From The Maas - Iraq

Obama a dangerous narcissist?

nospam@example.com (marc) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:48:07 -0400

Ace sums up Obama's comments on the surge pretty well:

Obama: Surge Was a "Bad Strategy," I Have No Idea What Would Have Happened if We'd Followed My Strategy (and I Don't Really Care to Think About It), and Oh, By the Way, It Was Really My Call for Political Reconciliation That Reduced Violence

What Makes George Bush Bad Can Also Make Him Good

nospam@example.com (marc) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:49:41 -0400

David Brooks looks back:

Expert and elite opinion swung behind the Baker-Hamilton report, which called for handing more of the problems off to the Iraqi military and wooing Iran and Syria. Republicans on Capitol Hill were quietly contemptuous of the president while Democrats were loudly so.

Democratic leaders like Senator Harry Reid considered the war lost. Barack Obama called for a U.S. withdrawal starting in the spring of 2007, while Senator Reid offered legislation calling for a complete U.S. pullback by March 2008.

The arguments floating around the op-ed pages and seminar rooms were overwhelmingly against the idea of a surge — a mere 20,000 additional troops would not make a difference. The U.S. presence provoked violence, rather than diminishing it. The more the U.S. did, the less the Iraqis would step up to do. Iraq was in the middle of a civil war, and it was insanity to put American troops in the middle of it.

When President Bush consulted his own generals, the story was much the same. Almost every top general, including Abizaid, Schoomaker and Casey, were against the surge. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was against it, according to recent reports. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for a smaller U.S. presence, not a bigger one.

In these circumstances, it’s amazing that George Bush decided on the surge. And looking back, one thing is clear: Every personal trait that led Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war led him to make a successful decision when it came to this crucial call.

Via PW

Obama is Charismatic!

nospam@example.com (marc) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:30:02 -0400

What an inspiring candidate!

Senator Obama’s statements on Iraq are representative of his larger weaknesses. If you strip away the eloquence, charm, and political skills and drill down on the substance, Obama is, especially when it comes to Iraq, misinformed and seemingly out of his depth. He continued to make claims that are demonstrably wrong–and perhaps the media, many of whom are utterly enchanted with the Obama candidacy, will begin to hone in on how out of touch with reality he is. We are, after all, electing a president and not a high school prom king. Obama’s lack of knowledge on issues like Iraq should matter more than his ability to excite a crowd and charm reporters. And his steadfast refusal to alter his views based on new, and in this instance encouraging, evidence is more evidence of the enormous gap that exists between who Obama is and how he presents himself to be. On Iraq, Barack Obama is in a state of denial.

Hope! CHANGE!

Quagmire! QUAGMIRE!

nospam@example.com (marc) — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:45:08 -0400

What more can be said than this:

I forget who it was who noted this, but it's a brilliant point. During WWII, Japan's government and media always claimed Japan was winning every single battle. But careful listeners could divine the way the War in the Pacific was really going by noting the locations of each of these "victories" -- each of these "victories" seemed to be occurring closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

In a near-exact reversal of that situation, the American media laments each and every American "defeat"... but careful readers will note that the "Zone of Quagmire" seems to be radiating farther and farther out from US power centers and closer and closer to the heart of Al Qaeda/insurgent/Sadrist control.

We began by losing in Fallujah so badly our troops now say there are weeks that go by without hearing a gun shot. It's quiet there -- too quiet.

We then lost Baghdad catastrophically. You can tell we lost because there are so few reports of mortar attacks hitting the Green Zone. The enemy won there by moving further and further out from the city. You know -- surrounding us.

We then lost in Basra so dreadfully it apparently simply vanished from the map entirely, perhaps sucked into another dimension through an interplanar vortex.

Next up we lost in Sadr's last bastion of power -- the slum he's named for -- which you can see by fact that the Iraqi Army is now patrolling the streets and conducts house-to-house searches for weapons. But we lost, because two concessions were made to the Sadrists -- "light weapons" (pistols, rifles) could be kept, one per person, and no US troops would accompany the IA. That last point really stung us, because you know our boys are heartbroken that the IA gets the glamor duty of patrolling this slum. Glory denied.

And now we're losing in Mosul, of course.

If we lose in Iraq, it's going to be because the left decided that they wanted to.

It's a Quagmire!

nospam@example.com (marc) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:10:10 -0400

Yeahp. We're losing all right:

Between mid-March and mid-April, al Qaeda suffered major losses in Iraq. American and Iraqi troops killed or captured 53 al Qaeda leaders. These include men in charge of entire cities (or portions of large cities like Mosul or Baghdad), as well as men in charge of various aspects of terror operations (making bombs, placing them or minding the bombers). Most important, nine of the ten most senior men involved, were captured, and interrogated. This led to locating more al Qaeda staff, and assets. Hundreds of weapons and explosives caches have been discovered this year, as a result of interrogating captured terrorists. The result has been a sharp fall in suicide bomber attacks, and the ones still carried out are against soft targets (civilians), including the recent funeral of two men earlier killed by terrorists. This was part of an al Qaeda campaign to force Sunni Arabs to switch sides again and support terrorism. But these attacks have the opposite effect, causing more hatred for al Qaeda.

That miserable George Bush! TROOPS OUT NOW!

MSM Withdraws Forces From Iraq

nospam@example.com (marc) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:43:01 -0500

Surrender may not be an option for the US Military, but it seems to be for the media who have less and less bad news to report:

...over the last five months, the broadcast networks have consistently reduced their coverage of Iraq, as if the story of American success in Iraq is less worthy of attention than their old mantra of American failure in Iraq.

Quagmire, indeed. Via Ace, who notes:

while they do relish covering every Al Qeada or insurgent attack in Iraq, they do not seem to have much appetite for reporting on our troops' big victories against Al Qaeda. There's some bleeding there, too, and by their own standard that ought to be leading.

But they're just not interested. Only Al Qaeda "victories," such as they are, apparently merit any reporting whatsoever.

Speaking of bleeding...

Progress

nospam@example.com (marc) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:45:36 -0500

This seems like good news:

In short, less than five years after the fall of a genocidal Sunni dictator — who killed thousands of Shiites and Kurds — a democratically elected Shia government granted de-facto “amnesty” to former Baathist co-conspirators.