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Tag: Iraq War (Page 4 of 6)

More carnage in Iraq

August 15, 2007 /

Is anyone surprised?

U.S. officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and commanders have warned they expected Sunni insurgents to step up attacks in a bid to upstage the report.

Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said last month that he proposed reducing American troop levels in Ninevah and predicted the province would shift to Iraqi government control as early as this month. It was unclear whether that projection would hold after Tuesday’s staggering death tolls.

A fifth-grader could have predicted this. We’ve been doing the same thing in Iraq for years. Sure, the tactics have improved dramatically where we have our soldiers, but we have never had enough troops, and we will never have enough troops. We work on an area, and then the insurgents move to another area. Nothing has changed.

Early in the war, hawks like McCain argued that we needed more troops. Bush ignored them and the commanders on the ground (ho only listened to the ones that told him what he wanted to hear). Despite Bush’s incompetence and a flawed strategy, McCain and others stuck with Bush. Then they supported this foolish surge.

This situtation will not be resolved militarily. How many times do we need to be reminded about this?

Iraq War

Elizabeth Edwards takes shots at Obama

August 14, 2007 /

I’m a big fan of Elizabeth Edwards, but her latest shots at Obama are a little silly.

Mrs. Edwards added that any divide in the Democratic party this year among the candidates is the difference between “actual Democrats and rhetorical Democrats.”

“Sometimes it seems we have these beliefs but it turns out it’s like a Hollywood set: It’s a facade and there’s no guts behind it,” Mrs. Edwards asserts in the interview, “You listen to the language of what people say, particularly Obama, who seems to be using a lot of John’s 2004 language, which is maybe not surprisingly since one of his speechwriters was one of our speechwriters, his media guy was our media guy. These people know John’s mantra as well as anybody could know it.”

“They’ve moved from ‘hope is on the way’,” the potential first lady concluded, “to the ‘audacity of hope’. I’m constantly hearing things in a familiar tone.”

So Edwards was the first politician to use the word “hope” in his stump speech? Give me a break.

Here’s another lame shot:

And while Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., was in the Illinois state legislature and not the Senate in 2003, Mrs. Edwards equally questioned his motives.

“Obama gives a speech that’s likely to be extraordinarily popular in his home district,” Edwards said, “and then comes to the Senate and votes for funding… so you are going to get people behaving in a holier-than-thou way.”

Obama was right on the war, and he was planning a run for the Senate. His opposition to the war was not popular, and to suggest he did it for political motives is absurd.

I applaud John Edwards for apologizing for his vote, but frankly we all deserved that apology. Edwards was a complete robot during that process. He didn’t question anything. He didn’t read the full National Intelligence Estimate. He was also planning a run for the Presidency. And yet Elizabeth Edwards has the gall to challenge Obama on this? It’s ridiculous.

Iraq War, President 2008

Fighting terrorists as we leave Iraq

November 14, 2006 /

Newsweek’s Christpher Dickey has been one of the nest reporters covering the Iraq War from the beginning. If you read his columns, you knew that the chest-thumping and rosy scenarios coming from the Bush administration were not to be believed.

As we look for an exit strategy from this mess, Dickey explains how our withdrawel is playing around the world. The facts are grim – the terrorists will be emboldened.

Terrorists will indeed believe that all this is a triumph for their God, their vision, His design. But the United States and its friends would be repeating one of the egregious mistakes that got us into this sorry mess if we allowed the bad-guys’ opinions to dictate our strategy and tactics.

The signal error of the Bush administration was to embrace the terrorist rhetoric of war, and then to militarize a conflict that should have been handled all along as a matter for the police, the intelligence services and public diplomacy. The struggle ought to have been focused as a fight against malicious individuals, not their aberrant ideologies, against small criminal groups, not the vast civilizations they claim to represent. (A report from the James A. Baker III Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations in 2002 tried to make this point before we went into Iraq, but alas …)

Dickey again presents a powerful argument. We have to be smart about our counter-terrorism techniques.

Foreign Policy, Iraq War, War on Terror

The question of hearings

November 8, 2006 /

We’re starting to hear the pundits explain why the Democrats shouldn’t start holding hearings and issuing subpoenas. Idiots like Lanny Davis are making this case, arguing that the Democrats shouldn’t make the same mistake that the GOP made in the 90’s when they mercilessly investigated Bill Clinton.

Certainly, there is potential for abuse of this power, but the differences between now and 1998 are very stark. We are three years into a disastrous war, and the GOP has done little oversight over the past six years. The investigations of Bill Clinton seem trivial compared to the isues facing us today.

The leadup to the Iraq War and the prosecution of the war were marred by deception and incompetence by the Bush administration, not to mention tremendous waste and likely war profiteering. It is the duty of the Congress, regardless of party affiliation, to investigate these matters. The public will accept it, and embrace it, if it is done in a fair manner. Republicans like John McCain, John Warner and Lindsay Graham will support responsible inquiries as well.

The Democrats have no choice – they ran on the need for oversight; now they must deliver.

Democrats, Iraq War

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