Posted on 08/02/2007 8:13:57 AM PDT by Austin Willard Wright
I was listening to ABC News give a newbreak on the radio. The announcer gave the top stories and said, “In Iraq today, there were four deaths.”
My inital thought was, “Okay, who died? Were they American soldiers? Were they killed in an accident? Were they killed while capturing or killing twenty terrorists? Were they innocent Iraqi citizens killed by an IED?”
The news blurb was meant to make a stupid American think, “Uh, oh! In Bush’s evil war the American death toll has just gone up by four!”
To say that I loathe ABC News is an understatement.
We continue to work with the Iraqi government to stabilize relations between fractious minorities, at least some of whom are beginning to see the futility of battling each other when they could be participating in the leadership of their own country. It's still a mess - but it is getting better, and pulling the plug at this point would result in a certain disaster. As a means of historical comparison: Germany was a mess in 1949, too.
bttt
The surge began in May: 121 deaths. June: 98 deaths. July: 71 deaths. 121 to 98 to 71. I believe 98 is 81% of 121 and 71 is 58.7% of 121 and if that is not a “down” trend, I don’t know what is. You cannot compare 2006 casualties to those in 2007 because the operational reality of this year is utterly different than that of last year. We have more troops, the Iraqis are better trained, we have the assistance of tribal leaders where we had none last year, the government is stronger, the insurgents are weaker and have fewer places to hide. And that is why the number of US deaths are down in the past three months. It may be hard to accept, but for right now, we have the upper hand.
Some new polls will show support for the War around 50% and climbing."
That's what happens when you side with the terrorists against your own country.
If I'm not mistaken, General Westmoreland asked for more troops in 1968, he was denied.
Granted Iraq and Vietnam are both different wars, but the one thing they had in common is that both wars are unpopular. Even if we are on the verge of winning it all in Iraq, the Democrats may call it quits.
By the way, I believe that the Iraqi Parliament is in recess for the month of August, despite that they still have a lot of issues to work on and we are losing patience in Washington D.C.
After overthrowing Hussein, we should have put Chalabi in charge and given him what he needed to run the country. He would have cut the requisite deals and things would be no worse than they are in Egypt right now.
Instead, the PC crowd in the State Dept and Bush's own naive stupidity has us in this position. We are screwed, and we dont even have a client over there we can rely on. After 5 yrs! What a nincompoop.
You are correct that we are in a very critical time for the was in Iraq, and things could still go either way. General Westmoreland didn’t get the troops he wanted (even though US troop strength in Vietnam peaked in September 1968 at 537,000), but even as the last US troops came home in January 1973, we had bombed the North Vietnamese into submission and a peace agreement followed. It was only when Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam in 1974 (and the USSR expanded aid to the North) that the Communists gained the upper hand.
A killing spike could also be a signal that the surge is working and the terrorist are ramping up their attacks to sway American opinion - just a thought.
We did fine last year. Lost control of the senate by one seat, but that’s typical for a president in office this long. Going soft on immigration hurt us more than Iraq ever will.
Part of the problem is that the State Dept. screwed President Bush and Defense Dept. by replacing Garner with one of their “guys” Bremer who couldn’t do the worse job with occupation in Iraq than anyone would had thought. I believe that Garner planned to keep the Ba’athist Army intact after replacing some Saddam Loyalists as commanders.
get real. Compared to Billary or Osama Obama, the GOP candidate (especially Fred) will win in a alandslide.
I agree; that too.
Don’t you just despise dims!?
LLS
Big time!
have you seen the latest polls that show support for the war increasing?
The illogical disconnect in 2003 was mind-boggling: we couldn’t have BOTH a light US/Coalition force footprint AND abolish the Iraqi military. The DoD dictated the former and the State Dept. dictated the latter. It was a recipe for disaster, and this is not 20/20 hindsight. I said so at the time, but I’m just a middle-aged keyboard babbler.
You mean the average guy is “SICK” of meaningless media headlines that are effectively enemy propaganda.
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