The hot news today will be President Bush’s visit to Iraq, but something that has been lost is things like this post by an Iraq blogger which says volumes.

 

Although recently a bombing killed more than 500 people in an area dominated by Yezidis, a little known religious group in northern Iraq, the Al-Aimma bridge tragedy has been the worst single event in the war. Last year we brought you a story from Sami Rasouli, who told about Othman Ali Al-Obeidi, who is famous in Iraq because he had a Sunni name, but his father’s name, Ali, is traditionally a Shi’a name. Othman was on the Iraqi swimteam and died saving Shi’a pilgrims from drowning in the Tigris. The second anniversary of the tragedy has just passed, so we are again remembering Othman and the other brave Iraqis who stood against sectarianism.

Other media agencies are falling over themselves to discuss the onset of a civil war in Iraq. It is important to take these discussions with a grain of salt. That is not to say sectarian violence, ethnic cleansing, and general chaos, insecurity, and disorder are a daily experience in Baghdad, they are. But the violence may be more organized than now discussed. Just over a year ago, Der Spiegel reported on the experience of another man living near the Al-Aimma Bridge. He made it clear that the violence is not the crazed killings of madmen, but organized political violence.

Lady Vet (over @lucianne’s) asked how long it would be before the first reporter talked about a plastic turkey. Not long. Very, very early ABC’s guy said “his first visit, a surprise, where he brought out a plastic turkey for the troops”. ABC still tops my current list of scumball political operatives playing as journalists.

We withdrew from Beirut, we withdrew from the port of Aden, we withdrew from Mogadishu, and all it got us was the dearth of respect that emboldened the jihad, and became the principal cause of the 9-11 massacre. Withdrawal won’t make Iraq any safer, and it will definitely make any American, anywhere, a target for death. Our enemy is going down to a humiliating defeat, despite the perfidy of the left in this country, and it’s easy to see that a defeat for the jihad in Iraq is also a painful defeat for those who hate Bush.

You can listen to these putzes…or you can listen to the people who’ve actually held the guts of their friends in their hands.

Yes…mcmegaphone…and it was easier for Clinton to pass on AlQueda to the next president. They did what they could do..given the congress..the CIA..etc..and the media/public support they had at the time.

Here’s the difference….Clinton actually knew where Osama was…watched him…and couldn’t kill him. Today..if given the same opportunity..he’d be toast. Now..what’s the difference? Come on…you can say it. Why is that so!! Could it be…no…it couldn’t. could it be because of 9/11???

putz.

Yes, violence is slightly down from a few months ago, but that’s a seasonal thing: violence goes down when it’s really really hot. If you compare it to this time last year, you’ll see that Iraq gets worse every year and that the Glorious Surge has accomplished nothing.

So, given the fact that Iraq is getting worse, your only point is that Iraqis don’t like Al-Qaeda. But no one, not even Bush, has ever claimed that Al-Qaeda In Iraq (a different organization from the real Al-Qaeda, anyway) is responsible for the majority of the violence. The fact that the Iraqis don’t like AQ merely proves that AQ won’t take over Iraq when we leave.

So let’s review: Iraq is getting worse, and Bush refuses to do the only thing that could possibly make Iraq better — implement a phased withdrawal. Instead Bush prefers pretending that violence is down, even though it’s actually up. Why? Because Bush would rather see America defeated and humiliated than admit he was wrong. The longer we stay in Iraq, the worse Iraq gets and the worse America’s defeat becomes. But Bush has decided that American defeat and an Iraq bloodbath is a small price to pay for the ability to blame the next president for withdrawing.

Since there will be no formal surrender in this war, we will have to look to certain “benchmarks” to see our victory take shape. I personally will pay attention to how the jihad attempts to fight. Perhaps we will see a slow but sure lessening of the suicide component in future bombings. Some remote detonations have already begun to appear, indicating a clear lack of willing martyrs.

I saw recently that “Iraqis” have been attempting to cross our southern border from Mexico, this could be the beginning of capitulation in Iraq, as the jihad will in the end attempt to save face by changing the venue.

Too bad the Palestinians can not get to that place.