Red you are one well read dude I have to give you that. This is one of those threads that could go on and on and not get anywhere, wait, is that Iraq? Hmmm anyway. Regardless of why, when, good G2 or bad G2 (thats intel for you non military folk) the bottom line is we are there. This is only an opinion but the one reason that I can think that we are still there is to stop iraq from becoming annexed into iran. That would be true terror and the bad thing is I'm not sure it can be stopped at this point. You are correct amigo in that as soon as we leave (whenever that may be) the shia are going to get theirs. We figured that out when I was there in '03. It will take generations, a few of them for there to even be a glimmer of hope that the sunni won't be wiped out there. They are PISSED. That crappy little town I spoke of in an earlier post, it's about 20 square blocks and has a population of over 400k, all shia. No sewage, it all just runs into the street. No water, no power it's a sespool. If we had to patrol that dump during rainy season we ordered boots before we left because you cut them off at the dumpster, there was no cleaning them. 35 miles up the road is a neighborhood much like ones you find in downtown suburbia, big houses for families of 4-6 where the shia were stacked upon each other. Just another snapshot as to what it's like there. That sort of stuff doesn't pass easily for them as it shouldn't. They were exiled to places like this by saddam. Yeah, they are pissed. However, they ALL wipe their a$$ with their hands, and clean their hands with the paper so what can we really expect. Here is to the sanctions getting that idoit taken out of power in iran.
If any of you are interested in seeing this toilet you can find it on google earth. Start at baghdad, zoom in just a little and follow the tigris north till you find khalaf al ja' ata. The crap hole is just east of there. I put the little hand in the middle of the map and it read 33(deg) 32'50.75N and 44(deg) 24'41.17 E can you tell I'm bored? Digging up stuff like that?
Ahh this has been a really good debate, no one has answered the question of what the mission is today. So we will keep it going. The mission now is to save face, what makes it even worse is our economy is in shambles, which makes people say well we could have use that money for healthcare or helped the economy. I am against pulling out everybody at once, they will create more disaster.
Chew on this quote a bit.. Ugh "War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much." President Bush March 19, 2008
Just the opportunity to post my favorite Iraq War quote. George Bush the Elder understood the obvious consequences when he wisely decided not to invade Iraq in 1991 when we had a 500,000-man army on the ground. In his 1997 memoir "A World Transformed" he said: "Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs... . We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... there was no viable 'exit strategy'. Had we gone the invasion route, The United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." Do you suppose Dubya never even read his dad's book?
Chuck Hagel comments on the war.. Republican Senator http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23721893/ Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate's strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems "a reckless foreign policy ... that is divorced from a strategic context." Hagel, who's been a harsh critic of the war since 2003, writes that the invasion of Iraq was "the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence." The Vietnam veteran said he had hoped the lessons from that war would give the nation's leaders perspective before troops were sent to Iraq. "To the astonishment of those of us who lived through the agony of Vietnam, these lessons were ignored in the run-up to the Iraq War," he writes. Hagel said Vice President Dick Cheney and others "cherry-picked intelligence" and used fear to intensify "war sloganeering." During visits to the Middle East in December 2002, Hagel said, Israel's top security officials asked, "Do you really understand what you are getting yourselves into?" Hagel said Bush personally assured him that he would exhaust diplomatic avenues before committing troops to Iraq. The senator said he voted for the war resolution based on those assurances, but regrets the vote because it's now clear that lawmakers were presented with lies and wishful thinking. Last year, Hagel was the only member of his party on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's decision to dispatch an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq. "There is no strategy. This is a pingpong game with American lives," Hagel said at the time.
Shane, if your not to doped up by now, I have a question about the war. This recent outbreak of fighting in Basra, has me confused. Now the militas are fighting for power in this city, I hope I am correct. What is the USA strategy for something like this. Shouldnt there be a big offensive by the US Military to put an end to this. Or is it to difficult to really know who you are fighting against to do this. Or would it be a police type exercise, where you try to stop the fighting amongst these groups? Help me out here.
To tell you the truth I haven't been following it a lot, but if it's what I think it is it has to do with the muktad al sadr clown. He runs the mahdi militia and they are a huge pain in the ass. All the stuff I mentioned earlier about the IP's being out in front of us telling the thugs that the US was coming. They are all mahdi. Huge shia influence. Here is another reason why it is so difficult to take these people down. Back in the day when the formings of the new iraqi govt were underway it allowed for different "factions" if you will to become political parties. Thats all this group did. They went from a terrorist group to an offical political party with the stroke of a pen, AND threw a big dome over top of their HQ and called it a mosque so now we can't go in and raid it. What you are asking is tough for me to answer though, at one point there was a cease fire with the mahdi. Not sure if that is still in place or not. We could take them down, but you are getting into upseting what little balance they have and I'm not in a position to make those calls. Hope that helped, if not, pm or call me.
