Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Way Forward in Iraq?
President Bush said not much beyond, "thanks for the report and we will get back to you." We are deep into a war that was started by and under President Bush. At this stage he should not need a commission to come up with suggestions on what to do next. It is an indication of the depth of the crisis the US finds itself in Iraq. The President did not look like a confident CEO. I do not think Bush looks well. This is not good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Damascus is reporting that the Syrian government sees developments in Washington as an opportunity to come out of international isolation.
ReplyDeleteThe ISG had also been expected to recommend a gradual phased withdrawal of US troops over the next 18 months.
According to the leaks, the report will back a reduction in the number of US troops in Iraq - perhaps halving it from the current level of 140,000 changing the nature of their engagement from a combat to a back-up role.
I do not understand how this will work at this stage.
2164th said, "The ISG had also been expected to recommend a gradual phased withdrawal of US troops over the next 18 months."
ReplyDeleteThe report, due out any minute now, suggests that all US combat forces not directly associated with force protection should be withdrawn by the first quarter of 2008. So we're going to have a smaller force in Iraq, and every soldier will be tasked solely with providing protection for that smaller force, while the Iraqi army handles all active campaigns. The image of a self-licking ice cream cone comes to mind. What is the point of being in Iraq at all?
We are about to "surge" the troop strength, in Iraq. Expect that those scheduled to rotate home to be extended, in country.
ReplyDeleteThat'll get an "extra" 20,000 or so troops there for 90 days or so.
But to what effect? Unless the Doctrine changes, all the troops in the world would make no difference. 5,000 more troopers at Camp Anaconda will not change the situation.
If there is a military solution to the Iraq challenge, the troops deployeed now could handle it. If the solution is political, no amount of soldiers, assigned to "Peacekeeping" will keep the pieces together.
The window of Victory is smaller than many think.
ReplyDeleteOur resident partison, the yellow dog Republican, rufus, tells us he is burnt out on politics.
Well, the winners of the 7 Nov election are neither dispirited or toasted.
Mr Dick Morris says this, about those that are energizd
"... She definitely can win … and probably will. She is uniquely able to expand the electorate to bring in millions of women, mostly single, who will vote overwhelmingly for a female Democrat. The feminization of poverty, long decried by the left, will finally lead unmarried women to show up at the polling place and vote their short-term economic interest and vindicate their gender bias. In 2000, only 19 million single women voted. By 2004, their turnout rose to 27 million. With Hillary in the race, the single-female vote will probably go up to its proper ratio of the adult population — 33 million votes.
Can white men outvote single women? Despite the intensity with which white men tend to oppose Hillary, they can’t vote twice.
The enthusiasm that will grip many Americans — women in particular — at the cultural implications of a woman president will probably sweep through the primaries and cause many to overlook Hillary’s flaws and dismiss her defects. ..."
Tick tock, the sands of time continue their fall, piling up, burying the GOP in the deserts of the Middle East.
I had thought, prior to 7 Nov 06, Mr Bush would have until April to act, decisively against Iran and Syria. Now I think Mr Podhoretz is right, Mr Bush has weeks to act, not months. The GOP debacle has accelerated the timelines of opportunity.
While on the "Home Front"
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON (Reuters) - One in seven Mexican workers have left their country and are working in the United States, an immigration study said on Tuesday.
Over 14%. The reconquest of the US southwest continues.
Asyemetric and nary a shot fired.
For some really great "Cover Art" check out this This at the New York Sun.
ReplyDeleteBarak Hussain Obama and Ms Rodham, together.
CAIRO (AP) — Police have arrested an American, 11 Europeans and several others from Arab countries for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in Middle Eastern countries including Iraq, the Interior Ministry said Monday.
ReplyDeleteThe group was part of an Islamic militant terror cell that had adopted extremist ideas and were living in Egypt under the guise of studying Arabic and Islamic studies, the ministry said in a statement.
Along with the American, police arrested two Belgians, nine French and several others from Egypt and other Arab countries including Tunisia and Syria, the statement said.
The ministry did not provide names or say how many Egyptians and Arabs were arrested.
"Investigations have confirmed that those elements are related to some terrorist organizations abroad," the ministry said. "They were seeking to recruit others, teach them destructive beliefs, urging them for jihad, traveling to Iraq to carry out operations via other countries in the region."
Jeez, rat, for awhile there this morning I wasn't contemplating suicide.
ReplyDeleteDesert Rat wrote, "Over 14%. The reconquest of the US southwest continues."
ReplyDeleteAfter the Mexicans take over California, maybe they'll build a fence on the Oregon border and enforce it this time. Ya think?
DR,
ReplyDeletere: "One in seven Mexican workers have left their country and are working in the United States..."
Speaking of Mexico, I like the sound of Su casa, mi casa.
Since the US has a 14% share in Mexico, the US ought to have a 14% share of the seats on the board. Turn about is fair play.
No, Ms T, I do not think that the Mexicans will build a fence, any where, except maybe on their Guatemalan border.
ReplyDeleteSince the exodus from Mexico has not diminished, and with the coming sothern Socialist revolution, I suspect the flow will increase.
Between the further societal disintergration in the south and the US moving to "legalize" the migrants already here we guarentee the increasing of the migration, I think.
The North American Union is rapidly approaching, allen.
ReplyDeleteFear not, but learn to speak espanol, that's my advise.
For post apocaypso options, heading south to the tropics certainly is high on the list.
Pero, necisita la linga.
apocalypso
ReplyDeleteKansas is already squared up. It should be easy to brick it in and hold out there.
ReplyDeleteInvestors Business Daily provides this insight.
ReplyDeleteIran
Max Boot, a wonderful writer for The New Atlantis, a journal concerning technology and society provides some insight into "The Limits of Technological Supremacy"
ReplyDeleteA bit long but worth the read.
Limits
Buddy,
ReplyDeleteI thought we were gonna see a avatar you'd picked out for Christmas.
The Times, still if I recall produced on Fleet Street has been around for many a year. It goes into our relationship with Iran in an article entitled, Beyond Nuclear,Beyond Nuclear which I don't believe will quite clear the air but is a good try.
ReplyDeleteDR,
ReplyDeleteI am suggesting that America could use some additional "sunbelt" states.
"Bush doe not look good."
ReplyDelete---
So faking it for two years may not have worked.
Perhaps cheerleading the fakir was not the most patriotic course afterall.
-----------------
Misguided reconciliation with Baathists="
While it's fashionable to say de-Baathification caused the Sunni insurgency, in reality terrorist violence is proportional to that policy's reversal. In order to maintain security after the April 2004 siege of Fallujah, the coalition restored former Baathists.
Car bombings increased 300 percent within a month.
In Mosul, once deemed a model city of reconciliation, Gen. David Petraeus appointed senior Baathist Gen. Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi to be police chief.
Petraeus' decision was a triumph not of pragmatism, but of naïveté. Barhawi provided intelligence, equipment and arms to terrorists, finally handing over every police station in the city to the insurgents in November 2004.
Far from winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, re-Baathification antagonized them. Not all Iraqis had joined the party, and the refuseniks suffered for their morality. Non-Baathist Ph.D.s could not even work as schoolteachers and had to beg for food. After Saddam Hussein's fall, they joined schools in droves, eager to rebuild their country. Re-Baathification meant firing competent new teachers to reinstall corrupted predecessors who, as the Baath Party archives show, had created blacklists of 14-year-old students under their charge.
Realists may say foreign policy should be centered on U.S. interests, not justice. Here, too, though, re-Baathification has failed. It has not assuaged insurgency. Not only does offering concessions to violence encourage violence, but also by extending an olive branch to unrepentant Baathists, diplomats may have furthered Iranian influence and worsened militia violence. Many Iraqi Shiites distrust Washington, not for occupying Iraq in 2003, but for failing to do so 12 years earlier when they rose up to oust Hussein, only to suffer retaliatory massacres. It should not surprise that Iraqi Shiites look at U.S. outreach to Baathists as a sign that the younger Bush will betray them just as his father once did.
Tehran exploits such fears. On Sept. 2, an Iranian news agency reported that President Bush visited Saddam Hussein to talk about his restoration.
Sometimes, premature reconciliation, no matter how well-meaning, can do far more harm than good.
Michael Rubin,
But stealing all of Mexico's most energetic workers has done wonders for their economy and their political base.
ReplyDeleteJust ask the bean counting bottom-liners here.
Survivors of Victims of illegal mayhem think they should be bird cage liners.
habu, my pic didn't have a URL, so my project ran onto intense technical difficulties. It's now on the To-Do List, along with "inhale woe, exhale bliss".
ReplyDeleteSo I finally get the answer to why insurgents running in the streets of Mosul when the Strykers were whacking moles to the south were never taken out by Specter:
ReplyDeleteThey were part of the plan!
this is close, tho
ReplyDeleteO/T
ReplyDeleteIf I told you that the next big move in the global economy was a pool of "dead capital", TEN TRILLION dollars worth more than likely you'd pay attention.
Well it's there and the US Millennium Challenge Corp believes it has found the key to unlocking this dead capital and using it to benefit mankind from the bottom up.
Ten trillion TEN TRILLION is a whopper in any market!
Buddy,
ReplyDeleteIt has the character of Americana, the alert ,keen eye, the independent personal grooming, and that undefineable quality that says US foreign policy. I'd go for it.
ddy,
ReplyDeleteRemember you have to right click to raise the URL which will be under "properties" at the bottom.
Sometimes they are protected however. You prototype has a url which I believe fits ,however it may be too many k's in size 50k limit but the system will thell you and not take it.
What this country needs is some old fashioned cadoodling.
ReplyDeletehabu, "independant grooming" is the generous sort of phraseaology of which I am always in dire need.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I happened on this thru an instapundit link. The South has been vilified, called "repulsive" by an "activist democrat". He needs some possumtater, bad!
If you, like a good roofer, have the inclination, that is.
Doug,
ReplyDeleteCadoodle now like it's 1999!
Was it my imagination, or was GWB seemingly fighting an urge to glance at his watch, this morning while announcing the ISG Report?
ReplyDeleteBuddy,
ReplyDeleteI'll hammer him, or rather P-Tater will let loose like a moose.
Doug's got me wonder'n if I'm do'in enough cadoodle. Man can't live on but so much Iraq Study Group afore he gets a need to turn away and just get down,dirty,cabin fever cadoodling.
Butt soon the sun will start it's northward track and what's south will rise again!!!
Now I have to go fetch some grub.
Oh Buddy. I checked Google pics and Marcus Garvey is available.
ReplyDeleteNo I have it Buddy,,THE AVATAR..
ReplyDeletePresidential
ok--but I was starting to think "Ingemar Johansson".
ReplyDeletegreat idee, the little bama banty rooster. BUT, there's also the great inner-journeyman, Dr. Timothy Leary:
ReplyDeleteI heard that Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no he's outside looking in.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying not to search the group that sang it--trying to drive the wet cells back down that poorly mapped logging roads back there in the raw wilderness--
ReplyDeleteThe dead capital, the 10 trillion--great TCS essay. For more on that, search [ Hernando De Soto ] and filter out the entries about the Spanish Conquistador, in favor of the working economist who knows how to fix everything up to and including the friggen middle east.
Rather unsporting of you to kick Rufus while he was down, 'Rat.
ReplyDeleteHere's some cheer for the Rufster:
---
As Tigerhawk has argued several times, high oil prices make alternative fuels economical and create incentives for innovation. But even the most optimistic among us did not count on such genius as THIS! - Peak Oil? Pish Posh! :
By Charlottesvillain at 12/06/2006 12:49:00 PM
Lauri Venøy wants to use the product created from liposuction to develop bio-diesel.
Bio-diesel can be produced from plant oils and/or animal fat, and the Norwegian sees the scheme as a renewable energy source, newspaper Dagens Nærinsgliv reports.
More than sixty percent of Americans are overweight and the Norwegian's firm in Miami, Florida is in the process of signing an agreement with US hospital giant Jackson Memorial. This deal would give Venøy & Co. around 11,500 liters of human fat a week from liposuction operations, which is enough to produce about 10,000 liters of bio-diesel.
I have to wonder if Lou Dobbs, or anyone else, would complain about the outsourcing of labor in this particular processing plant.
Rather unsporting of you to kick Rufus while he was down, 'Rat.
ReplyDeleteHere's some cheer for the Rufster:
---
As Tigerhawk has argued several times, high oil prices make alternative fuels economical and create incentives for innovation. But even the most optimistic among us did not count on such genius as THIS! - Peak Oil? Pish Posh! :
By Charlottesvillain at 12/06/2006 12:49:00 PM
Lauri Venøy wants to use the product created from liposuction to develop bio-diesel.
Bio-diesel can be produced from plant oils and/or animal fat, and the Norwegian sees the scheme as a renewable energy source, newspaper Dagens Nærinsgliv reports.
More than sixty percent of Americans are overweight and the Norwegian's firm in Miami, Florida is in the process of signing an agreement with US hospital giant Jackson Memorial. This deal would give Venøy & Co. around 11,500 liters of human fat a week from liposuction operations, which is enough to produce about 10,000 liters of bio-diesel.
I have to wonder if Lou Dobbs, or anyone else, would complain about the outsourcing of labor in this particular processing plant.
What about Ingemar Bergman?
ReplyDeleteThe reason I don't have trashcans is cause I'm ahead of the pack with Blogger Beta.
ReplyDeleteYou recalcitrant Neanders gotta upgrade someday, might as well be now, while we still have Calif to call our own.
(Google will be in Azatlan)
ReplyDeleteDidn't Chavez or one of the Neocoms hire a Desotoite as an advisor?
ReplyDeleteNEOCOMS!
ReplyDeleteBuddy try this lyrics
ReplyDeleteIt was all downhill once Larsen started posting.
ReplyDeletedave h..
ReplyDeletebring on a topic we'll chew on 'er with ya.
For all you who want some of Iraq I just got an email from Blackwater. They're hiring on a new contract.
ReplyDeleteThey need current TS and above for Project Managers, Air Type Commanders, etc..good money, adventure..hell they're the largest contractor for security over there with some 3 million men under arms!! OK, not so many but alot. BlackwaterUSA.com
“Death to America” is not just a slogan for our enemies.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a deeply held conviction, on which they are feverishly acting.
Only when we are ready to take them seriously, when our leaders’ brave words are matched by determined deeds, can we win — in Iraq and, more importantly, in the greater war.
— Andrew C. McCarthy
Doug,
ReplyDeleteBy the time we wake up we'll be shoot'n from our redoubts next to the backyard barbeque
So in Eygpt and other applicable locales, if one cell of multinationals is busted, how many were not?
ReplyDeleteIf security so tight around the Arabic and Muslim world that every sprout is plucked before ripening? Or is this just one peach on a multinational terrorist tree?
From Lebanon, perhaps, exfiltarated to France during the 34 Day War?
That is the core of all good redoubts, habu, the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteIf you are into the BBQ firing positions, well that's interior defense.
The perimeter has been breached.
Which is right on your point, I know.
Saw this on the back window of an airman's truck this afternoon(could have been a woman for all I know):
ReplyDeleteSnatch a kiss
Or visa-versa
Run with it, "dave h".
;-)
i caught that crack, up there, dung. i've been over there at mortman's, trying to pain a yankee, so you got away with it. now i quit with you ahead, since dave h has shamed me. next post will be an attempt at something with some substantialistism.
ReplyDeleteH/T Fourth Rail
ReplyDeletePhilippine Forces Score Victory Against RSM
But has the government learned its lesson, because prior to this arrest,
“De los Reyes was charged with illegal possession of explosives. He posted bail for P200,000 and later went on the lam.”
Captured RSM member confirms Abu Sayyaf ties
Link
From Moonbattery
ReplyDeleteMuslim Students Urinate on Bible in Australia
“Some are paid for by Australian tax dollars, like the East Preston Islamic College, which soaks up $3.9 million per year in government funding. Extracurricular activities at the college include desecrating the Bible.”
NudeGayWhalesForJesus offers a pithy comment,
“[T]he ‘whole incident implies a deep hatred inculcated in the students towards the Christians/non-Muslim teachers.'"
"gee, ya think?”
Oh, them Oz are gonna kick some multiculti ass, before this is over.
ReplyDeleteAllen said, "Snatch a kiss
ReplyDeleteOr visa-versa"
Hey, somebody owes me royalties, that's been on my Blogger Profile for some time.
Allen said, "I am suggesting that America could use some additional "sunbelt" states."
ReplyDeleteWhich al-Gore suggests will be British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatechwan, Manitoba, etc, before long.
WC,
ReplyDeletere: al-Gore
Yes, true, but al-Gore will soon enough be in an undisclosed location, with padded walls and no metal dinnerware. A mind is a terrible thing to baste.
the "sunbelt" gonna be the "sun-overalls"
ReplyDeleteI doubt that we will "aquire" a swath of northern Mexico. No the will be a "convergence", a Sedona AZ New Age phenomenom of both cyclical and cynical signifigence, of the entities in their entireties.
ReplyDeleteMr Gores "sunbelt" states will be included as well.
There's a great day a'comin'...