Posted on 11/18/2007 7:55:35 PM PST by devere
We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we're hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw. No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe. Al-Qaida has been driven from every neighborhood in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander there, said Nov. 7... Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone. Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians. "Iraq has proved to be the graveyard, not just of many al-Qaida operatives, but of the organization's reputation as a defender of Islam," said StrategyPage... You may not be aware of the calamities that have befallen al-Qaida, because our news media have paid scant attention to them... Rich Lowry agrees. "The United States may be the only country in world history that reverse-propagandizes itself, magnifying its setbacks and ignoring its successes so that nothing can disturb ... the 'narrative of defeat,'". If what Mr. Peters, Mr. Benedetto and Mr. Lowry suspect is true, it must have pained The Associated Press to see a correspondent write Wednesday: "The trend toward better security is indisputable." It'll be interesting to see which newspapers run the AP story, and where in the paper they place it. "We've won the war in the real Iraq, but few people in America are familiar with anything other than its make-believe version," said the Mudville Gazette's "Greyhawk," a soldier currently serving his second tour in Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
“So, the moment a Tom Tancredo or someone like him gets into a position of power makes a statement like this, how do you think that might strike our moderate muslim allies we have worked so hard for four years to develop?”
I think it might strike them that they’d better do something to control the extremists. Their religion mandates pilgrimages to Mecca, so they would have a strong incentive to make sure that their holy city stays safe.
Seems to me that President Bush has been telling us this since about late 2001. As for the Saudis, they can take a number and have a seat. Their turn will come.
You and I disagree, then.
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