Jun 29 2007
al-Qaeda Continues To Lose Ground In Iraq
The only good news we have right now is al-Qaeda’s bloody brutality has caused the Muslim street in Iraq to rise up and take side with us as we fight al-Qaeda:
Sunni militias that once fought U.S. troops are now seeking to join them, frustrated by al Qaeda’s influence in parts of Baghdad, a U.S. commander said on Friday.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said working with the militias compensates for insufficient Iraqi police presence in some neighborhoods.“Some of them who have previously been fighting us have come to us as we’ve spoken with them and they want to fight with us,” Fil said.
“They are tired of al Qaeda and the influence of al Qaeda in their tribes and in their neighborhoods and they want them cleaned out and they want to form an alliance in order to rid themselves of this blight.”
The decision to work with militias, which had previously been cited by Washington as major forces of instability inside Baghdad, follows efforts in Anbar province to help Sunni Arab sheikhs combat Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.
“We think it’s a very positive development, we’re excited about it. But we are frankly being cautious.” he said by videolink from Baghdad.
The strategy of working with local sheikhs to develop tribal police to secure their own neighborhoods is being expanded to other areas of Iraq as well, U.S. generals say.
“We’d like to do the same thing with some of the Shia groups as well,” Fil said.
This trend of Iraqis coming out against al-Qaeda and siding with the Iraqi government and the US is expanding and it seems to be accelerating. There will come a tipping point where the nation throws of the Islamo Fascist canard and gets down to running things. This would put Iraq on a path to success which will be hard to stop if one even wanted to. It could become a fate compli by late next year if the current trends hold.
It would make the Iraq war no different than most others, with some set backs and some mistakes, but still a historic success. It will not be a Desert Storm, when the US liberated Kuwait from Iraq Forces. But it would make it faster path to stability than the Balkans (still struggling for normalcy) and be a fraction of the time for Europe to mend after WW II. Won’t even mention the Korean Penninsula.
This would be a very timely turn of events in case the GOP does succeed in bringing us back to 1992 with Dems in control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. It would be nice to get Iraq to the point Democrats would be cautious not to undo all the progress made.
Who;d a thunk it ?
Usama bin laden provides the final glue to put together a net plus for the US and Coalition forces.
UBL provides what the US needed the most, somebody the Iraqis can hate even more than the US.
Way to go .. UBL.
It took 5 years after the surrender of Germany to get a government in place there and political assassinations continued for years after, almost 20 years in fact. People expect us to simply go in, take down a government, install a new one of a completely different kind and walk out. That’s just plain dumb.
Don’t you guys ever get tired of being full of bull****?
After four years here are the “new government’s most salient features:
1. controls nothing outside the Green Zone.
2. half the members thereof do not even attend govt. functions,
either living out of the country or fearing to travel.
3. has ethnic ,militas, both Shia and Sunni pervading its military
and police.
4. is pro-Iranian and Shariah Law oriented
5. has approval ratings somewhere in the ballparkof Bush’s.
There will be no America-friendly government in Iraq, regardless
of when it stabilizes. Nor one friendly to Israel.
Sooth
These people make a show of supporting but do not really support the
troops. They sweep the losses under the rug, not only publicly
but within themselves. They will tell you we lost 50,000 in
Vietnam but only 5000 (with the underreported contractors)
in Iraq.
Not accepting the truth even in this regard, which is that
Iraq is not one-tenth “pacified” as compared to the final,
no-win Vietnam stats.
One diff-the public will not allow a prolonged Vietnam
occupational attempt at “victory.” In my opinion that
was settled the day the Kay Report was released. No
WMDS, no truth behind the war, no public patience.
Then, it all depended on whether pre-planning was ample to bring
off the heist.
Whoops! The lack of pre-planning was part of the lie!
The circle is closed: pre-planning would have meant
levelling with the American people: “we’re not really
in the clear at all about the WMDs, but we know we’ll need
500,000 troops and several years to bring this off. Any
takers?”
Soothsayer knows what the answer would have been
from the public. A resounding “NO!”
Sooth
These people make a show of supporting but do not really support the
troops. They sweep the losses under the rug, not only publicly
but within themselves. They will tell you we lost 50,000 in
Vietnam but only 5000 (with the underreported contractors)
in Iraq.
Not accepting the truth even in this regard, which is that
Iraq is not one-tenth “pacified” as compared to the final,
no-win Vietnam stats.
One diff-the public will not allow a prolonged Vietnam
occupational attempt at “victory.” In my opinion that
was settled the day the Kay Report was released. No
WMDS, no truth behind the war, no public patience.
Then, it all depended on whether pre-planning was ample to bring
off the heist.
Whoops! The lack of pre-planning was part of the lie!
The circle is closed: pre-planning would have meant
levelling with the American people: “we’re not really
in the clear at all about the WMDs, but we know we’ll need
500,000 troops and several years to bring this off. Any
takers?”
Soothsayer knows what the answer would have been
from the public. A resounding “NO!”
Yo, Center . . . I’ll bet you know all the words to Horst Wessel.
Bush has managed to drive even the Turks into the anti-American camp.
“The VOA article contains the depressing statistic that in recent polls, Turks named the United States as th number one threat to their well-being, after the terrorist group, the PKK:
‘ In a recent opinion poll measuring what people in Turkey perceive as the country’s biggest threat, the United States was first and Iraqi Kurds were second. Leyla Tausanoglu, a political columnist for the independent Cumhuriyet newspaper, says many Turks are skeptical of American plans because of the Iraq war, and are now suspicious of U.S. ties with Iraqi Kurdish leaders.’
“
Looking for confirmation of this, but if true AQ is getting desperate
You won’t find this story anywhere in the MSM. But my military sources in Baghdad and elsewhere have confirmed to me that 1. beginning yesterday, Thursday, July 28th, two U.S. battalions began moving into Al Anbar to hunt Al Qaeda members smuggled out of Baghdad through Fallujah and Ramadi, and 2. that Al Qaeda has launched not so much a military campaign to retake Al Anbar, but a revenge campaign against its Sunni denizens, and most specifically its denizens’ Sheiks, who routed them out of the province and into a few mixed Sunni/Shiite areas in and around Baghdad. Al Qaeda harbors the illusion that by kiling the Sheiks, it will be able to subjugate the entire Sunni population of the huge province, and govern it as a separte Al Qaeda Sharia state. This is a fool’s game. Al Qaeda doesn’t have the numbers to pull it off, and the only reason it thrived in Al Anbar in the first placeis because the locals gave them cover from the hunting U.S. forces, as well as other vital forms of support. But as often happens when one lacks many other options, Al Qaeda is throwing out logic and merely acting in revenge, and acting to chase an impossible dream. So far, a few more Sunni sheiks have been murdered since the hotel bombing. They will not last by making the Sunnis their enemies, because they ultimately lack the numbers and force to subjugate them. There will be bloodshed, but they can only lose.
AQ is only a minor part of the problem in Iraq. Far more troubling is a Shia dominated government allied with Iran; a Sunni insurgency hell-bent on recapturing power and oil revenue; and a Kurd sector fomenting a separatist Kurdistan at the expense of Turkey and Iran.
Course, I guess we’re happy as long as Halliburton and Blackwater are getting paid on their no-bid contracts and the graft cashflow keeps fattening George and Dick’s retirement package and the Carlisle Group.
Too bad about those dead troops – but you can’t make a Let’s Make Cheney Rich Omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Bill Roggio is reporting new stats on Baghdad. Here is what it looks like
April
Iraqi Control 0%
Controlled 19%
Being Cleared 35%
Yet to be Cleared 41%
May
Iraqi Control 0%
Controlled 29%
Being Cleared unk
Yet to be Cleared unk
June
Iraq Control 7%
Controlled 48%
Being Cleared 36%
Yet to be Cleared 16%
Sooth,
You unwittingly make a good case for “staying the course” in lieu of partitioning or allowing a real civil war to happen among the factions.
Your charges of presidential graft are not to be taken seriously. They are Michael Moorish baffoonery.