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| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
i'm trying not to.
you said- "The goal of the insurgency isn’t to win the hearts and minds".
...followed directly by- "All the insurgency needs to do to win is foment sectarian strife to the point of civil war".
i simply say thats contradictory. |
Jesus, Q, that's not difficult to understand nor is it contradictory for fuck's sake. Let's see if I can break it down for you:
the insurgents are not trying to win over the Iraqi people like we were attempting to do with our lovely invasion.
What the insurgency needs to do, however, in order to win this war is create enough problems between the factions that we run like hell away from a civil war.
How the fuck is creating a civil war via violence and the fact that they're not trying to win over the people's hearts and minds contradictory? What part of that somehow conflicts with the other? Please be specific in detail on your answer, because it's becoming tedious for you to say this without sufficient explanation.
| quote: | | no. i'm saying that not all Sunni and not all Shia are willing to go to war with eachother no matter who is in power and no matter what outsider is forcing their hand. |
Occ isn't saying that either, so why would you think he is? Not all Sunni and Shia are needed to go to war with each other in order to create enough sectarian violence to create civil war and chase us out. I'm sure there's many who do not want this, but that's irrelevant if the violent ones create enough problems to successfully tip the scales towards chaos. This is what we see today.
| quote: | | at the moment, yes i am. im far from willing to be proven wrong. |
Considering this is coming from someone who believes Bush does no wrong at every turn, we're just utterly shocked beyond belief on your sentiments here. Absolutely shocking, I tell ya.
Also considering that our fearless leader mentioned that it is simply "illogical" to disagree with his Iraqi policies:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,221501,00.html
again the jaws are dropping far and wide with your feelings here.
But uhh, let's just handwave away typical days like these:
| quote: | Friday, October 20, 2006
71 Killed Bombings, Shootings;
Mosul, Kirkuk Targetted;
Islamic Army in Talks with US
Another US GI was killed in al-Anbar Province on Thursday.
Guerrillas set off bombs in four Iraqi cities on Thursday, leaving dozens dead and hundreds wounded.
*In Mosul a fuel truck loaded with explosives was driven into a police station. The driver was killed but his payload still detonated, killing mainly civilians at a nearby gas station. In a coordinated series of attacks, guerrillas then set off more car bombs in the city and launched mortar attacks. Altogether 20 persons were killed in the city.
Reuters reported it this way: "MOSUL - Six suicide bombers in vehicles, including one in a fuel truck, attacked Iraqi police and U.S. patrols, and insurgents fired mortars and clashed with police, U.S. officials and police said. The violence killed at least 20 people in the city 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad."
The US military withdrew 3,000 troops from Mosul to send to Baghdad, where 15,000 US soldiers are now engaged in Operation Forward Together. Guerrillas in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city with a population of some 1.8 million, some 80% of them Sunni Arab, have taken advantage of the draw-down of US troops there to multiply the number of their attacks on police and the institutions of the new government. Mosul was a bastion of the Baath Party in the old days, and crowds there have chanted for Saddam even after his fall. Some Sunnis in Mosul support the fundamentalist Salafi movement.
*A carbombing in the northern oil city of Kirkuk struck at a popular market, killing 10 and wounding 58. Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen are contending for control of the city. There were there other bombings in or near Kirkuk according to Reuters, mainly targetting police, a number of whom were killed or wounded.
*Guerrillas used a roadside bomb to kill 10 persons and wounding 20 in the mostly Shiite city of Khalis 50 mi. north of Baghdad.
*In south Baghdad, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb as a police convoy passed, killing 3 policemen and two by-standers. There were other bombings and shootings in the capital.
Reuters reports other political violence in Iraq on Thursday. They report 71 dead in these attacks.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports [Ar.] that tribal leaders and Baathists have recently formed protest groups in Tikrit and Kirkuk aimed at lobbying for the release of deposed president Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Ministry of the Interior reacted with alarm to this development, threatening to arrest the founders of such pro-Saddam organizations.
Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] representatives of the Islamic Army of Iraq, a major Sunni Arab guerrilla group, are secretly meeting in Amman with an American delegation. The meeting is also being attended by representatives of major tribes and by the Iraqi Accord Front, the fundamentalist Sunni coalition with 44 seats in the Iraqi parliament. The visit over the past 3 days to Amman of Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who is from the IAF, may have included helping make secret arrangements for this clandestine summit. While in Amman he called for Sunni Arab guerrillas to talk to the Americans, and he was threatened for it by the 1920 Revolution Brigades, which still is rejectionist. An Iraqi observer said that the talks do not rise to the level of negotiations, but that they demonstrate a desire on both sides for negotiations. I wonder if these prospective negotiations were among the things making Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite from the fundamentalist al-Da`wa al-Islamiyah Party, nervous about Washington's commitment to him.
I said on the Lehrer News Hour on Monday that the "Battle for Baghdad" had failed and that attacks had actually increased since it started in August. The idea had been for the US and Iraqi troops to clean out the guerrilla cells from the Sunni Arab districts of the capital and stop attacks on Shiites, and then to go to the Shiites and demand they dissolve their militias, which they did not need any more because Sunni guerrilla capacity had been vastly degraded. But with attacks up, no neighborhood is going to give up its militia.
So here is what the wire services are reporting from Thursday: "Military spokesman Maj Gen William Caldwell said there had been a 'disheartening' 22 per cent rise in attacks in Baghdad since the end of last month." He admitted that the security sweeps have not only failed to reduce attacks, they have failed to stem an increase in their frequency! I.e. what I said on Lehrer.
Christian spokesmen in Iraq say 35,000 Iraqi Christians have fled to Syria in 2006, about 5% of the entire community. Money graf from AP:
' "We want to live in safety. We don't want to be killed. We love life," said another Christian refugee, Saddallah Mardini, 43. Mardini said US forces should leave Iraq now. "The occupation has brought destruction to Iraq," he said. His wife, Wissam, 25, complained of shortages of electricity and water in Iraq. "My kids go to school now (in Syria), which is something they were deprived of in Iraq," she said. '
These are Christians speaking. Imagine what the Muslims think.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/71-...ings-mosul.html |
Beautiful days in those neighorhoods, ain't it Mr. Rogers?
| quote: | it was something i wanted to address on my own because no one seems to talk about it. maybe i should have been more concise.
there is a certain, separate element to all of this violence that, IMO, can only be explained by shear homicidal brutality. a criminal side to this issue that is common in all walks of life on a limited scale but due to the lack of a civilian authority in certain parts is for some reason extremely exagerated. where police are effective in most of Iraq upholding the law and protecting it's citizens, this criminal homicidal behavior is shocking to say the least and was not anticipated by normal people Anglo or Arab. it's only blessing is that it is shocking and would put anyone off to any organized effort fostered by it...you would think. |
Exaggerated violence, eh? Let's put it into perspective, which may be difficult to GOP folks like Rep. Steve King (R-IA), but we should try. Rep. King mentioned that living in Iraq is less dangerous than living in D.C.:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/...29/132706.shtml
Now before anyone's chuckles breaks out into laughter, let's keep going with the thought. Comparing a city to a country is a bit silly in the first place, but if we do actually break this down:
| quote: | 1) The King report uses 2002 data for Washington, D.C., finding a violent casualty rate of 45.9 deaths per 100,000 people. That number is badly outdated. Using the most recent 2004 data, the violent casualty rate in D.C. is 35.8 deaths per 100,000. There were 198 homicides total in D.C. for the entire year.
2) According to Pentagon's own data released today, there have been 94 violent casualties per day in Iraq between February and May of 2006. (see p.33). That translates into 34,310 deaths per year in Iraq. For an Iraqi population of about 26.7 million, plus another 150,000 coalition forces, the violent casualty rate in Iraq is 128 deaths per 100,000.
3) Lastly, the King report is trying to conflate the data for one urban area in the U.S. with the entire country of Iraq. As OpinionJournal writes, "The comparison with U.S. cities poses a problem of scale. Just as some municipalities here have high concentrations of crime, Baghdad and some other Iraqi cities have high concentrations of military, guerrilla and terrorist activity. A comparison of Baghdad with Los Angeles or a similarly sprawling U.S. city would be more enlightening than a comparison of Iraq as a whole with cities of well under a million people."
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/7562.html |
Oh, BTW, those Iraqi's really do love us to death:
| quote: | About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year, according to a poll in that country.
The Iraqis also have negative views of Osama bin Laden, according to the early September poll of 1,150.
http://iraqnam.blogspot.com/2006/09...of-attacks.html |
oh yeah, what civil war?:
| quote: | Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside.
Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a 'Taleban republic'. Officials in the strategically important, mixed Sunni and Shia province with a Kurdish minority, have no doubt about what is happening.
Lt Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."
At the moment the Sunni seem to be winning it. As the violence has escalated in Iraq over the past three years it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital.
The UN said last week that 5106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1493 in the provinces outside it.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/s...jectID=10402824 |
And BTW, it's not just the insurgent violence that we have to worry about, just in case anyone forgot:
| quote: | WASHINGTON -- A declassified government intelligence report says the war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that is likely to get worse before it gets better.
In the bleak report, released Tuesday on President Bush's orders, the nation's most veteran analysts conclude that despite serious damage to the leadership of al-Qaida, the threat from Islamic extremists has spread both in numbers and in geographic reach.
"If this trend continues, threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide," the document says. "The confluence of shared purpose and dispersed actors will make it harder to find and undermine jihadist groups."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl...cs/4216583.html |
And about those Iraqi police folks:
| quote: | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The plan was simple: Iraqi troops would block escape routes while U.S. soldiers searched for weapons house-by-house. But the Iraqi troops didn't show up on time.
When they finally did appear, the Iraqis ignored U.S. orders and let dozens of cars pass through checkpoints in eastern Baghdad -- including an ambulance full of armed militiamen, American soldiers said in recent interviews.
It wasn't an isolated incident, they added.
Senior U.S. commanders have hailed the performance of Iraqi troops in the crackdown on militias and insurgents in Baghdad. But some U.S. soldiers say the Iraqis serving alongside them are among the worst they've ever seen -- seeming more loyal to militias than the government.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6092400345.html |
| quote: | | why? tax revenues are up 18% this year preceded by increases last year. if there is a reason why fighting the Iraq war and raising my taxes shouldn't be mutally exclusive i'd like to hear it. i'll stand by what i said previously, and that is monetary costs should be considered the lower priority. |
You'd really like to have it that way, wouldn't you? Funny thing about those tax revenues, when put in full context they really haven't made up for the losses in which the cuts created in the first place. And this is acknowledged even by folks within this Administration, no less:
http://www.cbpp.org/9-27-06tax.htm
But hey, it's not like our troops are begging for more $ over there or anything:
| quote: | WASHINGTON -- The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.
The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.
"This is unusual, but hell, we're in unusual times," said a senior Pentagon official involved in the budget discussions.
Schoomaker failed to submit the budget plan by an Aug. 15 deadline. The protest followed a series of cuts in the service's funding requests by both the White House and Congress over the last four months.
According to a senior Army official involved in budget talks, Schoomaker is now seeking $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $25 billion above budget limits originally set by Rumsfeld. The Army's budget this year is $98.2 billion, making Schoomaker's request a 41% increase over current levels.
"It's incredibly huge," said the Army official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity when commenting on internal deliberations. "These are just incredible numbers."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printed...rack=crosspromo |
| quote: | | im defending our role so far in this by pointing out that we control the battlefield and can take the fight to any place, any time and yes, i do guage some success by our defensive operations. the strategy handing over territory to Iraqi forces has to imply some sort of defensive posture on our part. this is why i attribute a lot of this current violence to a young Iraqi military. like i said, some territory will have to be re-assessed and handed back again. |
Yes, it really is their age and lack of maturity that's causing all these problems, rather than the asinine plan or lack thereof instead. Got it.
| quote: | | the enemy wants more violence to be successful and their status quo, like you said, can be percieved as a success. i don't think that staus quo can be sustained given the position we have over the country but there's gonna be some adjustment needed for sure. |
Welp, that position of ours really hasn't quelled the "status quo" very well now, has it? In fact you're right, it isn't a status quo at all - it's declined.
| quote: | | look the enablers are there, it's just gonna take some time is all im saying |
If the situation is getting worse and not better, if the violence continues to spread instead of become more isolated, the reality must eventually be conceded that time is not a factor if we cannot maintain control at all.
| quote: | | the ones who are fighting to reduce that. |
Ahh, once again it's just shocking to see that you give a free pass to the civilian nutsacks who enabled this sincere lack of a post-war plan in the first place and have instead placed the blame solely on our military fighters and Iraqi citizens.
Bush.
Is.
Never.
Wrong.
Everyone got that?
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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