If you hadn’t noticed, Baghdad is under seige from both the insurgency and bloody attrition from death squads,kidnappings for ransom a rape epidemic and the flight of huge numbers of professionals to other countries. Only an escapist would compare
Baghdad to post-war Berlin.

As for training, we weren’t training enemies after the war in Germany.
We are training anti-American members of militias in Iraq.

Strata undoubtedly would tell you “worse is better” with his
typical amoral disregard for the lives of Iraqis which today, al Sadr
correctly blamed on the US troops (whose responsibility under Geneva is to keep attacks like these from happening and has utterly failed since the invasion) and, as of my last reading, the young
clerical nationalist has now vowed to leave the government if Maliki
follows through with his meeting with Bush next week.

Strata, in his amoral haze, will doubtless read such a government departure as somehow a victory for Bush and American strategy.

But when the US leaves in ignominious disgrace, with an anti-American government in place,how will AJ spin that?

They understand it all too well, hun.

The Democratic party, their nutroots like trollboi Ken and their propaganda wing the MSM want us to lose. They are firmly on the side of the Islamofascists.

They may have a “road to Damascus” moment right before they die in the next attack on the US by their Islamofascist heroes, though. But by then it will be too late.

In this case a country that has been under a dictatorship for a much longer period than Germany was has been restarted from scratch without any of the former regime rank and file party members. This means that every position in every institution is filled with someone who has never done it before at the same time these same people are attempting to create regulations, procedures, etc. In other words, it is probably going to take longer in Iraq than the 5 years it took in Germany.

There is another part of the “immediate withdrawal” problem that is never addressed by people who should know better. The current Iraqi army that is being created is pretty much only the “teeth” units. Even when that task is completed, they still don’t have the support structure required to maintain those units. In the meantine, US training units, transportation units, engineer units, supply units, etc. are providing that support structure. So while numbers of US troops might be unchanged, nobody is looking at the change of structure of those troops.

Getting the Iraqi army combat units trained and up to strength is actually the EASY part of the task. Getting them to a point where they can feed themselves, train themselves, move themselves around, build their own compounds, etc. takes longer and involves a lot more training. Nobody in any position of authority in the Iraqi system has more than 3 years of experiance. How do you provide senior staff officers that are skilled in logistics and intelligence with only 3 years worth of experiance? You can’t. It takes much longer than that.

People like Ken have unreasonable expectations because they don’t understand the scope of the problem. You can’t just pull out and leave because whilke you might have an Iraqi army division that is ready to fight, you don’t have the units to get food, ammunition, and supplies to them or mechanisms to procure those items and get them distributed to depots so they can be sent out to those units. Running a military is a lot larger job than just fielding a mob with guns.

And my point was that if it took us Americans a full decade just to get our own government right, AND if we and the Iraqis are trying to set up a government in Iraq, you would imagine that it would take LONGER, all else being equal. In other words, three and a half years isn’t enough time to get everything in place so that we can just walk out on the Iraqis and trust that they’ll be organized enough to fend off the insurgents on their own (the insurgents who are targeting Iraqi civilians with fully as much enthusiasm as they are targeting U.S. soldiers).

Proud to be a Strata-ite. Strata-ites unite!

You’re a Strata-ite alright,disconnected with reality and bent on exonerating America’s essential immoral side bared for all the world to see in the Iraq War. If I didn’t come off “smug” on these
matters, I’d come off angry enough for Strata to have an excuse to
ban me.

Between 1777 and 1787 ,the US government’s “scrapping and redesigning” was not replete with warring and bloodshed between the branches of said government, not replete with private militas
accompanying the “scrapped and redesigned” structures,said
militias carrying out wholesale slaughter of their rivals.

Nor were the “scrapped and redesigned” governments trapped in a
Green Zone, surrounded by bloodshed they were both incapable
of stopping and frequently victimed by-when members of which
governments were not themselves complicit in the bloodshed.

See the diff, Aitchie?

Not that I care too much because he comes off as positively smug about the problems we’re having in Iraq and apparently wants us to lose the fight and is willing to paint the picture as bleakly as possible to convince us that we’re in over our lazy uneducated heads in Iraq.

Indeed!
And the MSM credits no one for this monumental achievement.

Actually, Ken, the war was quite successful. What we have so far is a failure of a new government to assert itself.

Actually Crossed-up, you’re wrong two ways. The war “is” not
“was” because your dear leader refused to believe a guerilla war
would fold off the conventional war and did not prepare for it.

Secondly, if (for the purposes of using your argument) the new
government is a failure this means Bush’s vaunted US-administered
“democratic induction” of Iraq was also a failure.

As for “more than six months” US “trainers” concede in a
Washington Post article yesterday the Iraqi troops are
“years away” from minimal training success.

If you believe a 31% war support among Americans is enough
to sustain the years required, you’re as delusional as AJ.

Because he provides an excellent opportunity to post more good news.

And there is definitely something else brewing with the assasination in Lebanon….maybe that has more to do with Bush’s visit to Jordan then just Iraq. Iran and Syria (and the Hezbos) are planning a move because they think we are tied up by the Dems in the Congress. I think AJ is right, the terrorists will try to force the Dems hand not realizing the Dems have limited power….which is why they are beginning to backtrack on their promises to the far left fringe.

We’ll find out soon I’m afraid…

BTW…I cannot understand why anyone pays attention to Ken – I don’t.