Iraq: Things keep getting worse

Posted September 19, 2004 to World category.

Weve lost this war. We've literally lost entire swaths of Iraqi territory to the insurgents. We've empowered Al Qaida and Islamist militants with new recruits and pictures of prison torture and rape to fuel their cause. We''ve stretched our military thin, hurt recruitment, made it impossible to respond to actual threats.

In short, this is the biggest political and military blunder this country has faced since -- I'll let the historians decide when. But as things are going, this is going to have worse repercussions for our nation than Vietnam ever did.
>> Daily Kos

Or as a Newsweek headline put it, Its worse then you think.

Things are really getting out of hand in Iraq. It was always a thankless job which the American's undertook, and by the time the American's leave the Iraqi's will be throwing brickbats at them:

...As much as ordinary Iraqis may hate the insurgents, they blame the Americans for creating the whole mess.

This is so far removed from Bush & co's confident predictions of being received as liberators and going out as heroes. The strangest thing about the whole matter is that the polls still show strong support for Bush.

And the losses aren't only in Iraq. Al Qaeda has regrouped. The invasion of Iraq, intended to demonstrate American power, has done just the opposite: nasty regimes around the world feel empowered now that our forces are bogged down. When a Times reporter asked Mr. Bush about North Korea's ongoing nuclear program, "he opened his palms and shrugged."
>> New York Times: Paul Krugman - Taking On the Myth

Bush I, in a 1998 speech to Gulf War veterans: (via Daily Kos)

Had we gone into Baghdad -- we could have done it, you guys could have done it, you could have been there in 48 hours -- and then what? Which sergeant, which private, whose life would be at stake in perhaps a fruitless hunt in an urban guerilla war to find the most-secure dictator in the world? Whose life would be on my hands as the commander-in-chief because I, unilaterally, went beyond the international law, went beyond the stated mission, and said we're going to show our macho? We're going into Baghdad. We're going to be an occupying power -- America in an Arab land -- with no allies at our side. It would have been disastrous.

Just about anyone with any sense knew this... so where does that place the current US president?

More depressing links:

I would post more, but all the news out of Iraq is bad. Even the WMD straws Bush and co. keep trying to desperately clutch at like rats on a sinking ship have been officially declared missing in action:

Charles Duelfer, the CIA -appointed leader of the weapons hunt, was still finalizing the roughly 1,500 page-report, which was expected to say no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons were found, the sources told Reuters.

From Back to Iraq, which is actually on the ground in Iraq:

I don’t know if I can really put into words just how bad it is here some days. Yesterday was horrible — just horrible. While most reports show Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra as “no-go” areas, practically the entire Western part of the country is controlled by insurgents, with pockets of U.S. power formed by the garrisons outside the towns. Insurgents move freely throughout the country and the violence continues to grow.

I wish I could point to a solution, but I don’t see one. People continue to email me, telling me to report the “truth” of all the good things that are going on in Iraq. I’m not seeing a one. A buddy of mine is stationed here and they’re fixing up a park on a major street. Gen. Chiarelli was very proud of this accomplishment, and he stressed this to me when I interviewed him for the TIME story. But Baghdadis couldn’t care less. They don’t want city beautification projects; they want electricity, clean water and, most of all, an end to the violence.

Then there's that other war, still going on. Whither Afghanistan?

The war-devastated nation is once again at risk of falling hostage to narco-terrorists, warlords and unlawful rulers thanks to the policies of the Bush administration.

1 Comment

| Leave a comment

If any one thinks we lost this war you guys should gojoin those Iraqi Bastards over there when we send them all to hell

Leave a comment