Pentagon defends Baghdad crackdown

[Superlative]

A day after 180 people were killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad, the US defence secretary has told Iraqi leaders his country's support is not an "open-ended commitment".

Robert Gates was speaking on Wednesday as he left Tel Aviv for his first visit to Iraq since the US decided to send an extra 30,000 troops to the country.

The Pentagon has defended its security crackdown in Baghdad after more than 140 people were killed in one attack near a market - the worst single blast in the capital since the US-led invasion in 2003.

"Frankly I would like to see faster progress," Gates said.
On Thursday, the violence continued as a suicide car bomber rammed into a fuel truck, killing 11 people and injuring 21 in southern Baghdad.

Three people were also killed overnight when mortars were fired at a mainly Shia part of southern Baghdad.

Soldiers killed

Two British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in the southern province of Maysan on Thursday, the British military said, a day after it handed over the region to Iraqi security control.

On Wednesday, a US soldier was killed after his patrol was attacked in southwest Baghdad while two more soldiers were killed and another wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, the US military reported.

The US military also reported that a US marine died in a non-hostile shooting incident during combat operations in western Anbar province on Monday, the US military said.

It said it was investigating the incident.

Spike in violence

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Thursday, Brigadier-General Bob Holmes from the US Central Command in Qatar said that the Baghdad security plan was still being implemented and that other developments needed to dovetail with an increased military presence.

He said: "Central Command have said you can't just expect a military solution to work by itself.

"It takes overarching diplomatic means, political instruments of power, economic development, societal, cultural all of these things have to come together with in this case the military and support as we support the Iraqis to give a stable base."

A day earlier, Admiral William Fallon, the new commander of US forces in the Middle East, told US politicians in Washington that the surge in troops to Baghdad had significantly reduced the number of sectarian murders.

He said: "The biggest concern I have are the periodic big bangs which are really troublesome because of the potential for retaliation and retribution."

Co-ordinated blasts

US defence officials blamed al-Qaeda-linked groups for carrying out Wednesday's attacks.

Major-General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman, said: "Initial indications based on intelligence sources show that it was linked to al-Qaeda."

Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, blamed the attacks on "infidels and Sunni extremist vampires".

He has ordered the arrest of the Iraqi army commander in charge of security in Sadriya for failing to secure the area.

Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper in Sadriya, said: "The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood."

The apparently co-ordinated attacks - there were several within a short space of time - occurred hours after al-Maliki said Iraqis would take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year.

Ordinary Iraqis, however, demanded a solution to the daily bloodshed.

On Thursday, at the site of the bombing in Sadriya, one man, who gave his name only as Ibrahim, said: "We want a solution to these massacres. What did those poor people do? Who are the targets? Woman and children?"


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/87164E4A-BC5D-4B1E-8C37-8ACE20CB1981.htm

 

[90K]

I think the iraqis are lazy and aren't willing to step up to the plate. Iraq was going to become a issue sooner or later and no matter the time frame the iraq we see today would have been the iraq we'd see then. Time tables are good only if those people get off there ass and put aside sunni/shia issues and look toward a unified Iraq.

 

[hjmick]

I think the iraqis are lazy and aren't willing to step up to the plate. Iraq was going to become a issue sooner or later and no matter the time frame the iraq we see today would have been the iraq we'd see then. Time tables are good only if those people get off there ass and put aside sunni/shia issues and look toward a unified Iraq.

I don't think they're lazy, I think they're afraid. For decades they've been brutalized and kept down, they've been afraid of the police and military for as long as many of them can remember and now people want them to join that which they've feared for so long? SOme have done so, some good, some bad. Some who will use their new position to seek revenge, some who will use it to make things better, some who will use it to carry on with the same old crap. No, they're not lazy, their reactions are more Pavlovian in nature.

 

[90K]

Well that maybe, but for the younger generation they have the choice now to stand up or lie down. This innocent person called Saddam was a bad person. Leaving him in power allowed for one thing really IMO. It kept the war on terror out of iraq. Once we went in and didn't secure the borders which was a huge mistake it allowed these others to bring there ideas with them. Personally I wouldn't want any foreign troops in my land so I can't blame the iraqis. We are witnessing the same terror of sorts that was happening before the war. But it is up to the people to stand up against terror if they can. If not in twenty years iraq will still be at war if they don't get nuked by iran in the process.

 

[Superlative]

If not in twenty years iraq will still be at war if they don't get nuked by iran in the process.

They'll still be at war.

Iraq has a Shiite majority, and so does Iran, so, if there is a Democratic Iraq, they will shore up relations with Iran, they dont like each other but they share some of the same views.

So they will get together and reclaim power in the east, that they feel is rightly theirs, and then they will re-arm.

once they re-arm, where do you think they will look?

If you watch the news, whenever there is a protest in Iraq they have two signs.

Death to America and Death to Israel.

and Guess who happens to house the largest US military base in the region.

Israel.

If Iraq is ever able to stand up on their own, they will not forget these 4+ years of death and violence that came when the US visited.

Their children are sure as hell not going to remember this and say, 'thank god america freed us', they are going to remember that theyre family and friends died when American came to town.

 

[Annie]

Well that maybe, but for the younger generation they have the choice now to stand up or lie down. This innocent person called Saddam was a bad person. Leaving him in power allowed for one thing really IMO. It kept the war on terror out of iraq. Once we went in and didn't secure the borders which was a huge mistake it allowed these others to bring there ideas with them. Personally I wouldn't want any foreign troops in my land so I can't blame the iraqis. We are witnessing the same terror of sorts that was happening before the war. But it is up to the people to stand up against terror if they can. If not in twenty years iraq will still be at war if they don't get nuked by iran in the process.

And the Iraqis have been signing up, often waiting in lines where the terrorists blow them up, yet they keep coming.

I don't think these attacks prove failure on coalition's part, rather the insurgents reckon, correctly that the US opposition will rally to call it a failure. Face it, the opinion that matters are the Iraqis, who keep waiting in lines to sign up.

I think it's insulting to those that want better for themselves and progeny to lump them in with the insurgents and those that want Civil War.

 

[red states rule]

The troops do have the full backing of the Dems

Iraq war is 'lost': US Democrat leader

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.
"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."

Congress is seeking to tie funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq next year, but Bush has vowed to veto any such bill and no breakthrough was reported from the White House talks.

Bush on Thursday was addressing an Ohio town hall meeting and defending the war on terror launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.


"It is the most solemn duty of our country, is to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.

"A lesson learned was that -- at least in my opinion -- that in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."

But Reid drew a parallel with former US president Lyndon Johnson who decided to deploy more troops in Vietnam some 40 years ago when 24,000 US troops had already been killed.

"Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, so he surged in Vietnam. After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam," Reid said.

The comments came a day after bombers killed more than 200 people in a slew of car bombings in Baghdad, dealing a savage blow to the US security plan which aims to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in the country to quell sectarian unrest.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates fly into Iraq Thursday on an unannounced visit for talks with top US military commanders there.

He met with General David Petraeus, chief of coalition forces in Iraq, his deputy Lieutenant Colonel Ray Odierno and Admiral William Fallon, chief of US forces in the Middle East.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070419184534.ileoeb47&show_article=1