Iraq Study Group Reaches Concensus

reporter writes to point us to a story in the Washington Post reporting that the Iraq Study Group has reached consensus and will issue its 100-page report on December 6: 'The Iraq Study Group, which wrapped up eight months of deliberations yesterday, has reached a consensus and will call for a major withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.' The Post mentions that first word of the panel's conclusions came from the New York Times yesterday. The Times points out that it is not clear how many U.S. troops would come home; some brigades might be withdrawn to Iraqi bases out of the line of fire from which they could provide protection for remaining U.S. operations.

Comments

The Reverse Vietnam

[krell]

"shifting the U.S. role from combat to support and advising"

That's how we got into Vietnam.

Re:The Reverse Vietnam

[xoyoyo]

You've spotted the Chimp's cunning plan. If this thing goes like Vietnam in reverse then the step after "military advisors" is handing it over to the French.

Re:The Middle East is the new Southeast Asia

[krell]

"Personally I wish we (the US and its allies) would formulate a common long term plan (good or bad) and just stick to it."

Personally, I'd rather they not stick to any bad plan. Why would anyone possibly want that? What has "sticking to the same plan no matter what" brought us for the lasdt 3 or so years?

Iraqi's are slow

[otacon]

Didn't most of the U.S. (government aside) reach this consensus in like 2003?

In other words

[smooth wombat]

what the study group is recommending is "cut and run" or possibly, "cut and walk".

Not that it really matters since Bush is already planning to ignore what the study group says. He'll just continue to "Stay the course".

Re:In other words

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

what the study group is recommending is "cut and run" or possibly, "cut and walk".

Not that it really matters since Bush is already planning to ignore what the study group says. He'll just continue to "Stay the course".

You are correct. Bush will ignore what the panel recommends and force the next president to do it.

I considered myself to be pretty much a "yellow dog Republican" prior to this election. For you non-USAers, the short explanation of this term means that you would vote for anyone, even a yellow dog, as long as they run under a particular party's banner. I have to give the Republicans credit that whoever invented the "cut and run" statement was able with 3 words to stop all rational discussion of the issue by turning it into a debate on cowardness. All anyone has to do is say "cut and run" and rational debate is over because it's now been shifted into an emotional issue. What finally did it for me and made me vote Democrat a few weeks ago was that I concluded that Henry Kissinger is right that Iraq is not winnable in a conventional sense. More troops won't shore up the porous borders around Iraq that allow the non-stop flow of weapons that are fueling the Shiite-Sunni civil war. The Republicans try to fear monger that the second we leave, Al Queda will come in, but I finally concluded that we aren't stopping Al Queda right now anyway, so why are we still there?

Unfortunately I didn't realize this until after the 2004 elections where I foolishly voted for Bush, but I finally figured out last year exactly why he does what he does. There is a small subset of people who see the world in black and white. He is one of those people. Most people don't see the world in black and white, so they don't know what it is like to deal with these people because there aren't a lot of them. People who see the world in black and white don't agonize over any decisions. They make their minds up very quickly and rarely change them. If they do change them, they go completely to the other side. Ever heard of former smokers who now compaign non-stop to stop everyone, everywhere from smoking? That's kind of how these people are when they change their minds. The biggest problem with these people who see everything in black and white is that they are completely unable to see the viewpoint of anyone who disagrees with them. It's because to them, everything is crystal clear and it's so clear that if you don't see it that way, you must be crazy. Any dissenting words are just "crazy talk" and their minds are completely closed. This is why Bush says things like "If you aren't with us, you're against us." He sees everything in black and white. Once Chaney and Rumsfield and a few others convinced him that Iraq had to be invaded, it was game over. He'll never back down because to him, it's all crystal clear that he was right to go to Iraq and to leave is wrong. I'm amazed that more people don't understand this about Bush. Once you grasp how he sees the world, it's not difficult to understand what he'll do. It explains why he refuses to talk to North Korea except in those bogus "6 party talks". He's made up his mind that the 6 party talks are the only way to resolve it and he can't conceive of a one-on-one approach because that's "crazy talk". Bush is never going to remove troops from Iraq because to him, the issue is clear cut. He's right, his opponents are wrong, end of story.

Re:In other words

[smooth wombat]

Glad to hear that you've finally seen the light. As a fellow GOPer (registered as such but not necessarily in political agreement) I have long not voted the party line but rather for the person. I even worked for Perot when he ran which I'm sure put me on some GOP hitlist. :)

As far as Bush and Cheney are concerned, there are numerous blogs, articles and whatnot out there which describe how people like Dennis Feith and other hawks are manipulating things to make the U.S. the sole power in the world. Not just superpower, militarily, but power as in "We'll tell you what to do" power.

Certainly some of these writings are from conspiracy wackos but others are written by seasoned journalists who document and provide evidence for everything they write. In fact, this article from Asia Times Online, discusses Bush's willingness to ignore both the Study Group recommendations and his avoidance of talking with Syria and Iran.

Let me put it this way. When I first heard Bush say that Iraq had wmds I knew he was lying. I knew Iraq didn't have all these tons of weapons lying around nor have the capacity to produce any such weapons on a moments notice.

Which begs the question: if I knew there were no weapons there, how could this administration not have known there were no weapons there? Further, even when the UN inspectors were doing their inspections (contrary to what some people have said never took place), the U.S. was giving them specific sites to inspect because we "know that he [Saddam] has them" yet not one facility ever produced any evidence that banned weapons were there. That should have sent red flags up all over the place so either Bush ignored these warnings and was determined to "stay the course" or he had already made up his mind to invade Iraq before this whole thing started and the case for wmds was simply a front.

What is really disturbing is that by January or February of 2007, more american lives will have been lost in Iraq than were killed on September 11th. Put another way, Bush, by his actions, will have killed more americans than did Bin Laden. You do remember Bin Laden, don't you? The guy Bush has called irrelevant.

I will make this prediction. Before Bush leaves office, the vast majority of troops will have been pulled from Iraq so Bush will be able to (again) declare, "Mission Accomplished". It will then be left for the incoming president to figure out a way to extract the remaining troops, under fire no less, and not make it look like a retreat. Thus, the onus of failure will not taint Bush's record for posterity, regardless of the facts.

Advice on reading fringe pro-bias sites.

[krell]

"When reading The Washington Post, always consider the diametric opposite position from whatever agenda the WaPo pushes. Consider http://newsbusters.org/node/6863 [newsbusters.org]"

Reading Newsbusters is as valuable as reading FAIR.org. These so-called "watchdogs" are lapdogs of media that share their own fringe biases, and they bite the media just for not sharing their opinions and political bias.

Perfect. The French save face too!

[krell]

" If this thing goes like Vietnam in reverse then the step after "military advisors" is handing it over to the French."

It's a perfect plan. The French get a lot out of it too: since it is running backwards, the typical French retreat ends up looking like the French charging into victory. "Cheese-vomiting conquest monkeys" indeed!

News just in from Fox News

[pubjames]

Speaking from the Whitehouse lawn, President George Bush made a surprise statement today.

"Today's report from the Iraq Study Group has highlighted something that has been on my mind for sometime - my Iraq strategy has failed. I think the right thing for me to do is to apologise to all those people who, during the build-up to our invasion, warned me both publicly and privately that my strategy was unsound and the basis for it wrong. Members of the U.N. weapons inspectors - Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, I would like to apologise to you for deliberately undermining you. Jacques Chirac - Jacques, you were right, and I'm sorry that my adminstration went out of their way to mock you. My good friend Tony Blair, who chose to stand by me even when I acted like a bully and knew you had deep reservations about my decisions. To all of you, I hope you accept my sincere apology."

Re:My plan for Iraq

[AoT]

I'm not as worried about the Shiite dominated area. I think that, in the long run, Arab/Persian tension will keep them from being dominated by Iran. It would be nice to have alternative leadership for the Shiite world.

You should be worried, of course given your apparent dearth of knowledge about the region it is no surprise you see it that way. But here's the problem: Saudi Arabia also has Shi'a areas. And, surprise, surprise, those area have oil. You separate the Shi'a in Iraq and they get a base of operations to foment resistance to the Saudi regime.

As for the Sunni area? They basically become irrelevant, especially since Baghdad will become Shiite. The Saudis will likely step in and offer some sort of support to stabilize this area.

Wow, tacit approval of ethnic cleansing, nice.

All in all you seem to miss the point, the US in reality has no say on whether Iraq splits or not, there is and will continue to be a civil war which will decide these matters.

Word of advice from old British Empire...

[fantomas]

"Divide Iraq into three regions"

Word of advice from the British Empire: things get really sticky later on down the line when outsiders draw lines on maps and tell locals how it's going to be.

Re:Word of advice from old British Empire...

[misanthrope101]

You're talking to an audience who is never, ever wrong, and who do not feel that the intractible, insoluble problems faced by every other great power in history apply to them. Every objection to the invasion of Iraq--that Saddam didn't have WMD, that Saddam wasn't involved with Al-Queida, that the invasion would destabilize the region and make terrorism worse--have proven true, and still they think they were right all along.

Iran wanted Saddam removed because they want a Shia superstate. This little gem of an idea was on the news for about 10 minutes a couple of years ago, when the Pentagon opined that Chalabi was an Iranian double-agent who duped the US with bad intel so Iran could foment a regime change to destabilize the region so the Shia majority could take control. But when the news agencies realized that they were saying that the entire Executive Branch of the US Government had been suckered by selective intelligence into doing the bidding of a known sponsor of terrorism, the story sort of dried up and went away. We're still working for Iran and Israel. Two masters, though with incompatible ends, but both being served by our own Wilsonian idealistic crusade mentality. It's an interesting, if depressing, situation.

Why we are really there.

[tjl2015]

I supported the conflict initially, but have since come to realize how foolish this little adventure was. Ultimately, we were duped into believing we could do the impossible. The main problem is that Iraq is an artificial state, with little real unifying history, religion, or any common identity. It was created by the European powers at the end of World War I, following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. It was created arbitrarily, for the sole convenience of the Western powers, with complete disregard to ethnicity and religion. THAT's the problem with Iraq. This is a problem at the very root of society. You can't drop some troops in there, and expect a vibrant, healthy democracy to just magically spring out of the Euphrates.

I think occupations can create democracies, by holding a diverse group of people together long enough to develop a common identity. It was done by some European powers, take India for example. The problem is that this sort of colonialism takes a large-scale occupation, much larger than we have now, for a time span of MULTIPLE DECADES. This is economically, strategically, and politically impossible in the modern era.

In order to hold this unstable country together, you either have to be a brutal dictator like Sadam or act like the freaking Romans. I suspect if every time a US soldier was killed we rounded up and killed 500 random people, the resistance would end quite quickly. However, any nation created this way will only last as long as that threat of force is present.

Ultimately, I think the people in charge of this whole charade knew this was going to happen all along. In the minds of the neocons who started this whole thing, the people of Iraq are just one piece in a puzzle. You'll notice lately that US troop casualties have been falling while Iraqi casualties have been rising. This is because our troops have been retreating to fewer, larger bases, performing fewer daily patrols, and patrol in more heavily armored convoys. The insurgents have gone for easier targets, Iraqi army members, and mainly, innocent civilians. Sunnis fight Shiia, Shiia fight Sunnis, the Kurds just want out entirely, and everyone wants a piece of the non-uniformly distributed oil resources.

I think the military is really content to sit back and watch as Iraq destroys itself, while the US troops serve their purpose, guarding the valuable oil pipelines. For the people in charge, as long as the crude is flowing, the whole country might as well just drop dead. Also, the troops presence serves a second important function. By having a large troop presence in the center of the Middle East, the pentagon intends to keep Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and all the major powers in line. While our boys on the ground fight for their lives trying to help the Iraqi people, the people at the top are looking at grand strategic goals.

And that is why we went there in the first place. Not WMDs, not democracy, not anything else. Our troops are there to stabilize Iraq's oil flow, and to keep the whole region in line, stabilizing the larger oil supply. The Iraqi people are meaningless. Our troops will be behind high walls and thick armor, while the rest of the country degenerates into pure chaos.

Re:Why we are really there.

[tjl2015]

What I meant by that is that when the British came into India, India was divided into dozens of tiny, warring states. How do you think a tiny island nation was able to conquer hundreds of millions of people? Simple, divide and conquer. By playing the divided states against each other, they slowly took over the whole subcontinent. Before the British came, there was no real, unified Indian identity. Yes there had been a few earlier governments, like the Guptas and Mughals, but these were EMPIRES, not NATIONS. The central government did little more than collect taxes from local princes/governors, and served only to surpress rebellion or prevent foreign incursion. At the time of the British arrival, India was divided into seperate, completely independent states. People identified with whatever little kingdom they lived in.

When the British left, there was a unified Indian identity. Sure, there was still the Hindu/Muslim clash, but the country was divided into 3 nations, not 50. This is not some grand endorsement of colonialism, however. The main thing the British did was merely provide stability and modern communication and transport. The same thing could have been done if one of the earlier Indian states acquired foreign technology and conquered its neighbors.

The lesson of the British in India is that a national identity cannot be created artificially, it can only develop naturally. It took TWO CENTURIES for this to take effect. The British enforced peace, provided a common language (their own, conveniently for them), and built railroads. This allowed people to move about with much greater ease, blurring the divisions between regions and slowly, naturally forming a kind of national identity. Now India is still a very diverse country, and it was only thanks to its early leaders that it was able to hold itself together, but the early leaders of modern India built upon the previous national identity.

Yes, the British did create unity in India. However, it must be mentioned that they did so purely for their own benefit. They took control of the national economy, and turned what had once been a world-leading, self-sufficient country with a vast manufacturing capability, into a colonial economy focused on providing cheap raw materials for foreign export. It's certainly debatable whether India would have been better off with or without British interference.

The whole point is that you can create a national identity, but only by a very long-term occupation, brutally surpressing any resistance. It was worth it for the British because they harnessed the entire Indian economy for their benefit. We would not do that in modern times not only because it would be morally reprehensible, but because we would have the entirety of the Muslim world trying to bomb US soil, not just a few pissed-off radicals. (You think things are bad now, imagine if Bush announced tommorrow that all Iraqi oil revenues and tax revenues were being confiscated, that numerous home-grown industries would be prohibited, and that Iraqi citizens would be legally required to buy a whole host of manufactured goods exclusively from US companies.)

As far as Northern Ireland goes, that's a whole diffent ballgame. The nation of Ireland existed prior to foreign intervention. Also, in the minds of people like the IRA at least, the opposing group and the occupier were one and the same. In India, the British could at least present themselves more as neutral arbitors. In Northern Ireland, the resistors at least saw it as the British, working for the advancement of British citizens, living in North Ireland. It's hard to create a common identity with your neighbor if you view him as a foreign occupier.

Re:Shhhhhhh

[AoT]

Never mind that it's technically impossible for them to lose,

Hmmm, never thought of that. I guess since we don't have any goals in Iraq then it's impossible to fail at those goals, ergo we cannot lose.

Good god man, you're a genius.

Call the white house.

It's a Civil war

[tentimestwenty]

The Iraqis may be slow but the problem is that the whole country was used to a dictator and it took someone that strong and tyrannical to overcome the religious and ethnic differences between the people. Take away the order of the dictator and nobody knows what to do or to expect. You'd be moving slowly too if you'd never experienced democracy and lacked the overwhelming government infrastructure required to make it work. All we have now is lawlessness, and no clear roles for people or groups. Naturally all the thugs and zealots are struggling to get whatever power they can and it has turned into a civil war. In my opinion, the Iraqis are not going to pull it together by themselves because 1.) they have no experience 2.) the disruptive forces are much bigger than the calming forces and 3.) there's no help from their neighbours or anyone in the world. The only way to avoid a 100 year civil war is to have the UN go in with 50,000 peace keepers along with a coalition of middle east leaders (honest ones) and work for 5-10 years on setting up a functioning government and infrastructure. The chances of that happening are next to zero. Bush wrecked the country

Re:Shhhhhhh

[syphax]

There's something in the American psyche these days that demands they leave every job half done.

That's convenient.

There is/was something in the American Administration that demanded that it botch every single aspect of Iraq war planning, from the general idea (Al's a threat! Let's attack Iggy!), to the lack of a plan to keep the peace (as the Shinseki episode so cleary demonstrates).

It may be hard for you to understand, but some people oppose the war, and did so from before the start, because it was a bad idea, poorly implemented.

this should be interesting

[misanthrope101]

After being entertained for years by the notion that to leave Iraq, or pull back, or draw down, or really anything other than what Bush was doing would be "cutting and running" and "emboldening the terrorists," I'm curious to see how Bush pulling troops back will be called something other than cutting and running. My guess is that they'll (they being neoconservatives) declare victory and trumpet Bush's genius, then lament the incompetence of the new Congress in letting Iraq descend into civil war.

Since we never really had an objective, it would be easy to declare victory no matter the outcome. Disarm Saddam of his WMD? Done--before we even arrived! Regime change? Done. Would've been done sooner, if we hadn't armed and financed him, but let's not dwell on fine points. Pay him back for his support of Al Queida and his role in 9-11? Er, okay, bad example.

But PR can do anything. All they have to do is say "We won! Bush is a great leader!" and trumpet it over and over and over and over, while acting indignant that anyone would ever suggest that Bush, Cheney, and the neoconservatives bear any responsibility at all for anything bad that happened in Iraq (though we can credit them for every flower that bloomed, it seems) and eventually people will come around. If there is ethnic cleansing and tens or hundreds of thousands killed in internecine war, it's not as if the US population is going to sit down and say, "well hell, our President is responsible for that." People consider themselves and the government they voted for responsible for the noble things they meant to do, not what they did. A school opened and a child got a puppy? That's because of George Bush, God bless him. That kid gets killed later that day by a rocket? Not us, Bub. This isn't new--how many Americans felt responsible for the Khmer Rouge? How many Americans care that American financiers helped Hitler? There won't be a reckoning, because there never is. It's too easy to pat ourselves on the back for our nobler motives, and ignore what our decisions actually resulted in.

Re:Shhhhhhh

[replicant108]

They've been calling the war a "quagmire" since, what, week 2?

The fact that this "war" was unwinnable was obvious to the majority of the world's population before it even started.

Re:Shhhhhhh

[AoT]

Try ignoring the media and talking to your soldiers some time if you want a realistic picture of how things are going in Iraq.

Sure, I'll run right over there and ask them. Or maybe I'll check our some picture they can no longer send. Oh, wait I know I'll ask someone who is essentially *ordered* to have a positive outlook how things are going.

Maybe you need to go ask an Iraqi how things are going.

Question is...

[mauledbydogs]

Who, exactly, are they going to support? The current government is a barely functioning coalition of religious factions, several of which have their own private armies. The only thing stopping them going hammer-and-tongs at each other are the US forces.

Re:Shhhhhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Try ignoring the media and talking to your soldiers some time if you want an unrealistically optimistic picture of how things are going in Iraq.

There, fixed it for ya.

Not that I trust the media either, but asking soldiers? Here, let me tell you in advance how it's going to play out:

"You mean I just spent the last X months (years) of my life away from my family in this god forsaken dust bowl getting shot at, not knowing when the next IED is going to go off, seeing my buddies get killed, maimed or shell shocked, all for nothing?"

Nobody wants to think they've endured all that pointlessly. So they'll continue to cling to the notion that this fight can be won, or that civil war can be averted. Otherwise, their sacrifice is meaningless - and that is a thought too hard to bear. To ask a soldier is to get the answer that victory is attainable, because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about.

(Note: The above is not an endorsement of either the media coverage, or the opinions of any political party. I think they have their own biases and agendas too.)

Re:Shhhhhhh

[daem0n1x]

I live in that tiny little place caleed "the rest of the World", and I can guarantee you this war was considered a disgrace ever since your president started talking about it. Face it, nobody bought Bush's crap outside of the US, in spite of the great effort from our media corporate machine to convince us otherwise.

Only some right-wing politicians (and Blair, the poodle) gave their approval, but they would suck the American President's dick any time, no matter who he is or what party he belongs to.

You should regret it

[HangingChad]

I do think that the aftermath of the military victory was handled poorly.

This is the latest right wing talking point. Don't admit it was a brain dead idea from the beginning, blame the execution. They're trying the same arguments about Viet Nam. It wasn't the intent, it was the execution. It's setting up Rumsfeld to be the patsy and gives the Republican Congress a pass on not doing anything resembling oversight. Where was all this brilliant insight during the build up to the war?

Divide Iraq into three regions. Kurdistan in the north, which would include the border areas around Mosul, the northern oil fields, etc. A central/western Sunni Arab area, and a southern/eastern Shiite Arab area, including the southern oil fields.

ROFL! That's almost as good the pre-war planning. You just alienated Turkey with the independent Kurdistan idea and gave the Kurds a nearly infinite supply of money to fund Kurdish separatists with the oil field revenue. You alienated one of our better allies in the region and funded ongoing instability in a formerly stable region. Off to a great start.

The Saudis will likely step in and offer some sort of support to stabilize this area.

You got that part right but if you think the Saudi money will go to fund stability you need to put the crack pipe down. The Wahhabis supply most of the really freaky, unstable radicals in the region and there's a good chance the bulk of those funds would end up in the hands of Al-Qaida. Everyone who thinks leaving the Sunnis to depend on the most radial elements of radical Islam for funding please raise their hand.

'm not as worried about the Shiite dominated area.

You're not worried about setting up an Islamic regime run by a radical strong man with ties to Hezbollah? Now I know you're high.

You are right that there's no avoiding a civil war at this point, mainly because it's been going on the last year and half. And you're right that we're not going to fix what's broken with the exercise of military power. Pull our troops back to over the horizon bases...an idea which John Kerry suggested and Bush poo-poo'd. Situate those bases so our guys can help control traffic across the Saudi and Iranian borders. Not that leaving Syria and Jordan borders unguarded is a bright spot, but you have less than 100K troops to work with and that's all you can do. Turn over management of our continued presence to the special forces generals instead of regular Army, which was another huge mistake that tends to get glossed over. But when you have so many screw ups to pick from, it's easy to miss one or two.

Thanks, Slashdot

[mrn121]

I have read obituaries that have been more positive than slashdotters' comments on the Iraq War. I know it doesn't look great, but what looks even worse is if this whole country obsesses over how bad it all looks instead of remaining confident and positive.

Established facts:
1) There were no WMDs
2) We all thought there were WMDs
3) We are currently in Iraq
4) Most of us think we should not have gone in the first place, largely based on what we know now

I am tired of disputing these topics. We are there, right now, regardless of why, and whether or not you did support/would have supported the invasion. Let's get past that and talk about what to do now to try and make the best of this. This report (which, BTW, none of us have actually read) allegedly starts from the present and tries to figure out the best course of action from this point forward, and I applaud that. I just wish that some slashdotters could do the same thing.

We get it, you hate George Bush. He is not (by a long shot) my favorite president either, but that shouldn't matter right now. Can we grow up and move on to actually accomplish something, or do we need to keep pointing fingers and accomplishing nothing?

Re:Thanks, Slashdot

[QCompson]

2) We all thought there were WMDs

I'm tired of disputing these topics too, but when people make blanket statements such as this, I find it difficult to sit back idly. We all didn't think there were WMDs. I saw Colin Powell's presentation to the UN concerning the threat Iraq posed to the world. It was shite. Showing pictures of double-wide trailers, give me a break. During the whole lead-up to the war, the administration (IMO) seemed to be grasping at straws, trying their very best to convince americans that Saddam was the biggest threat the US was facing. It was all Bush would talk about at the time.

Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector, was on the talk-show circuit in 2003, disputing the administration's claims that Iraq had WMDs.

You want to move forward, fine. You want to work to find solutions to this mess, fine. But don't rewrite history, and don't tell me what I did or did not think.

the new plan

[blurker]

The plan is to stay in Iraq until the last helicopter leaves the embassy rooftop...

Re:Shhhhhhh

[clickclickdrone]

I'd say it was true. heck, Bush snr even said it - it's in his Biography that he counciled his son against it.
Some nations need strong, nay extreme leadership to keep them together because they're so volatile. Saddam was a nasty piece of work but he was at least reasonably predictable. As one Iraqi noted in an interview, at least under Saddam he knew if he did x, y or z he'd get tortured and maybe killed. Now he fears that just for going down the shops.
It's a huge mistake to assume everyone in the world feels and thinks like we do. They do not and htings that might seem trivial to us are big deals for them and vice versa. Sometimes these people need someone who is a bit of a psycho to keep a lid on things and we are now seeing in Iraq what happens when rule with a rod of iron is taken away. Something similar happened in Yugoslavia, strong domineering leader dies, everything goes to crap and people who apparantly got on with each were suddenly at each others throats.

Re:Shhhhhhh

[mstahl]

What the grandparent post was saying, but I guess a typo got in the way of the message coming across, is that at least in America it's *really* difficult to get objective information about how the war in Iraq is going. Each news source might have a different idea about it, might be talking to different officials that, yes, are ordered to stay on message, or might have ulteriour motives that prevent it from delivering unbiased information. In addition, yes, soldiers and media are extremely limited in what photographs they're permitted to send back home.

Where do you get this shit from?

Why do you think it is that all the *retired* generals in the US army seem critical of the war in Iraq? Once they're retired they're no longer under orders to stay on message, and the message that the administration has chosen is that everything's under control. It isn't, and I think most people accept that there's little possibility of it getting under control the way things are going now. I've talked to soldiers, I've read blogs, I've done enough research to satisfy myself that the "quagmire" of Iraq has turned into a "shitstorm" and it's time to get out.

Re:Shhhhhhh

[hachete]

People like Richard Perle seem to think that Iraq is an unfolding disaster:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/1 2/neocons200612

The neo-cons - the architects of the ideology if not the actual war - are cutting loose like no one's business. They seem to think the war is going badly, and they're blaming the chimp.

And even if you don't believe the figure of 100,000 people fleeing Iraq every month, that it mught be 50,000, or even less, it's still people going gone get. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6158847.stm

Dead bodies found:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6160117.stm

more killed. every day, yet more.

If this is victory

Re:Well the one I asked

[Chris Burke]

The soldier I asked was pretty drunk, but I figure we can forgive that since he was discharged due to losing his right leg above the knee from a roadside bomb.

If you see him again, buy him a beer for me.

This is something we don't hear about very much. I was deeply distrubed when the news and government started to only report U.S. fatalities. Every other report of war I'd ever heard talked about casualties, as in soldiers taken out of combat by death or injury. It sounded very suspicious -- the numbers sounded fairly low (at the time) relative to other conflicts, but all I knew about other conflicts were casualties, which are always several times higher than the number outright killed. Yet those numbers weren't being mentioned, making it sound like a deliberate attempt to hide the larger and thus more depressing number.

So as we cross past the 3,000 mark of dead coalition soldiers, we have 46,000 non-mortal casualties. Not all of those are crippling injuries, but nevertheless we're going to be seeing a whole lot more soldiers like the one you met. Especially like that, since the roadside bomb taking out a soldier's legs but not killing them seems to be the most common mode of injury.

I hope to God all those people who support this war will "Support the Troops" when they see one sitting at the traffic light on a board, no legs, holding a sign that says "Iraq vet, need food and work" and drop the man some cash. I know I will.

Figures are from http://www.icasualties.org/oif/