The Sunday Times is reporting that Britain will pull out virtually all her troops remaining in Iraq by this year end. Senior commanders have drawn up plans to that effect. These are expected to be approved by Gordon Brown, the incoming Prime Minister.

Innings closed

How are you Americans getting on in your bit?

Hopefully, our bit will be to do whatever is best for the whole Country and its people. It is easy to start something and then run away from it, but is it the right thing to do? I don't think that it is personally.

"How are you Americans getting on in your bit?"

We have a way to go before we completely destroy the country. Give us at least until January 2009.

The plan is right on schedule, America is being dismantled as a democracy and the military, fascist regime has got everything under control.

quote:

Originally posted by Scotty:
Hopefully, our bit will be to do whatever is best for the whole Country and its people. It is easy to start something and then run away from it, but is it the right thing to do? I don't think that it is personally.

If it's best for the whole country, shouldn't the whole country share in deciding that?

I've been thinking about the "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons you see on so many cars in this country. It must be obvious that there isn't a great deal of thought or concern that goes into these things, other than a desire to convince the casual observer of our - - - - - what exactly?? Patriotism, jingoism, indifference to the terrible cost of American and Iraqi lives? Other than providing a new source of income to the people who manufacure such things, what possible purpose could they have? Those of you who have and display such devices may wish to explain your reasons, but here's what I think about the whole issue:

If a war is ever to be enetered into by a democratic nation, whether in self defense or pre-emptively, it must never be fought by mercenaries. The youngsters with little prospect of affording education beyond high school, and with little hope for employment above the hamburger flipping entry level; are being sold a bill of goods. They are called "volunteers" and receive training in the science and art of killing other youngsters, then sent to risk their lives and limbs for the benefit of - - - -whom? Are the people who decide to send these disadvantaged youngsters to be killed and maimed doing anything other than hiring mercenaries to serve their own questionable motives? Every one of the young people killed or maimed is much more than a single "volunteer" who chose to "serve his country" , he or she has a couple of parents, twice that number of grandparents, up to eight great-grandparents, a spouse, several siblings, and even one or several offspring. Damned few of that gang "volunteered", but all of them have to share in the cost. Shouldn't they share in the initial decision?

I believe that if our nation ever goes to war, the costs and burden should be shared as equally as possible by all elements of the population, not by the comfortably wealthy hiring the poor to do the heavy lifting. I think we might do well to adopt the Swiss model of universal military training/service for purposes of maintining a "standing army" and ready reserve so that all of our citizens have an equal share and investment in our defenses, including whether or not to enter into any avoidable conflicts.

It certainly would have been better if the US administration had thought about what was best for Iraq before destroying its infrastructure, wasting billions in reconstruction money, allowing Kurdistan to secede, doing nothing to forestall the entirely predictable sectarian bloodbath...

Possibly, if there had been some kind of compulsory military service, the administration would have had to think twice about its invasion, and could have concentrated on effective anti-terrorism policies.

Going back to the original question, having built the world's biggest and best-defended embassy in Iraq, the US probably isn't leaving soon.

In today's NYT there's an article that begins thusly:

Iraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory

By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD

PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.

The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.

It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.

Most famously it happened to a former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, who tried to flee after a military coup in 1958 by scurrying through eastern Baghdad dressed as a woman. He was shot dead. His body was disinterred and hacked apart, the bits dragged through the streets. In later years, Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party crushed their enemies with the same brand of brutality.

“Other Arabs say, ‘You are the country of sahel,’ ” Razzaq said. “It has always been that way in Iraq.”

But in this war, the moment of sahel has been elusive. No faction — not the Shiite Arabs or Sunni Arabs or Kurds — has been able to secure absolute power, and that has only sharpened the hunger for it.

Listen to Iraqis engaged in the fight, and you realize they are far from exhausted by the war. Many say this is only the beginning...



The point is this, I think: in this horribly ill -advised invasion, bush has unleashed forces the stopping of which is impossible, unless we stay there in force, forever. Even then, it's pretty obvious that we can't stop it: we can only make it a slow death rather than a cataclysmic one. It seems to me that bush ought to stand before the world and admit he's done something truly horrible, and apologize for it. He ought to say that as terrible as it is, the US -- having unleashed this monster -- does not choose to allow it to destroy us and therefore to our shame we will leave and let the chips fall where they may. He ought to ask that those in the neighborhood do what they can; he ought to say we will retreat into our borders for awhile and spend our energies trying to atone to the world by developing solutions to the other problems facing the world. Then he ought to resign and devote the rest of his life to volunteering in an AIDS hospital in Africa, or building houses, like Jimmy Carter. In New Orleans. If he were president of Japan, we know what he'd do, if he had any remaining vestige of honor...

quote:

Originally posted by sid1114:
If he were president of Japan...

He wouldn't exist Well, you can wish...!

'On Aug. 13, 2002, the CIA completed a classified, six-page intelligence analysis that described the worst scenarios that could arise after a U.S.-led removal of Saddam Hussein: anarchy and territorial breakup in Iraq, a surge of global terrorism, and a deepening of Islamic antipathy toward the United States.

Titled "The Perfect Storm: Planning for Negative Consequences of Invading Iraq," the paper, written seven months before the war began, also speculated about al-Qaeda operatives taking "advantage of a destabilized Iraq to establish secure safe havens from which they can continue their operations," according to a report about prewar intelligence recently released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The report said the CIA paper also cautioned about outcomes such as declining European confidence in U.S. leadership, Hussein's survival and retreat with regime loyalists, Iran working to install a friendly regime "tolerant of Iranian policies," Afghanistan tipping into civil strife because U.S. forces were not replaced by United Nations peacekeepers and troops from other countries, and violent demonstrations in Pakistan because of its support of Washington.

Before the war, while the Bush administration was putting a spotlight on the CIA's intelligence on Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be wrong, it either buried or ignored the agency's more accurate assessments of the problems that could emerge in the aftermath of regime change in Iraq, the Senate report said...' www.washingtonpost.com

It was never, or only incidentally, about doing what was best for Iraq.

Prime minister. Make that prime minister...

quote:

Originally posted by newnickname:
Iraqi Lawmakers Pass Resolution That May Force End to Occupation

That there may be the best method to end this "war".