From: "Mark" 

Look Rich, I realize you think all is lost. It's not really a profitable
use of time to discuss it, you will always believe that. Many years from
now after a new Sheraton opens in Babylon, if a hot water heater
(manufactured by a Shia) explodes and kills a Sunni janitor, you'll be
claiming that it's evidence that all is still lost in a civil war.

The simple fact is, when the Dems (many if not most of them) blather away
daily about it being "the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong
place" and "bring our boys home and do it now" that is not
supporting our efforts; it is undermining them.

That's a fact, that in my eyes, is indisputable -- so don't bother trying.


"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:44ed0688{at}w3.nls.net...
> Talk about parroting distortions - the ultimate distortion is that a
> person using free speech on our airwaves criticizing the bungling of this
> administration is causing the Iraqis to not support their government. How
> about a more realistic view of the Iraqi government or rather the
> non-existance of one?
>
>
> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH24Ak03.html
>
> 1: The Iraqi government - a group of 'talking heads'
> A minimally viable central government is built on at least three
> foundations: the coercive capacity to maintain order, an administrative
> apparatus that can deliver government services and directives to society,
> and the resources to manage these functions.
>
> The Iraqi government has none of these attributes - and no prospect of
> developing them. It has no coercive capacity. The national army we hear so
> much about is actually trained and commanded by the Americans, while the
> police forces are largely controlled by local governments and have few, if
> any, viable links to the central government in Baghdad.
>
> Only the Special Forces, whose death-squad activities in the capital have
> lately been in the news, have any formal relationship with the elected
> government; and they have more enduring ties to the US military that
> created them and the Shi'ite militias who staffed them.
>
> Administratively, the Iraqi government has no existence outside Baghdad's
> heavily fortified Green Zone - and little presence within it. Whatever
> local apparatus exists elsewhere in the country is run by local leaders,
> usually with little or no loyalty to the central government and not
> dependent on it for resources it doesn't, in any case, possess.
>
> In Baghdad itself, this is clearly illustrated in the vast Shi'ite slum of
> Sadr City, controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army and his elaborate
> network of political clerics. (Even US occupation forces enter that
> enormous swath of the capital only in large brigades, braced for
> significant firefights.)
>
> In the major city of the Shi'ite south, Basra, local clerics lead a
> government that alternately ignores and defies the central government on
> all policy issues from oil to women's rights; in Sunni cities such as Tal
> Afar and Ramadi, where major battles with the Americans alternate with
> insurgent control, the government simply has no presence whatsoever. In
> Kurdistan in the north, the Kurdish leadership maintains full control of
> all local governments.
>
> As for resources, with 85% of the country's revenues deriving from oil,
> all you really need to know is that oil-rich Iraq is also suffering from
> an "acute fuel shortage" (including soaring prices, all-night lines at
> fueling stations, and a deal to get help from neighboring Syria, which
> itself has minimal refining capacity). The almost helpless Iraqi
> government has had little choice but to accept the dictates of American
> advisers and of the International Monetary Fund about exactly how and what
> energy resources will be used. Paying off Saddam Hussein-era debt,
> reparations to Kuwait from the Gulf War of 1990, and the needs of the
> US-controlled national army have had first claim.
>
> With what remains, so meager that it cannot sustain a viable
> administrative apparatus in Baghdad, let alone the rest of the country,
> there is barely enough to spare for the government leadership to line
> their own pockets.
>
>
> "Mark"  wrote in message
news:44ed00ce$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>>
>> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
>> news:44ecfa70{at}w3.nls.net...
>>> I'm not the only one calling it a civil war.  Nor do I pine for the
>>> incompetence of the Bush Administration whose actions were instrumental
>>> in creating the conditions for those deaths
>>
>> Not you, but the Dems in office that continually carp and whine and
>> intimate that they'll cut and run at the earliest opportunity (hell, it's
>> not intimation, it's fact) are the ones causing greater death for our
>> troops, for Iraqi citizens, and greater sectarian violence in general,
>> because the average Iraqi watches their BS on TV at night and wonders if
>> he should stand up for his new government, if the US is going to cut and
>> run if the Dems take majorities. I can't say as I blame them. Let us pray
>> the Dems don't get control, cause that's gonna cause one hell of a sea of
>> glass in the middle-east. Bush has been trying to avoid that, the Dems
>> are trying to ensure it.
>>
>>> http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/20/hagel-iraq-civil-war/
>>> Today on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said that Iraq is in a
>>> "very defined civil war" and that the Middle East is
"the most unstable
>>> we've seen since 1948."
>>
>> Exactly. The status-quo was BS, instability was the goal.
>>
>>
>>> It appears that commanders need permission from the White House to even
>>> use the term 'civil war'. If one is not going on why would the term be
>>> banned?
>>
>> If you'd followed the link I provided to the interview with the top Brit
>> in Iraq in the previous message, you'd have read this:
>>
>> "I think it's very important that we talk -- we don't talk about civil
>> war, because of itself it is -- it's inflammatory language. It is
>> implying that the situation is worse than it is. It therefore encourages,
>> amongst other things, adventurous media reporting. It could encourage a
>> certain degree of despondency in the political constituencies of both of
>> our countries.
>>
>> But above all, I simply don't think it is an accurate statement of the
>> situation that we're currently involved in. And I'm sorry to sound as
>> though I'm being sort of rather didactic in a military way, but I think
>> it's important that we use the proper language to define the situations
>> that we find ourselves in."
>>
>>>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/21/AR200608210
0798.html
>>> Former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, Ned Walker, said if military
>>> commanders were talking about civil war they must have been given
>>> permission from the White House to do so and Bush was testing public
>>> opinion by uttering the phrase.
>>
>> He wasn't testing "public opinion," is that all this is
to you guys 24/7?
>> Bush doesn't give a shit about public opinion, he ain't running for
>> anything --- Damn why is that so hard to swallow? He was allowing them to
>> breach the subject because so many dimbulbs have been uttering it
>> non-stop for so long.
>>
>>> Of course now the term 'miniature civil war' has now been offered
>>>
>>>
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug22/0,4670,IraqBritishCommander,00.html
>>> WASHINGTON - The British deputy to the top U.S. commander in Iraq said
>>> Tuesday the country's sectarian conflict is not a full-blown civil war
>>> but could be described as a"civil war in miniature."
>>
>> Again, *if* you'd read my previous link maybe you'd see some frigging
>> context to that point; not just parrot some more distortions.
>>
>>
>>
>
>

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