Qaeda supporter may have tried to anticipate a military action against them by launching a devastating attack on US soil on September 11, 2001. Neither would I suggest a gross miscalculation from Ambassador Simons by making such hazardous statements. However, the US representative's statement is acknowledged by several reliable sources and participants at the Berlin negotiations at the end of July 2001. For this reason, and because it may have been interpreted as a tug of war, this threat is an important aspect for our understanding of the months leading to September 11, which may have had a significant if not essential impact on the intelligence analysis process prior to that date.

One may ask the simple question, Would the US intelligence agencies have evaluated the fragmented raw intelligence and signals differently if the US government had informed them that the United States had threatened military action if the Taliban were to refuse US diplomatic and business concessions five weeks before the attacks?

In other words, if the intelligence community had known that there was extra motivation involved for Bin Laden, would they have looked to connect the dots more carefully? Instead, ultra-secretive Cheney, who cannot even tell us that he was busy planning all sorts of divvying up of the world's oil resources, was mum as far as we're told to virtually everyone about his plans to support the oil lobby.

Does that place a smoking tower in Cheney's hands? Obviously not. But I'm not the one obsessing on 9/11. You're the one trying to discredit the blatantly obvious connections between the oil industry and our involvement in Afghanistan by trying to insinuate that anybody doing so is a tin foil hat loonie bent on hanging 9/11 on Bush and Cheney. But if, as you have done, one can acknowledge that those connections are long-standing and well-documented, then the logistics specific to 9/11 are fairly moot. 9/11 is just one event in a greater picture of oil companies highly motivated to use the U.S. Cold War apparatus to further their goals. They were going to get in there one way or another, regardless. If Cheney helped to engineer the specifics it would not surprise me, but it's not necessary in my mind. He and his oil buddies had lots of options at their disposal to make it happen.

PH:
I'm getting two different signals for you. At first you seem to flatly deny that Cheney or other Americans helped to engineer 9-11 but then you seem to open the door to infer that they did just that.

Are you saying that out of their greed they accidentally left us open to an attack or that they actively assisted in 9-11? They are two very different things.

Scott,

A fair comment. I think that it's safe to say that we'll never have credible evidence that Cheney had any direct hand in planning 9/11 - and I don't need that evidence to accept that Cheney came into power with the explicit agenda to bend U.S. policy to the specific interests of the Western oil interests. With that in mind it's relatively moot whether he had a direct hand in 9/11 or not - 9/11 was but one event in a much broader chain of events set in motion by oil interests to secure as many oil fields as possible in a continuation of the dominance that they were able to attain under Cold War policies.

In other words, if there were never a 9/11 there would have been some other event that could have been used as a fulcrum for the oil interests' goals. So whether there was accidental, implicit or complicit support for it by Cheney becomes rather moot. It's a red herring. The real issue is, why was American policy in general being driven by the unprecedented secrecy surrounding Cheney's establishment of plans for the oil industry and the continuation of Cold War policies that were not grounded in any realistic military threat that measured up against our capabilities? Desert Storm's lasting legacy was to prove that the U.S.' military capability was laughably enormous against conventional military threats. Why, then, have this capability unless you intend to use it in an offensive rather than defensive manner? The marriage of military interests and oil industry interests were a natural match - a match all to clear to ex-Halliburton CEO Cheney, whose company had profited immensely from both the war machine and the oil machine.

Unless credible evidence surfaces that can demonstrate irrefutably that 9/11 could not have happened without inside help it's a waste of time to think about it. I think that it's entirely possible, given the three key factors required for any criminal activity - means, opportunity and motive - but it's far more important for the American people to recognize and accept the broader and far more insidious picture of a nation whose entire governmental process has been corrupted to support the narcissistic goals of a handful of corporate elites and their lapdogs. This would be true with or without 9/11. You could go out there and prosecute any one you please as being complicit in 9/11 but if you don't address the broader issue of how our national system of government has been corrupted it will matter little. And because it is so corrupt it's not likely that such complicity would result in any prosecution, even if the evidence held its own ticker tape parade in prime time. So if the attainment of any justice in a purely hypothetical conspiracy is unattainable, it's really not worth focusing on at all. It's largely at this point a stalking horse used by the right when any one questions the underlying motivations for our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, that may change when the NIST releases an updated report on the causes of the collapses of the WTC towers and 7WTC, expected in the next few months. But I doubt that such findings would be any more significant for revealing the ultimate truths of 9/11 for the purposes of justice than were post-Warren Report investigations of the Kennedy assassination by Congress. It was what it was, let's move on and deal with the fundamental issues of corruption.

What the government want and what the people want can be miles apart. Look at how few of Americans Bush speaks for.

About 38%. Look how few the @!$%#ty democratic congress speaks for... about 20%.

From what I understand, it is the obstructionist Republicans in Congress keeping the ratings low. Besides, Congress isn't elected as a whole, what matters are individual Congress person's ratings.

Andrew (aka Online Apps)Gasp. I thought the Iraqis DIDN'T want us. Imagine that

The key word here is "Imagine".

An then stretch it some.

Congress isn't elected as a whole, what matters are individual Congress person's ratings.

True, and it's always the other people's representatives who don't get it. This in part perpetuates the "obstructionist" perception as often even in the same state strong opposition is elected into power.

At some point however the congressional low ratings trickle down to all the individual representatives and no one can shed the ill will directed towards them.

they call it a democratic congress but in reality it is 49 to 49 in the sentate with two independants.. that do vote with the dems when it comes to commintie assignments but we see that liberman will vote with the gop when it comes to isreali issues(like the iraq war. and sorry it is an issue or israel, they support the war).. they have a bigger lead int he house but as you know from seame street, a bill got to go through both houses before landing ont he presidents desk.
people also love to quote those poll numbers without looking at the next question, which is why do people hate congress and most answered two things they havent investigated bush enough and they havent ended the war or even slowed it down.. the surge happened on their watch when they ran to end the war.
Yeah i hate peoloci and reid, i think they are partisan old school democrat scum that care more about their own power than doing what is right. I am one of those 80% that hates congress right now. But it has zip to do with onslaught of liberal laws coming out of congress and the shear increases in taxes.. oh wait cause they havent done any of that.
You know most of the time people love a do nothing congress.. you know how gov gov best when they gov least.. thats a gop phrase.. so since this one is barely gov why do you think people hate them? because they love bush??? LOLOLOLOLOL i dont think so.. wake up and smell the super minority as you are in it.

Yeah i hate peoloci and reid, i think they are partisan old school democrat scum that care more about their own power than doing what is right. I am one of those 80% that hates congress right now.

why do you think people hate them? because they love bush??? LOLOLOLOLOL i dont think so.. wake up and smell the super minority as you are in it.

80% does not a super minority make... but welcome to the smell. You are clearly not alone in your feelings about pelosi and reid nor the vast majority who feel strongly about the poor job being done in congress in either partisan direction.

super minority isnt those that hate congress but those that still support bush..
but thanks for spinnign my comment.

Surprise, surprise. A puppet government that we put in place and are keeping there by force of arms wants us to stay. Shocking. And who is going to pay for this continued occupation? Why the good old American taxpayer of course.

SHOCKING!
But no surprise-

Jesus God, now we'll never get out! Just when you think it can't get any worse . . .

Notice how the right wingers on Newsvine call this corruption, class dictatorship, "democracy". Illegal invasions, occupations, and a Vichy type regime that is beholden to the fascist state of Hitler, now the same collaboration regime to our class elites, corporate fascism, and imperial empire, and yes the majority of Iraqis and Americans want us out, but like I have always said there is a great ideological disconnect between what people don't want and what they vote for. This ideologica disconnect is seen here in the regressive comments by right wingers here.

yes the majority of Iraqis and Americans want us out, but like I have always said there is a great ideological disconnect between what people don't want and what they vote for.

Parsing between the Hitler and Vichy analogies, I detect a shred of truth. This is the case of the American people who have sacrificed so much (for good or for ill) and expect something more to show for it.

We all want happy endings and high on the list is getting out of Iraq with a stabilized Iraq in place... With one serious exception that it relinquishes the lucrative rebuilding and goodwill redevelopment to the Russians and the Chinese and compounds our unfavorability in the region.

If there is one thing American's always want to retain the rights to... it's the ending.

puppet gov wants us out and have said as much several times
they DO NOT get along with the us.
puppet gov needs us to stay, or the people would remove the corrupted puppet gov
they just want a deal like the saudis got. You get cheapo oil, you keep us in power and protect us from external and internal threats.
Thats why you never have and never will hear a sitting president call for elections in SA.. we cry DEMOCRACY.. but only at our enemies.

Eric Albert:

Notice how the right wingers on Newsvine call this corruption, class dictatorship, "democracy". Illegal invasions, occupations, and a Vichy type regime that is beholden to the fascist state of Hitler, now the same collaboration regime to our class elites, corporate fascism, and imperial empire, and yes the majority of Iraqis and Americans want us out, but like I have always said there is a great ideological disconnect between what people don't want and what they vote for. This ideologica disconnect is seen here in the regressive comments by right wingers here.

This is funny. The man that says Hugo Chavez is a democratic leader that must be respected because he was elected by a free and fair election is saying that the Iraqi government isn't legitimate. LOL They took the same route to power that Chavez took: they used military force to overthrow the old government and then ratified it through an election under their watchful eye. Now that you've been caught in a tight spot I'm anxiously awaiting a buzzword-laden response about imperialistic whores and their struggles with class and short skirts... I'll let everyone else figure out which buzzword doesn't belong in a typical Eric Albert post. ;-)

...we could reap a decent reward once their oil infrastructure is fully operational.

I've been hearing this for five years. Is there a realistic estimate of how long Operation Iraqi Liberation is gonna last? (It would've been cheaper to just by the oil.)

How exactly is that reward going to work? From what I have seen oil is sold internationally at the going rate. Are the Iraqi's going to sell oil to American companies at less than the going rate? Not bloody likely. Even if they did the Bush buddies would just suck up the difference as "profit" with no benefit to the average American consumer. No, I think we have been royally screwed by the Bush royal family.

It is very much like calling Dell for assistance. You get on the line and wait and wait and wait and wait.......... When you finally get through to a human, you have to break a language barrier, but you know that if you hang up, or in the case of Iraq, withdraw, you will be back where you began with nothing to show for your waisted time and effort. So that is why I am going to put forth the effort to understand this guy and articulate my problem as best as I can.

Sorry if that made no sense.

luckydog:
The effect of Iraq and its oil is that it is not a member of OPEC and as long as it is a close ally of the United States it will remain unaffiliated with OPEC. While unaffiliated with OPEC, Iraq can pump as much oil as it would like. If it floods the market at our behest, it will cause oil prices to go down and reduce the funding to our enemies like Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia. I consider Saudi Arabia an enemy because some of its wealthy oil barons give great deals of money to Islamic "charity" groups that, surprise, gets funneled to Sunni Muslim terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. Bush's premise wasn't crazy, it was just a massive undertaking to successfully complete and he used about 40% of the resources that he should have when invading and occupying a country the size and ethnic composition of Iraq. Bush is not wrong when he says a stable and democratic Iraq is in our best interests; he has just lost total touch with reality by thinking he can bring that about with the military at its current size.

Bush's premise was crazy alright when he lied us into war. He then mismanaged the war, allowed looting, disbanded the army and left them unemployed, with their weapons while disregarding perfectly valid plans for reconstruction. Then he started parceling out no-bid contracts to American and foreign companies while leaving the iraqis out and unemployed. Under those circumstances it would have been a miracle if an insurgency hadn't started.
Of course a stable and democratic Iraq is in our best interest but I bet that it is way way down on Bush's list of priorities. We have to look no further than Pakistan and their military dictatorship to see how much Bush "values" democracy.
Regarding the oil, Iraq's oil industry is a mess with no capability of flooding the world oil supply even if they thought it was in their own best interest to do so which I doubt very much. Saying Venezuela is our "enemy" is a real stretch. That they have a buffoon in charge is a fair statement but then so do we.

From my experience, most of the Iraqi people want us there

every single scienctific poll done disagrees with you very very much and so does every single soldier i talk to.

Most of the Iraqis want us there because no matter how much they hate us they hate uncertainty even more and chaos loves a vacuum... particularly the huge vacuums that large armies leave when they withdraw for good.

The withdrawal is not going to be reversed unless they want to operationally break the backs of our armed forces. If they plan to stay long term in Iraq the only safe, responsible way to do it for our military members is to aggressively enlarge the size of our military.

Well, "drawing down" to 50,000 troops hardly seems like much of a withdrawal anyway...

Scott,

Bingo!! I wrote a big article on this subject some time back. We also should rethink some of our security arrangements around the world. I see no reason whatsoever to keep a large troop presence in S. Korea and we can scale back in Europe as well and let the Europeans, with their constabulary militaries, pony up for their own security.

Now, let the "war for oil" comments from the usual suspects begin.

You are right Bill. There is no oil in Korea or Europe so why should we stay there?

there also isnt much in aphghanistan.. but aphghanistan has the perfect location for a pipeline controllign the flow of oil through asian.

After the Chinese almost completely embarrassed us in the Korean war from our gross underestimation of their ground forces it would make sense for us to keep a foothold there. It wasn't THAT long ago. Plus it's a strategic point in the global community in relation to N.Korea and Vietnam. Nothing to do with oil. This of course is highly off topic from the original article.

We do not, and never will have control over Iraq. Ditto Afghanistan.

True.
It is not our place to control any foreign nation, but the goal of U.S. military presence is to stabilize the region. We are doing that. I'm not referring to the "surge" and I'm not debating our initial intent prior to U.S. invasion. If we leave too soon we could see Iraq erupt into sectarian violence worse than we have seen. The overwhelming Shia population would be more vulnerable to Iranian influence and we must not forget that Iraq has a very weak military.

If Iraq was a peaceful independent country and they truly wanted us there then I have no problem with a couple of bases but I do not perceive that to be the case. A national referendum as Crutch suggests would be a good idea in any event.

I see your point, but such a referendum would not be good news for the Sunnis and the Kurds. They are the minority and still have little pull even within the puppet Iraqi government.

If Iraq was a peaceful independent country and they truly wanted us there then I have no problem with a couple of bases but I do not perceive that to be the case.

Your right luckydog, Iraq is anything but peaceful.
Are you in favor of a complete U.S. withdraw?

Wouldn't that be like leaving one's small children home alone and expecting them to act responsibly?

I am troubled by the comparison of Iraqis to small children. I wish the "adults" were able to tell us when they would be getting "home".

The Iraqi's got along fine without America for over 4000 years. I am not sure that they need us, or indeed want us to hold their hand now. All we have done is destroyed the equilibrium of the place and trashed their country.

Now doubt you would have been a big fan of the equilibrium Stalin provided as well, dog. And if you've been following the reporting on Iraq you'd know that despite all of the bloodshed and privations nearly everyone in Iraq would not want to return to the days of Saddam.

Thanks, Bill. My thoughts as well.

Iraq is much better now and the word I am hearing from the streets of Ramadi and Fallujah are STAY.

Bill,

It would be hard to "return to the days of Saddam" now, wouldn't it? Do we really need a straw-man?

Good point Crutch:

Like all class whores, thugs, they can be bought off through the class hierarchy of class regimes and class Empire.

Classy.

If they were really a soverien gov, they would have been able to arrest a couple black water guards.

That's what I was thinking. If they are independent enough to request security "backup" they should be able to pursue legal action against Blackwater for murders. No doube a conflict of issues US media will miss.

Return on our investment?!? Our investment killed a million Iraqis! How can you possibly reason that that means they owe us something?

The people of Iraq owe us nothing, I would agree. But Americans have spent blood and treasure for four-plus years. Do we just chase that all down the rat hole or do we try to establish some sort of reasonable flow back to us? And, at the same time, do we try to repair the breech that we have created? I am not saying that walking away from this is not an option, but I am not sure how we are being just to the million Iraqis that have died or the American people in doing so. It took Vietnam decades to recuperate, mostly without American support. We have that option, but I am not sure that it's the right option.

last week i saw smoking coming from my neighbours house, without thinking i ran in. the place was a blazed, i ran upstairs and found my neighbour unconcious and dragged him out. I figure he owes me his new hummer. I mean i put a lot of work into saving him dont i deserve something... OF HIS?

Now lets say this actually happened on the 4th of jully and it was one of my bottle rockets that set his house on fire as this is more apt to iraq.. dont you still think he owes me his hummer.

You know we may have suffered a bit, but iraq has lost it's homes, it's bridhes and all most of it's professionals have left.. you knwo the4 people that cant make change at mcdonalds.. thats who is left in iraq.. i think they need a bit of cash a bit more than exxon haliburton stock holders who are mad it costs $80 to fill up their hummer.

Truly none of us deserve anything, but that is hard to comprehend and even harder to live by.

But what always gets under our skin... to use JoulesBeef's analogy... is when all the other neighbors are given "gifts" from the burned out neighbor even if Joules was scarred in the voluntary process of getting involved in what was originally a well intentioned act.

-----------------------------------

Analogies break down in many ways.... another to consider is that our country's founders spent 11 years to come to agreement on a consititution we could operate with, and this in a period of relative peace... I suppose Iraqis should be given a few more weeks to govern themselves :)

We can't be just to the people who have died, they're dead. The only people we can be just to are the ones who are still alive. And we do that by not killing more Iraqis and not putting more Americans in harm's way.

Is it wrong that the "other neighbors" get the "gifts" because "your" actions made them available or because it's immoral to loot your "burned out neighbor"?

And for another analogy (obnoxious on purpose): Saying we have a duty to repair the damage we created by staying in Iraq is like saying that if you rape a woman you have a duty to marry her.

I figure he owes me his new hummer. I mean i put a lot of work into saving him dont i deserve something... OF HIS?

War reparations rarely work out well. It was burdensome war reparations that weakened Weimar Germany and lead to Hitler's rise. By contrast, we rebuilt Western Europe after WWII and were repaid with robust trading partners, compliant allies in the Cold War and lots of places where Americans could travel safely. If you do something for the sake of "you owe me" you rarely get what you want. Best to invest in Iraq in a positive way - before others help it to decay even further.

Green Henry:

We can't be just to the people who have died, they're dead. The only people we can be just to are the ones who are still alive. And we do that by not killing more Iraqis and not putting more Americans in harm's way.

Is it wrong that the "other neighbors" get the "gifts" because "your" actions made them available or because it's immoral to loot your "burned out neighbor"?

And for another analogy (obnoxious on purpose): Saying we have a duty to repair the damage we created by staying in Iraq is like saying that if you rape a woman you have a duty to marry her.

Yes, it's a very just thing to do to totally dismantle every bit of security the Iraqi people have, observe a nation that is awash in assault rifles and other small caliber weaponry and then ask them to quietly wait to commit genocide until we're safely on our C-147 transports out of Baghdad International Airport. That's downright neighborly of us Green Henry... if we lived in some kind of barbarian country.

Clearly you don't like us being there now. I don't know where you stood in the beginning. I thought if it was done right it could benefit both us and the Iraqi people but when I saw the plan for keeping the peace I was immediately against it. The bad news for you and me is that we're already there and I have news for you: you're going to face a tooth-and-nail fight out of me to just withdraw from a country when I know damn well that one side that comprises 60% of the population is just itching to commit genocide on another side that is approximately 25% of the population. When America said "Never again." after the Holocaust, we meant it and just because you think that the Iraqis deserve the right to commit mass genocide and national suicide doesn't mean that I'm going to acquiesce to your plan to just come home.

It's wrong when you don't protect your neighbor from any possible harm that could come to him while he is unconscious from breathing in smoke you created by burning his house in the first place. Therefore, it is our job to stand guard until there is an Iraqi government that is fair to all sides that has a police force to deal with criminals and a military to deal with insurgents, terrorists and foreign militaries that are eyeing it up looking to take advantage of it.

As to your obnoxious (on purpose) analogy: the transatlantic rape of America on Europe blossomed into a lovely family that reunited two long lost twins (East and West Germany) and faced down an abusive drunk ex-husband that wanted to kill our wife instead of marry her and have a family.

Rather than your boorish analogy, I prefer the Tiffany's Jewelry rule: you break it, you bought it. We screwed up their country and now we're responsible for it until it's back to neat whether we like it or not. End of story.

Scott-
That's an interesting point, in fact I agree with your point absolutely--in principle.
In addition to a nephew in the war, I live just outside of the biggest Marine base in the world. I know a lot of these guys, and have had the mixed fortune of hearing firsthand what is going on there.
If the guys I've met are representative of the guys that are running this operation, then HELL YES, finish this. The thing is, if the guys I've met were representative of the guys running this operation, we would be DONE. Or damn near it.
But they are not. Not even close.

I do not believe in conspiracies, generally speaking. And I do believe this bunch in the White House NEEDS to be conspiratorial. Their aims are clearly stated. It is to protect US interests. And it is important to point out that this is also the position of the presidential front runners from BOTH parties. (Hillary said last week that it didn't make sense to abandon US interests in the area). So, we protect our interests, and if a people get their country back from a dictator, all the better. At least that's their theory, I believe.

And frankly, depending on how you define "interests", I might agree. But stopping the killing in Iraq is NOT the US mission. It IS the soldier's mission, of course. They seem to be quite focused on what they're doing, now that Rumsfeld is out.

But I believe it is important to remember that it is the State Dept that is making the key decisions here. And they define US interests. Not we, the people, and not the military either.

I'm not here to beat a dead horse, but there is this nasty little detail of not having a declaration of war in Iraq. The tradition in this country before Korea was to declare war with clearly outlined objectives and to have some sort of War Department managing it. Clear objectives, clearly pursued.
Without such objectives cemented as law in a war declaration, the mission is subject to change without notice and could even disappear altogether.

So, with essentially nothing on paper, nothing restraining the Executive, it is impossible to discern rhetoric from policy now.
This will go on for years and truly turn much, much worse for us. And turn, immeasurably worse for the Iraqi people, regardless of the efforts of the soldiers in Iraq, and regardless of the efforts of even the best intentioned inheritor of this tragedy.

I maintain that the only way to change course here is to abandon it. The only way to ensure that the future of Iraq is truly the will of the Iraqi people is for us to leave completely. They are an enormously resilient people, from every account I've seen. They will survive.

None of the presidential candidates is saying what I want to hear on the war but I am supporting Obama because I think he at least has the best principles for making further foreign policy decisions regarding Iraq.

I certainly agree with you that these undeclared wars need to stop. It's far too close to monarchy and too unorganized with someone like Bush at the helm.

If Paul wasn't in the race, I'd probably back Obama too. Of course, he's a member of the Council on Foreign Affairs too.....

Scott-

Dismantle every bit of security they have? What about the Iraqi Military and Iraqi police force we've been training? Will that just fall apart when the Americans leave? If so, then we've accomplished absolutely nothing in the last four years (a premise I don't necessarily disagree with)! But that aside, I reject the premise that the occupation is keeping peace. The entire scope of the sectarian violence (genocide, civil war, whatever you want to call it) has occurred under the occupation. Just look around, there is no peace. Iraq won't slip into civil war once the US leaves because the civil war has already begun. So yes, I can say that we should just leave because I begin with the premise that the occupation is doing absolutely no good.

Yes, I was against the war from the beginning for one simple reason: war is always wrong. And yes, we are there now, but I absolutely reject the notion that the only way to stop violence is with more violence.

And on your last point, your hypocrisy amazes me! The US has a responsibility to protect Iraq from foreign militaries looking to take advantage of it? Hello? What do you call the US occupation? Are we not a foreign power? Are we not taking advantage of Iraq? What gives the US more right to an Iraqi client state than Iran? The point is that Iraq has a right to self-determination free of all these outside influences and to treat the US as a neutral, benevolent power seeking only Iraq's interests is simply not accurate.

Green Henry:

Dismantle every bit of security they have? What about the Iraqi Military and Iraqi police force we've been training? Will that just fall apart when the Americans leave? If so, then we've accomplished absolutely nothing in the last four years (a premise I don't necessarily disagree with)! But that aside, I reject the premise that the occupation is keeping peace. The entire scope of the sectarian violence (genocide, civil war, whatever you want to call it) has occurred under the occupation. Just look around, there is no peace. Iraq won't slip into civil war once the US leaves because the civil war has already begun. So yes, I can say that we should just leave because I begin with the premise that the occupation is doing absolutely no good.

Iraq's security situation is like a room with limited ventilation that has a fire burning in it. The US military is the regulator on the ventilation that controls how much oxygen seeps into the room. If we were to put 500,000 troops into the country, we could shut the regulator off and the fire would burn down to embers and then slowly die. If we remove the troops we have there now, it will be like turning the regulator onto full blast and pumping O2 into the room. The fire will burn out of control and destroy everything in sight. If we shut down the regulator we can save what hasn't caught fire and burnt to embers yet. As for whether we've trained Iraq's army and police so that they won't fractionalize into sectarian groups when the United States isn't there to guide them and take the lead I'll simply say this: it's the Bush administration. I can count on one hand how many things they have done right since they took office.

Yes, I was against the war from the beginning for one simple reason: war is always wrong. And yes, we are there now, but I absolutely reject the notion that the only way to stop violence is with more violence.

I'm sure the Jews that were liberated from concentration camps by the 101st Airborne share your disdain for war and the paratroopers that practiced it. Suffice to say, I don't think war is always wrong. In fact, I don't think war is anything but always hell like Sherman said it was. But the sad fact of the matter is that sometimes you have to make the choice between fighting standing up and living on your knees. Are you someone that disavows war to the point that you'll live on your knees for an aggressor because war is always wrong? (Please try to keep in mind I am talking about war over the arc of time because I don't think Iraq was necessary nor fought against an aggressor)

And on your last point, your hypocrisy amazes me! The US has a responsibility to protect Iraq from foreign militaries looking to take advantage of it? Hello? What do you call the US occupation? Are we not a foreign power? Are we not taking advantage of Iraq? What gives the US more right to an Iraqi client state than Iran? The point is that Iraq has a right to self-determination free of all these outside influences and to treat the US as a neutral, benevolent power seeking only Iraq's interests is simply not accurate.

I tend to look at results because, at the end of the day they are what you are left with. If the US withdraws from Iraq posthaste like you are suggesting it will trigger a full-blown civil war while the civil war there is just on simmer right now. Full-blown civil war equals a great deal more deaths. I want as few Iraqis to die as possible and I'm not terribly particular about how it is done. The simple fact of the matter is that history indicates you are wrong about the monopoly of force creating peace. If the US had established a monopoly of force from the beginning of the occupation to convince the three sects that the US would not be leaving and anyone disrupting the process towards a civil government was going to be locked up until there was a civil government in place with a mixed-ethnicity army and police force that had a deal about oil revenue being shared equally and a federal system of government we would have gotten much farther than the way we have went about it which, as George Carlin would impolitely put it, has been a "clusterf***." Pardon my French.

Bill, I agree that having moderately more effective military operations has been a plus, but we had a significant hand in for four years - and failed to play it until recently. We could have made it clear to the Iraqis that we're leaving sooner rather than later unless they were going to play ball and backed it up with some troop movements and avoided a lot of posturing. Instead a lot of time was wasted pretending that things were okay. They're only coming to the table now because they know that there's a serious chance that we could walk away if we wanted to. That's not to say that we should give in as they want - they want to have their cake and eat it too, spit at the U.S. but have us pay for their security. There still needs to be a timetable to get our troop levels much, much lower than 50K.

I don't think you understand the military situation in Iraq, past or present, one iota's worth. Simply telling the Iraqis to step up when their forces were manifestly not ready to do so is stupid. You'll recall that most of the military is composed now of Shiites who little to no command and control functions in the old Iraqi army whose leadership was reserved for Sunnis. Throwing such ill-led troops into battle against hardened insurgent fighters is idiocy. Petraeus's operations as head of the 101st in Mosul at the war's beginning was textbook counterinsurgency. Now Iraqi forces are partnering effectively with US forces and in some areas doing the brunt of the fighting. The old stay on the FOB and run "shoot me" patrols as practiced by Casey was dumb, dumb, dumb. Timetables are for idiots and Democrats and oft-times the two overlap.

Bill,

To bring it back to negotiations, I think that we could have set the stage for a more healthy relationship with the Iraqis if we had made it clear that we were willing to walk away. Yes, they were weak, making it all the more important for us to have leveraged that point instead of letting them get away with so much hollow bluster when we should have been demanding constructive commitments. But whatever, it's all moot now, the point now is not how well our troops might be doing but how well we can negotiate the rapid reduction of their role. The higher their profile the more prominent the rationale to recruit "jihadists" for anti-U.S. attacks. The true measure of our military success will be how rapidly we can eliminate the need for it. The right military tactics are important, but let's get the boy-toys out of the picture and start building lives for these people ASAP.

We've already turned over security in Karbala province to the Iraqis (a month ago) and the "surge" is now in the process of winding down with elements of the 1st Cav coming home. Further, even a group of Shiites have come out asking that Iran stay out of Iraqi internal affairs. Much is made of the so-called Iraqi intransigence in not meeting our goals for them politically. But I would remind readers that Iraq was a state politically infantilized by Saddam and to expect them to come to reconciliation quickly on such important issues as the oil law and de-Baathification is idiocy. Christ, it took us six years to establish our own constitution.

the iraqis have said that americans can leve at any time.. plus we dismanttled their army which most people saw as a mistake. Of course i doubt bill will ever admit that bush made one... and sorry rumsfeld had lost the support of much of his own men and had to go.
and yesterday the iraqi pm said the us is propaghanidsing iran and that iran isnt interfering. THIS IS THE IRAQI LEADER.. and this was yesterday.

and the surge is only winding down as you put it, because it has to, we cant afford it.. it has nothign to do with security. We also pulled out of many areas to support the surge in bagdhad. The day before we left karbala their were bombs going off.

But I would remind readers that Iraq was a state politically infantilized by Saddam and to expect them to come to reconciliation quickly on such important issues as the oil law and de-Baathification is idiocy.

Whereas the United States is a country that's been politically infantilized by people who still have hard-ons for Scoop Jackson and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The fault, dear Brutus, lies with our own stupidity and not with the Iraqis. Heck, even our own Secretary of Defense now acknowledges that the U.S.'s expectation that we can just snuff our enemies with military prowess is completely unrealistic - we need to invest in diplomacy and making the lives of average people better to make real progress in the Middle East. The whole military exercise in Iraq has been a sad joke, a tragic waste of American lives and talent.

JoulesBeef:

and sorry rumsfeld had lost the support of much of his own men and had to go.

In my humble opinion, Rumsfeld will be remembered as the worst and perhaps most destructive SecDef that this country has ever had by trying to micromanage all branches of the military and trying to impose businesslike precision and calculus onto a chaotic and nearly immeasurable state called war. By doing that he cost a lot of good Americans and Iraqis their lives and forever will the blood not only stain his hands, so certain of what he was doing that he kept piloting the military toward certain doom, but blame will lay heavy on the head of George W. Bush who allowed him to do it for far too long out of a childish stubborness to salvage his pride and to prove that he was right rather than getting the job done in Iraq by admitting mistakes were made when they were recognized and fixing them. This has been a sad, sad state of affairs in United States military history since 2003. I hope and pray to God that the next President and SecDef have better judgment and leadership skills for God help us all if they manage to be worse.

Petraeus's operations as head of the 101st in Mosul at the war's beginning was textbook counterinsurgency. Now Iraqi forces are partnering effectively with US forces and in some areas doing the brunt of the fighting. The old stay on the FOB and run "shoot me" patrols as practiced by Casey was dumb, dumb, dumb. Timetables are for idiots and Democrats and oft-times the two overlap.

Repeatedly Bill you suppose that the Democrats are the idiots but it has been a Republican war from the very beginning. You started it, you mismanaged it, your hand picked people were in charge in both the military and the civilian sectors and yet you blame the Democrats. Amazing logic Bill.
Wasn't Petraeus in charge of training the Iraqi police force, you know the one that is worthless?Weren't the Democrats right from the first saying if you were bound and determined to do this you needed more troops? Weren't they trying to get Bush and Rumsfeld to take a different course for YEARS? Tell me again Bill how this is the Democrats fault.

Bill does have a point about Petraeus' Mosul command. He took over Mosul from the start and there has not been any serious problems there. One wonders if it might have been a different war if he had been in overall command in Iraq from the beginning.

Repeatedly Bill you suppose that the Democrats are the idiots but it has been a Republican war from the very beginning. You started it, you mismanaged it, your hand picked people were in charge in both the military and the civilian sectors and yet you blame the Democrats.

Now even Jack Murtha is saying the surge is working... and Pelosi could not be hotter at Murtha.

Truly it is a soundbite that proponents of Patreus or the surge are going to use ad nauseum in the weeks ahead.

Well I sincerely hope it is the surge that is working because then that means we have some control however I suspect, as many do, that this is a result of Iraqi insurgent commanders reducing the number of attacks in order to cause us to dispose our troops in such a fashion that they can be attacked more readily or to prepare to fight their real enemies - each other.

I agree that the Chinese wouldn't commit troops to the region, but with their network of clients they won't have to.

RE "good old competition," are you suggesting that the U.S. stop trying to be a competitive global economic power and just let China take over that role?

I'm not cheery about U.S. corporations getting what they want out of Iraq - it sickens me that this was done at our expense so that they could profit from it - but if some corporation is going to do it, it may as well be one of ours.

RE "good old competition," are you suggesting that the U.S. stop trying to be a competitive global economic

competitive is a bit differnt that shove it down your throat monopolistic. Sure in the short term seems liek a great idea, we make more money american has a better economy..but the hate grows and festers as we party in the green, Very few people hate us for our freedoms, they hate us as we come into a country and put into power our puppet supporters and then rape the country of their natural resources and giving them pennies on the dollar for it. Iran over threw the us puppet gov as they were tired of living in poverty while sitting on a huge amount of oil.
SO while i sort of agree it is better if the us companies make that money, i say it is better tif they can do so fairly... as otherwise it is only "good" for short term gains.

they hate us as we come into a country and put into power our puppet supporters and then rape the country of their natural resources and giving them pennies on the dollar for it. Iran over threw the us puppet gov as they were tired of living in poverty while sitting on a huge amount of oil.

I would agree that Cold War-style tolerance of corrupt regimes has bought us and these nations much grief, but let's not be naive about our competition. They care little for the betterment of these nations as well. We're probably a generation or more away from a fully credible U.S. foreign policy based on consistent application of economic and political justice. But we can start towards that goal, to be sure.

Yup--the goal of the surge was to make the Iraqi political system stand alone. That hasn't happened and isn't on the horizon.

I'd agree - we're being asked to be a permanent force when they should be developing their own permanent forces. But right now there's nobody really laying out the case to them as to how they're going to do better.

the goal of the surge was to make the Iraqi political system stand alone

The goal of the surge was to reduce violence in the state so that a stable government could govern. Violence has been reduced so now it is time for the Iraqis to create a strong and stable government.

It really is amazing how the left goes from one perceived failure to another.

Please refrain from name calling.

Reducing the violence was the means to allow the Iraq government make good on eighteen measures of success. How is the score on that stand? Not good as far as I know.
Moving the goal post is poor rhetoric.

Mr Bush is stuck like Brier Rabbit to tar baby.

Thinking Conservative, it is amazing to me how Repubs change the goals when they aren't being met, thinking that we, the public will forget what they said. The point of the surge was to unite the Iraqis politically. That isn't going so well.

As for violence being down, didn't Al-Sadr say that he would stop attacking for 6 months and isn't this month 4 or so of that?

Please refrain from name calling.

Was that addressed to me? If so, when did I call names?

Not good as far as I know.

Of course it is not ...The government needs reduced violence in order to govern. Reduced violence should lead to a stronger government? Where am I wrong on that?

The point of the surge was to unite the Iraqis politically.

Can there be unity when there is violence? Does the reduction of violence open of the chance for greater unity and stronger government?

It really is amazing how the left goes from one perceived failure to another

It is amazing how somepeopel will defend bush to the death despite the mountains of evidence.
shoot even patreaous tried to spin the largest sectarian killing in iraqi history as a good thing, showing the insurgents(mislabbled as they insurge from anywhere) are desperate.

I guess thinking conservative you think the iraqi war is a sucess too huh... after all we got all them wmds.. oh wait Now what is the war for democracy or something.. reminds me of a friend. i dont gamble with as he always changes the def of winning, when he starts losing.... "no no no i said 3 out of 5"
So as long as you allow thinking conservative the chance to constantly change the def of winning, then he can always be right.

Quoting - "Thinking conservative" "It really is amazing how the left goes from one perceived failure to another."
if I were to say something like "Conservatives just can't do anything but grasp at straws."

is amazing how somepeopel will defend bush to the death

Have I even mentioned his name? All I have said is that it is nice to see an improvement in Iraq and how amazing quick the left is to point out the next negative aspect. Iraq is not perfect but it is nice to see what appears to be progress.

So as long as you allow thinking conservative the chance to constantly change the def of winning, then he can always be right.

All I have said is that the reduction of violence is a good thing...do you agree with me?

"Conservatives just can't do anything but grasp at straws."

If that means that I am glad to see violence down in Iraq then I agree with you. Are you glad to see violence down?

JoulesBeef, I will take that over the alternative of being a hopeless pessimist, determined to prove my point of American evil and how this country is on a crusade for oil and will not stop until everyone in a turban is dead! Oh wait, no, no, it's not the country.. My bad, it's only Bush and Cheney. Everyone else is just at the mercy of our supreme leader. ::rolls eyes::

We have been in Iraq for the same reason since day one. If you want to pretend that it was just for the false reason of capturing WMDs and that of course was all a farce then who can stop you? The reasons have never changed though. We went in, not because of WMDs, but because of the threat of WMDs. Well you might think that a possibility of WMDs alone is not enough reason to invade and you would be right. A more suitable response would have been to force them to allow in UN inspectors to put all of our minds at ease. OH WAIT.. NO, WE DID THAT! Actually. I recall Saddam making some big speach and kicking out our inspectors. He spat in the face of the international community and if you have fear that can not be put at ease then you strike.

That is nature. Do you let the bee sting you or do you squash it? Are you wrong for squashing the bee if you later learn that it's stinger was broken before you step on it? Well we're not talking about bees so it doesn't matter anyway.

Point is that, yes, things got out of control and countless mistakes were made. Those who could have been allies were instead victims as their jobs went away and an entire army found themselves being sent home (with guns).

Personally, I have no love for Bush. I defend him more for often because I get tired of millions of people giving all credit to one man. Spread that @!$%# around a bit. It's a classic case of scapegoating. And Bush can be blamed for a lot no doubt but history will be more kind to him and less kind to everyone else. The books will show todays modern day man as some kind of crazies who chose to focus on the big non-issues like global warming instead of the things that really effect us. When you look at the news of today remember that you are also looking at the history of tomorrow.

Why is it easier to blame Bush when Saddam was begging for this war? He didn't care enough about his people to have the good sense to cooperate when he could have. The problem with a dictatorship is that the citizens have to pay a higher price for the pride of it's leader.

thinkingconservative,

It's amazing to me the Iraqis have manages as well as they have politically up until now. Hell, when this country went through something similar Lincoln took all kinds of draconian measures up to and including suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and delcaring martial law.

I think we can safely say that all the violence in Iraq is due solely to George W. Bush and the actions he took.

I know that the right loves, absolutely loves the idea that Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus as that in their mind justifies all kinds of abuses in the name of "saving the country". Hey, suspending Habeas Corpus was not necessary nor proper nor has it ever been. It is an inalienable right. Lincoln for all his greatness was a man and men make mistakes. Suspending Habeas Corpus was and is a mistake. The newly self appointed dictator of Pakistan the other day was using Lincoln as an example of a great leader who suspended Habeas Corpus. That should tell you something right there.

Once again I would caution against assuming that the reduction in violence is attributable to our superior military prowess. I am not saying this out of any political motivation but rather a concern that we get too puffed up with our own Hubris and get caught flatfooted.

Whatever we do we should do it controlling the situation and not have it control us as it has these past four and a half years.

The problem with a dictatorship is that the citizens have to pay a higher price for the pride of it's leader.

This is precisely my argument against allowing Presidents to unilaterally declare war. And allowing them to continue them even after the reasons for invasion were proved false.

Jones:

As for violence being down, didn't Al-Sadr say that he would stop attacking for 6 months and isn't this month 4 or so of that?

To be totally fair about this, al-Sadr most likely declared a ceasefire when he started losing too many of his veterans in street fights with the US military. What's the point in feeding your soldiers into a meatgrinder when you know that your enemy is going to leave within a few months? Better to organize a ceasefire and conserve your strength for what you view as finishing the driving of the occupation force out of your country and then moving on to killing all Sunni males and enslaving all Sunni females. This is a tactical move by him designed to accomplish political and military goals just like the Surge was a tactical move designed to accomplish political and military goals for the Bush administration.

I think we can safely say that all the violence in Iraq is due solely to George W. Bush and the actions he took.

I think most thoughtful observers would safely say that's an incredibly simple-minded statement. Tell me how many tens of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of Saddam's neglect combined with the UN sanctions your ilk still has fond memories of?

Still, it's important not to take the equally facile counterpoint: Sadr's Jaish al-Mehdi cease fire, not the Surge, is the primary reason we're not taking casualties right now.

The primary money-maker in Baghdad is extortion of protection rents from home owners. Right now, the ameriki control a neighborhood, the JAM another, some Sunni faction yet another. What do you think will happen when the Americans withdraw from their sector of control? A power vacuum will be created. It's just like street gangs, only these guys carry rifles in the daylight.

Don't be deluded, folks. The Surge is an illusion. All interested parties are collecting their strength. When the USA is well and truly out of the picture, then the fun will begin in earnest. It's no accident the Iraqi government, useless and corrupt, is asking us to stay. We're their militia, like it or not.

JAM is no longer a cohesive force as it once was and it too has splintered into rival street gangs. You should know better than to try and get that one past me. And we're the Dawa Party's militia? Gee, I thought all along that Sadr served that function. And as I posted yesterday in southern Iraq, Shiites are getting more than a little tired of Iranian meddling. It will be interesting to see what the upcoming provinicial elections bring forth.

Your excellent article confirms, not denies my point. JAM are no less trouble in pieces than in total. Why should each individual street crew forward rents to Sadr? There are more, not less of them, and they feud among each other, extorting from their fellow Shiites.

Today they call the JSS. Who will they call when Dudley Do-Right American platoons aren't responding to the call? Ghostbusters? Get real, Bill, the Surge isn't working as advertised, it's obeying Boyle's Law. When the ameriki are gone, then Baghdad will resemble Basra today. As you very well know, Basra has gone to the dogs in the absence of the British.

And you have some evidence of this do you? All based on this preliminary article? I don't think so. Even during the Bremer's proconsulship foreign contractors could bid on Iraqi reconstruction jobs but only coalition companies could be the general contractor. Iraq is now a sovereign country and will let contracts to whom they wish. But it would, of course, be hoped that stick it where the sun don't shine to that little goon Putin and Yukos and Lukoil.

Why are you down on Putin Bill? Bush said he "looked into the man's eyes" and decided he could trust him. That should be good enough for you.
Iraq is a soverign country like Cheney isn't in the executive branch. Only when it's convenient.

Non-dispositive.

makesnosenseofive.

if iraq was soviegn they would be able to meet with their diplomats from iran and not have their guests arrested
if iraq was soviegn they would have been able to detain a couple black water guards.

As for evidence.. bush even said so.. we are spending the blood we should get the lucrative contracts.. we said that going in.WE SAID THAT COUNTRIES THAT DIDNT SUPPORT OUR WAR WOULD BE LEFT OUT OF RECONSTRUCTION.. you do recall that???Or do you subscribe to revisionists history.

In what way do you think Saudi Arabia is an ally?

Further, while the Egyptians and Saudis may tut-tut a bit they'll be damn glad Uncle Sugar is staying around as they fear an Iranian-dominated crescent from Lebanon down through Syria and Iraq even more.

In what way do you think Saudi Arabia is an ally?

HMM lets see we have an agreement with the monarchy to protect it from cheapo oil.
Bush is practically a member fo the saudi royal family and the saudi prince visits him often.
Saduia arbaia let us put bases there to attack saddam the first time.
And when oil prices get high or supplies get tight, we call up SA and ask them to pump more, just liekbush did at the start of the war.
Most fo the hijackers came from sadia arabia and yet we dont even meantion them in the war on terror.
Seriously thinking conservative, you must not think if you cant see that we concider SA a very important and strong strategic ally. You may be able to fool people with those questions who arent informed.. but hear on the vine we know our history better.

And yeah while we may piss off egypt and SA, I will agree with bill harrison this time.. the gov feel they need us to stay in power. SO while they may get mad, thats about all they will do.. the people on the other hand are more likely to join terror groups but you know the war on terrorism isnt about reducing it.. or if it is, they sure have a funny way of going about it.

Sure they are our little oil budies, but are they really a friend and do they really care about us besides our next oil order?

I am glad you know everything O smart one.

Yes, and the dead are rising, buildings are reconstructing themselves and the newly increasing flow of oil is driving gas prices down to unheard of levels. Is that superman flying around the world backwards?

Hullo JPM, welcome to 'Vine. Nice stats on your comment but how do I know these aren't McNamera-esque figures. On one hand, I hear the surge is working and on the other hand I see there are more casualties than ever in Iraq. For 5 years I have heard this war in Iraq was gonna be a cake-walk. Now, my son is eligible for the draft that nobody will state is coming and the current forces are pretty stretched. After a few years of war, I suppose the neighborhoods may have just settled themselves out. I guess that counts as easing the conflict but that also sounds as if ethnic cleansing has taken hold and made the colors and whites brighter...

This is terrific news, the surge worked exactly as planned.

Which is first for this war, if it is true.

American forces have routed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi militant network, from every neighborhood of Baghdad.

Every? I'll need to see proof of that.

Murder victims are down 80 percent from where they were at the peak," and attacks involving improvised bombs are down 70 percent.

What about human collateral damage? I don't think murder was #1 on the cause of death list in Iraq here recently

Now there is a collaborative strategy to allow democracy to develop, maintain US interests and potentially self fund the effort.

oh, ok.... Now? I was under the impression they were going to try that years ago. Once again, I guess I overestimated the US government.

welcome to the Vine ;)

What I was trying to say JPM in my best snarly voice is that we have declared victory in Iraq before. Maybe this is the time that it is really true but personally I want to see proof before the "Mission Accomplished" banners go up again. You certainly did not post anything that deserved the response you got from me and I do apologize. By all means welcome to Newsvine.

Neat and necessary. We have a problem (and a growing one at that) if we traded Saddam being bribed by the French for an Iraq that is run by the Russians or Chinese. That changes the complexion of the Middle East and not to a color of our preference.

I think we can safely say that all the violence in Iraq is due solely to George W. Bush and the actions he took.

I think most thoughtful observers would safely say that's an incredibly simple-minded statement. Tell me how many tens of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of Saddam's neglect combined with the UN sanctions your ilk still has fond memories of?

A truly remarkable statement Bill. Now you are implying that we attacked a sovereign nation to protect Iraqi's from themselves? Cold comfort to the thousands of American families who thought their loved ones died "defending America". 4 million refugees and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, their country a wreck and immersed in a religious civil war. I think we can safely attribute the result to George W. Bush and his "ilk" while America is markedly less safe than it was before his simple minded decision to invade Iraq.