Posted on 08/19/2006 1:30:45 PM PDT by pppp
'Misunderestimating' Bush's Iraq
Amid all these problems, there is the danger of the "Hezbollah model" being adopted in Iraq. Muqtada, who has been a nightmare for the Americans since they invaded, has all the credentials to create such an organization in Iraq, modeling himself after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Muqtada is young. He is well connected in the religious establishment, he hails from a prominent Shi'ite family and he has a large following among Iraqis. Like Nasrallah, he is opposed to both the US and Israel. Like Nasrallah, he is an Arab nationalist at heart who does not want to see Iraq divided. The only difference is that Muqtada wants to establish a theocracy in Iraq.
He lacks Nasrallah's charisma, however, and the flow of money and arms from Iran. If he pulls the right strings, though, and makes wise alliances, he could receive strong support from the mullahs of Tehran - something that the Americans wish to avoid at any cost.
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
Muqtada's fatass should be taken out along with his militia this weekend!
We allied ourselves with the wrong side.
He should have been taken out last year, IMO. Or sooner. Ditto, that other fat, subhuman POS murderer, Nas-rat-shit. Or whatever. Repeat the 'Nazi Werewolves Solution' in WWII, with these islamo-fascist-nazis.
Why has this fat clown even been breathing for the last year?
The question that gets asked over and over and over...
Where's the left's evil CIA when you need it?
Once again, this same question keeps coming up: WHy didn't we take out Al Sadr? Why because the Iraqi people supported him plain and simple. Where were the protests against him holding up in a mosque? Where?
"He lacks Nasrallah's charisma, however, and the flow of money and arms from Iran. If he pulls the right strings, though, and makes wise alliances, he could receive strong support from the mullahs of Tehran"
He is already Iran's puppet. What is this writer talking about?
"The consequences of Izrael defeat may be dire."
Israel didn't lose.
"We allied ourselves with the wrong side."
What side should we have allied with?
The Bush White House PR Machine could use some improvement
Firing Squad
By John E. Carey
August 19, 2006
My friend Amir Taheri asked, “Was it Tacitus who said, ‘Defeat is an orphan while victory has a thousand fathers’?”
In fact, that Roman historian had it just about right.
Argue, if you will, that Israel is the victor in all of this. Meanwhile, we’ll assemble the firing squad.
Even Saddam Hussein has said he prefers the honor of the firing squad to the other more ignominious forms of death meted out as judgment for conduct unbecoming.
There are some simple rules of accountability in the U.S. military and in other places in the world. These can be rather ruthless as they enforce strict guidelines of ethics, personal performance and professional achievement.
The people of Israel must make their own assessment of their leaders in this war. But if the tenants of personal accountability followed by the U.S. military are enforced, there will be some changes at the top of Israel’s leadership team in the weeks ahead.We therefore briefly review some of the players during the last two months or so in Israel.
Foreign Minister
“There can no longer be militias and terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah.”These words were spoken by Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to der SPIEGEL on July 25, 2006.
This promise (or assertion?) was not fulfilled.
Moreover, Ms. Livni was absent from the United Nations in New York while that august body crafted the terms of the cease fire agreement. When she prepared to leave Israel, less than 24 hours before the cease fire was finalized in New York, the Prime Minister sent Mr. Shimon Peres instead of his Foreign Minister.
Since the war ended, she has been diligently though ineffectively lobbying United Nations diplomats in efforts to get Hezbollah disarmed. That hasn’t happened.
She has also worked hard to get a real peacekeeping force into the area between Hezbollah and Israel. That hasn’t happened.
Ms. Livni should most probably be asked to leave the government.
Defense Minister
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz should retire.
Israel lost 118 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians in the conflict that began July 12, when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.
Reservists also complained of lack of essential equipment.
There were three key objectives of the war:
--Elimination of Hezbollah’s rockets.
--Disruption or annihilation of Hezbollah.
--Return of captured Israeli soldiers.
None of these objectives were met.
The people of Israel now have a diminished confidence in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Israel’s enemies are surely emboldened that the IDF is now no longer seen as invincible.Mr. Peretz is already trying to implicate defense chiefs in his downfall. As public criticism of the war's handling mounted in Israel, the Haaretz daily quoted Defense Minister Amir Peretz Wednesday as saying top military officers did not relay all relevant information about Hezbollah's arsenal after he took office in May.
Israeli soldiers are returning from Lebanon with complaints of poor training and equipment.
And there are other controversies involving Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz but they are of no consequence. The fact that Israel waged a war so unsuccessfully, and flattened much of southern Lebanon in the process, is a responsibility that clearly rests upon his doorstep.
Chief of Staff
Senior Israel Defense Forces officers expressed dissatisfaction yesterday with the announcement by Chief of Staff Dan Halutz that he had recently instructed the Field Security Directorate at the General Staff to keep track of their telephone conversations.
According to the disgruntled officers , the chief of staff's action "stinks of McCarthyism" and reflects "pressure on the part of the head of the army who feels under siege and is focusing on minor details."
Dan Halutz is no Moshe Dayan. He lost this war as much as anyone and he needs now to step aside.
Prime Minister
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, already under fire for his handling of the Lebanon war, is facing a possible probe over a Jerusalem property deal.Olmert and his wife are to be summoned for questioning over the deal by the government's top watchdog, the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday.
But this could all be window dressing.
Mister Olmert led his nation into war and then lost the war.
Mr. Olmert’s “on again, off again” handling of the IDF manacled generals in the field. His famous 48 hour air assault cease fire was a terrific failure. By withholding the main thrust of the ground offensive to the Litani River while diplomats dithered in New York, Mr. Olmert handcuffed his generals and needlessly put lives at risk.
As Shmuel Rosner reminded Israeli readers in the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday, “This is not a Presidency - it's the constant coalition of the willing, and the weaker the Prime Minister gets, the faster he will be abandoned by his partners.”
Or, as observer Noah Pollak wrote, “To most Israelis, supporters of Israel, and especially to the IDF soldiers I spoke to on the border over the past few days, the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah that recently went into effect is viewed as a cruel indignity, a dangerous projection of Israeli weakness and equivocation, and a plucking of defeat from the jaws of victory.”
The people of Israel, we expect, will come to their own conclusions on Mr. Olmert.
On The Rise?
So who may be on the rise in Israel? Perhaps Bibi Netanyahu.Former Prime Minister and hard liner Mr. Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, currently the Opposition Leader, said this week the government needed unity but also needed a careful self-examination concerning the war against Hizbullah terrorists. He criticized the Olmert administration for not declaring an emergency situation at the outset of the war.
The former prime minister also attacked Prime Minister Olmert for not accomplishing the return of two kidnapped IDF soldiers and the dis-arming of Hizbullah.
Israel Guilty of "Misunderspinning"
Misunderspinning
By John E. Carey
August 14, 2006
President Bush is known for his malapropisms. Some are merely ascribed to the president; he doesn’t hold the copyright.
“Strategery,” a Saturday Night Live creation, became the title of a Bill Sammon book.
But these buzzwords tell us a lot of how the people in popular culture view their leaders and their world.
We might assign the new word "misunderspinning" to the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, now entering a difficult cease-fire phase.
Or for Israel: “misunderwinning.”
Israeli leaders are claiming tremendous gains, if not outright victory on one side of the border, and issuing a veiled threat on the other.
Israeli Prime Minister Mr. Ehud Olmert insisted, “Hezbollah won’t continue to exist as a state within a state.”
That assertion remains to be proven.
In fact, in Lebanan and the greater Arab world, Hezbollah is a state and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, appeared almost daily of Hezbollah TV (al-Manar "The Beacon"), and al-Jazeera during the conflict saying, "We have not been harmed." Within 24 hours before the start of the “cease fire,” Hezbollah fired over 200 missiles into Israel. Maybe as many as 250.
Since destruction of Hezbollah and elimination of these missiles were the number one and two goals of the war for Israel, according to Boaz Ganor, an Israeli expert who discussed the goals with me at the outset of the conflict, who do you think “won”?
A government spokesman said Israel came out ahead in the Lebanon war and will abide strictly by the U.N. cease-fire deal. "The situation on the ground is advantageous, the diplomatic situation is advantageous to Israel," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a brigadier general in the Israeli army, wrote in an article for the Jerusalem Post, "We created the necessary conditions to compel the international community to... ultimately turn Lebanon into an accountable, sovereign nation. If this happens, Syria and Iran would be the main losers of this war."
We’ll see.
In Lebanon, as the clock struck 8 this morning and the cease-fire commenced, the streets of Beirut were littered with a new leaflet dropped by Israeli planes saying that Hezbollah had brought the people of Lebanon “to the edge of the abyss” and brought only “destruction, displacement and death.” The leaflet warned that the Israelis could return “with all necessary might.”
Addressed to Lebanon's citizens, Israel’s leaflet said, "Will you be able to pay this price again?"
Hezbollah distributed leaflets of its own on Monday congratulating Lebanon on its "big victory" and thanking citizens for their patience during the 34-day war with Israel.
This morning, as the cease fire begins, The Washington Post features a page one story under the headline “The Best Guerrilla Force in the World.” The article is, of course, about Hezbollah.
If Israel had won, the headline might have read “Finest Fighting Force On Earth Again Prevails” referring to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
I’m really a military analyst with only ten years in the media as a journalist and even I can figure this out.
For good or bad, Israel appears to have not prevailed in their goals in this war.
Israel, and in particular, Mr. Olmert’s government, are guilty of misunderspinning and also seriously misunderwinning.
posted by John Carey at 5:20 AM links to this post
Losers: US, Israel Says the Wall Street Journal
War's Inconclusive Outcome Makes Goals in Middle East
Harder to Achieve, Many Say
By Marc Champion and Guy Chazan
The Wall Street Journal
August 14, 2006; Page A6
Israel's failure to quickly defeat Hezbollah forced the U.S. to make significant compromises at the United Nations and looks likely to leave U.S. policies in the region as well as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert damaged, according to diplomats and analysts.
Even as Israel threw thousands of extra ground troops into a major assault to clear Hezbollah from Lebanese territory ahead of a cease-fire that took effect at 8 a.m. Israel time today, analysts and diplomats said the effort may be a sign of Mr. Olmert's political desperation rather than of strength. The career politician has come under criticism that he has mishandled the month-long war by limiting the military to an air offensive, with relatively few troops on the ground.
Read the entire story:
http://extendedremarks.blogspot.com/
"Why has this fat clown even been breathing for the last year?"
my guess is that there was some sort of deal made between him and Sistani....and that Sistanis "moderate" facade to our govt was used as leverage for allowing Muqtada to balance the (then) sunni actions happening in the north and Baghdad areas. However, it looks like Muq had aspirations beyond what the US and (possibly) Sistani believed at the time. I'm not so sure Sistani and the southern Iraqu/Arab/shia would welcome Iranian/Farsi domination, but I think Muq would...
Seems an accurate assessment. Most Arab Iraqis would resist domination by Aryan Iranis.
Israel clearly lost this latest dustup in Lebanon.
Muqtada al-Sadr is going to be the Castro of the Middle East. We're going to be dealing with this clown for decades, waiting for him to croak, as he flips off adminstration after administration. Before the uprisings he was seen as an ambitious upstart with no credentials other than a famous daddy. Now he's a successful leader, cleric and popular figure, who has a large militia and public support to spare.
Sorry (not really) to be such an incesant nitpicker, but that would be "tenets," not "tenants."
I still can't figure out why that little butterball wasn't taken care of with a 5.56mm solution the first time he raised hand against the US. It would have sent the only message his ilk understand. This is one prolem we can honestly blame Bush for.
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