Iraq war is 'lost': US Democrat leader

[BigBadBrian]

Iraq war is 'lost': US Democrat leader

Apr 19 02:45 PM US/Eastern


The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.
"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."

Congress is seeking to tie funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq next year, but Bush has vowed to veto any such bill and no breakthrough was reported from the White House talks.

Bush on Thursday was addressing an Ohio town hall meeting and defending the war on terror launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.


"It is the most solemn duty of our country, is to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.

"A lesson learned was that -- at least in my opinion -- that in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."

But Reid drew a parallel with former US president Lyndon Johnson who decided to deploy more troops in Vietnam some 40 years ago when 24,000 US troops had already been killed.

"Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, so he surged in Vietnam. After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam," Reid said.

The comments came a day after bombers killed more than 200 people in a slew of car bombings in Baghdad, dealing a savage blow to the US security plan which aims to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in the country to quell sectarian unrest.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates fly into Iraq Thursday on an unannounced visit for talks with top US military commanders there.

He met with General David Petraeus, chief of coalition forces in Iraq, his deputy Lieutenant Colonel Ray Odierno and Admiral William Fallon, chief of US forces in the Middle East.

Link

[blueturk]

"It is the most solemn duty of our country, is to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.

"A lesson learned was that -- at least in my opinion -- that in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."

This is such fucking bullshit! Of course it's our duty to protect our country from harm, but it's not our duty to use our military for Bush's personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. "The enemy" was (and is) not Iraq. Your fucking president has used over 3200 American lives and exploited the nation's emotions after 9/11 for his own personal fucking agenda, and you're so rabidly loyal to your party that you can't even see it. Fucking pathetic.....

[FORD]

It ain't just Democrats who are saying the war is lost. Many Republicans have also said so.

Like Paul Craig Roberts , for example. He was in the Reagan administration.

Henry Kissinger, whose picture is next to the word "warmonger" in the dictionary, said that "a military victory is impossible" just two weeks ago. When Kissinger gives up on a war, you know its a lost cause.

Chuck Hagel - who unlike most of the current Republicans has actually seen war - has known this one was a lost cause for a while now.

John Warner - your own fucking Republican senator - ain't exactly a big fan of this continued bullshit either.

Don't blame this one on the Democrats, the entire country is waking up to the futility of this horseshit excuse for a war, which was based on nothing but lies.

[Nitro Express]

The Bush Administration thought if we invaded Iraq and took Saddam out of power, the Iraqi people would dance around like the little furry people at the end of that Star Wars movie. Then we would put in a puppet govt. and reap lucrative oil deals.

What Bushco failed to realize is Iraq is full of ethnic minorities that hate each other. Now we have started a civil war and there's nobody to check Iran now. If we stay wer are screwed and if we go, Iran invades Iraq.

[Nickdfresh]

Well, maybe if the "fucking morons" that BigBitchBrian voted for, and still mindlessly defends, hadn't lost it...

[Nickdfresh]

BTW Brian, when does your kid enlist? I believe he's about that age, isn't he?

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
BTW Brian, when does your kid enlist? I believe he's about that age, isn't he?

No. And it's none of your business.

Change the thread title back the way it was.

[pflo]

Originally posted by blueturk
"It is the most solemn duty of our country, is to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.

"A lesson learned was that -- at least in my opinion -- that in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."

This is such fucking bullshit! Of course it's our duty to protect our country from harm, but it's not our duty to use our military for Bush's personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. "The enemy" was (and is) not Iraq. Your fucking president has used over 3200 American lives and exploited the nation's emotions after 9/11 for his own personal fucking agenda, and you're so rabidly loyal to your party that you can't even see it. Fucking pathetic.....

Fuckin BINGO!! Any asshole who voted for bush in 2004 should be FORCED to get their fat chickenshit ass to Iraq and fight. Disgraceful state of affairs in the good ole USA.

[pflo]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
.

What Bushco failed to realize is Iraq is full of ethnic minorities that hate each other.

That would have taken about two minutes to read in a history book. Fuck bush and EVERY asshole that re elected him.

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by pflo
Fuckin BINGO!! Any asshole who voted for bush in 2004 should be FORCED to get their fat chickenshit ass to Iraq and fight. Disgraceful state of affairs in the good ole USA.

Shutup, Meathead.

We protect your ass.

Bow and kneel to us, Mr. #######

[Nickdfresh]

We "protect your ass?"

Are you talking about Canadians, douchebag?

They're fighting, and dying, in Afghanistan, pussy-bitch. Six of them died the other day, then two more the following day, baldy.

When does your son join them there?

And stop the personal info postings!

[pflo]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Shutup, Meathead.

We protect your ass.

Bow and kneel to us, Mr. #######

Dont want your protection, fuckstick. Didnt ask for it , either. Dont NEED it. Why? Because we are not so arrogant and intrusive that other countries resent us. In fact, we like to distance ourselves from you whenever possible. Thats one of your typical egocentric delusions, simpleton. Keep electing dimwits like bush, and it will be YOU who will need protection. Trust me.

[FORD]

Nobody elected Bush, pflag.

But as long as you have Little Stevie Wonderbush in power, don't delude yourself into thinking you're safe from neocon fascism.

[Guitar Shark]

Originally posted by FORD
Nobody elected Bush, pflag.

Other than the Electoral College, you mean?

[FORD]

Originally posted by Guitar Shark
Other than the Electoral College, you mean?

No, the BCE appointed Felonious Florida Five of the Supreme Court.

[Guitar Shark]

We've been down that road before Dave. Don't make me embarrass you again...

One wonders why I keep trying...

[Nickdfresh]

Well Shark, with that fucking nutcase Katty Harris in charge, I dunno...

[Guitar Shark]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
Well Shark, with that fucking nutcase Katty Harris in charge, I dunno...

I'm not saying there weren't improprieties in Florida. There very well may have been. But FORD's entire premise about the "BCE-appointed Felonious Five" has been proven wrong time and again, yet he trots it out at every opportunity. Much like he does with the controlled demolition WTC crap.

[sadaist]

Originally posted by FORD
No, the BCE appointed Felonious Florida Five of the Supreme Court.

I came over yesterday FORD. Why didn't you answer the door?

[FORD]

Originally posted by Guitar Shark
I'm not saying there weren't improprieties in Florida. There very well may have been. But FORD's entire premise about the "BCE-appointed Felonious Five" has been proven wrong time and again, yet he trots it out at every opportunity. Much like he does with the controlled demolition WTC crap.

Were Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy appointed by BCE presidents, or not??

[Nickdfresh]

Renquest, Kennedy, and O'Connor are hardly thought of as a bastion of rightism...

[sadaist]

Originally posted by FORD
Were Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy appointed by BCE presidents, or not??

First, there is no such thing as "BCE". If you are referring to either George Bush or Ronald Reagan, it is important to remember that either a Clinton or Bush has been in the white house for nearly 28 years. Any justices appointed prior to that would be quite old...if still alive.

[Cathedral]

The real point is that it is time for a change.
No more family bloodlines should be running this country for extended periods of time.

Good or bad, it's time for some new "blood" in the top ranks of government.
Fresh perspective is way over due.

[sadaist]

Originally posted by Cathedral
The real point is that it is time for a change.
No more family bloodlines should be running this country for extended periods of time.

Good or bad, it's time for some new "blood" in the top ranks of government.
Fresh perspective is way over due.

I second that. But if Hillary wins, which she very well could do, it could be 36 years with either a Bush or Clinton in the White House. Maybe in 2016 Jeb Bush & Chelsea Clinton can run against each other.

[FORD]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
Renquest, Kennedy, and O'Connor are hardly thought of as a bastion of rightism...

Kennedy, maybe not. He did smoke pot, after all. But he did vote for the Fraudulent Selection. Sandy O'Connor cursed so much when Gore was (briefly) announced as the winner on election night that she scared her own husband. She made it abundantly clear that she didn't want to retire under a Democratic president. And Rehnquist, apparently was so stoned on Oxycontin that he probably didn't remember HOW he voted the next day.

[FORD]

Originally posted by sadaist
I second that. But if Hillary wins, which she very well could do, it could be 36 years with either a Bush or Clinton in the White House. Maybe in 2016 Jeb Bush & Chelsea Clinton can run against each other.

This country would never survive another BCE pResidency. I'm not sure how we completely recover from this one.

Let's hope the Republicans remember the damage this one did.

[hideyoursheep]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
No. And it's none of your business.

Change the thread title back the way it was.

You're not too old, either.

Fuckhead.

[hideyoursheep]

Originally posted by BigBadBrian
Shutup, Meathead.

We protect your ass.

Bow and kneel to us, Mr. #######

Fuck you, pussy.

You never "protected" a goddam thing-stop trying to beat your chicken-chest and pretend you actually did something in here.

BTW...Since when do we "protect" Canada?

Damn, you's a dumb boy....

[Sgt Schultz]

Victory at Last
[ ed; no thanks to Commie Libtard Cut-and-Runners]

Newsweek declared: "Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And yet it has to be said and it should be understood – now, almost seven hellish years later -- that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East."


Read more: Newsweek Declares 'Victory At Last' In Iraq, While Team Bush Blasts Joe Klein and Tom Ricks | NewsBusters.org



More on Newsweek's Cover Story about Iraq



by Pete Wehner

Following up on my post from yesterday, I wanted to return to the Newsweek cover story on Iraq, which declared that “something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.”

Here are some further thoughts on the story and what it tells.

1. The progress in Iraq has been truly remarkable, especially when one considers where things were at the end of 2006. Iraq was caught in a death spiral. The odds were stacked against us. And most people in Iraq and America — including almost all of the political class and virtually the entire foreign policy establishment — had given up on the possibility of success. The main question for them was the terms of our retreat and de facto surrender.

2. In Iraq we have seen the rebirth of a nation. The “emergence of politics” in Iraq — including the willingness of its political leadership to engage in compromise; the Iraqis’ passion for democratic processes and willingness to set aside sectarianism; a free press; and the respect and legitimacy the Iraqi military has gained among its people — is unprecedented in the Arab world. But the successes there remain fragile and can still be undone. Iraq has proven to be treacherous terrain for foreign powers.

3. With the passage of time, President Bush’s decision to champion a new counterinsurgency strategy, including sending 30,000 additional troops to Iraq when most Americans were bone-weary of the war, will be seen as one of the most impressive and important acts of political courage in our lifetime. And those who fiercely opposed the so-called surge were not only wrong in their judgment; in some instances their actions were shameful. (I have in mind those who insisted the surge was failing long after it was clear it was succeeding. For a recapitulation of the words and actions of the critics of the surge, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, go here and here).

4. Those like Joe Klein and Tom Ricks, who claimed the Iraq war was “probably the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history” (Klein’s words) and “the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy” (Ricks’s words), were wrong. Ricks went so far as to say in 2009 that “I think staying in Iraq is immoral.”

Now, if we had followed the counsel of Klein and Ricks and not implemented the surge, their predictions might have been closer to the mark. (Bush’s decision was one of “adolescent petulance” and “the decision to surge was made unilaterally, without adequate respect for history or military doctrine,” Klein wrote on April 5, 2007.) As it is, if the positive trajectory of events continue and Iraq does end up reshaping the political culture of the Arab Middle East, the Iraq war will, on balance, have advanced American interests in the region.

5. What has unfolded in Iraq is not an accident or based on luck. It was the result of one of the most astonishing military turnarounds in American history. The story of how that happened, and the men who made it happen, will be studied for generations. And Gen. David Petraeus — whose views pre-2007 were not widely shared and were often resisted within the military chain of command — has already secured his place among the greatest wartime generals in American history.

6. The former American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker — another one of the heroes of this effort — said it as well as anyone has when he stated, “In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came.”

The war has taken longer and been harder than any of us ever wished. There were terrible mistakes in judgment along the way. But very late in the day those mistakes were corrected, allowing something good and hopeful to emerge in Iraq.

A nation that was broken is on the mend. A warring country is now peaceable, no longer a military threat to its neighbors or the region. A genocidal dictator is dead and gone. The Iraqi people are free. And a nation that was our enemy continues to work closely with us in rebuilding what was a shattered society.

In 2006, the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami wrote a powerful and stylistically beautiful book, The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq. That gift, Ajami said, was the idea of consensual government. It is a gift we gave the Iraqis at the cost of many American lives and much treasure. It is a gift they appear to have received.

“Iraq seemed the most forbidding place for a campaign of reform, the hardest soil,” Ajami wrote during the darkest days of the war. “Yet every now and then, that country offered glimpses of hope that Iraqis may yet pull off a decent political world that works. There were days its sectarianism seemed like an affliction that would never go away. Then there were hints that the multiplicity of its communities could yet support a politics, and a culture, of pluralism.”

The Iraqis were not as enchanted with tyranny or indifferent to democracy as some critics of the war insisted.

What America has done for Iraq, which had been brutalized for so long, may not be the noblest act in our history. But it ranks quite high. The Iraq war was, in fact, a war of liberation. And the liberation appears to be working. Nothing is guaranteed; “Everything in Iraq is hard,” Ambassador Crocker once said. But regardless of where one stood on the war and the surge, what we see unfolding in Iraq today is something to be grateful for, and to take pride in.

[kwame k]

Fucking please......You are so desperate for anything to grasp onto to ease your guilty conscience about electing and supporting a Constitutional Criminal like Bush.

We won the war in Iraq years ago (about a month or so after we invaded a sovereign nation) and to say anything less is fucking ignorant.

We lost the occupation.......and they'll never be a Democratic Nation because of ethnic/tribal divisions. The blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is on the hands of a few out of touch old men.

Yup, everything is roses and puppy dogs in Iraq and thank God we have a President who finally has the balls to pull out of there and go fight the terraist where they actually are.

17 killed in Baghdad blasts targeting voters

BAGHDAD – A string of blasts ripped through Baghdad targeting early voters and killing 17 people Thursday, authorities said, raising tensions in an already nervous city as early ballots are cast for Sunday's parliamentary elections.

Insurgents have repeatedly threatened to use violence to disrupt the elections, which will help determine who will oversee the country as U.S. forces go home. It is also a test over whether the country can overcome its deep sectarian divides. Two of the blasts hit voters outside polling stations.

Link

Fuck the bloggers you linked to, fuck Newsweek, and most importantly......fuck you.

[sadaist]

...and they'll never be a Democratic Nation because of ethnic/tribal divisions.

I see a lot of that type of division right here in our own country.

[jhale667]

I see a lot of that type of division right here in our own country.

Not to the point where anyone's worried our next democratic election will be our LAST as they are with Iraq's.

[kwame k]

I'd love to hear the Mental Midgets explain in their own words why we invaded a sovereign nation.

[LoungeMachine]

I see a lot of that type of division right here in our own country.

Coincidently while we're "spreading democracy" to other nations, the theory of democracy is being diluted to nothing here at home......



Wonder when we're going to practice what we preach.....

[LoungeMachine]

I'd love to hear the Mental Midgets explain in their own words why we invaded a sovereign nation.

They'll tell you it's because 90% of other countries thought Saddam was a threat and had WMD's too....

We've heard their tired talking points countless times here.



Being a consevative means never having to admit you're wrong

[Bob_R]

[kwame k]

They'll tell you it's because 90% of other countries thought Saddam was a threat and had WMD's too....

We've heard their tired talking points countless times here.



Being a consevative means never having to admit you're wrong

I was baiting a trap for those guys......because if anyone says it was about overthrowing a Dictator who is killing innocent people in his country and because of human rights violations, I'd go all Darfur on their asses.

Then again, those countries that have experienced genocide over the last decade or so, had two strikes against them, as far as the right caring anything about them.

Strike one........no oil.
Strike two......they're black.

[jhale667]

I was baiting a trap for those guys......because if anyone says it was about overthrowing a Dictator who is killing innocent people in his country and because of human rights violations, I'd go all Darfur on their asses.

Then again, those countries that have experienced genocide over the last decade or so, had two strikes against them, as far as the right caring anything about them.

Strike one........no oil.
Strike two......they're black.

Exactly, exactly...and as for the invasion, the W. rationale "He tried ta kill mah daddy" is off the table too.

[kwame k]

Exactly, exactly...and as for the invasion, the W. rationale "He tried ta kill mah daddy" is off the table too.

So is the "it's about oil", too. Oil prices are higher today than they were.

Now if you want to use the war profiteer argument....well, look at how much Cheney's stock went up in Halliburton in just 2004-2005 when he was the VP.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $241,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $8 million. The former CEO of the oil and gas services juggernaut, Cheney has pledged to give proceeds to charity.

What charity did that money go to? The Dickhead Anti-America fund.

[Bob_R]

Exactly, exactly...and as for the invasion, the W. rationale "He tried ta kill mah daddy" is off the table too.

Who cares that they tried to kill George Bush Sr.? Too bad they missed.