'Keep An Eye On Diyala'

[red states rule]

that is your rather uneducated, uninformed, inexperienced opinion...it is not fact.

The Democrats' 'Slow-Bleed' Strategy
A disgraceful moment in Congress.
by William Kristol
02/26/2007, Volume 012, Issue 23

Politicians often say foolish things. Members of both parties criticize cavalierly and thunder thoughtlessly. They advance irresponsible suggestions and embrace mistaken policies. But most of our politicians, most of the time, stop short of knowingly hurting the country. Watching developments in Congress this past week, though, one has to ask: Can that be said any longer about the leadership of the Democratic party?

President Bush is sending reinforcements to join our soldiers fighting in Iraq. Democrats are entitled to doubt this will work. They are entitled to conclude the whole cause is hopeless or unjust--and that we should withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible or on some other more responsible timetable. They are entitled to move legislation in Congress to compel such a withdrawal, on a schedule and with provisions that seem to them appropriate.

But surely they should not fecklessly try to weaken the U.S. position in Iraq, and America's standing in the world, by raising doubts as to our commitment in Iraq without advancing an alternative. That is precisely what they are doing with the nonbinding resolution condemning the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq. The fact that some Republicans have embraced this resolution does not excuse the Democratic party for its virtually monolithic support of it. The GOP has its share of fools and weaklings. But it is the Democratic party that now seems willing to commit itself, en masse, to a foreign policy of foolishness and weakness.

For the nonbinding resolution passed by the House Friday is merely the
first round. What comes next are legislative restrictions and budgetary limitations designed to cripple our effort in Iraq. As Politico.com reported Thursday:

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options. . . . The House strategy is being crafted quietly. . . . [Rep. Jack] Murtha, the powerful chairman of the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, will seek to attach a provision to an upcoming $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. It would restrict the deployment of troops to Iraq unless they meet certain levels of adequate manpower, equipment and training to succeed in combat. That's a standard Murtha believes few of the units Bush intends to use for the surge would be able to meet. . . . Additional funding restrictions are also being considered by Murtha.
So the nonbinding resolution is only the first step in the slow-bleed strategy. The Murtha plan intends to block further relief and reinforcement for American troops, leaving them exposed and unable to succeed. Surely Democrats (and fellow-traveling Republicans) will turn back from this path while they still have time to save some of their honor. But the antiwar groups won't make it easy. John Bresnahan's Politico.com report continues:

Anti-war groups like [Tom] Mazzie's are prepared to spend at least $6.5 million on a TV ad campaign and at least $2 million more on a grass-roots lobbying effort. Vulnerable GOP incumbents . . . will be targeted by the anti-war organizations, according to Mazzie and former Rep. Tom Andrews, D-Maine, head of the Win Without War Coalition. . . . Mazzie also said anti-war groups would field primary and general election challengers to Democratic lawmakers who do not support proposals to end the war. . . . Andrews, who met with Murtha on Tuesday to discuss legislative strategy, acknowledged "there is a relationship" with the House Democratic leadership and the anti-war groups, but added, "It is important for our members that we not be seen as an arm of the Democratic Caucus or the Democratic Party. We're not hand in glove." . . . "I don't know how you vote against Murtha," said Andrews. "It's kind of an ingenious thing."

No, the Democrats and the antiwar groups shouldn't "be seen" as "hand in glove." But they are. The national Democratic party has become the puppet of antiwar groups. These groups do not merely accept-reluctantly--American defeat in the Middle East. They seek to hasten it. Some seem to welcome it.

The leaders of those groups believe their slow-bleed strategy is "kind of an ingenious thing." In truth, it's not really so "ingenious." But it is disgraceful. In our judgment, it will fail as a political strategem, it will fail to derail the president's policy--and we will ultimately prevail in Iraq. The slow-bleed strategy will, however, stain the reputation of its champions, and of the useful idiots in both parties who have gone along with it.

--William Kristol

 

[maineman]

and in reply, you post an opinion piece from a noted neocon and administration apologist.

why am I not surprised?

when will you ever be able to fend for yourself without having to rely on the words of others?

 

[red states rule]

and in reply, you post an opinion piece from a noted neocon and administration apologist.

why am I not surprised?

when will you ever be able to fend for yourself without having to rely on the words of others?

I posted truth and facts - something you would not understand if it came up and bit you on the ass

 

[maineman]

I posted truth and facts - something you would not understand if it came up and bit you on the ass

opinion pieces and editorials are not "facts". I thought you knew that.

 

[red states rule]

opinion pieces and editorials are not "facts". I thought you knew that.

Why the Iraq war is turning into America's defeat

February 18, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
The week's news from Iraq: According to the state television network, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was wounded in a clash with security forces just north of Baghdad. A senior deputy was killed.
Meanwhile, the punk cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided that discretion is the better part of mullahs and has temporarily relocated to Iran. That's right: The biggest troublemaker in Iraq is no longer in Iraq. It may be that his Persian vacation is only to marry a cousin or two and consult with the A-list ayatollahs, but the Mookster has always had highly sensitive antennae when it comes to his own physical security -- he likes being the guy who urges martyrdom on others rather than being just another schmuck who takes one for the team. So the fact that urgent business requires him to be out of town for the Big Surge is revealing at the very least of how American objectives in Iraq are not at the mercy of forces beyond their control; U.S. military and political muscle can shape conditions on the ground -- if they can demonstrate they're serious about doing so.

Which these days is a pretty big "if." Reporting the sudden relocation, the New York Times decided -- in nothing flat -- that it was yet another disastrous setback. In Iraq, no news is good news, and Sadr news is badder news:

''With the new American offensive in Baghdad still in its early days, American commanders have focused operations in the eastern part of the city, a predominantly Shiite area that has long been the Mahdi Army's power base.

''If Mr. Sadr had indeed fled, his absence would create a vacuum that could allow even more radical elements of the Shiite group to take power.''

As my National Review colleague Rich Lowry marveled: ''So now we need to keep Sadr in Iraq because he's such a stabilizing influence!'' Of course! As Hillaire Belloc wrote, ''Always keep a hold of Nurse/For fear of finding something worse'' -- and, even when Nurse Sadr is blowing up the kids in the nursery every day, it's best to cling to her blood-drenched apron strings because the next nurse will be an even bigger psycho. America is a big helpless baby who's blundered into a war zone he can never hope to understand.

According to a report by the New York Sun's Eli Lake last month, Iran is supporting Shia insurgents in Iraq and Sunni insurgents in Iraq. In other words, it's on both sides in the so-called civil war. How can this be? After all, as the other wise old foreign-policy "realists" of the Iraq Study Group assured us only in December, Iran has "an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.''

Au contraire, the ayatollahs have concluded they have a very clear interest in fomenting chaos in Iraq. They're in favor of Sunni killing Shia, and Shia killing Sunni, and if some vacationing Basque terrorists wanted to blow up the Spanish Cultural Center in Mosul, they'd be in favor of that, too. The Iranians don't care who kills whom as long as every night when Americans turn on the evening news there's smoke over Baghdad. As I say in my book, if you happen to live in Ramadi or Basra, Iraq is about Iraq; if you live in Tehran, or Cairo, or Bei-jing, Moscow, Pyongyang or Brussels, Iraq is about America. American will. American purpose. American credibility.

There was a TV station somewhere -- was it Thunder Bay, Ontario? -- that used to show a continuous loop of a roaring fireplace all night, and thousands of viewers would supposedly sit in front of it for hours because it was such a reassuringly comforting scene. The networks could save themselves a lot of money by adopting the same approach: Run a continuous loop of a smoking building in Baghdad all night while thousands of congressmen and pundits and think-tankers and retired generals run around Washington shrieking that all is lost. America is way out of its league! A dimwitted tourist in a fearful land of strange people who don't watch "American Idol." Iraq is so culturally alien that not a single Sunni, Shia or Kurd has come forward claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole's baby!

Get a grip, chaps! In Iraq, everyone's a tourist. This al-Qaida honcho, al-Masri, is an Egyptian. His predecessor, Zarqawi, was a Jordanian. Al-Sadr is a Persian stooge. For four decades, the country was a British client. Before that, it was a Turkish province. The Middle East is a crazy place and a tough nut to crack, but the myth of the unbeatable Islamist insurgent is merely a lazy and more neurotic update of the myth of the unbeatable communist guerrilla, which delusion led to so much pre-emptive surrender in the '70s. Nevertheless, in the capital city of the most powerful nation on the planet, the political class spent last week trying to craft a bipartisan defeat strategy, and they might yet pull it off. Consider this extraordinary report from the Washington Post:

"Democratic leaders have rallied around a strategy that would fully fund the president's $100 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but would limit his ability to use the money. . . . The plan is aimed at tamping down calls from the Democrats' liberal wing for Congress to simply end funding for the war.

"The Murtha plan, based on existing military guidelines, includes a stipulation that Army troops who have already served in Iraq must be granted two years at home before an additional deployment. . . . The idea is to slowly choke off the war by stopping the deployment of troops from units that have been badly degraded by four years of combat."

So "the Murtha plan" is to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. But of course he's a great American! He's a patriot! He supports the troops! He doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years. As John Kerry wondered during Vietnam, how do you ask a soldier to be the last man to die for a mistake? By nominally "fully funding" a war you don't believe in but "limiting his ability to use the money." Or as the endearingly honest anti-war group MoveCongress.org put it, in an e-mail preview of an exclusive interview with the wise old Murtha:

"Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president's foreign and national security policy."

"Undermining"? Why not? To the Slow-Bleed Democrats, it's the Republicans' war. To an increasing number of what my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls the White-Flag Republicans, it's Bush's war. To everyone else on the planet, it's America's war. And it will be America's defeat.

©Mark Steyn, 2007


http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/260810,CST-EDT-steyn18.article

 

[maineman]

and in response to criticisms that you use other editorial pieces to do your arguing for you, you post yet another editorial piece.

one last chance: either show me something written by you or I am going to bed

 

[red states rule]

and in response to criticisms that you use other editorial pieces to do your arguing for you, you post yet another editorial piece.

one last chance: either show me something written by you or I am going to bed

I have posted numerous articles and a NBC News broadcast where Brian Williams said the terrorists were hoping the Dems get their way, thus handing them a win in Iraq

Of course traitors like you only want defeat in Iraq. You think in your pea brain it is a defeat for Pres Bush and not for America

 

[maineman]

I have posted numerous articles and a NBC News broadcast where Brian Williams said the terrorists were hoping the Dems get their way, thus handing them a win in Iraq

Of course traitors like you only want defeat in Iraq. You think in your pea brain it is a defeat for Pres Bush and not for America

I ask you for something written by you and you point out NBC articles you have cut and pasted.

you are too dumb to talk with.

You just got ignored. adios.

 

[red states rule]

I ask you for something written by you and you point out NBC articles you have cut and pasted.

you are too dumb to talk with.

You just got ignored. adios.

Translation - I am tired of having my wrinkled old ass kicked so I am cutting and running from the battle. This is my slow bleed debate plan

 

[Annie]

you didn't misread it necessarily, but to characterize someone pointing out that the violence had shifted to another area of Iraq as a situation that was "improving" is just a tad too koolaid soaked for me to buy into.

No, I misread it, in the sense of speaking to that area. I should have been more careful, since earlier in the day I had read that many had fled the tightening in Baghdad and moved outside the current perimeter to regroup for the attacks.

Improving in the sense that once again, the professional military is working towards attacking rather than only reacting. At least I hope so.

 

[maineman]

No, I misread it, in the sense of speaking to that area. I should have been more careful, since earlier in the day I had read that many had fled the tightening in Baghdad and moved outside the current perimeter to regroup for the attacks.

Improving in the sense that once again, the professional military is working towards attacking rather than only reacting. At least I hope so.

but in my opinion, it would appear way too little way too late. If they can just move their sectarian violence to another -and another and another - whenever our "surge boys" come to town, we will be chasing them forever around the countryside as they spawn more and more violence and carnage.

 

[Annie]

but in my opinion, it would appear way too little way too late. If they can just move their sectarian violence to another -and another and another - whenever our "surge boys" come to town, we will be chasing them forever around the countryside as they spawn more and more violence and carnage.

While I defer to your experience, I hope in this case you are wrong.

 

[red states rule]

but in my opinion, it would appear way too little way too late. If they can just move their sectarian violence to another -and another and another - whenever our "surge boys" come to town, we will be chasing them forever around the countryside as they spawn more and more violence and carnage.

Using that liberal logic, we should shut down all Police stations since all the police do is chase criminals all over the countryside as the criminals spawn more and more violence and carnage.

 

[maineman]

While I defer to your experience, I hope in this case you are wrong.

so do I. I hope that God or Allah or whoever visits the hearts of each and every member of these sectarian militias that seem determined to spill one another's blood and brings peace to all of them. I hope that they all come together and decide to turn swords into plowshares, have a group hug, sing kumbaya and get along like bosum buddies from this day forth....

I just would not bet a nickel on it happening.

I fail to see how a foreign occupying army of infidels is going to ever make Iraqi sunnis and shiites stop killing one another short of us killing them all... and such a hamfisted approach would certainly tip the rest of the quasi-moderate arab street completely and irrevocably against us.

There are way too many of them and way too few of us....this "surge" is just Bush's end game to hand this bucket of shit over to the new democratic president in January '09 and wash his hands of it.

 

[red states rule]

The surge is working, much to the dismay of the moonbat left. Any good news for America is bad news for the left

As far as a Dem Pres in 08 - who stands a snowballs chance of winning the Electoral College?

 

[dilloduck]

so do I. I hope that God or Allah or whoever visits the hearts of each and every member of these sectarian militias that seem determined to spill one another's blood and brings peace to all of them. I hope that they all come together and decide to turn swords into plowshares, have a group hug, sing kumbaya and get along like bosum buddies from this day forth....

I just would not bet a nickel on it happening.

I fail to see how a foreign occupying army of infidels is going to ever make Iraqi sunnis and shiites stop killing one another short of us killing them all... and such a hamfisted approach would certainly tip the rest of the quasi-moderate arab street completely and irrevocably against us.

There are way too many of them and way too few of us....this "surge" is just Bush's end game to hand this bucket of shit over to the new democratic president in January '09 and wash his hands of it.

What makes you think our real goal is to get them to stop killing each other. They hated each other for decades and as of NOW who is the primary instigator of keeping the sectarian war alive ? Al -Quada and Iran. Blaming America for fomenting this hatred is pure garbage.

 

[red states rule]

Blame Amercia first is what the moonbat left does best

 

[maineman]

What makes you think our real goal is to get them to stop killing each other. They hated each other for decades and as of NOW who is the primary instigator of keeping the sectarian war alive ? Al -Quada and Iran. Blaming America for fomenting this hatred is pure garbage.

no one is blaming America for the hatred between sunnis and shiites in Iraq.... I am certainly blaming George Bush for putting a match to that powder keg.... Iraq was run by an asshole - no doubt....but he was very good at three things that we have proven incapable of doing: 1. keeping islamic extremists out of Iraq, 2. keeping sunnis and shiites from slaughtering one another on a wholesale basis, and 3. keeping Iran in check. Regardless of what sort of an asshole Saddam was, we would be better served today if we had him doing those three things himself while we concentrated on seeking out and uprooting islamic extremism which is our real enemy.

 

[red states rule]

no one is blaming America for the hatred between sunnis and shiites in Iraq.... I am certainly blaming George Bush for putting a match to that powder keg.... Iraq was run by an asshole - no doubt....but he was very good at three things that we have proven incapable of doing: 1. keeping islamic extremists out of Iraq, 2. keeping sunnis and shiites from slaughtering one another on a wholesale basis, and 3. keeping Iran in check. Regardless of what sort of an asshole Saddam was, we would be better served today if we had him doing those three things himslef while we concentrated on seeking out and uprooting islamic extremism which is our real enemy.

There were terrorists in Iraq, there were terrorist treaining camps in Iraq. There are direct links between Saddam's secret police and terrorists. Saddmam was slaughtering on a wholesale basis. Saddam was a serious threat to the region an US military servicemen and women

If you and your fellow moonbats, would channel your hate for Pres Bush toward the terrorists, the Dems would not be thinking about handing the terrorists a win with their slow bleed plan

 

[dilloduck]

no one is blaming America for the hatred between sunnis and shiites in Iraq.... I am certainly blaming George Bush for putting a match to that powder keg.... Iraq was run by an asshole - no doubt....but he was very good at three things that we have proven incapable of doing: 1. keeping islamic extremists out of Iraq, 2. keeping sunnis and shiites from slaughtering one another on a wholesale basis, and 3. keeping Iran in check. Regardless of what sort of an asshole Saddam was, we would be better served today if we had him doing those three things himself while we concentrated on seeking out and uprooting islamic extremism which is our real enemy.

Well we don't. Now what do you suggest as our next best move?