Let me be the first to shout out “QUAGMIRE! SECTARIAN VIOLENCE! Harry Reid told me the war is lost! The surge failed!”
/lib rant
LA Times? Heart be still. What will Nancy and Harry do if one of the big liberal newspapers declares victory in Iraq?
*sigh*
Poor LA Times... they can't even get basic reporting correct. It's called CLC (Concerned Local Citizen groups)! That's okay, us FReepers knew about this MONTHS ago!
Liberal news. Months late and dollars short.
How Bush is screwing up the quagmire ping.
Thanx for the post.More good news from Iraq.
Sunni and Shi’a religious leaders signing the unprecedented “fatwa against violence” will give clear evidence the troop surge, applying counterinsurgency warfare principles, provides the security General Petraeus envisioned. He said, “The object is to improve security for the people of Iraq in order to give Iraqi leaders the time and space they need to come to grips with tough political issues.” Sheikh Ahmed al Kubaisi and Ayatollah Sayyid Ammar Abu Ragheef will sign a fatwa becoming statutory authority for all Iraqi Shi’a and Sunni believers. These senior religious leaders for Iraq also have tens of million followers throughout the region.
Yet they are too astute to far outstrip their followers’ dispositions, because neither has armies or police forces to compel behavior. In their estimation, Iraqis are sufficiently ready to use government institutions to solve tough political issues, that they can in turn risk their positions of moral authority in a manner never attempted in all history. They risk Muslim community stature when most Iraqi legislators, moderate local political and spiritual leaders, and sheiks are just now relaxing from thoughts dominated by assassins stalking them and their families. These leaders rely upon our security reinforcing emerging moderate constituencies, which can facilitate and/or force consensus on formidable issues of de-Ba’athification, energy sharing, provincial laws/elections, and amnesty.
The extraordinary courage displayed by these two men should not be subject to displays of “Ugly Americanism” in resolutions setting arbitrary, Westernized timetables for troop withdrawals.
BTTT