Iraq update:
The look on Donald Rumsfeld’s face lately has not been a happy one. As the Bush Administration and its defenders try to pretend that the war in Iraq is not going badly, the reality is that things are getting worse with little hope for a solution in the near future.
Viceroy Jerry has asked for 50,000 troops to maintain his rule. There’s one small problem with that. There aren’t 50K to give. The US military is nearly at the end of it’s deployable strength and needs to withdraw the 3ID as soon as possible.
We are rounding up people in their sleep and taking 10 AK’s in battalion and brigade sized sweeps. Use the combat power of a US battalion to grab, what, five sleepy guys and their rifles and the attacks grow? There may be up to one million potential guerrillas and supporters. Not only that, but the kids are tossing rocks and laughing at our wounded and dead. We are losing the population more and more each day.
The fatal error of Bush’s “Bring ’em On” comment is that besides its cheap talk and bully posturing, is that it isn’t true. We cannot handle what they’re throwing at us. We don’t know who they are and we aren’t killing them in number. They wound and kill Americans every day and escape. They aren’t being killed.
>>”Daily Kos”:http://www.dailykos.com/archives/003273.html#003273
Note also that a Shi’a Iraq could be dangerous also for the strong Iranian pro-democracy movements, which have been rocking the nation for a month.
Even now, in many cities, the iranian Pasdaran and Bassij militia counts a good percentage of arabs (iraqi shi’a or lebanese). Joining these militiamen has no appeal and attraction for the ordinary people, they simply hate them. I expect the number of the “foreign” troopers grow in the case of a shi’a Iraq.
Even a stunning scenario: Iran becomes secular and anti hezbollahi after an internal revolutionary bloodbath, and the Iran-Iraq war restarts with reversed sides!
“No country is going to send their troops to be bullet sponges. Kill 25 Dutch troopers and their parliament will flip out. ”
So true, it is ridiculous that we dutchies send people over there…. They will slaughter us…. but apparently our administration wants their names in the history books.
Mike Furir Mike 155
hi nice site.