The troop surge has ended. Please congratulate the troops that you may encounter on their success. They are the ones who made it work!

I congratulate the troops.

Concerning our leaders who sent them there and their political supporters?

I kick them in their behinds!

Mac2 --- is this your real name...

He uses language just like you do...

More 'surge' poppycock
By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3574.shtml

Aug 4, 2008, 00:16

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The surge has failed. It helped reduce US casualties, but it hasn’t produced the political solution that the Bush administration wanted.

The Shia-led government, headed by Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki, has demanded a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. What more proof of failure does one need? One hundred forty-four of the 275 members of the Iraqi Parliament signed a letter calling for a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. Also, a recent poll conducted for British Channel 4, showed that 84 percent of Iraqis want the US military to “leave within a year.” Again, these are signs of failure not success.

The absence of violence is not proof of success, otherwise, Saudi Arabia and the People’s Republic of China would be lauded as model governments, but they’re not. They are repressive regimes and human rights abusers. The reduction in violence in Iraq is just a temporary lull in the ongoing struggle against foreign occupation. The Sunnis are regrouping under the auspices of the Awakening Council, but their long-range plans remain the same: to retake political power from the Maliki government and force the US to withdraw.

The spinmeisters in the Western media have made a big deal out the pause in the fighting and used it as a sign of progress. Progress? Over one million Iraqis have been killed and over 4 million have been either internally displaced or become refugees due to the war. By what perverted standard does the media measure success?

What the surge really proves is that ethnic cleansing works. Baghdad was a city of roughly 65 percent Sunnis. Now it is nearly 75 percent Shia. They didn’t simply pack up and leave, they were driven out by Shia militias who were provided cover by the US military. The process was chronicled by numerous independent Iraqi journalists. Uruknet.info, one of the few web sites that closely follows developments in Iraq, provided daily accounts of the Shia militias attacks on the various districts in Baghdad as they were taking place. Most of the news was not reported in the Western media. The surge was created as part of a public relations campaign to disguise ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. Now the Sunnis have been effectively purged from the capital. That’s not a “political solution,” it’s a war crime.

More importantly, the United States has helped the Shia militias win their war against the Sunnis. The Shia control Baghdad now and the Sunnis will never get it back. That is why they are moving on to the next phase of their strategy which is to pressure US troops to leave. The war has also strengthened Tehran and expanded its power in the region. The Maliki government treats visiting Iranian diplomats like they were royalty and is on friendly terms with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iran/Iraq friendship shifts the balance of power away from US/Israeli interests. The long-term consequences of this are still unknown, but it does not bode well for America’s energy needs.

The Shia have little experience running the government. That’s been the Sunnis role. That doesn’t mean they are incapable of leadership, it simply means that the Bush administration broke with traditional imperial policy to apply their own neocon theories. Normally, imperial powers remove as few of the political leaders as possible, so that the social systems keep functioning with as little disruption as possible.

Not Bush. Bush chose to raze the country to the ground; rip apart the social fabric, destroy the critical infrastructure, and spread chaos far and wide. Many of the intellectuals, scientists, teachers and government officials have either been killed or fled the country. It is an Iraqi holocaust equal to the 1948 purge of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, as author Nir Rosen says, “Iraq no longer exists.”

By handing over control of the government to the Shia, Bush has intensified the sectarian violence. The idea of creating a “Shia Crescent” in the Middle East is part of a crackpot theory cooked up in a Washington think-tank. Imagine if the Russians invaded the United States and decided that the path to political stability was to wipe out the government, disband the bureaucracy, and appoint inexperienced people from the poorer sections of the inner cities and barrios to run the country. This is the level of ignorance in the Bush administration. The strategy has cost the lives of over a million Iraqis. That’s a high price for ignorance.

Political analyst Steven Simon explains in great detail the ”fatal flaws” in the present Bush strategy in an article that appeared in the May/June edition of Foreign Affairs, the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Here’s what Simon says in “The Price of the Surge,” “The surge has changed the situation not by itself but only in conjunction with several other developments: the grim successes of ethnic cleansing, the tactical quiescence of the Shiite militias, and a series of deals between U.S. forces and Sunni tribes that constitute a new bottom-up approach to pacifying Iraq. The problem is that this strategy to reduce violence is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state. If anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them against the central government and against one another. In other words, the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

“Despite the current lull in violence, Washington needs to shift from a unilateral bottom-up surge strategy to a policy that promotes, rather than undermines, Iraq’s cohesion. That means establishing an effective multilateral process to spur top-down political reconciliation among the major Iraqi factions. And that, in turn, means stating firmly and clearly that most U.S. forces will be withdrawn from Iraq within two or three years. Otherwise, a strategy adopted for near-term advantage by a frustrated administration will only increase the likelihood of long-term debacle.

“The surge may have brought transitory successes, but it has done so by stoking the three forces that have traditionally threatened the stability of Middle Eastern states: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism. States that have failed to control these forces have ultimately become ungovernable, and this is the fate for which the surge is preparing Iraq. A strategy intended to reduce casualties in the short term will ineluctably weaken the prospects for Iraq’s cohesion over the long run.” [Steven Simon “The Price of the Surge,” Foreign Affairs]

As Simon points out, Bush’s bottom-up strategy reinforces the three main elements (tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism) which are preventing a unified Iraqi state from emerging. This increases the likelihood that Iraq will continue to be a dysfunctional state that will pose a threat to its neighbors, the region and US interests. That implies that the surge is inherently counterproductive.

Simon puts it like this: “When it withdraws from Iraq, the United States will be leaving a country more divided than the one it invaded -- thanks to a strategy that has systematically nourished domestic rivalries in order to maintain an illusory short-term stability.”

There was never the slightest chance that the US would succeed in Iraq. The project was doomed from the beginning. Contrary to optimistic reports in the media, the future of the occupation has never been more uncertain. The Iraqi resistance has undermined the ability of the US military to wage war. The US is presently facing serious challenges around the world, but it can’t address those problems because its army is tied down in Iraq. The world is drifting away from Washington and the trend appears to be irreversible. The superpower model of global government is beginning to crack.

Another way to measure success in Iraq is by looking at the US fiscal deficit which has skyrocketed to nearly $500 billion. This is due to the exorbitant costs of prosecuting an open-ended conflict in the Middle East. Americans are not confused by the rhetoric surrounding the surge; they know we are losing. They see evidence of defeat every time they pull up to a gas pump. Tell me: Is $4 dollar per gallon gas a sign of victory or defeat? This isn’t rocket science.

The individual battles and skirmishes in Iraq are irrelevant; what matters is that America’s ability to wage war has been greatly undermined. By the end of 2009, the troops will begin to withdraw or they will be left to fight with slingshots and bows and arrows. The housing market is collapsing, the financial system is in meltdown phase, and the country is facing the greatest funding crisis in its 232-year history. Don’t look for proof of America’s defeat in Iraq. Look for it at home. Look for it at the pawnshops, the homeless shelters, and the growing number of empty subdivisions which have turned into ghost towns. This is where one can see the true costs of the war; a war that was lost before the first bomb was dropped.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

I will absolutely congratulate the troops and commend them. Like Arneoker, I applaud them yet would kick those whose ideas and strategies made it a mess to begin with.

The surge was originally designed to only last a few months. A few months is not a few years.

Still, it has finally created some stability in an area mismanaged especially in the beginning. It took longer but there is definitely a measure of success.

If the surge is over and sucessful, then get the f--k out of there and bring them home to the USA
Not in Iran, not elsewhere, bring them home

Why have more die every day?

And if its suceessful, its only because of the torture and the civilian killing they did on the Iraqi's so there is no one left at all
They just plum killed everyone

just shot and shot and bombed and nuked all the living people
now they is dead.

some accomplishment

thanks for treating these people like they were pin cushions.

war crime tribunals coming up soon.

Like Arne, I have always congratulated the troops on their performance.

They have risen to the occasion and brilliantly executed what was a flawed strategy --- and since January 1, 2007 a better strategy...

I regret that their effort may end up be short-lived since the political reconciliation that was supposed to file the reduction in violence has not been achieved yet. Without the achievement of a functional Iraqi government which is representative of all Iraqis, it is difficult to imagine the reduced violence will be extended indefinitely, particulalry as troops continue to be dispatched home.

Mac2 -- have the other benchmarks been met?

Iraq Benchmark Report Card
One Year After the Surge
January 24, 2008

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/200.../benchmark.html

Total Benchmarks: 3 of 18 Accomplished

On the one year anniversary of President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying his "New Way Forward" in Iraq, it is clear that the surge has failed to meet its objectives. One year ago, the president pledged that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." Despite the fact that the Iraqi government has only met three of the 18 benchmarks laid out last year, an end to U.S. military and financial commitment is nowhere in sight.

The purpose of the surge was to provide the “breathing space” for political reconciliation to occur. Yet over one year later, political progress has been scant, and what progress has been made is not durable. The Iraqis have not made the difficult political compromises necessary for national reconciliation, and an indefinite U.S. presence in the region will not inspire them to do so. Despite the best efforts of our military men and women in creating a temporary lull in violence, substantial advancement toward a sustainable and independent Iraq has not been made.

In order to motivate Iraq’s political leaders, the United States must set a date certain for withdrawal. Only then will the Iraqis make the difficult political compromises necessary for national reconciliation. While redeploying our forces over the next 10-12 months, the United States must initiate a diplomatic surge to ensure that all of Iraq’s neighbors are involved constructively in Iraq’s future. Only by implementing a Strategic Reset in Iraq will the United States be able to take control of its own national security interests in the country and the greater Middle East.

Government Benchmarks: 2 of 8 Accomplished
1. Perform constitutional review. Unmet

2. Enact de-Ba’athification reform. Partial

4. Form semi-autonomous regions. Unmet

5. Hold provincial elections. Unmet

6. Address amnesty. Unmet

8. Establish support for Baghdad Security Plan. Met

16. Ensure minority rights in Iraqi legislature. Met

18. Keep Iraqi Security Forces free from partisan interference. Unmet


Security Benchmarks: 1 of 8 Accomplished
7. Disarm militias. Unmet

9. Provide military support in Baghdad. Partial

10. Empower Iraqi Security Forces. Partial

11. Ensure impartial law enforcement. Unmet

12. Establist support for Baghdad Security Plan by Maliki government. Unmet

13. Reduce sectarian violence. Partial

14. Establish neighborhood security in Baghdad. Met

15. Increase independent Iraqi Security Focres. Unmet


Economic Benchmarks: 0 of 2 Accomplished
3. Implement oil legislation. Unmet

17. Distribute Iraqi resources equitably. Partial

I congratulate the troops even when their missions prove unsuccessful....they are doing what they are required to do....

I also congratulate them, especially for their patience, stamina and loyalty when they must promote and follow-through on missions that should never have begun in the first place in which they have had no choice.....

Exactly right. And, they do what they are asked to do even if they don't agree with the mission....

The mailman successfully delivered his rounds today, no mistakes

Let's all congratulate the US Post office

And my sanitation men did not forget any cans
Let's all congratulate the garbage patrol

The garbage surge has worked!!!

And has the surge made Iraqis great us like liborators? Has the surge made Iraqi oil pay the cost of the war like Bush said? So far we have gotten out ass handed to us in Iraq. Lets see about $ 1 trillion spent and 35,000 US casualties. Yep. Sounds like an overall win to me! And now our Iraqi allies want us out or there. What was and is the point of being in Iraq? Its an overall disaster. They quit killing us because they know we are leaving. Where is the victory here? Nice try McCain. I am not buying it.

Try to stay on topic, David.

It is on topic. The surge is meaningless in the overall Iraq campaign. We still loose because we have won nothing.

The surge for what it was designed for, has worked. The other sh*t don't mean "jack" in this instance.

I trust the troops to not be as delusional as you are so I won't mention the surge for fear of eating boot.

that is about 100% correct.

surge is just another word for nothing left to lose, but unfortunately a loss is just a loss and a waste of 4000 USA and 1.75 MILLION dead
Iraqi beautiful people and another 1 million wounded

By the way- do they all got their electricity back?

Bush took it way, never gave it back

Got Candle?

Looks like somebody forgot to tell the insurgents.



AP: Leader of US-allied Sunni group killed in Iraq

By SAAD ABDUL-KADIR, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 3 minutes ago

A member of a U.S.-allied Sunni group says that gunmen killed one of the group's senior leaders and six of his guards in an ambush south of Baghdad.

The official says the gunmen attacked the convoy of Sheik Ibrahim al-Karbouli in Youssifiyah on Monday. He was a senior leader of the so-called awakening council in the town, which is a former al-Qaida stronghold about 12 miles south of Baghdad.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity out of fears for his own security.

Al-Qaida has frequently mounted reprisal attacks against awakening councils because of their success in cutting into support for the terror movement among Iraqi Sunni Arabs.

Well perhaps, but sometimes it makes sense to transcend the instance, if there is doubt about just how important the instance is in the first place.

Well then someone needs to tell them!

Anyone here want to do that?

As usual your post makes no sense, and you should not congratulate your garbage collectors. At your place, they left behind a very big pile.

And your problem with that is...

I nominate Graham...might put living in the U.S. in a more positive light for him.....

the Iraqi invastion was a misfire

I would rather vote for Mr. Saddam than Bushie any day. Mr. Saddam never did anything to me.
Bushie did.

Then raw numbers never was your field, was it? or the feeling for the 1.74 MILLION iraqi's who were tortured by the trashy US troops and dismembered, killed, burnt, and who knows what
was done by the a-holes called Americans.

After all, Bushie did 9-11 NOT Mr. Saddam, and his two nice kinder who Bushie assassinated.

Yes, but...



About a week and half ago I was at an Iraqi-owned restaurant at the Bogota city line. I wonder what the owners of that place would feel about your statement. Then you could just go to Dearborn, Michigan, where I hear a lot of people of Iraqi ancestry live.



Well a lot of Iraqis have suffered, and a lot them blame Americans, many with good reason, but this is a distortion and an insult to many fine people, including my cousin's son who served as a Marine in Iraq.



I believe you are half-right here. Neither did it.



They were dirt bag thugs. I don't take pleasure in their deaths, but I don't shed a tear for them either.

Saddam's kids did NOTHING to the USA

They were killed in cold blood, and a father lost his precious kids

That was the total reason for their deaths

To humiliate and torture a living breathing beautiful human being

oy, Graham started the day off on the wrong foot. Already got sparks flying in all directions before breakfast.

not my fault some people here don't care about Iraqi's as human beings.

Just our bloated fat ugly Americans killing them.

Yeah, the surge worked...killed everyone in the 1 mile radius (though one can't go outside that one mile radius)

Sure as Bushies killed Daniel Pearl and the others

and now they say the thraxman is a democrat...boy do they create great backstories, don't they

So the Iraqi groom that one of them threw out the hotel to his death so that he could have at her bride was simply chopped liver?



I am so heartbroken.



We were just meanies.



Obviously the groom tossed out of the hotel would not qualify for that category. I guess that athletes for Iraqi teams who failed to please one of those "precious kids", and thus were killed, would not qualify for that either.

But let us not be extremists and consider all of them human beings, right?

being that 100s and 1000s of USA troops/mercanaries (they are the same aren't they,paid to be there to follow foolishly any stupid order given them?) have been found to have tortured prisoners, defiled Iraqi women and families, stolen millions in Iraqi goods, and desecrated
religious meaningful things Iraqi's own, ruined their economy, stole their electricity, built nothing back
put Iraqi's on a leash in Gitmo, electrocuted, waterboarded, and who knows what to their private parts

I think one needs to cleanup their own backyard, before worrying about a couple of kiddies in Iraq.

Sounds like you could be helping the truth here.

Concerning the "kiddies", turns out that Uday didn't kill those athletes. My bad. He just had them tortured. And I must point out that you brought up those kiddies in the first place. I don't think that their vile and murderous thuggishness was enough to justify our invasion. In fact our invasion was not justified. But that tragic error does not justify distortion, or calling the worst kind of thugs "kiddies". Remember that no human being did not have a Mommy and Daddy, no matter how vile that human being was.

I sincerely congratulate the troops and give them all credit for any good which has come to pass in Iraq...

despite the ignorance, incompetence and corruption of their CIC and his cronies.


They did one helluva job of putting the lipstick on a huge old ugly boar hog.

Next time let's give them a job worthy of their courage and loyalty and not some charade of a neo-con / revenge agenda of an insecure and pathetically ignorant President.

I congratulate you NO, and others who have actually said sensible things about some very important issues.

In a democracy that sort of thing needs to be honored as well.

Yes, let's give them the resources to fight Bin Laden and the Taliban...who actually did attack us on 9/11...

Let us congratulate those who opposed Bush's boneheaded policies, especially those who opposed them from the start. Such people are vitally needed in a democracy.

Yes most American troops are not war criminals. Can anyone tell me which ones are not war criminals? We know that some are. We just know of the disclosed crimes that the press came clean on. And then there is the matter of the murders committed by the privite armies like Blackwater. Over all I am not happy with our nation and the conduct of this campaign.

No problem, just taking care of a situation about a pile of garbage.

http://www.therawstory.com/
Suskind: Bush ordered fake letter linking Iraq to 9/11
08/05/2008 @ 8:46 am
Filed by David Edwards and Nick Juliano


A blockbuster new book from investigative journalist Ron Suskind adds another revelation to the growing canon demonstrating the lengths to which President Bush and members of his administration lied, misled and deceived the American people to pursue its invasion of Iraq.

Advertisement
Bush allegedly ordered the CIA to forge a handwritten letter from the head of Iraq's intelligence service to Saddam Hussein that purported to link the Iraqi dictator to the ringleader of the hijackers who toppled the Twin Towers on 9/11, according to news accounts of Suskind's new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Such use of an intelligence service to influence domestic political debate could be an impeachable offense, Suskind writes.

Politico's Mike Allen reports:

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.” [...]

The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.
The faked letter was first reported as genuine by the conservative London Sunday Telegraph in December 2003. Right-wing commentators and Bush defenders harped on that disclosure as evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. According to Suskind's book, the CIA had been protecting Habbush in the early months of the invasion; the agency persuaded the Iraqi intelligence chief to write the letter in his own handwriting and paid him $5 million.

CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante reported Tuesday that Suskind's sources had seen a draft of the letter written on White House stationary.

The Way of the World is Suskind's third book on the inner workings of the Bush administration, joining The One Percent Doctrine, which outlined the often extreme anti-terror policies advanced by the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney, and The Price of Loyalty, which painted a picture of the early day's of Bush's presidency with the help of ousted former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Predictably, the White House is unhappy with Suskind's latest offering and the Bush administration is relying on its trademark push-back of insulting the messenger. White House spokesman Tony Fratto insulted Suskind, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work with the Wall Street Journal, as a practitioner of "gutter journalism," and called the allegations "absurd."

Suskind appeared Tuesday on NBC's Today Show for interviews about the latest book.

This video is from NBC's Today Show, broadcast August 5, 2008.

So have you taken care of it?

as long as one is, all are suspect

it is up to the good ones to refuse to do things they know is wrong

mutiny is doing a wrong act, not not obeying to do a wrong act

Then those people will be heroes

Well David, I'd say about 99.999999% of them are not war criminals. We get about a dozen highly publicized cases out of the about three million folks serving in the military, do the math, eh?

My words "taking care" indicate a work in progress......do they not?

So how's it going?

I think that the the actual percentage is extremely low in any event.

Why do you ask?

To obtain an answer.

BTW, the only garbage I can take care of is my own. I am not so talented as to dispose of someone else's garbage, although at times I can spot it.

Your questions are trivial and deserve no answer.

I think that there are a lot more war crimes then the press or the military discloses. We only see what they tell us or what someone is willing to speak about. I think the truth will come out over the next few years as it always does. There are always people who witness crimes and then come clean about them years later to clear their conscience. Meanwhile I will look at people who served in Iraq and wonder.

I think you are right, but I still think that most soldiers in Iraq act honorably. Many of them have probably seen stuff that is pretty damn sickening, if not what you could fairly call war crimes.

What would you consider a war crime Arne? How about shooting at somebody with a 37mm AAA cannon while they was hanging helpless in a parachute harness?