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[Economist's View] "Learning the Lessons of Iraq": The claim that the "surge" was a success is based on the decline in deaths in Iraq to a level that was going on at the beginning of 2004, hardly a "success." Woodward makes it clear that little of this decline had anything to do with the surge, with the Sunni tribesmen already pissed at al Qaeda in Iraq for its activities in al Anbar and going to fight them no matter what, and al-Sadr calling for his people to stop fighting due to internal political factors. At most the surge increased the building of walls around the neighborhoods in Baghdad after the several years of ethnic cleansing and segregation of neighborhoods there had been completed last year (with a major outmigration by Sunnis and Christians).
[BURMA DIGEST] Learning the Lessons of Iraq: NEW YORK - The Iraq war has been replaced by the declining economy as the most important issue in America’s presidential election campaign, in part because Americans have come to believe that the tide has turned in Iraq: the troop “surge” has supposedly cowed the insurgents, bringing a decline in violence. The implications are clear: a show of power wins the day.
[Heading Right!] Country Last: Yemen, the site of a car-bomb attack yesterday on the American Embassy, is quietly emerging as a base for Al Qaeda veterans of the Iraq war, who are seeking refuge there and are close to establishing the kind of safe haven the group enjoys on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
[Comments for Esrati] Comment on It’s September 11, do you know where your freedoms went ...: Obama has taken up the Afghan war as the right war to be fighting, but it faces the same problems faced in Iraq, namely that we are occupying a country with a tradition of resistance of invaders, ethnic divisions, warlords, a drug economy and in many places a cultural affinity for the Taliban’s brand of strict religious conservatism. Efforts to make friends by rebuilding and modernizing the country have not happened or been effective.
[Start Thinking Right] Picture Worth A Million Words On Iraq And Success Of Surge: Regardless of what you conclude about the claims of Republicans and the claims of Democrats for this election, I hope you agree with me on at least this: our soldiers, our brave warriors, have been magnificent. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, they have served with valor and honor in the midst of so much fear and dishonor. I have been so proud of them. I have been so proud to call myself “an American” because of them.
[WORLD MONITOR] The Tragic Illusion”¦..: Furthermore, in terms of Iraq, there are many legitimate arguments to be made that it is a necessary war and that it bolsters, rather than detracts from, the war against terror, which involves the battle in Afghanistan.
[afterdowningstreet.org - Convict Bush and Cheney!] At All Costs, We Must Avoid a 'Surge' in Afghanistan: Moreover, most analysts agree that at least part of the rationale behind Russia's invasion of Georgia, reigniting fears of a new Cold War, was its confidence that, with America's armed forces pre-occupied with two failing wars (and badly depleted because of a policy of not replacing military resources as fast as they are used up), there was little America could do in response. Russia's calculations proved correct.
[CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS] Stiglitz: Occupational Hazards: Will the error be repeated in the renewed US Afghan campaign? All comments (9). Joseph Stiglitz. Joseph Stiglitz; guardian.co.uk,; Thursday September 11 2008 10:00 BST. The Iraq war has been replaced by the declining economy as the most ...
[Epoch] book review: Following the 2000 dot-com crash, Israel’s leading tech companies needed a new global niche, and the government encouraged expansion beyond information and communications technologies into security and surveillance. It launched a slew of start-ups “specializing in everything from ’search and nail,’
[True Blue Liberal] At All Costs, We Must Avoid a ”˜Surge’ in Afghanistan: From AlterNet By Joseph Stiglitz The Iraq war has been replaced by the declining economy as the most important issue in America’s presidential election campaign, in part because Americans have come to believe that the tide has turned in .
[News Dissector Blog] DEBATING FISA AND OBAMA, IRAN’S MISSILES, AMERICA’s FORECLOSURES UP: From Iraq, to the abortion issue, to the Telecom Immunity Act of 2008, I’ve watched closely as Obama has tried to grab some middle ground, and attempt to diffuse future criticism of him by the GOP as being “soft on terrorists” and not a heartland values type of guy.
[Weasel Zippers] Article of the day.....: It is true that the war in Afghanistan has gone on too long, that the Taliban keep resurfacing like some sort of bad dream, that Osama is still on the loose, that Iraq is a huge disaster, that the Muslims who live in post-colonial nations have valid complaints against both the Western powers and the autocratic despots who rule over most of them. All of this is true.
[Lawrence Helm's Blog] Is the US an Empire?: So about these wars we conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the “Nation Building” afterward, we can say they were prudent (if the many who view Islamism as a threat are correct in their assessment, as I believe they are) or a mistake (if Fukuyama, Roy &
[Mudville Gazette] The British Invasion: At home, Britons were stunned by the graphic footage of their soldiers being assaulted in a city thought to be "safe," especially in comparison to the blood-soaked urban areas of the Sunni Triangle which dominate news coverage emanating out of Iraq. The violent imagery was only the latest and most troubling indication of the British military's failure in Basra and its environs, a disastrous turn of events which seemed unthinkable two years ago, when British troops were welcomed into Basra with relatively open arms.
[Tony Blair] Al Qaeda in Britain threatened to kill Brown & Blair - 3 Arrested: If the British government fails to respond to our demands by the last day of March 2008 as they fail to answer to the truce of our Shaykh Usama bin Laden and to the truce of the Emir of Believers Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, then the Martyrdom seekers of the organisation of al-Qaeda in Britain will target all the political leaders especially Tony Blair and Gordan Brown, and we will also target all Embassies, Crusaders Centers and their Interests through out the country, with the help of Allah.
[www.turntoislam.com] Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant: For more than ten years after the Gulf War of 1991, the U.S. government kept economic sanctions on the Iraqi people. Since the U.S. Air Force had destroyed Iraq’s civilian infrastructure in the war, the embargo meant that Iraqis had to live without clean water, effective sewage disposal, or electricity.
[Rogue Columnist] McCain's national security cred and TR -- more media lies: Note: McCain's boosters routinely claim that he was behind the "surge" strategy implemented by General Petraeus, but apparently this represents more confusion on their part, since the point of the surge was the redeployment of troops away from fortified bases and into "small, local groups closely partnered with Iraqi military and police units, with each unit permanently assigned to an area and working its 'beat' ". The additional troops were necessary to permit these thinly spread forces to operate on a block-by-block basis in Baghdad.
[AND NOW THE APOCALYPSE!] FATAL VISION: The Deeper Evil Behind The Detainee Bill, by Chris Floyd: What's more, there are strong indications that the Bush administration has outsourced some of the contracts to outside operators. In the original Post story about the assassinations -- in those first heady weeks after 9/11, when administration officials were much more open about "going to the dark side," as Cheney boasted on national television -- Bush insiders told the paper that "it is also possible that the instrument of targeted killings will be foreign agents, the CIA's term for nonemployees who act on its behalf.
[Bad American] Olbermann Out on a Limb on 9-11; Nader, Others Call for New ...: “Before the Congress adjourns, I will bring forth a new proposal for the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.
Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, On War: Blogs, Photos, Videos And More On Technorati, British Commonwealth: Blogs, Photos, Videos And More On Technorati, Military Intervention: Blogs, Photos, Videos And More On Technorati, Iraq Reviews
