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Diamond
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quote: I'm not the one who claims to have conversations with soldiers.
And I am sure that you do not. They see attacks on them declining. They see people returning to the streets. They see people willing to give them advise on terrorists. Streets that were unsafe a month ago are open to people, and merchants are back in business. People are coming out and talking to them, and feeling better about being in the open. |
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| Posts: 3165 | Location: From the Mountains to the Sea. | Registered: 06-08-02 | |
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Diamond
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One would be good. Just one quote from the guys you talk to. quote: They see attacks on them declining. They see people returning to the streets. They see people willing to give them advise on terrorists. Streets that were unsafe a month ago are open to people, and merchants are back in business. People are coming out and talking to them, and feeling better about being in the open.
Is that a quote from soldiers you talk to? It looks exactly like the stuff you've been posting from the Internet sources avialable to us all about the isolated successes of the surge. I guess the two things could sound similar. If it is a quote from an actual soldier, could you make that more explicit? Charles you have not posted quote after quote from soldiers; you have posted quote after quote about soldiers. I'm not sure that you see the difference, but there certainly is one. |
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Diamond
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quote: Is that a quote from soldiers you talk to? It looks exactly like the stuff you've been posting from the Internet sources available to us all about the isolated successes of the surge. I guess the two things could sound similar. If it is a quote from an actual soldier, could you make that more explicit?
Jeez! I completely give up. Are you just trying to wear on my patience or are you truly that ignorant? Either way, I truly have had it with you. You just want to spin things because they are not going your way. You are never satisfied, and nothing will change that, Make your comments that I am sure you will make about my ability to answer, but that is not going to change anything. You ask what they are saying, I tell you, then you tell me its not so. If you know so much, answer your own damn question. I have answered your question. You can take it or leave it. Don't bother to ask again. |
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| Posts: 3165 | Location: From the Mountains to the Sea. | Registered: 06-08-02 | |
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quote: Originally posted by newnickname: One would be good. Just one quote from the guys you talk to. quote: They see attacks on them declining. They see people returning to the streets. They see people willing to give them advise on terrorists. Streets that were unsafe a month ago are open to people, and merchants are back in business. People are coming out and talking to them, and feeling better about being in the open.
Is that a quote from soldiers you talk to? It looks exactly like the stuff you've been posting from the Internet sources avialable to us all about the isolated successes of the surge. I guess the two things could sound similar. If it is a quote from an actual soldier, could you make that more explicit? Charles you have not posted quote after quote from soldiers; you have posted quote after quote about soldiers. I'm not sure that you see the difference, but there certainly is one.
Seems your feeling your own doubt. Just admit it, you will feel better. |
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| Posts: 133 | Location: Calif. | Registered: 08-01-07 | |
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Diamond Enthusiast
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A snippet:
August 24, 2007
More Iraqis Said to Flee Since Troop Rise
By JAMES GLANZ and STEPHEN FARRELL
BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 — The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the partition of the country into sectarian enclaves.
Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show.
The data track what are known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni regions to the west and north.
Though most displaced Iraqis say they would like to return, there is little prospect of their doing so. One Sunni Arab who had been driven out of the Baghdad neighborhood of southern Dora by Shiite snipers said she doubted that her family would ever return, buildup or no buildup...
And another:
Report finds Iraqi government precarious
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 5 minutes ago
The Iraqi government is strained by rampant violence, deep sectarian differences among its political parties and stymied leadership, the nation's top spy analysts concluded in a sobering assessment released Thursday.
With the country teetering between success and failure in the next year, Iraq's neighbors will continue to try to expand their leverage in the fractured state in anticipation that the United States will soon leave, the new report found.
It predicted that the Iraqi government "will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months" because of criticism from various Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions. "To date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively," it said.
There was a glimmer of backhanded hope for the Iraqi leadership in the often dark analysis: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will continue to benefit from the belief among other Shiite leaders that "searching for a replacement could paralyze the government."
The new National Intelligence Estimate was an update of another high-level assessment prepared six months ago by the top analysts scattered across all 16 U.S. spy agencies. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency were the key contributors to Thursday's report, which found some security progress but elusive hopes for reconciliation among Iraq's feuding groups...
We can argue forever. Time will tell who's right about whether it's all "working." Quoting a soldier here, another there, doesn't add all that much: where we have troops, things are better; where the insurgents went to avoid them, things are bad as ever; worse. Without political progress, we can stay as long as we want, and nothing will get better. All the signs point to political failure; as predicted by people who knew the area before bush invaded it. Including, years earlier, cheney. But here we are, arguing from afar. Time will tell. Is telling.
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| Posts: 1505 | Location: Puget Sound, USA | Registered: 06-03-02 | |
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Diamond
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The comments on internal displacement support the idea that certain areas are relatively peaceful because the people there are now, through violent 'cleansing', all of one ethnicity or sect. That might keep things peaceful enough for Bush to leave office without having to face up to what he has done, but it hardly bodes well for the future of Iraq. On another thread, Scotty, you said, "Some young Marines that I knew would have hurt someone that made unwanted advances toward them, I know because they told me so." That's the kind of thing I'm looking for; that you tell us what some soldiers, or one soldier, has said to you about Iraq and the surge, in just the same way as you did there. That quote has the ring of authenticity - it seems like a genuine soldiers' perspective, not available in any number of snippets or summaries from the websites you direct us to. Can't you give us just a little glimpse of what soldiers are saying to you? I'm pretty sure it doesn't sound like a journalist's writing. Would a soldier really be likely to say to you "Streets that were unsafe a month ago are open to people, and merchants are back in business"? Nobody talks like that. Why do you keep prevaricating? I don't know anyone in the US army. If someone asked me now what US soldiers think about the surge, I'd have to point them to that piece written by the seven guys you keep dismissing. It is actually the words of soldiers. (I might also mention there's a couple of posters on a forum who say they know what soldiers are saying, although they seem incapable of telling us about it in a simple, straightforward and manly fashion - but who'd be interested?) |
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quote: Originally posted by newnickname: The comments on internal displacement support the idea that certain areas are relatively peaceful because the people there are now, through violent 'cleansing', all of one ethnicity or sect. That might keep things peaceful enough for Bush to leave office without having to face up to what he has done, but it hardly bodes well for the future of Iraq. On another thread, Scotty, you said, "Some young Marines that I knew would have hurt someone that made unwanted advances toward them, I know because they told me so." That's the kind of thing I'm looking for; that you tell us what some soldiers, or one soldier, has said to you about Iraq and the surge, in just the same way as you did there. That quote has the ring of authenticity - it seems like a genuine soldiers' perspective, not available in any number of snippets or summaries from the websites you direct us to. Can't you give us just a little glimpse of what soldiers are saying to you? I'm pretty sure it doesn't sound like a journalist's writing. Would a soldier really be likely to say to you "Streets that were unsafe a month ago are open to people, and merchants are back in business"? Nobody talks like that. Why do you keep prevaricating? I don't know anyone in the US army. If someone asked me now what US soldiers think about the surge, I'd have to point them to that piece written by the seven guys you keep dismissing. It is actually the words of soldiers. (I might also mention there's a couple of posters on a forum who say they know what soldiers are saying, although they seem incapable of telling us about it in a simple, straightforward and manly fashion - but who'd be interested?)
I am glad you and yours finally agree the surge is working. What was it that finally convinced you? |
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| Posts: 133 | Location: Calif. | Registered: 08-01-07 | |
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Diamond
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quote: Originally posted by newnickname: It seems that when you read about some isolated successes, or progress in certain areas, Charles, you understand it to mean "it's all going just fine; the plan is working". I guess you're not alone in that failing; going back to that Clinton quote that started this latest spat - MSNBC, NY Post, Drudge falsely claimed Clinton said "surge" is "working". Some reaction to the 'seven soldiers' article on a military forum - An article on the surge.
Who said everywhere, only you have said that. But we know, even Clinton knows the surge is working. Clinton: Iraq Tactics "Working. We're Just Years Too Late"... August 21, 2007 10:21 AM http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/21/clinton-iraq-tactics-wo_n_61272.htmlSpeaking to a veterans group, Clinton undercut claims, including her own, that President George W. Bush's troop buildup would not work. "It's working," she said, but "we're just years too late." Seven months ago Clinton had predicted that the surge "cannot be successful." She said it. |
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| Posts: 133 | Location: Calif. | Registered: 08-01-07 | |
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Diamond
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Sigh. From the link above: 'Clinton actually said: "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas -- particularly in Al Anbar Province -- it's working. We're just years too late changing our tactics."'In some areas, Charles. Even those successes may be illusory: 'Where population displacements have led to significant sectarian separation, conflict levels have diminished to some extent because warring communities find it more difficult to penetrate communal enclaves.' thinkprogress.org |
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Diamond
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quote: Who said everywhere, only you have said that.
Page 4 - NNN: Yes, "isolated" successes. Scotty: Certainly not! Success throughout the whole Country.If you don't think that the surge is, on the whole succeeding, but only in certain parts, then what are we arguing about? Is it simply that you are optimistic and I am pessimistic about the bigger picture? |
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Diamond
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quote: Originally posted by newnickname: 'VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)..' The War as We Saw It
Am I alone in thinking that the whole link cited is a wonderful illustration of the very high standards of literacy and learning, including some notes on history, attained by men who are sergeants or staff sergeants in the US army? (Or maybe not  ) Taken as a whole, the piece reads very differently from anything which we would expect from non-commissioned men in the British army.Heavens, none of them would know who Janus was and so 'Janus-like' would be lost on their peers. And that's quite apart from the high standard of the vocabulary and style in general. Another link in this thread is the 'Spiegel' link. This is from the offices of Der Spiegel, a German magazine. Has nobody got any pieces from American news magazines, such as Time or Newsweek, upon which they can rely? Whichever way we wish to interpret it, prima facie anything in English in Der Spiegel has been processed or recorded by a German speaker, to his or her understanding, for use in a German magazine and the whole text written first in German. |
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| Posts: 8679 | Location: Newmarket, UK/ Antibes, S.France | Registered: 07-14-02 | |
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Diamond
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Yes, Charles - "it" means the surge, and "in some areas" means "in some areas". It seems that when you read about some isolated successes, or progress in certain areas, you understand it to mean "it's all going just fine; the plan is working".
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Diamond
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I guess it comes down to the difference between "the surge is working" and "the surge, in some areas, is working".
That seven soldiers' article suggests that the surge may be working in some areas, but won't achieve its goals. It won't "work", in the sense of "be, on the whole, successful". On the other hand, several Bush cheerleaders and a truncated quote from Clinton suggest that the surge is working. Which do you choose to believe?
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quote: Originally posted by newnickname:
Yes, Charles - "it" means the surge, and "in some areas" means "in some areas". It seems that when you read about some isolated successes, or progress in certain areas, you understand it to mean "it's all going just fine; the plan is working".
Yes the plan is working. |
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| Posts: 133 | Location: Calif. | Registered: 08-01-07 | |
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quote: Originally posted by newnickname:
I guess it comes down to the difference between "the surge is working" and "the surge, in some areas, is working".
That seven soldiers' article suggests that the surge may be working in some areas, but won't achieve its goals. It won't "work", in the sense of "be, on the whole, successful". On the other hand, several Bush cheerleaders and a truncated quote from Clinton suggest that the surge is working. Which do you choose to believe?
What is your point, the surge is working. |
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| Posts: 133 | Location: Calif. | Registered: 08-01-07 | |
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