[lotuseclat79]

Article here.

Summary:
1. That the strategy is "new"...
2. That the strategy is any more likely to work now than in the past...
3. That the strategy is "Iraqi" in impetus or direction...
4. That 20,000 troops will somehow change the game...
5. That the Iraqi government enjoys sufficient legitimacy and impartiality to curb sectarian violence...
6. That the al-Maliki government is a reliable US ally...
7. That the Iraqi military has the competence to take the lead in securing Baghdad...
8. That the terrorists and insurgents are wholly separable from the Iraqi population at large...
9. That the US is in a position to "provide" a political alternative to the Middle East...
10. That disaster is still avoidable...

-- Tom

[WarC]

Bush outlined several components of his plan that are steps away from previous strategy.

Including but not limited too:
-embedding battalion-sized units of US forces into each Iraqi brigade.
-increasing offensive efforts in Al Anbar province with 4,000 additional Marines
-revising the de-baathification of the Iraqi armed forces and police, to allow for Saddam-era personnel to return to their former jobs (one of the oft-heard complaints about the war)
-pushing for new elections which could allow sunnis to gain a foothold in the new government (since they boycotted those elections last time around)
-encouraging the iraqi goverment to cut ties with shiite militias

Where has this been done before?

I've already seen Obama and Pelosi claim they've heard nothing new and nothing that could lead to success. They have their ears plugged the same way they've had their ears plugged since 2003! I wonder where they have that great Crystal Ball. They demand the impossible: a sure-fire, concrete, time-tabled war. Impossible! It's never happened in the history of mankind, whether we're talking the Iraq war or Thermopylae!

"I want our country to be defeated, humiliated, and disgraced for Democratic gain!" That is essentially what the Democrats are pushing.

[WarC]

Any nation that draws too great a distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.
-Thucydides

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by WarC

"I want our country to be defeated, humiliated, and disgraced for Democratic gain!" That is essentially what the Democrats are pushing.

That's what it has ALWAYS been.




For Democrats, It's All About Politics, Not About Solutions

Don't take it from me, take it from one of the top Democrats in Congress. Rahm Emanuel. On Iraq:

Emanuel wants to use that rising public anger to make the Democrats the nation's true governing party...

The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change. The country is angry, and will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen. Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, they're waiting to pick up the pieces.

On critical domestic issues:

Reform of Social Security and other entitlements? Too big, too woolly, too risky. If the president wants to propose big changes to entitlements, he can lead the charge.

Even in the majority, Democrats have no solutions. They are entirely about scoring political points and are quite content to leave substantive policy debates and answers to our most pressing problems to the Republicans. Without Joe Lieberman, the Democratic party is in dire need of adult supervision. Not only is Barack Obama not the answer, neither are dinosaurs like Biden and Dodd.

I've been telling all of you this for 3+ years now. Not only are the looney left hoping for US to LOSE in Iraq, they're counting on it!

[Littlefield]

I agree some in the media hate Bush so much they want America to lose and The Dems only care about the political consequences . They say the war is wrong and can stop it but will not because it will hurt them . Therefore they have no morality or guts.

[ekim68]

How Republicans win if we lose in Iraq
Bush and the GOP are shifting tactics just like Nixon did with Vietnam -- to win the next election, not the war.

IF YOU THINK the growing similarity between Iraq and Vietnam is tragic but inadvertent, you're not being cynical enough.

During the first years of the Iraq war, any resemblance to Vietnam was the result of the Bush administration's disastrous miscalculations. But today, the Iraq war is looking more and more like the Vietnam War because that's exactly what suits the White House.

Writing on this page Thursday, Jonah Goldberg praised President Bush for telling Americans that "he will settle for nothing less than winning" in Iraq. Sure, Goldberg acknowledged, Bush "may be deluding himself," but at least he's "trying to win." No, he's not.

It's clear that Bush knows perfectly well there's no possibility of "winning" anymore, so apparently he's seeking in Iraq exactly what Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sought in Vietnam before the 1972 election: a face-saving "decent interval" before the virtually inevitable collapse of the U.S.-backed government.

By 1971, Nixon and Kissinger understood that "winning" in Vietnam was no longer in the cards — so they shifted from trying to win the war to trying to win the next election. As Nixon put it in March 1971: "We can't have [the South Vietnamese] knocked over brutally … " Kissinger finished the thought " … before the election." So Nixon and Kissinger pushed the South Vietnamese to "stand on their own," promising we'd support them if necessary. But at the same time, Kissinger assured the North Vietnamese — through China — that the U.S. wouldn't intervene to prevent a North Vietnamese victory — as long as that victory didn't come with embarrassing speed.

As historian Jeffrey Kimball has documented, Kissinger's talking points for his first meeting with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai on the topic of Vietnam included a promise that the U.S. would withdraw all troops and "leave the political evolution of Vietnam to the Vietnamese." The U.S. would "let objective realities" — North Vietnamese military superiority — "shape the political future." In the margins of his briefing book, Kissinger scrawled a handwritten elaboration for Chou: "We want a decent interval. You have our assurance."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...ome-commentary

[Littlefield]

Trouble is the DEms do not have the guts to cut funding because they have no morality and do not want to be painted as weak .They need to put up or shut up!

[LANMaster]

Ekim, you're not stupid enough to buy the LATimes' analuysis that the Iraq war, and losing it would be a positive for the GOP.

You're just not that stupid. I know it.

[ekim68]

LAN, their analysis at least follows the time line during Vietnam pretty accurately as I recall.
Although Nixon didn't start the war, he used it to his advantage, even the ending of it.

And, as been pointed out before, Bush used a "surge" last year and it just added more casualties. It's time to bring the soldiers home and then, the dems and reps can insult each
other.

[linskyjack]

Originally Posted by WarC

Bush outlined several components of his plan that are steps away from previous strategy.

Including but not limited too:
-embedding battalion-sized units of US forces into each Iraqi brigade.
-increasing offensive efforts in Al Anbar province with 4,000 additional Marines
-revising the de-baathification of the Iraqi armed forces and police, to allow for Saddam-era personnel to return to their former jobs (one of the oft-heard complaints about the war)
-pushing for new elections which could allow sunnis to gain a foothold in the new government (since they boycotted those elections last time around)
-encouraging the iraqi goverment to cut ties with shiite militias

Where has this been done before?

I've already seen Obama and Pelosi claim they've heard nothing new and nothing that could lead to success. They have their ears plugged the same way they've had their ears plugged since 2003! I wonder where they have that great Crystal Ball. They demand the impossible: a sure-fire, concrete, time-tabled war. Impossible! It's never happened in the history of mankind, whether we're talking the Iraq war or Thermopylae!

"I want our country to be defeated, humiliated, and disgraced for Democratic gain!" That is essentially what the Democrats are pushing.

Actually de-Bathification has been on the table for months, but the Shi government has done everything in its power to hold it up in parliament. You keep telling us about success when in fact you can't have "success" when you are an occupying army in the middle of a civil war.

[Littlefield]

Today one of Al Sadirs spokesmen said Americans would go home in body bags.
We are going to have to go after his militias .We need to cordon off and let Iraqis go house to house.

[Mulderator]

Originally Posted by LANMaster

Ekim, you're not stupid enough to buy the LATimes' analuysis that the Iraq war, and losing it would be a positive for the GOP.

You're just not that stupid. I know it.

Oh he is--no question about it--with most of the rest of the liberals.

[lotuseclat79]

According to John Burns (Charlie Rose show) of the NY Times, in the next few months we can expect to see Maliki/Iraqi PM probably either resign or be asked - i.e. he really does not want to be PM, and as such has been a major blocking factor to decreasing sectarian violence in Iraq. That would leave the way open for an alliance with Sistani - a more infulential ****e clergy and a new coalition inside the Iraqi governent with a new Prime Minister that can be more effective to help stop the sectarian violence which all started at the beginning of last summer when the Shiite mosque was bombed.

What Iraq needs is for oil revenues to be equitably share among the three factions - Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites, the al-Sadr militia to disarm, and for reconstruction to begin in earnest. If that starts to take place as of the middle of this year, then and only then can the US even think about winding down the levels of troops in Iraq, of course, with the continued build up of the resources and training of the Iraq army.

-- Tom

[trekguy]

Originally Posted by LANMaster

I've been telling all of you this for 3+ years now. Not only are the looney left hoping for US to LOSE in Iraq, they're counting on it!

Ridiculous.

Lose the war?

The war in Iraq started on March 19, 2003. Baghdad fell under US control on April 9, 2003.

We have had control of Iraq since then. In effect, the war was won in a month's time. We have been controlling/occupying Iraq for 3 1/2 years.

The goal since then is to have a stable Iraq. It isn't a matter of "winning" anything, that part was done years ago... it's a matter of the people of Iraq taking responsibility for their future.

We can't prop them up forever.

[LANMaster]

Hi trek.

Don't you think that the Dems see each IED detonation as a few hundred votes come election day?


Heck, the're practically enticing the enemy on.