TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Political Discussion / Debate
-- US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost
Pages (3): [1] 2 3 »
US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost
BAGHDAD (AP) � The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace � a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.
Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaida holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.
This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told The Associated Press this past week there are early indications that senior leaders of al-Qaida may be considering shifting their main focus from Iraq to the war in Afghanistan.
Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the AP on Thursday that the insurgency as a whole has withered to the point where it is no longer a threat to Iraq's future.
"Very clearly, the insurgency is in no position to overthrow the government or, really, even to challenge it," Crocker said. "It's actually almost in no position to try to confront it. By and large, what's left of the insurgency is just trying to hang on."
Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have lost their power bases in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities. An important step was the routing of Shiite extremists in the Sadr City slums of eastern Baghdad this spring � now a quiet though not fully secure district.
Al-Sadr and top lieutenants are now in Iran. Still talking of a comeback, they are facing major obstacles, including a loss of support among a Shiite population weary of war and no longer as terrified of Sunni extremists as they were two years ago.
Despite the favorable signs, U.S. commanders are leery of proclaiming victory or promising that the calm will last.
The premature declaration by the Bush administration of "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003 convinced commanders that the best public relations strategy is to promise little, and couple all good news with the warning that "security is fragile" and that the improvements, while encouraging, are "not irreversible."
Iraq still faces a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shiite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, corruption. Any one of those could rekindle widespread fighting.
But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military's hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.
Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.
That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital. People are expressing a new confidence in their own security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.
Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war � four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.
Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.
In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.
Now a moment has arrived for the Iraqis to try to take those positive threads and weave them into a lasting stability.
The questions facing both Americans and Iraqis are: What kinds of help will the country need from the U.S. military, and for how long? The questions will take on greater importance as the U.S. presidential election nears, with one candidate pledging a troop withdrawal and the other insisting on staying.
Iraqi authorities have grown dependent on the U.S. military after more than five years of war. While they are aiming for full sovereignty with no foreign troops on their soil, they do not want to rush. In a similar sense, the Americans fear that after losing more than 4,100 troops, the sacrifice could be squandered.
U.S. commanders say a substantial American military presence will be needed beyond 2009. But judging from the security gains that have been sustained over the first half of this year � as the Pentagon withdrew five Army brigades sent as reinforcements in 2007 � the remaining troops could be used as peacekeepers more than combatants.
As a measure of the transitioning U.S. role, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond says that when he took command of American forces in the Baghdad area about seven months ago he was spending 80 percent of his time working on combat-related matters and about 20 percent on what the military calls "nonkinetic" issues, such as supporting the development of Iraqi government institutions and humanitarian aid.
Now Hammond estimates those percentage have been almost reversed. For several hours one recent day, for example, Hammond consulted on water projects with a Sunni sheik in the Radwaniyah area of southwest Baghdad, then spent time with an Iraqi physician/entrepreneur in the Dora district of southern Baghdad � an area, now calm, that in early 2007 was one of the capital's most violent zones.
"We're getting close to something that looks like an end to mass violence in Iraq," says Stephen Biddle, an analyst at the Council of Foreign Relations who has advised Petraeus on war strategy. Biddle is not ready to say it's over, but he sees the U.S. mission shifting from fighting the insurgents to keeping the peace.
Although Sunni and Shiite extremists are still around, they have surrendered the initiative and have lost the support of many ordinary Iraqis. That can be traced to an altered U.S. approach to countering the insurgency � a Petraeus-driven move to take more U.S. troops off their big bases and put them in Baghdad neighborhoods where they mixed with ordinary Iraqis and built a new level of trust.
Army Col. Tom James, a brigade commander who is on his third combat tour in Iraq, explains the new calm this way:
"We've put out the forest fire. Now we're dealing with pop-up fires."
It's not the end of fighting. It looks like the beginning of a perilous peace.
Maj. Gen. Ali Hadi Hussein al-Yaseri, the chief of patrol police in the capital, sees the changes.
"Even eight months ago, Baghdad was not today's Baghdad," he says.
SOURCE
do you have any comments to make?
Costs:
Over $1 trillion
Our international prestige
Our economy
4000 soldiers
100,000's of Iraqi's
1,000,000's of refugees
Need I continue?
Interesting analysis. But then again the far left refuses to accept these facts and continue to promote the day for us to pullout, because according to them our presence is insignificant in the region 
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover Interesting analysis. But then again the far left refuses to accept these facts and continue to promote the day for us to pullout, because according to them our presence is insignificant in the region |
You are a joke. Would you like to specifically address the point, or just post more extreme right wing rhetoric? We all know you don't give a fuck about people dying or losing their homes..
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton Costs: Over $1 trillion Our international prestige Our economy 4000 soldiers 100,000's of Iraqi's 1,000,000's of refugees Need I continue? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover Your vision to get the big picture here might be very blurry. Who ever said that being in war is a very cheap thing? Since when does the US have to act based upon popular approval of the rest of the world? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton What are you, a centrist moderate?? You are a joke. Would you like to specifically address the point, or just post more extreme right wing rhetoric? We all know you don't give a fuck about people dying or losing their homes.. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton Ever heard of the UN Charter? You'de rather bankrupt the country to carry out some idealistic utopia in the world. A country which acts unilaterally...we usually call those "rogue"... |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton Ever heard of the UN Charter? You'de rather bankrupt the country to carry out some idealistic utopia in the world. A country which acts unilaterally...we usually call those "rogue"... |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover Please, next time you post those type of BS statements, make sure you know my stance |
| quote: |
| I do care about our soldiers and for the citizens of Iraq. No doubt, that the Iraq is a better place without Hussein. But let me tell you one thing, I denounce the notion that our troops are oversees fighting a fight that to many far left nuts is insignificant. How can we the American people send the message to our soldiers that their sacrifice wasnt worth it? I must admit in the beginning we had the wrong strategy... now we are in the right path and we must get to the finish line. But to many people it seems that patience is not a virtue. |
| quote: |
| Well we didnt go to Iraq a lone. They were other sacrifices by great men from all over the world that contributed to this good cause. Starting from Euro and Latin American countries. Only because the actions of the US and its allies are not of good taste to many of our adversaries dosent mean they can dictate the foreign policy of our nation and of our allies. |
| quote: |
| I know this isn't directed at me, but it's liberals who strive (and think is attainable) for a Utopia. And if you care so much about that refugee suffering, do your part and open up your home to a suffering Iraqi child or family |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover Who ever said that being in war is a very cheap thing? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Groundhog Boy Um, the douchebags that urged this war to the US people under false pretenses also said that it'd be cheap - that Iraq would be able to pay us back for their liberation with a small portion of the oil profits that the government would get. |
| quote: |
| They were wrong about its difficulty. (It was to be either "a cakewalk" or "a walk in the park"--take your pick). They were wrong about how our troops would be greeted ("as liberators" said Vice President Dick Cheney on September, 14, 2003; "with kites and boom boxes," wrote Professor Fouad Ajami on October 7, 2002). They were wrong about weapons of mass destruction. ("Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool--or possibly a Frenchman--could conclude otherwise," wrote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen on February 6, 2003.) They were wrong about how many troops would be needed. ("It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct a war itself," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on February 27, 2003.) They were wrong about the number of casualties ("we're not going to have any casualties," said President George W. Bush in March, 2003). They were wrong about how much it would cost. ("The costs of any intervention would be very small," according to White House economic advisor Glenn Hubbard on October 4, 2002.) They were wrong about how long it would last. ("It isn't going to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either," claimed Richard Perle on July 11, 2002.) They were wrong about the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network," as Secretary of State Colin Powell put it in addressing the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. They were wrong about the likelihood of Iraq descending into civil war. ("[There is] a broad Iraqi consensus favoring the idea of pluralism," insisted William Kristol and Robert Kagan on March 22, 2004.) There was, in fact, very little they were not wrong about. |
| quote: |
| "Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will." Richard Perle, chair The Pentagon's Defense Policy Board July 11, 2002 |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover I do care about our soldiers and for the citizens of Iraq. |
.
winning eh?
| quote: |
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/080728/w0728118A.html Female suicide attackers strike in Iraq; 57 killed at two separate gatherings BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers, including at least three women, struck Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and Kurdish protesters in the northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, killing at least 57 people, a brutal reminder that mass gatherings remain vulnerable despite vast improvements in security. The attacks came even though the United States has stepped up efforts to recruit and train women for Iraq's police force and enlist them to join Sunnis fighting al-Qaida. Insurgents increasingly use female bombers because their billowing, black robes easily hide explosives and they are less likely to be searched. U.S. military figures show at least 27 female suicide bombings this year, compared with eight in 2007. Monday's attacks tapped into two different sets of fears. The three nearly simultaneous bombings in Baghdad undermined public confidence in recent security gains that have tamped down sectarian bloodshed. The attack in Kirkuk, 290 kilometres to the north, showed that ethnic rivalries can turn into mass slaughter in a city that is home to Kurds, Turkomen, Arabs and other minorities. The U.S. military blamed "al-Qaida in Iraq" for the Baghdad bombings. It was still investigating the Kirkuk attack, underscoring the more complicated nature of the tensions there. But city police spokesman Brig.-Gen. Sarhat Qadir said the terror network was behind that attack as well. The Baghdad bombings left piles of rubble and shattered glass on the streets alongside crumpled cars and sandals from panicked pilgrims, many of whom had slept at rest areas before rising at dawn to begin their annual march to the golden domed shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. Hospital emergency rooms were overwhelmed with bloodied victims, including a young boy with a bandaged head who sucked on a pacifier as he was held by a man. "I heard women and children crying and shouting and I saw burned women as dead bodies lied in pools of blood on the street," Mustapha Abdullah, a 32-year-old man who was injured in the stomach and legs, said from his hospital bed. At least 32 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded, Iraqi police and hospital officials said. It was the deadliest attack in the capital since June 17, when a truck bombing killed 63 people in Hurriyah. In a throwback to more violent times, the Iraqi government announced a 24-hour curfew in Baghdad, banning all vehicle movement starting 5 a.m. Tuesday. The attacks in the capital began about 7:15 a.m., when three of the women detonated their explosives belts in quick succession less than a kilometre apart. The bombers were walking among pilgrims streaming toward the golden domed shrine of the eight-century imam. The shrine, the focus of a major Shiite festival this week, gives its name to the northern neighbourhood of Kazimiyah which surrounds it. Iraqi security forces had deployed about 200 women this week to search female pilgrims in Kazimiyah, but the attacks took place along the procession some 10 kilometres southeast of the shrine. There were too few women guards to search people in the procession itself. The blasts started with an explosion near the National Theatre in the central Shiite neighbourhood of Karradah, followed by a bombing near a refreshment tent set up for the pilgrims and another between two traffic checkpoints. Shiites en route to Kazimiyah have been attacked in past years by gunmen in Sunni areas south of Baghdad. No major bombings have struck the pilgrimage, although at least 1,000 pilgrims were killed in a Baghdad bridge stampede caused by rumours of a suicide bomber in 2005. Since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, who was a Sunni, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at religious festivals to display the majority sect's power in Iraq. Sunni religious extremists have often targeted the gatherings to foment sectarian war, but that has not stopped the Shiites. Even so, Iraqi authorities had been hopeful they could maintain calm this year as the overall levels of attacks have dropped to their lowest point in more than four years. At least 478 Iraqi civilians have been killed in violence so far this month, representing a 76 per cent decline when compared with July 2007, when the death toll was 2,021, according to an Associated Press count. The bombings, however, showed the fragility of the gains as insurgents maintain the ability to wage high-profile attacks that inflict a heavy casualty toll. They come ahead of planned U.S.-Iraqi operations aimed at routing insurgents from Diyala province as well as rural hideouts elsewhere in northern Iraq. Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, blamed "al-Qaida in Iraq" for the attacks in the capital and confirmed the bombers were all women, including a teenager. "As we have previously stated, AQI is not defeated. They are evil and responsible for the most heinous attacks against unarmed, non-combatant civilians," he said. The attack in Kirkuk killed at least 25 people and wounded 185, the police spokesman said. The suicide bomber struck shortly after 11 a.m. as Kurdish protesters were gathering to protest a draft provincial elections law that would give them less power in Kirkuk. Kurdish objections over a proposed power-sharing formula have blocked the law from being passed, a move that could delay the countrywide voting until next year. Startled demonstrators ran for cover in nearby buildings, some still holding up the protest banners and Kurdish flag, a yellow sun against red, white and green stripes. After the explosion, dozens of angry Kurds stormed the offices of a Turkomen political party that opposes Kurdish claims on Kirkuk, opening fire and burning cars amid accusations that their rivals were to blame. No casualties were reported. |
In my opinion, the only people who actually approve of the Bush administration are hard right ideologues and fundamentalist Christians.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Krypton In my opinion, the only people who actually approve of the Bush administration are hard right ideologues and fundamentalist Christians. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover Well we didnt go to Iraq a lone. They were other sacrifices by great men from all over the world that contributed to this good cause. Starting from Euro and Latin American countries. |
All of the resistance groups in Iraq are biding their time until the election this year. They know we will have a new President in six months, and if conditions remain good on the ground for Americans, we are likely to start withdrawing troops...then they can have a field day and begin their power struggle anew. There is a "cold" civil war going on in Iraq right now...and it will become a very hot civil war once U.S. troops leave. The various sides are building their forces and waiting patiently to see what happens with U.S. policy. In any case, they have NOT disbanded, and the fighting will break out again next year regardless of who wins.
I won't deny they are probably hoping Obama will win the election, because that means less resistance to their internal civil war. When we leave, they will have a very bloody conflict and the strongest side will prevail. If Mccain wins, the status quo will be in effect. There will be no huge final conflict.. There will just be the slow bleed of suicide bombings against civilians around the country which will break the spirit of Iraqis. And U.S. troops will be stationed in Iraq FOREVER getting killed with roadside bombs every week, which will slowly break the spirit of Americans.
Either scenario isn't good..and we can thank the neocons for getting us into this horrible mess.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by occrider No you don't. If you did you would have spoken up years ago when it was clear to everyone but the criminally stupid that this administration's polices were failing and was a failure for YEARS at the expense of our soldier's lives, taxpayer money, and Iraqi civilians lives. It's sadly pathetic to see you "conservatives" suddenly cling to the successes of the surge strategy as if was never a strategy that originated from the "liberal" (which includes McCain) camp to begin with back in 2003 or 2004. God forbid you guys develop the testiculure fortitude to demand results from a commander in chief on your own without the necessary politicized cliffnotes from your party . What's even sadder is that your lauded Bush administration STILL has no strategy. Yay the surge has reduced violence! Way to embrace a strategy advocated back in 2003/2004. What's next??? Good night you princes of Maine, you kings of New England. You're still a bunch of children ... |
Why don't you answer the rest of his post instead of just one sentence where you think you have a chance at a rebuttal?
how can you win or lose a war on terror that never ends? its just meant to be sustained, not won or lost.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Clovis Why don't you answer the rest of his post instead of just one sentence where you think you have a chance at a rebuttal? |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover I did! He is just a frustrated liberal I mean the far left comes out bitching about the war and yet they have no strategy for victory. Okay, I know what the strategy is.... to get out by 2009 |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by LatinLover I did! He is just a frustrated liberal I mean the far left comes out bitching about the war and yet they have no strategy for victory. Okay, I know what the strategy is.... to get out by 2009 |
Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.