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Poor President Obama, he just can't bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, thought it would? I just don't understand why Senator Obama is being such a baby about the surge. Why can't he admit the obvious? It worked. Even as recently his Afghanistan speech last week: Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end. We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we are doing so is a testament to...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

War On Terror: Sen. John Kerry, who was so wrong about Iraq, now says our commander in Afghanistan is "reaching too far, too fast" and that a "good enough" policy should suffice. It won't. Offering his advice on how to micromanage the war against the Taliban, Kerry said Gen. Stanley McChrystal, President Obama's hand-picked general to fight what he called a "war of necessity," is wrong in saying he needs 40,000 more troops to fight and win it. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, Kerry advocated a "good enough" policy designed not to achieve victory in al-Qaida's...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

(LAS VEGAS) - John McCain told veterans today that Barack Obama stubbornly refuses to agree that the troop surge in Iraq has worked and took legislative steps to divert funding for the effort in order to prevent progress in the Iraq war. Speaking at the Disabled American Veterans conference in Las Vegas, McCain said Obama “tried to legislate failure,” adding that “I would rather lose an election than lose a war.” “Thanks to the courage and sacrifice of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines and to brave Iraqi fighters the surge has succeeded,” said McCain. “And yet Senator Obama still...

On Sunday's This Week, ABC's George Stephanopoulos condemned John McCain for charging that “Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.” Stephanopoulos, who interviewed McCain on Saturday at his Arizona ranch, declared: “I can't believe you believe that.” McCain insisted “I'm not questioning his patriotism. I'm questioning his actions. I'm questioning his lack, total lack of understanding,” leading Stephanopoulos to counter: “But that is questioning his patriotism. When you say someone would rather lose a war, a candidate, that's questioning his honor, his decency, his character.” As McCain continued to defend his assessment, Stephanopoulos...

CNN) -- With just 100 days until the election, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are accusing each other of shifting their positions when it comes to Iraq. Obama accused McCain of altering his stance after the senator from Arizona said 16 months would be a "pretty good timetable" for troop withdrawal, and McCain said Obama was becoming more inline with his position -- a "conditions-based" plan for withdrawal. In an interview with Newsweek, Obama was asked about what sort of U.S. troop presence he would keep in Iraq, now that he has talked with diplomatic and military leaders there....

There is some irony in the fact that Democrats, after years of deriding Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as a hopeless bungler and conniving Shiite sectarian, are now treating as sacrosanct his suggestion that Iraq will be ready to assume responsibility for its own security by 2010. Naturally this is because his position seems to support that of Barack Obama. A little skepticism is in order here. The prime minister has political motives for what he's saying -- whatever that is. An anonymous Iraqi official told the state-owned Al-Sabah newspaper, "Maliki thinks that Obama is most likely to win in...

Senator Obama refuses to be boxed in between what he considers two “false choices”, either:1) …On such and such date, come Hell or high water we’ve gotten our troops out, and be blind to anything that happens in intermediate months2) …completely defer to whatever the commanders on the ground say (because his military and strategic knowledge is better than theirs)LINKBy dismissing out of hand the absoluteness of a calender date by which all Americans will be out of Iraq, Senator Obama has just capitulated the political left’s dogma for the past six years (a debate that started in 2002 before...

Hello everyone - tried to post a blog earlier but I am afraid that it got lost in the system - perhaps it was eaten by that dog!Anyway, to be brief, was trying to say tonight on air that I welcome the Obama trip overseas - and hope it sets a precedent for all future candidates. At the same time, as an old-fashioned institutionalist who was strongly shaped by working in the White House, I believe that whether a President is right or wrong on policy, we have only one President at a time and he must be the chief negotiator...

Barack Obama on his “Most Excellent World Tour” (The Iraq Stop) defends his position that the surge in Iraq did not work. In an interview on ABC (All Barack Channel) Obama would not acknowledge that the surge in Iraq has been successful. (Video Included)

One of the big topics of the day on the cable news channels is Drudge Report's story about the New York Times rejecting Sen. John McCain's proposed Op-Ed about Iraq. Fox News has Carl Cameron reporting the story, MSNBC's Chris Matthews talked about it on Hardball and Howard Kurtz gave his take last hour on CNN: "One irony of the internet age: the rejected piece will probably wind up getting far more attention by the controversy whipped up by Matt Drudge then if the New York Times had just gone ahead and published it," said Kurtz. We hear prime time...

The nation's top military officer Wednesday declared the security situation in Iraq "remarkably better," so good in fact that he expects to recommend more U.S. troop reductions this fall if conditions hold. Just back from a tour of two war fronts - Iraq and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region - Adm. Michael G. Mullen said he expected to witness improvements in Baghdad and across Iraq, but was surprised by how well a 17-month-old U.S. troop surge has worked. "I won't go so far as to say that progress in Iraq, from a military perspective, has reached a tipping point or it is...

14 July 2008The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the...

More on the we've won front from Michael Totten:I’m reluctant to say “the war has ended,” as he did, but everything else he wrote is undoubtedly true. The war in Iraq is all but over right now, and it will be officially over if the current trends in violence continue their downward slide. That is a mathematical fact. Over the past few days al Qaeda has detonated several car bombs in Diyala. So, how is the war "over"? Totten goes on to say that the violence may never actually peter off to nothing in Iraq, but reminds us that violence...

A funny thing happened over on the Barack Obama campaign website in the last few days. The parts that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared. John McCain and Obama have been going at it heavily in recent days over the benefits of the surge. The Arizona senator, who advocated the surge for years before the Bush administration employed it, says the resulting reduction in violence is proof it worked with progress on 15 of 18 political benchmarks and Obama's plan to...

Sen. John McCain on Monday accused his Democratic presidential rival of flip-flopping on the war in Iraq, as a pair of new polls showed the Republican's strategy of painting Sen. Barack Obama as politically expedient is beginning to take hold with voters. As Mr. Obama repositions himself for the general election after exclusively targeting the Democratic base of committed liberals, it leaves some voters on the left feeling he is abandoning them on their top issue - Iraq - and has independents questioning his veracity. "If a perception takes hold that a candidate is flip-flopping on core convictions, that will...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — After months vowing to get US troops home from Iraq, Barack Obama has succumbed to the war's political entanglements, struggling to explain his plan in the light of recent security gains. More than five years after the US invasion, the Iraq war is now enmeshing not only the Bush administration which started it, but both men fighting to inherit it, Democratic White House hopeful Obama and Republican John McCain. Obama is torn between a vow to end the war, which underpinned his win over Democratic foe Hillary Clinton and Republican claims his plan invites US humiliation, would...

BAGHDAD • Iraq's main Sunni Arab bloc is close to rejoining the Shia-led government, officials said yesterday, a move that would amount to a long-awaited political breakthrough. Getting the Accordance Front to return to government after it quit nearly a year ago is widely seen as a key step in reconciling feuding factions after years of sectarian conflict. Sunni Arabs have little voice in the current cabinet, which is dominated by Shias and ethnic Kurds. Asked if the Front was set to rejoin, spokesman Salim Al Jubouri said: "Yes. Many of our demands have been executed ... sharing of responsibility,...

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military is to hand over security control of the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Anbar province to Iraqi forces in the next 10 days, a US military spokesman announced on Monday."The handover of Anbar is expected to take place in the next 10 days," Lieutenant David Russell told AFP, declining to provide an exact date.Anbar would be the tenth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed back to Iraqi forces by the US-led coalition amid a push to transfer security control of the entire country back to Baghdad.Anbar province in western Iraq, the country's largest,...

Democrats no longer talk of the 18 benchmarks for measuring progress in Iraq because so much progress has now taken place. Way back in the dark days of 2007, when the only popular question about the Iraq war concerned the degree of tragedy, Congress’s Iraq “benchmarks” were all the rage among Democrats. Every argument against a continued U.S. presence in Iraq was constructed around the Maliki administration’s apparent inability to meet the political and security-based milestones as outlined by America’s Democratic-majority Congress. Then something happened. The gains of the troop surge allowed the Iraqi government and citizenry to implement the...

Nancy Pelosi(D-San Francisco) is the third in line for the Presidency. How is it that she gets away with such nonsense as crediting the goodwill of the Iranians for the surge in Iraq? This woman is Not too swift, illinformed , dangerous and a very loose unite. (Audio Included)

Fallujah is strange, sullen, wild-eyed, badass, and just plain mean,” writes Bing West in his 2005 war chronicle No True Glory. “Fallujans don’t like strangers, which includes anyone not homebred. Wear lipstick or Western-style long hair, sip a beer or listen to an American CD, and you risk the whip or a beating.” Fallujah has been Iraq’s bad-boy city since at least the time of the British in Mesopotamia; even then, travelers were warned to stay out. More recently, Saddam Hussein recruited some of his regime’s most ruthless officers from Fallujah. Even though it was a quieter city than most...

General cites recent rise in violence and urges senators to halt troop withdrawals for at least 45 days this summer. WASHINGTON -- Arguing for a continuing U.S. troop presence, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told Congress today that the recent flare-up of violence across Iraq demonstrates that recent security improvements are "fragile and reversible." The top U.S. commander said that troop reductions begun in December should continue through July, but that withdrawals should halt after that for at least 45 days. Petraeus said that further cuts would depend on progress in security, leading Democrats to charge that that Petraeus was...

One of our most faithful readers writes from Baghdad, where he is serving as an officer in the Army Reserve: I'm back over here for my fourth Army Reserve stint since 2004. What a difference a year makes. In late 2006 and early 2007, just after surge had been announced, many commentators and thinkers -- in uniform and out -- thought that Anbar was hopeless, a lost cause. Just google "Anbar Lost" to see what I mean. Nowadays, it has been weeks since we lost a soldier in Anbar. More incredibly Iraqi Army units, composed of Anbari Sunnis, have deployed...

Pelosi calls Iraq a 'failure' By: Mike Allen February 10, 2008 01:16 PM EST House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.” “The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.” The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.” Pelosi’s harsh verdict is a reminder of the dilemma for Democrats as...

<p>It has been a frustrating year for the Democrat-controlled Congress.</p> <p>They came to power on an anti-war ticket but have so far failed to change the course in Iraq or bring American troops home.</p> <p>Despite holding the purse strings, attempts to cut funding for the conflict have been met with the President's veto and an inability to raise enough votes to overturn it.</p>

The great thing about the Web is that we can easily RETRIEVE embarrassing information about the candidates. In this case, a video of Joe Biden loudly putting his foot in the mouth earlier this year about the "inevitable" failure of the Surge was posted on YouTube by none other than Joe Biden himself (JoeBidendotcom). This video was posted on YouTube on March 14 of this year so this bloviating Senate speech by Biden was made on or before then. Notice how the Democrats are now RELUCTANT to talk about Iraq? That is because the Surge has been an astounding...

US 'kills key Iraq al-Qaeda man' Abu Maysara was said to be a senior figure in al-Qaeda in Iraq A man killed during fighting in Iraq last month was a key figure in the al-Qaeda in Iraq movement, the US military has said.Abu Maysara, a Syrian, was a senior adviser to the group's leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a statement said. Abu Maysara died during a raid near Samarra and was identified using DNA evidence, the military said. Separately, US military officials say they regret the killing of an Iraqi civilian during operations on Monday. The militant Abu Maysara and...

The San Francisco Chronicle, newspaper of the liberal elite from the West Coast capitol of the far left, is making some astonishing observations today regarding Iraq: Is the troop surge in Iraq working?If it is, the battleground at home could shift in ways unthinkable just two months ago: President Bush could be off the ropes and Republicans back on offense. The Democratic Congress and presidential candidates could lose their footing on their biggest issue. And U.S. troop commitments and war funding could be set on a higher, more permanent trajectory.… There is no question that violence in Iraq has ebbed...

Map of Salahadin province and the Za'ab Triangle region. Click map to view. As al Qaeda in Iraq attempts to reestablish its networks in the Northern provinces, the Iraqi military and Multinational Forces Iraq have been shaping the battlefield in the north for a showdown with the terror group. Iraqi and US forces received a big boost the past week when a significant number of Iraqis formed a Concerned Local Citizens group in the region. Meanwhile, the Islamic Army of Iraq in Mosul has vowed to dig in and fight the Coalition. Iraqi and US forces have been focusing...

BAGHDAD, Nov 27 (KUNA) -- Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis. Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular. His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq. The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis. Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of...

Image from recently released Al Furqan / Al Qaeda in Iraq execution video. Click to view. After nearly a two month lull in videos released by Al Furqan, al Qaeda in Iraq's primary propaganda arm, two new videos of attacks on US forces have been released over the past three days. Al Qaeda in Iraq is attempting to reestablish its propaganda presence in Iraq, while Multinational Forces Iraq is seeking to dismantle the network. "Despite the recent loss of numerous cells across Iraq, the media wing of al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) has produced a second video product,...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Hundreds of Iraqi refugees boarded buses for home on Tuesday in the first convoy from an Iraqi-funded effort to speed the return of families that fled the country's violence and insecurity. Many Iraqis have headed back on own their own from Syria and elsewhere as extremist attacks have fallen sharply in Baghdad and other areas. But now the Iraqi government is hoping to accelerate the flow - and draw more attention to the recent drop in violence - by offering to pay for trips home. The program also seeks to win favor from neighboring countries such...

Iraqi forces can now gather intelligence and go after targets as successfully as U.S. units there, a senior intelligence advisor in the region said today. Iraqi intelligence gathering and processing has progressed at the tactical level to the point that target information is collected, processed and approved and then sent to Iraqi units, who go after the target. The cycle is successful in yielding results about 30 percent of the time. That is about the same as U.S. efforts, said Daniel M. Maguire, the senior intelligence advisor and director of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior intelligence...

Iraqis who fled their country because of the war are returning by the hundreds of thousands to Iraq from Syria, Egypt and Jordan because of the improved security.  Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is providing the free bus and flight travel: Residents welcome their relatives who have just returned from Syria after arriving in Baghdad November 21, 2007.   REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud (IRAQ) The return is dramatic. Baghdad has been transformed:  Iraqi refugees are returning home in dramatic numbers, concluding that security in Baghdad has been transformed. Thousands have left their refuge in Syria in recent months, according to some estimates. The Iraqi Embassy is organising...

Violence in Iraq has fallen at a rate that has surprised military commanders and even one of the architects of the “surge” that boosted US troop numbers in the country this year, according to figures gathered by the US. The figures show the numbers of suicide attacks, roadside bombings, mortar and other attacks on US forces and on the Iraqi population have more than halved since 30,000 extra troops in June. The military attributes the decline to the surge, the spread of local ceasefire deals across Iraq, a ceasefire by radical Shia militias and an improvement in the Iraqi security...

BAGHDAD, Nov. 19 — Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad. Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. *snip*The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35...

The New York Times finally discovers a breaking news story from Iraq -- that life has improved as a result of the surge. Well, for most of the rest of us, that hardly qualifies as breaking news, as we have tracked the decline in violence and the rise of commerce for the last three months. The Paper of Record catches up today with a front-page story and even an accompanying interactive graphic: The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of...

A few weeks ago, in Britain's Prospect magazine, the paper's foreign editor, Bartle Bull, published a bold essay saying that the high tide of violence in Iraq was essentially behind us and that the ebb had disclosed some interesting things. First, the Iraqi people as a whole had looked into the abyss of civil war and had drawn back from the brink. Second, the majority of Sunni Arabs had realized that their involvement with al-Qaida forces was not a patriotic "insurgency" but was instead a horrific mistake and had exposed their society to the most sadistic and degraded element in...

‘Historic occasion’ highlights increased level of cooperation from former foes. BAGHDAD — Sunnis in Baghdad are signing up in large numbers to join Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces — a sign, according to the U.S. Army, that Sunnis here are keen to follow the path to peace taken by their kinsmen in Anbar province. On Thursday, dozens of young Sunni men showed up for an Iraqi security forces recruiting drive at Joint Security Station Cougar, a base in Baghdad’s Sadiahy neighborhood that is home to Company F, 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry (Stryker) Regiment and several hundred, mostly Shiite, Iraqi police officers....

Englisgh Version:********************************************* Yesterday a joint US-Iraqi force with help from local anti-al-Qaeda awakening fighters in the Adhamiyah district in northeastern Baghdad found and disarmed more than 20 vehicles rigged as VBIEDs in a parking lot. This is a great find by any standards but the timing makes it all the more significant.The significance comes not only from the quantity of bombs, cars and other resources that al-Qaeda has been denied the ability to use. It comes from the amount of frustration they have to deal with right now that all these preparations and resources are lost. What makes me think...

The same day Multinational Forces Iraq reported it had killed Tha’ir Malik, the emir of Tarmiyah, Coalition forces fought a major battle against the terror network in the city. Twenty-five al Qaeda in Iraq operatives were killed and 21 captured after Coalition forces conducted a series of raids west of the central Sunni city searching for senior al Qaeda leaders. The term “Coalition forces” in Multinational Forces Iraq press releases usually is referring to Task Force 88 or The Task Force, the special operations hunter-killer teams assigned to dismantle al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership. The scope of the battle and...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military is sending 3,000 soldiers home from Diyala province, the second large unit to leave Iraq as troop levels are cut after a 30,000-strong "surge" earlier this year. Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, will not be replaced by a new unit when they leave the ethnically and religiously mixed province north of Baghdad by January, military officials said on Tuesday. Instead, troops from the larger 4th Striker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, located near Baghdad, will take over the area, said military spokeswoman Major Peggy Kageleiry. "Most of the (brigade) will...

BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents asked the United States to stay away, and then ambushed members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said yesterday. more stories like this A Baghdad neighborhood returns to lifeThirty bodies found in mass graves near BaghdadThousands of Baghdad residents returning as violence dropsFriday Iraqi death toll near record low US helicopter opens fire in Iraq The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that US helicopters keep out of the area because its fighters...

The invasion in Iraq was always a gamble in that it gave al Qaeda a cause to fight the "crusaders" in the heart of the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has called the U.S. a "paper tiger" in the past, and predicted the U.S. would shy away from combat in Iraq once the fighting got tough. And the United States came perilously close to a forced withdraw from Iraq at the beginning of 2007, but changed its counterinsurgency strategy and encountered dramatic results. The upside of the Iraq invasion was that an open confrontation with al Qaeda in Iraq forced...

Bronxville, N.Y. - In yet another sign of trouble for Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden publicly conceded that his like-minded militants in Iraq "made mistakes." In an audiotape broadcast by Al Jazeera this week, he sounds deeply anxious about the survival of Al Qaeda in Iraq – a group that is largely independent of his own organization but adheres to a similar ideology. Al Qaeda's top leader appealed to Sunni Arab tribes and other armed Iraqi Sunni groups to stop fighting Al Qaeda members and unite against the real enemy – the US-led coalition. Al Qaeda in Iraq faces growing...

Al Qaeda in Iraq on the Run Maybe the U.S. Congress will save it? By Clifford D. May Al Qaeda is on the horns of a dilemma. Last month, some 30 of its senior leaders in Iraq were killed or captured. Now, Osama bin Laden faces a tough decision: Send reinforcements to Iraq in an attempt to regain the initiative? That risks losing those combatants, too — and that could seriously diminish his global organization. But the alternative is equally unappealing: accept defeat in Iraq, the battlefield bin Laden has called central to the struggle al Qaeda is waging against...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's request for nearly $200 billion more to fund the Iraq war will not be approved unless it is linked to a plan to bring home U.S. combat troops by January 2009, the head of the House appropriations committee said on Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT Rep. David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, told a news conference his panel would not even consider the war funding request until early 2008, by which time he estimates funding for military operations will have run out. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently outlined the request to Congress.Obey said he and other Democrats...

WASHINGTON - The House takes up legislation today that would require President Bush to submit a plan for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. ADVERTISEMENT The bill would require the administration to report to Congress on the status of redeployment plans in 60 days. Follow up reports would be required every 90 days thereafter.Initially, Democratic leaders considered the bill too mild and instead focused on tougher measures that ordered troops home this fall. But those measures didn't pick up enough Republican support. The latest bill doesn't set any timetable for a withdrawal and Republican leaders have said they will not...