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Iraq 2.1
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 2:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

youwindsurf wrote:
What a cluster. Brought to you by the brain trust of W, C and R, who should be known as the Three Stooges.

No, not W. He's too effing stupid to spell "W." He was simply an available dingaling puppet that was engineered into position by a very smart cabal of extreme neo-cons, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (perhaps one of the worst of 'em), John Bolton (maybe he's the nastiest), Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, and Paul Bremer. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism)

Their fundamental philosophy is, "Nuke 'em til they glow." (Figuratively speaking.)
.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nw30 wrote:
youwindsurf wrote:
When "W", Cheney and Rummy decided to go into Iraq and try to create a democracy, anyone with half a brain knew that it would fail.

And look, it is failing. Big surprise.

How many soldiers and innocent people lost their lives over this debacle? How much money was spent on this debacle? How did ousting Saddam and creating a "democracy" provide any benefit to the US?

Saddam was a Sunni. al-Maliki (backed by the US) is a Shia. These groups have hated each other and have been fighting each other for years. A paper tiger democracy is going to make them forget their sectarian hate, play nicey-nicey and sing songs around the camp fire? Not likely.

What a cluster. Brought to you by the brain trust of W, C and R, who should be known as the Three Stooges.

I wonder how they can sleep at night knowing all of the death, pain and destruction they caused.

But what about "the just war", you know, the one that Obama said, Afghanistan? That same thing is going to happen there once Obama completes his pullout.
And by the way, more of our troops have died in A-stan and Iraq during this administration, than have died in Iraq.
Your indignation and your math doesn't add up.


NW, the left doesn't want to admit that this president has savaged and wasted our valuable American troops. More than double have died under Obama than W. Now he pulls out, but wait, he might go back? Stay tuned.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

pueno wrote:
youwindsurf wrote:
What a cluster. Brought to you by the brain trust of W, C and R, who should be known as the Three Stooges.

No, not W. He's too effing stupid to spell "W." He was simply an available dingaling puppet that was engineered into position by a very smart cabal of extreme neo-cons, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz (perhaps one of the worst of 'em), John Bolton (maybe he's the nastiest), Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, and Paul Bremer. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism)

Their fundamental philosophy is, "Nuke 'em til they glow." (Figuratively speaking.)
.


Yes, yes, the country has been moving in the right direction for the past 6 years hasn't it? Obama's approval is now as low as Bush's.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Perhaps a little balance for a change? Unlike previous wars, the US did not leave a military force behind in Iraq to bolster a rookie local military and to provide stability to a country ravaged by years of war. We withdrew completely. Left them to figure it out on their own. The vacuum created has been filled by a ruthless force led by another "angry goatherd" who was released from US custody in 2009. Two mistakes with dire consequences.
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
Yes, yes, the country has been moving in the right direction for the past 6 years hasn't it? Obama's approval is now as low as Bush's.

Obama has done a shitty job -- but very likely not as bad a job as McCain/Quitter and/or Robme/Lyin' would have done.

And it has moved in a decent direction on many things, just not as fast or as far as many would like. And he hasn't fixed the world or cured cancer. NOBODY could have fixed the incredible trashing of our country, our economy, or our international reputation overnight -- particularly considering the single-minded opposition to everything Obama from the republicans.

Before you dump on Obama's (admittedly now spotty) international reputation, remember that he was awarded the Nobel Prize simply because he wasn't Bush or a neocon.

Anyway....... what does your response have to do with my post?

Oh, I forgot. When you have no answer, you sidestep, deflect, post some irrelevant and utter nonsense.

But let me provide actual facts rebutting one of your claims.

Obama's favorable rating now, about 5.5 years in, is around 47%.

Bush's favorable rating about 5.5 years into his disaster was around 37-40% and dropped to around 30%.





So sorry for the F A C T S .

And one more thing.... you'll notice that Obama started at around 78%v favorable, while your hero W started at 55-60% favorable. If it hadn't been for 9/11, he never would have risen above that. The steady decline to 30% is because so many people recognized the horrible mistakes of his unfunded, illegitimate wars and his lies.

"...has been moving in the right direction for the past 6 years hasn't it?"

My retirement investments have grown very, very nicely, thank you, even considering the 30% drop (thanks, George)... it has all come back plus another almost-100%.

.
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uwindsurf



Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 6:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
As of 6 months ago, Obama had lost twice as many troops in Iraq as Bush.


Oh, really?

Coalition Military Fatalities By Year

Year US UK Other Total
2003 486 53 41 580
2004 849 22 35 906
2005 846 23 28 897
2006 823 29 21 873
2007 904 47 10 961
2008 314 4 4 322
2009 149 1 0 150
2010 60 0 0 60
2011 54 0 0 54
2012 1 0 0 1

Total 4486 179 139 4804

http://icasualties.org/Iraq/Index.aspx
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 6:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

youwindsurf wrote:
Oh, really?

Poor Mr. B.

Like a few others here, he has trouble with genuine facts, so he just makes shit up as he goes along.
.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm talking about todays approval ratings.

And You, 5 more killed last week. Google the stats like I did and you'll see otherwise.

http://www.examiner.com/article/10-years-iraq-and-the-obama-policy-kills-2221-twice-the-troops-as-bush
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
I'm talking about todays approval ratings.

That's like saying that it cost me $1.50 to drive to work in 1980 and it costs me $7.50 today, so my 1980 car must have been better.

Your analytical skills make Dubya look downright brilliant.

No wonder you're so funny.

Laughing Laughing Laughing
.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh if only the right actually read real histories on the ground. This is a drug addled fantasy:

Quote:
Perhaps a little balance for a change? Unlike previous wars, the US did not leave a military force behind in Iraq to bolster a rookie local military and to provide stability to a country ravaged by years of war. We withdrew completely. Left them to figure it out on their own. The vacuum created has been filled by a ruthless force led by another "angry goatherd" who was released from US custody in 2009. Two mistakes with dire consequences.


The military told Bush that it would take a large force, and advanced planning, to invade Iraq. Rumsfeld and Cheney scoffed, and we went to war without a plan. Well told in Ricks' book "Fiasco". Here is Ricks, a noted military historian with high credibility with the military, in his own words:

Quote:
[What were the lessons of the war in Afghanistan?]

Afghanistan is important to look at for a couple of reasons, first because [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was clearly unhappy and impatient with the U.S. military's performance. ... He kept on hearing "can't" rather than "Here's how we might do it." So for Rumsfeld, it was a bit of a triumph to say, "See, we could do it differently, more nimbly, more agily." ...

I think Rumsfeld comes away thinking: "Jeez, these military guys might not be quite as authoritative in their pronouncements as they pretend to be. I'm going to be a little bit more skeptical here." And also, "We can do this stuff much smaller than they think." ...

Almost immediately upon the fall of Kabul in November 2001, the military is told, "Give us a plan for Iraq." Part of the message was: "Don't let it be one of these slow, stumblebum plans like you guys cooked up for Afghanistan. We want something that's nimble and agile and that reflects what we learned [in] Afghanistan."

And the extent to which that informs postwar planning is what?

There's a feeling that you kind of make it up on the fly, as the United States did with [President Hamid] Karzai in Afghanistan. You take the enemy capital, install a new guy; [he] gets up and running. In both cases, [then-CENTCOM Commander Gen.] Tommy Franks had an extraordinarily conventional view, which is take the enemy capital -- Kabul, Baghdad -- and that's it. ...

So in Iraq, you could take Baghdad, but it led the U.S. to believe that it had won in Iraq, when really the real war in Iraq began on Aug. 7, 2003, four months after the fall of Baghdad. That was the real war for the future of Iraq that begins with the detonation at the Jordanian Embassy on Aug. 7, then followed a few days later by the bombing of the U.N. headquarters, and then in quick order the [Red Cross] and police stations. It really was a striking campaign to isolate the Americans from their allies. The message the insurgency sent as it rose in August, September, October 2003 was the most dangerous place in Iraq to be is standing next to an American.


Because we went to war in Iraq without a plan, and without a sufficient force, the military that supported Saddam essentially slipped into civilian garb--after first looting all the armories. Other people looted virtually all of the civil institutions--kind of like the Hells Angels Bard referred to. We had no plan, nor any real comprehension, at the politicial level, of the gulf between Shiite and Sunni.

Here is a scathing critique by someone who has covered the Middle East longer than the instant experts from the oil industry drove by to extract petroleum:

Quote:
FAREED ZAKARIA Opinion writer
Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and editor at large of Time magazine.

June 12
It is becoming increasingly likely that Iraq has reached a turning point. The forces hostile to the government have grown stronger, better equipped and more organized. And having now secured arms, ammunition and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from their takeover of Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — they will build on these strengths. Inevitably, in Washington, the question has surfaced: Who lost Iraq?

Whenever the United States has asked this question — as it did with China in the 1950s or Vietnam in the 1970s — the most important point to remember is: The local rulers did. The Chinese nationalists and the South Vietnamese government were corrupt, inefficient and weak, unable to be inclusive and unwilling to fight with the dedication of their opponents. The same story is true of Iraq, only much more so. The first answer to the question is: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lost Iraq.

The prime minister and his ruling party have behaved like thugs, excluding the Sunnis from power, using the army, police forces and militias to terrorize their opponents. The insurgency the Maliki government faces today was utterly predictable because, in fact, it happened before. From 2003 onward, Iraq faced a Sunni insurgency that was finally tamped down by Gen. David Petraeus, who said explicitly at the time that the core element of his strategy was political, bringing Sunni tribes and militias into the fold. The surge’s success, he often noted, bought time for a real power-sharing deal in Iraq that would bring the Sunnis into the structure of the government.

A senior official closely involved with Iraq in the Bush administration told me, “Not only did Maliki not try to do broad power-sharing, he reneged on all the deals that had been made, stopped paying the Sunni tribes and militias, and started persecuting key Sunni officials.” Among those targeted were the vice president of Iraq and its finance minister.


But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq? He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expertTom Ricks called “the worst war plan in American history” — the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.


Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria displayed the black flag of the Islamic State and shouted, “Towards Baghdad,” as they drove patrol cars stolen from the Iraqi army. (  / Reuters)
The turmoil in the Middle East is often called a sectarian war. But really it is better described as “the Sunni revolt.” Across the region, from Iraq to Syria, one sees armed Sunni gangs that have decided to take on the non-Sunni forces that, in their view, oppress them. The Bush administration often justified its actions by pointing out that the Shiites are the majority in Iraq and so they had to rule. But the truth is that the borders of these lands are porous, and while the Shiites are numerous in Iraq — Maliki’s party actually won a plurality, not a majority — they are a tiny minority in the Middle East as a whole. It is outside support — from places as varied as Saudi Arabia and Turkey — that sustains the Sunni revolt.

If the Bush administration deserves a fair share of blame for “losing Iraq,” what about the Obama administration and its decision to withdraw American forces from the country by the end of 2011? I would have preferred to see a small American force in Iraq to try to prevent the country’s collapse. But let’s remember why this force is not there. Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here’s what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: “It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. 1 demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them.” He reminded me that Maliki spent 24 years in exile, most of them in Tehran and Damascus, and his party was funded by Iran for most of its existence. And in fact, Maliki’s government has followed policies that have been pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian.

Washington is debating whether airstrikes or training forces would be more effective, but its real problem is much larger and is a decade in the making. In Iraq, it is defending the indefensible.


Read more from Fareed Zakaria’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.


But the haters will find ways to blame it on Obama. Maybe they heard it from a reputable source--the American Catholic bishops?
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