Yes, and no one discusses these issues any more...

Though they remain among the most important IMHO---

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...0&start=280

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...0&start=440

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...0&start=520

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...0&start=300

Absolutely correct. We're so darn accustomed to the war in Iraq, our nation has just accepted the daily reports as part of life. We NEED to be talking about these atrocities!

YEP...

Next year when they start talking about ENTITLEMENT REFORM to pay the $12 billion a month for Iraq, I think people will take notice.

I wish, but they won't. Not the people who are keeping the wars going. At this point there are just as many good reasons for stopping the War in Afganistan as there are for stopping the War in Iraq.

The Dems are making a big mistake by not hammering the financial consequence of that wrong decision some 5 plus years ago.

Bush, McCain and the GOP keep portraying that part of it as a past issue... and it is not. The decision to stay in Iraq or pull out is a decision that continues the financial drain on the United States... and while some would say "we've gotta stay...we've invested too much to pull out", the majority would sing a different tune knowing that we are taking money out of our own economy and away from our own needs and pumping into Iraq.

We have needs here... and they outweigh the needs there.

The Dems are terrible about formulating and communicating a message... but during an election year with so much coverage they have an opportunity to establish the dialogue and communicate the message.

Vice President Discusses Grim Milestone of 4,000 U.S. Dead in Five-Year Iraq War
24.03.08 23:53

( ABC )- In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.


Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.


"I want to start with the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq. Americans. And just what effect do you think it has on the country?" asked ABC News' White House correspondent, Martha Raddatz , who traveled with the vice president on a nine-day overseas trip to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East.


"It obviously brings home I think for a lot of people the cost that's involved in the global war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan," Cheney said in the interview, conducted in Turkey. "It places a special burden obviously on the families, and we recognize, I think — it's a reminder of the extent to which we are blessed with families who've sacrificed as they have."


"The president carries the biggest burden, obviously," Cheney said. "He's the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm's way for the rest of us."


Raddatz noted that some soldiers, Air Force members, and Marines have been on multiple deployments and have been sent back to Iraq because of the stop-loss policy — an involuntary extension of a service member's enlistment contract. The Army alone says 58,000 US soldiers have been redeployed to war because of the stop-loss policy.


"When you talk about an all-volunteer force, some of these soldiers, airmen, Marines have been on two, three, four , some of them more than that, deployments," Raddatz said. "Do you think when they volunteered they had any idea that there would be so many deployments or stop-loss? Some of those who want to get out can't because of stop-loss?"


"A lot of men and women sign up because sometimes they will see developments," Cheney said. "For example, 9/11 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country."


Referring to his talks with US service members in Iraq, the vice president said the men and women he speaks to are committed to the war.


"The thing that comes through loud and clear is how much they are committed to the cause, to doing what needs to be done to defend the nation," Cheney said.


When asked about the toll multiple deployments have taken on U.S. military members, Cheney fired back with a question.


"Of course it is, Martha," Cheney said. "So what would be the solution to that? I mean how would you deal with that?"


Today the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus , recommended to Bush a "pause" in the drawdown of U.S. forces after the last surge combat brigade leaves in July. The pause is expected to be four to eight weeks, after which another decision will made on resuming the drawdown.


There are currently more U.S. military members in Iraq than when the United States led the invasion of the country in March 2003.


Petraeus has spoken on the record about his desire for a pause, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has publicly endorsed the idea. If the security situation is stable, Petraeus will likely signal that the drawdown can continue in the fall.


When asked about the possibility of resuming a U.S. military drawdown from Iraq in the fall, Cheney said what's important is that the U.S. succeeds in Iraq.


"That isn't the way I think about it," Cheney said, referring to the possibility of a drawdown. "It's important to achieve victory in Iraq. It's important to win, to succeed in the objective that we've established."


"It may be that we can make judgements about reductions down the road and the President will make those when the time arrives, but I don't think he's likely to try and say now what the force ought to be at the end of the year," Cheney said. "Conditions on the ground will determine that."


Cheney dismissed the suggestion that a drawdown would be an important message to the Iraqi government that the United States wasn't staying indefinitely in the country.


"The idea that we can walk away from Iraq is, I think, terribly damaging on its face, and to say that, 'well that's the only way we can get the Iraqis to take on responsibility,' I don't believe that's the case," he said.


Without addressing the Democratic candidates specifically, the vice president said those who want to pull out of Iraq are "seriously misguided." He said the presidential candidates would be risking an attack on the homeland if US forces withdrew, arguing that terrorists would find safe havens in other countries.


Sens . Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both have said they'd withdraw US forces from Iraq if elected president. Sen. John McCain has advocated a continued U.S. presence in Iraq until security and political situations improve.


When asked if he was talking about any candidate in particular, Cheney said, "I am talking about any candidate for high office who believes the solution for our problem in that part of the world is to walk away from the commitments that we've made in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere."


Today the Democratic presidential candidates commented on the milestone of 4,000 US military dead in the war.


Tens of thousands of our brave men and women have also suffered serious wounds, both visible and invisible to their bodies their minds and their hearts," Clinton said Monday in Philadelphia. "As president, I intend to honor their extraordinary service and the sacrifice of them and their families by ending this war and bringing them home as quickly and responsibly as possible."


In a released statement, Obama said: "It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their future."


The 4,000 U.S. killed in Iraq figure includes seven civilians who worked for the military services while serving in Iraq.

http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=n...115&lang=EN

Shameful glee over 4,000th Iraq death

The hyping of this milestone by the media is inexcusable


08:30 AM CDT on Wednesday, March 26, 2008

It had to be driving them crazy.

Stretching back to late last year, weeks turned into months with no horrific U.S. setbacks to brighten the days of the war-hating rank and file in the dominant media culture.

Big drops in insurgent attacks and American deaths were quite the bummer for the finger-wagging outlets that feasted on the bounty of a year like 2006, when every week seemed to offer up a Humvee hit by rocket fire or an IED blasting a town square to bits. Now those were the salad days for messengers who seemingly could not wait for each occasion to portray the U.S. war effort as a costly, bloody disaster not worth pursuing. When the war's prospects improved, reporters' laptops largely fell silent.

But as March dawned, you could sense anticipation akin to a child at Christmas. Then, last weekend, there it was, under their tree ready to be opened and shared with gusto:

4,000 dead Americans. A blast along the Baghdad airport road Sunday night turned over the U.S. fatality odometer to a round figure that brought the war back to the top of the news.

The truth about Iraq is that the surge is still working and that America's sons and daughters in uniform there still believe in their mission. As such, I cannot contain my revulsion at the tone of reporting Monday as the national media noted the body count.

Like bedouins parched by a long desert of actual war progress, they slurped voraciously at the oasis of opportunity to dwell with wild disproportionality on the negatives of this war, which are the same as the negatives of all the wars in our history – they cost money, and they cost lives.

Of course the 4,000 figure is newsworthy, and so is the war's financial cost and the fact that its supporters are outnumbered 2-to-1 by Americans who are either against it or ambivalent.

But what the war opponents with press passes did Monday was more than just historical illiteracy – it was an act of poisonous spin that surely sparked high fives in the top terrorist coffee shops across the war zone.

"Grim milestone," read the phrase below NBC News "consultant" Gen. Barry McCaffrey as he told a Today show audience how deep and damaging the 4,000 deaths were to our troops.

Over on ABC, evening anchor Charles Gibson sought to drop our jaws with the statistic that the list of fallen soldiers whizzing by at two names per second would take up the whole newscast.

What is going on here?

If some clueless soul on the street is ignorant of what America has lost in wars past, that is one thing.

But generals – and reporters – should know better.

Many do, which makes the heavy-handed hyping of this milestone even more inexcusable. They know full well that the 4,000 Americans it has taken more than five years to lose in Iraq is roughly the same toll as the fall of 1967, the winter of 1968 or the spring of 1969.

If our Iraq losses continue at this pace, yes, we will have another Vietnam – in another 65 years.

But there's no room for those Vietnam loss rates, or our World War II death toll that is more than 100 times the current Iraq figure, in stories clearly intended to make you feel just awful about America's war effort today.

You may feel any way you wish about the war. But the fact is that the amazingly low human cost of our attempt to bring democracy to Iraq is a further testament to the skill and effectiveness of our fighting force.

Media ghouls may continue to mark every turnstile of death this war offers. But our men and women in uniform deserve better than grim, out-of-context reporting that serves only to further dim our spirit at home and embolden our enemies abroad.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...n1.463e27c.html

I'm inclined to agree. In fact I think maybe we should celebrate George Bush's War. What other President has been able to wage such a big war, losing less that 1000 USAeans per year. If we can own the entire world without sacraficing anymore Persons than this, what does a few trillion
dollars matter? We probably have not even killed a million Arabs yet.

Hyping?

Media was "hyping" 4,000 deaths?

I did not see it that way.

The media did nothing different with 4,000 than it did with 3,000, 2,000, 1,000 or 500.

I read your article. Won't you please watch the MTV sponsored meeting between Obama, Clinton and the eight Iraq War veterans? I found the video devastating and would really like to hear your assessment. If you don't like supplied links, just visit mtv.com, then 'news,' then 'video.' You'll find it.
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1583792&vid=217744

Here's Part 2
Young Vets React To Their Time With Clinton And Obama
http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1583794&vid=217718

There was complete silence when my husband and I were watching the new figure 4,000 dead on the news. Why? What total waste of human life, like all the rest of the wars! I remember feeling the same disgust in the pit of my stomach during the Viet Nam war. Every night my family and I would listen to President Johnson come on T.V. and say, "It is with a heavy heart that I must report more men die. His heavy heart didn't do Jack squat about bringing those men home. Just like Bush! I don't feel bad for any of them. Most of our friends family who lost someone in that war hoped Johnson would rot in hell!
There may not be much news covering the war in Iraq, but believe me every one I talk to in my neighborhood hates Bush!

While it is true that 4000 is just one more than 3999 they are counting wasted lives.....and they don't keep track of Iraqi lives wasted----Somehow iraqi lives are not important enough for the news. Also, the MSM is barely begun to chronicle the impact on our lives of this war upon our economy here at home.

I think it is doing more harm to our collective psyche than to our pocket books but it is doing plenty
of damage there too.

And things are getting worse in Iraq.

The surge has not worked.

It appears that the window for political reconciliation may be closing as deaths in Iraq increase again.

The surge served its political purpose.

George W. Bush will not have been forced to withdraw troops by the Democratic Congress.

The Republicans have won.

But Generals Casey and Abizaid were absolutely correct in their statements saying the surge would not work.

I watched Bush's War on PBS. I have a thread -- you can watch it too online.

BUsh ignored the generals like he ignored Abizaid and Casey and the Iraq Study Group.

They all said a surge would not work unless it was supplemented by a robust diplomatic effort to engage Iraq's neighbors in a commitment to reduce the violence there.

Bush barely attempted this and it worked for a short while. BUt without continued pressure on Iran and Syria without the strength of our diplomatic powers being forcefully exerted --- without pressure on the Iraqi government to act --- without holding the Iraqis to the fulfillment of political benchmarks and continued forward progress the surge was doomed to failure and this is what the ISG, and Generals Casey and Abizaid were talking about...

I have seen no glee in anyone reporting that 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq.

Not in the media nor on PBS where each night they show the pictures of the deceased soldiers that have died since the last airing.

Marine posted another shameful article. Shameful because it attempts to shift the focus from the reality of 4,000 dead American servicepersons to blaming the media.

It is a distraction which Marine should be ashamed to participate in particularly given his familiarity with the military and persons who have served and likely died there --- familiarity with the families that are left fatherless, sonless, motherless, daughterless --- sister and brotherless.

The war in Iraq was never the number one issue for me or most of the American public. The troops themselves want to stay there. Fine.

Barack Hussein Obama Jr., the anti-this-war one speech candidate has voted every time to fund this war since he had a chance to actually vote.

Yes he has.

But he has also voted to support timetables as well.

This is easy to forget.

He has supported timetables for the withdrawal of our troops as a preferred result.

However, confronted with a President that would not sign such timetables into law and a Republican Party who would not override a President's veto, he has done the responsible thing and funded the mission in Iraq so that our troops and our natioal security interests are not threatened by the political system.

Do you consider such a move imprudent? Unreasonsable? Irrational?

It is disingenuous and worse of him to be so outspoken about what he would have done when he never had the chance (be a profile in courage) yet be so nuanced about what he has done when he has had the chance(s).

IMNSHO: He is a good salesman. He is a lousy leader. And he is an average hypocrite.

---


and of course I do not consider any of the excuses bad. I am after all still unrepentent of my stance for going in and taking out Saddam.

Watch PBS special on the behind the scenes struggle to go in. I was correct in that it dd not have to be this way.

and I was wrong.

I always said I was shocked they had no plans to involve state and ngo's in the aftermath of a military victory. they did. then there was Bremer

I consider this a legitimate criticism. If anything keeps him out of the white house, this
will be it.

The left would desert him or others would see through him? Or both? Where would he lose the 'numbers'?

Really.

So you believe he should have voted to leave our troops high and dry and risk a threat to our national security by defunding their action in Iraq.

Well, unlike you I guess, I think such a move would have been imprudent, unreasonable and irrational.

Fortunately, Obama and the rest of the U.S. Congress did not side with your unwise approach and moved forward with funding.

A good salesman?

A lousy leader? Damn right.

When the war was popular --- 70% of Americans supported going into Iraq at the time -- and he was still a State Senator looking to become a US Senator he spoke out against the war. This took political courage. This took leadership. This was not an easy decision.

He used the best of his political skills once he got into the Congress in 2005 to try and get timetables and benchmarks passed -- yes he was one of the SEnators who with John Kerry was finally able to encourage Congress to add benchmarks to the legislation funding the war...benchmarks that started to force the Iraqi government to stand up with the Iraqi troops and the American troops and move forward toward poltiical reconcilation.

That was one of the votes that Obama made to fund the war.

It was an important vote because without that mandate Bush may have never moved forward and demanded poltical progress by the Iraqis.

So, it is easy for you to disparage Obama for his lack of leadership.

BUt tell me where the other candidates have demonstrated more leadership than he has.

Obama led on foreign policy stating that as President he would act unilaterally to go into Pakistan without Pakistani permission if it were in the US's best interests to do so. Clinton and McCain attacked Obama for this saying it was reckless. George Bush actually did what Obama said and guess what -- there is one less Taliban leader because of the policy leadership that Obama expressed which was accepted by the Bush Administration. Do you disagree with this approach?

Obama has also shown leadership in moving legislation through the Congress -- a Republican Congress --- when in 2006 he got Senator Coburn of Oklahoma to remove a hold he had on a bill he was a primary sponsor of to help secure loose nukes in Russia. His co-prime sponsor Sen. Lugar a Republican from Indiana could not get Coburn to remove the hold. Obama did and the bill is law helping to protect our national security so that loos nukes are kept out of the hands of terrorists.

That is leadership.

Tell where the other candidates have led --- particulalry Hillary Clinton...

You can't.

You can whine about Obama. That is easy to do.

BUt make an argument against him.

The agrument will certainly be made.

However, I think this is an element of statesmanship on Obama's part.

It would have been easy for him to oppose the war. However, instead, since he had no control over our sendiing our troops into Iraq and they were sent there and they were fighting there attempting to complete their mission, Obama put aside his personal feelings and did what he felt was best for the nation. He voted to support funding in various instances when he saw there was not chance to stop the war.

I believe that shows leadership.

It demonstrates that no matter my differences before the war with the policy --- now that we are engaged in that war --- I want the United States of America to win that war. I want our troops home as soon as possible as safe as possible. This requires funding. This requires supporting the war policy. This reuires putting my personal beliefs aside for my country.

Obama did that and he should be praised for it.

Ah yes -- when the questioning gets tougher 70s makes himself scarce...

I did not buy this rationalizing when it was going on and I still don't. The way to stop a run away executive from continuing to wage war is to stop funding it. Sinse Congress is elected by citizens,
there are no US citizens without blood on our hands. I do think Obama is less guilty on this count
than the other candidates, sinse Kucinich is no longer in the mix.

No, no. Characterizing deaths and injuries as 'wasted' is offensive on multiple levels, adding insult to grievous injury, as indicated below, although that wasn't your intention. Listen to what Ursula Pirtle has to say about her husband's death, how she's framed it in order to survive emotionally herself, and save your ire for the deserving.

Well, that is certainly your prerogative.

Obama entered Congress in 2005 and the war had already begun to spin out of control.

However, as a freshman Senator he did, I believe, need to be cut some slack.

It is a rare politician who can enter Congress and have an immediate grasp of the details and issues sufficient to be able to have an instant impact upon policy.

Obama bided his time. Perhaps that is discouraging to some, but I believe he wanted to act prudently and before he could suggest a course of action which differed from the Bush Administration's approach he needed to secure that education.

He did act relatively quickly I believe.

By his second year in Congress he was urging a withdrawal plan be adopted by the President.

How much more quickly did you want him to act?

During 2004 -- he did question whether his position was the right one on Iraq.

I appreciate that -- I want a leader who is not afraid to question his decisions.

HIllary Clinton refused to admit her mistake in voting for the war in Iraq -- because of the polticial consequences...

But in 2005 he was already starting to question whether it was not a mistake or at least the way Bush was waging the war was a mistake.

And he did stated in 2004 that his position was not that far from George Bush's on Iraq...the day after his speech...

Because he was being nuanced and not so stubborn as to believe once he takes a positon --- its necesarilly the right one that he will stick to no matter the evidence...

He is not afraid to change a position based upon the facts on the ground --- and evidence...

This is the type of leadership we crave...ISN'T IT?

Obama stance on Iraq shows evolving view
Senator saw 'obligation' in '04 to success of state
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | March 8, 2008

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles...ng_view?mode=PF

WASHINGTON - In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an "absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.

"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."

The statements are consistent with others Obama made at the time, emphasizing the need to stabilize Iraq despite his opposition to the US invasion. But they also represent perhaps his most forceful language in depicting withdrawal from crisis-ridden Iraq as a betrayal of the Iraqi people and a risk to national security.

Obama spoke out passionately against the war in 2002 as an Illinois state senator, while many in Congress were silent. But his thinking on how to resolve the crisis in Iraq evolved.

During his 2004 Senate race, he supported keeping troops in Iraq to stabilize the country. But starting in 2005, as violence engulfed the country, he grew increasingly disillusioned.

Now, Obama's views about the war have become a campaign issue, as Hillary Clinton - who voted for the war's authorization - has questioned whether Obama has been consistent in opposing the war.

Her husband, Bill, said Obama's depiction of his longstanding opposition to the war was a "fairy tale." And yesterday, news of an Obama adviser's comments that his promise to withdraw troops within 16 months represented only a "best-case scenario" further fanned questions about his Iraq views.

Yesterday, Obama struck back, declaring that Clinton "doesn't have any standing to question my position on this issue." And he added that, "I will bring this war to an end in 2009, so don't be confused."

In 2004, while supporting the Democratic presidential nominee, John F. Kerry, Obama endorsed Kerry's view that the United States had too much at stake in Iraq to withdraw at that time. Since joining the Senate in 2005, Obama has taken incrementally tougher positions on Iraq, even as he sought to hear from a wide variety of voices about what should be done there, according to aides, advisers, and transcripts of his speeches.

In November of 2005, after it had become clear that US troops faced a raging insurgency, Obama argued in a speech before the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations that the US military should scale down its presence, but that US troops were "still part of the solution" in Iraq.

"We have to manage our exit in a responsible way," he told the council, "at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and perhaps irreparable crisis."

In January of 2006, Obama took his first trip to Iraq, staying two days, and while there he heard conflicting views on whether US troops should stay or go.

He expressed frustration with the failure of Iraqi leaders to resolve key disputes, telling reporters that "if we have not seen significant progress over the next few months, we need to have an honest conversation with Iraqis as to what our investment is."

But 2006 unfolded as a year of sectarian bloodshed, deepening Obama's conviction that the US effort was being squandered. He began to call for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. By that time, the call was far from unusual, however; other senators had called for a phased withdrawal earlier.

"The notion that the United States can't be more committed to the future of Iraq than Iraqis became much more of the prominent view" among Democrats and even some Republicans in 2006, said Rand Beers, a former foreign policy adviser to Kerry.

By November of that year, voters across the nation expressed anger over Iraq, handing control of Congress to Democrats.

A month later, the Iraq Study Group recommended reducing US military support for Iraq's government if its leaders failed to make progress on achieving political agreements.

An author of that report, Benjamin Rhodes, later joined Obama's campaign as a foreign policy adviser, and Obama adopted some of the group's language in his 2007 bill calling for all combat brigades to be withdrawn by March of 2008.

As Obama mulled a presidential run, he began to reach out to a series of military leaders, including those who did not agree with him on Iraq.

When Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary, organized two meetings for Obama with retired military officers, Danzig asked whether he should invite officers who opposed Obama's views. The answer was yes, Danzig recalled.

"One of the attractive things about Obama is the desire to get a range of views and process them himself rather than get a homogenized product or exclude people who aren't in sympathy with him," Danzig said.

In a separate meeting, Obama asked General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the war effort, what should be done in Iraq. Zinni told him: "I don't think you can abandon Iraq. The region is too important."

Despite those views, Obama's foreign policy advisory team began working on a detailed plan for bringing US troops home and managing the potential humanitarian crisis that could follow.

Obama's campaign set up a working group on Iraq, headed by Colin Kahl, a security studies professor at Georgetown University. In July 2007, Obama's top advisers and Iraq specialists, including Kahl, produced a memo that shaped Obama's core Iraq views, made public in a Sept. 12 speech: to bring home one to two combat brigades each month, with all brigades out in 16 months, and keep only a small number of troops in Iraq to protect US diplomats and launch limited, targeted strikes on Al Qaeda.

But this week, Obama adviser Samantha Power caused a stir when she told BBC's "Hard Talk" that Obama "will revisit" the plan when he becomes president.

"You can't make a commitment in March of 2008 about what circumstances are going to be like in January 2009," said Power, who resigned from the campaign yesterday over separate comments insulting Clinton. "He will, of course, not rely upon some plan that he has crafted as a presidential candidate or a US senator. He will rely upon an operational plan that he pulls together in consultation with people on the ground."

Obama insisted yesterday he would stick to his plan. But Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said voters should expect Obama's views on the war to shift.

"If you look at Obama's stands, he has taken different stands, or differently nuanced stands, based on his perceptions of the changing realities on the ground," Mead said. "As a rational human being, [if he is elected president] nine months from now, he'll have to do the same thing. He'll have to look carefully at the situation as it is, and make the best policy calls that he can."

I suppose Jim McDermott, David Bonior, and Mike Thompson believed the tooth fairy was paying for their trip since it was too late in the year for the Easter Bunny and too early for Santa Claus, eh?

Marine, this morning on the local rightwing morning radio show the hosts pointed out that the State Department approved the trip, and that if State didn't know who was really behind financing their trip, then why would these guys know?

Oh, I forgot. All these guys are congressmen.

We know from experience the last thing on a congressman's mind is who's paying for anything.

Maybe I was misinformed but as I remember, there was a big stink about if the congress did not pass the funds the soldiers would suffer. They would be deprived of the equipment to defend themselves. Of course they were anyway. Thank you Mr. Bush! I guess I would have voted for the war to if I were Obam. The funding for the soldiers were at stake. I believe Kerry did the same thing. I think we were all duped into this war. At the time I remember we all thought the first Bush should have captured Saddam. So we all got on the bandwagon. It was supposed to be dethrone Saddam and get out of Iraq. We didn't know that Bush set himself up as a dictator also. Well, we were all ignorant that we were lied to. Saddam supposedly obtained weapons of mass destruction.

Be careful! You might upset him with inconvenient facts.

Do you tell a mother whose child was killed by a drunk driver that her child died for a good cause?
Do you thank the wife and children of a worker for his "sacrifices" when he died in an industrial accident that could have been prevented if management hadn't cut costs?
Do you tell the parents of a child who was raped and murdered than she died defending the 'innocence of childhood."
Do you thank the victims of Katrina in NO for bearing their suffering so that emergency relief would be available for Houston if needed?
Do you keep the truth from the family of a soldier who died from "friendly' fire.

Yes, it is harsh toward the surviving family to say that a soldier's life has been wasted in an ill-conceived and unjustified war;
But the perpetrators evade accountability as we try to protect families from this harshness.
And then set precedents to do it again and again-----perpetual war to defend other lands from people native to those lands.
The American way!

If the Iraqi Army pulls off the operation they are currently engaged in your ill-conceived and unjustified war will be an unqualified and resounding success a couple a months before election day.

Iran will never let that happen. They will bleed the Iraqi Army as the Sunnis have bled the US Army.

Here is reality...

Anti-U.S. Shi'ites renew Iraq attacks
Mahdi Army targets Basra and Baghdad
BY ROBERT H. REID • ASSOCIATED PRESS • March 26, 2008

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article.../803260404/1009

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's leaders faced their gravest challenge in months Tuesday as Shi'ite militiamen loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fought for control of the southern oil capital Basra and unleashed rockets on the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad.


Armed Mahdi Army militiamen appeared on Baghdad streets for the first time in more than six months, as al-Sadr's followers announced strikes and demonstrations to protest a government crackdown on their movement. Merchants closed shops in several Baghdad neighborhoods.

Several rockets were fired at the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies. There were no reports of casualties, but the blasts sent people scurrying for concrete bunkers.

Although all sides appeared reluctant to trigger a conflagration, Brig. Gen. Ed Cardon, assistant commander of the U.S. task force operating south of Baghdad, said the situation in the south was "very complicated" and "the potential for miscalculation is high."

The burgeoning crisis -- part of a power struggle among Shi'ite political factions -- has major implications for the United States. An escalation could unravel the cease-fire that al-Sadr proclaimed last August. A resumption of fighting by his militia could threaten the lives of U.S. soldiers and -- at least in the short run -- the security gains Washington has hailed as a sign that Iraq is on the road to recovery.

The confrontation also will test the skill and resolve of Iraq's Shi'ite-led government in dealing with Shi'ite militias, with whom the national leadership had maintained close ties.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, remained in Basra to command the security operation there. Sweeps were launched to rid the city of militias and gangs that ruled the streets even before the British handed over control to the Iraqis in December.

U.S. and Iraqi officials say some factions of al-Sadr's movement maintain close ties with Iran, which provides them with weapons, money and training. Iran denies the allegation.

Basra, located near the Iranian border about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, is the center of the country's vast oil industry. Stability in the city is essential if Iraq is to attract huge investments needed to restore its neglected oil fields and export facilities.

Throughout the day, the sounds of explosions and machine gunfire echoed through Basra's streets as Iraqi soldiers and police fought the Mahdi Army in at least four neighborhoods.

At least 31 people were killed and 88 wounded, according to police and hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Iraqi police and soldiers prevented journalists from reaching the areas of heaviest fighting, but Iraqi military spokesman Col. Karim al-Zaidi acknowledged that troops were facing resistance.

Residents of one neighborhood said Mahdi Army snipers were firing from rooftops. Others fired rocket-propelled grenades at the troops. Other residents said police fled their posts.

PM Vows to Fight Militas in BasraAP foreign, Thursday March 27 2008 By ROBERT H. REID

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged ``no retreat'' Thursday in the fight against Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra, as thousands of protesters demanded he resign over the crackdown and extremists fired rockets into the U.S.-protected Green Zone.

Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr called Thursday for a political solution to the burgeoning crisis and an end to the ``shedding of Iraqi blood.'' But the statement, released by a close aide, stopped short of ordering his Mahdi Army militia to halt attacks on the Green Zone or stop fighting in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.

In a sign of the deteriorating security, gunmen in Baghdad seized a high-profile government spokesman from his home in a Shiite neighborhood, killing three of his bodyguards and torching his house. In a bid to curb the violence, Iraq's military ordered vehicles and pedestrians off the streets of the capital until Sunday morning.

As Americans and Iraqis scrambled to cope with a newly violent Iraq, the State Department ordered all personnel at the U.S. Embassy not to leave reinforced structures because of continued incoming rocket or mortar fire from suspected Shiite extremists angry over the Basra crackdown.

The campaign to rid Basra of lawless gangs and Shiite militias - some believed tied to nearby Iran - is a major test for al-Maliki, a Shiite, and for the Iraqi military. The ability of Iraqi leaders and security forces to control situations like this one is key to U.S. hopes of withdrawing its forces from the country.

The prime minister put his credibility on the line by flying down to Basra and issuing a weekend deadline for the surrender of Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to al-Sadr. But the militiamen were still controlling Basra's streets Thursday, and the security operation has triggered a violent response among al-Sadr's followers in Baghdad and cities throughout the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq.

In the Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah, thousands of al-Sadr's followers denounced al-Maliki as a ``new dictator'' as they carried a coffin bearing a crossed-out picture of the U.S.-backed prime minister. Thousands more also rallied in Sadr City, Baghdad's main Shiite district.

``We call on our brothers in the Iraqi army and the brave national police not to be tools of death in the hands of the new dictatorship,'' a Sadrist member of parliament, Falah Shanshal, said.

However, al-Maliki showed no sign of wavering.

``We have made up our minds to enter this battle, and we will continue until the end. No retreat,'' al-Maliki told Basra area tribal leaders in a speech broadcast nationwide on Iraqi state TV.

Al-Maliki said Iraq had become a ``nation of gangs, militias and outlaws'' and he was undertaking a ``historic mission'' in Basra to restore ``the law of the land.''

But the Sadrists have been angry over recent raids and detentions, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces have taken advantage of their 7-month-old cease-fire to crack down on the movement.

They have accused rival Shiite parties, which control Iraqi security forces, of engineering the arrests to prevent them from mounting an effective campaign for provincial elections expected this fall. The Sadrists expect to make major electoral gains at the expense of rival parties, including those that maintain close ties to the United States.

American officials have acknowledged that the unilateral cease-fire declared by al-Sadr last August played a major role in reducing violence in Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi officials have insisted that they are not targeting al-Sadr's movement but simply going after renegades, criminals and extremists with ties to Iran.

Fighting raged for a third straight day in Basra, where Iraqis have been of control of security since the British withdrew last December.

Heavy gunfire and explosions resounded across the city while helicopters and jet fighters buzzed overhead. The city's police chief escaped an assassination attempt late Wednesday but three of his guards were killed in the roadside bombing.

Residents contacted by telephone in Basra, the country's oil capital 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, spoke of militiamen using mortar shells, sniper fire, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to fight off security forces.

Some complained that thousands of civilians were trapped by the fighting and running short of food, medicine and clean drinking water.

At least 56 people have been killed since Wednesday in Basra, according to police and hospital reports, although a complete and accurate count was impossible to obtain because of the fighting.

In an escalation of the crisis, saboteurs bombed one of Iraq's two main oil export pipelines that carries crude oil from Basra to the country's oil terminal on the Persian Gulf. The attack briefly sent prices rising on international petroleum markets.

In Baghdad, suspected Shiite extremists continued to hammer the U.S.-protected Green Zone on Thursday, firing several rounds of rockets or mortars that sent a huge plume of smoke above the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad.

Also Thursday, a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bombing in mostly Shiite eastern Baghdad, the U.S. command said. No further details were released.

One American, a government employee, died in Thursday's attacks on the Green Zone, four days after an American financial analyst was mortally wounded there.

A memo sent to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press says employees are required to wear helmets and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of trailers that most occupy.

Pentagon officials said Thursday that weapons used in recent Green Zone attacks included 107mm rockets made in Iran. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said some rockets were stamped with 2007 Iranian manufacture dates.

With security in Baghdad rapidly deteriorating, gunmen kidnapped the Iraqi civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security operation and killed three of his bodyguards after torching his house in a Shiite neighborhood.

The spokesman, Tahseen Sheikhly, is a Sunni who often appeared with U.S. military and embassy officials at news conferences to tout the successes of the security operation, which began last year when President Bush sent 30,000 U.S. reinforcements to Baghdad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/7417227

And here is the Bush/Marine fantasy:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...story?track=rss

From the Los Angeles Times
Bush plays up progress in Iraq but admits it's 'reversible'
Underscoring the Iraqi government's willingness to take on insurgents, the president cites numerous political and economic improvements. The U.S. mission, however, will take a while to complete, he ad
By James Gerstenzang
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 28, 2008

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, OHIO — President Bush said Thursday that the yearlong increased U.S. troop deployment in Iraq had allowed the country to "restart political and economic life" and take on a greater role in its own reconstruction while building a modern democracy on "the rubble of three decades of tyranny."

But he made clear his readiness to delay the withdrawal of U.S. forces, saying that as he considers his next steps, he will remember that "the progress in Iraq is real; it's substantive -- but it is reversible."

And in an apparent broadside at political critics who he said had refused to acknowledge the achievements he sees, the president said that "now that political progress is picking up, they're looking for a new reason" to call for retreat.

Accusing some members of Congress of "hectoring" Iraqi leaders, he said: "They claim that our strategic interest is elsewhere, and that if we would just get out of Iraq, we could focus on the battles that really matter. . . .

"If America's strategic interests are not in Iraq . . . then where are they?" he asked.

The speech was Bush's third of three over the last three weeks intended to present a broad look at U.S. policy in Iraq, the course of the war and the conditions on the ground five years after the U.S. invaded to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.

He spoke to about 1,000 people, many of them Air Force personnel, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, on the outskirts of Dayton. He stood between an F-86 of Korean War vintage and a current fighter jet, the F-22, with a Predator drone displayed from the ceiling of the museum hangar and a B-52 a menacing presence to the side.

Critics challenged his assessment, contending that it was overly rosy and failed to present a course that would lead to withdrawal.

Steven A. Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview that although the examples of progress Bush cited were accurate, the new Iraqi laws the president cited either "fall short or there are loopholes."

And, citing new fighting across the country as an "unraveling of the security situation," he said it was "tough to talk about progress one day after 100 people were killed in the worst violence in months."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a written statement that Bush had "failed to give the American people a clear indication" that a plan for success was any closer now than in the last five years.

"The president asserts that real progress has been made in Iraq, but if that were truly the case, then our troops would be coming home soon," he said.

In his 42-minute speech, Bush said any Iraqi failure to make quick political progress was not an example of "foot-dragging" -- a reference, an aide said, to criticism by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) -- but rather a reflection of the "revolutionary" nature of the challenge.

"This progress isn't glamorous, but it is important," Bush said.

He presented security issues, the economy and political conditions as woven together, and said he would take all of them into consideration when the top commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, came to Washington to report to Congress the week after next on the U.S. course in coming months.

Bush cited the Iraqi security forces' response to new violence in Basra, a largely Shiite city in southeastern Iraq near the border with Iran, as evidence that the U.S.-supported government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was willing to take on insurgents who had "received arms and training and funding from Iran."

He also presented several examples of what he said were political conditions that had "changed markedly."

Among them: tribal sheiks taking part in a political revival; passage of a pension law allowing tens of thousands of Sunnis to collect retirement benefits; approval of a law allowing mid-level members of the Baath Party to take part in civil society, from which they had been barred in the aftermath of Hussein's removal; and a movement toward provincial elections this year.

Suggesting at times a favorable comparison of Iraqi politics with American political behavior, Bush said that as in the United States, "sometimes it requires grass-roots politics to get the folks in central government to respond."

"By any reasonable measure, the legislative achievements in Baghdad over the past four months have been remarkable," he said.

On the economic front, the president said that oil production had increased in fields north of Baghdad despite neglect of the oil infrastructure during the Hussein years.

He said Iraq was outspending the United States on Iraqi reconstruction by a ratio of 11 to 1, and that he expected the country to soon cover 100% of its reconstruction expenses. He also said that electricity production was above prewar levels, although insufficient to meet growing demands.

But, he said, "unemployment is still too high" and, acknowledging a complaint made recently by Petraeus, "corruption remains a challenge."

james.gerstenzang@

latimes.com

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

March 30, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
A Civil War Iraq Can’t Win
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
Washington

EVEN if American and Iraqi forces are able to eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are still three worrisome possibilities of new forms of fighting that could divide Iraq and deny the United States any form of “victory.”

One is that the Sunni tribes and militias that have been cooperating with the Americans could turn against the central government. The second is that the struggle among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups to control territory in the north could lead to fighting in Kirkuk, Mosul or other areas.

The third risk — and one that is now all too real — is that the political struggle between the dominant Shiite parties could become an armed conflict.

Fighting is now occurring in southern Iraq and parts of Baghdad between the Mahdi Army, which is under the control of the populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and a coalition of forces led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s Dawa Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a powerful party led by a Maliki ally, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. This latter coalition has de facto control of much of the Iraqi security forces, and Mr. Hakim’s group has its own militia, called the Badr Organization.

Much of the reporting on this fighting in Basra and Baghdad — which was initiated by the Iraqi government — assumes that Mr. Sadr and his militia are the bad guys who are out to spoil the peace, and that the government forces are the legitimate side trying to bring order. This is a dangerous oversimplification, and one that the United States needs to be far more careful about endorsing.

There is no question that many elements of the Mahdi Army have been guilty of sectarian cleansing, that the Sadr movement is hostile to the United States, that some of its extremists have continued acts of violence in spite of the cease-fire Mr. Sadr declared last summer, and that some of these rogue elements have ties to Iran. No one should romanticize the Sadr movement, understate the risks it presents or ignore the violent radicals in the Mahdi Army.

But it is equally important not to romanticize Mr. Maliki, the Dawa Party or the Islamic Supreme Council. The current fighting, which the government portrays as a crackdown on criminality, is better seen as a power grab, an effort by Mr. Maliki and the most powerful Shiite political parties to establish their authority over Basra and the parts of Baghdad that have eluded their grasp.

Moreover, Mr. Maliki’s gamble has already dragged American forces part-way into the fight, including airstrikes in Basra. Striking at violent, rogue elements in the Mahdi Army is one thing, but engaging the entire Sadr movement is quite another. The official cease-fire that has kept the mainstream Mahdi Army from engaging government and United States forces may well be rescinded if the government’s assault continues.

This looming power struggle was all too clear when I was in Iraq last month. The Supreme Council was the power behind the Shiite governorates in the south and was steadily expanding its influence over the Iraqi police. It was clearly positioning itself to counter Mr. Sadr’s popular support and preparing for the provincial elections scheduled for Oct. 1.

American military and civilian officials were candid in telling me that the governors and other local officials installed by the central government in Basra and elsewhere in southern Iraq had no popular base. If open local and provincial elections were held, they said, Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council were likely to be routed because they were seen as having failed to bring development and government services.

There was no real debate over how bad the overall governance of the south was at the provincial level, how little money the region was getting from Baghdad, and how poor government-related services were, even in Shiite areas. Incompetence and corruption are not sectarian. An ABC News poll released this month showed that only two-thirds of the Shiite population in Basra had a favorable opinion of the central government, down from three-quarters last summer, and that only 14 percent of all residents felt they could move about safely.

The American officials I met with differed in their views of the size of Mr. Sadr’s populist base around Basra, but most felt that Mr. Sadr still had a broad base of support in Baghdad — something indicated by the huge rallies on his behalf in the capital last week.

As I traveled through southern Iraq, many people I spoke to were worried about how the October elections would play out. The first problem is that there are no real indigenous political parties operating with local leaders. The second is the framework, which is still undecided. If the election follows the model of the 2005 vote, Iraqis will vote for long lists of candidates from the main parties (confronting many unfamiliar names) and there will be no allowance for the direct election of members of the Parliament who would represent a given area or district. Optimists hope that local leaders and parties will emerge before the election; realists foresee an uncertain mess.

There were also differences of opinion over Mr. Sadr’s cease-fire. Was he simply waiting out the American-Iraqi effort to defeat Al Qaeda before allowing his army to become active again? Or was he repositioning himself for a more normal political life? Most likely, he is doing both. He may be as confused by the uncertain nature of Iraqi politics as everyone else, and he may be dealing with a movement so fractured and diverse that effective control is nearly impossible.

In any event, it is clear that Basra has become a special case. Since the American-led invasion, it had been under the protection of the British, who opted for a strategy of not-so-benign neglect. Thus the power struggle in the city — Iraq’s main port — differs sharply from that in the other Shiite areas. Basra was essentially divided up among Shiite party mafias, each of which had its own form of extortion and corruption. They sometimes fight and feud, and there are reasons to call them criminal gangs, but they have established crude modus vivendi.

Basra also feels the influence of Iran far more than the other Shiite governorates. Iran’s religious paramilitary force, Al Quds, has been an equal-opportunity supplier of weapons and money to all the Shiite militias, effectively ensuring that it will support the winner, regardless of who the winner turns out to be.

There are good reasons for the central government to reassert control of Basra. It is not peaceful. It is the key to Iraq’s oil exports. Gang rule is no substitute for legitimate government. But given the timing and tactics, it is far from clear that this offensive is meant to serve the nation’s interest as opposed to those of the Islamic Supreme Council and Dawa.

How will it affect America? If the fighting sets off a broad, lasting, violent power struggle between Shiite factions, most of the security gains of the last year could be lost and our military role broadened. There is also no guarantee that a victory by Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council will serve the cause of political accommodation or lead to fair elections and the creation of legitimate local and provincial governments. Such an outcome, in fact, might favor a Dawa and Islamic Supreme Council “Iraqracy,” not democracy.

Anthony H. Cordesman is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/...agewanted=print

This is just plain embarrassing ---

I would love to hear Marine defend this reality...

You notice he has been pretty silent on Iraq lately...

Ever since he was proven wrong on the MRAPs being delayed because of bureaucratic issues and funding he has been pretty quiet on Iraq...

Why can;t he just admit he made a mistake?

We all make mistakes...

Maybe he is starting to doubt whether he is right on Iraq?

Iraq: Sadr's Brief Uprising Bloodied Maliki's Nose (and Bush's)
By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation
Posted on April 1, 2008, Printed on April 1, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/80839/

At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by U.S. -trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

That's true -- but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq's second city, at the heart of Iraq's oil region, it's apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he's the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote.

The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated U.S. occupying forces. (For details, see my March 10 Nation article, "Is Iran Winning the Iraq War?") Iran has strong ties to Iraq's ruling Shiite alliance, which is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Corps, was armed, trained, financed and commanded by Iranians during two decades in exile in Iran. Since then, hedging its bets, Iran built a close relationship to Sadr's Mahdi Army as well, and Sadr himself has spent most of the time since the start of the U.S. surge last January in Iran*. In addition, Iran has armed and trained a loose collection of fighters that U.S. military commanders call "Special Groups," paramilitary fighters who've kept up a steady drumbeat of attacks on American troops. Thus, it was no surprise when Hadi al-Ameri, the commander of the Badr Corps and a leading member of ISCI, traveled over the weekend to Iran's religious capital of Qom to negotiate the truce with Sadr that resulted in a shaky ceasefire in Basra.

That Sadr emerged victorious, and that Iran succeeded in brokering the deal that ended the fighting, is a double defeat for the United States. It is also a catastrophe for Maliki, and there is already speculation that his government could collapse. An ill-timed offensive, poorly prepared and poorly executed, resulted in an embarrassing defeat for Maliki.

Why was the offensive launched in the first place? By all accounts, Maliki, his faction of the ruling Islamic Dawa party, and ISCI intended to crush Sadr in Basra for reasons both political and strategic. Political, because Sadr's movement is positioned to register a massive win at the polls in Basra and throughout southern Iraq in provincial elections scheduled for October, an electoral defeat that would portend the end of the Dawa-ISCI regime. Strategic, because Basra is the economic engine of all of Iraq. The city controls Iraq's South Oil Company, which pumps and exports the vast majority of Iraq's oil -- and for years Basra has been under the control of militias loyal to Sadr and to a Sadrist splinter party, the Fadhila (Virtue) party. By controlling the Oil Protection Force, a quasi-military force, and through its own militia, Fadhila is an important player in Basra, too, and Basra's governor is a Fadhilist. Though Fadhila has had its own clashes with Sadr's Mahdi Army, Fadhila kept its powder dry in the recent fighting, and there is no doubt that Fadhila is a bitter opponent of the Dawa-ISCI alliance. Last year, Maliki tried to oust the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, who defied Maliki and refused to step down.

Maliki, miscalculating badly, flew to Basra last week from Baghdad to personally oversee the assault on Sadr's forces. In so doing, he staked his prestige on the offensive. If indeed it has failed, Maliki has lost face. That the ceasefire ending the fighting was worked out in Qom, Iran, and mediated by Tehran, is doubly embarrassing for him.

But it's far worse for the United States. President Bush strongly backed Maliki since the Battle of Basra started. According to Steve Hadley, the president's national security adviser, the decision to act in Basra was taken jointly between Washington and Baghdad. And U.S. air power and even some ground units supported the floundering Iraqi forces, whose weakness and incompetence were revealed for all to see. After five years of massive U.S. training and equipment, the Iraqi armed forces weren't even able to take control of Iraq's second-largest city.

Adding to Bush's utter humiliation, the Iranian-negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani, who brought Sadr's representatives together with Hadi al-Ameri, the Badr Corps commander and the leading aide to Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the ISCI leader. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a "terrorist" entity by the U.S. government. So President Bush's "defining moment" is this: the head of an Iranian "terrorist" force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr's movement and ISCI.

*Sadr's supporters have repeatedly denied that he's sought shelter in Iran, and charge that the claim is an attempt by his opponents to undermine his credibility as a fierce nationalist.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of "Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books).

The Nation