Broken Army

[Lanya]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/world/middleeast/28sectarian.html?hp&ex=1167368400&en=ccc353334198d299&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Sectarian Ties Weaken Duty’s Call for Iraq Forces

   
By MARC SANTORA
Published: December 28, 2006

BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 — The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

A two-day reporting trip accompanying Major Voorhies’s unit and combat troops seemed to back his statement, as did other commanding officers expressing similar frustration.

“I have personally witnessed about a half-dozen of these incidents of what I would call political pressure, where a minister or someone from a minister’s office contacts one of these Iraqi commanders,” said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad.

“These politicians are connected with either the militias or Sunni insurgents.”

Whatever plan the Bush administration unveils — a large force increase, a withdrawal or something in between — this country’s security is going to be left in the hands of Iraqi forces. Those forces, already struggling with corruption and infiltration, have shown little willingness to stand up to political pressure, especially when the Americans are not there to support them. That suggests, the commanders say, that if the Americans leave soon, violence will redouble. And that makes their mission, Major Voorhies and Colonel Miska say, more important than ever.

They added that while political pressure on the Iraqi Army is great, the influence exerted on the police force, which is much more heavily infiltrated by Shiite militia groups, is even greater.

Shiites, led by militia forces and often aided by the local police, are clearly ascendant, Colonel Miska said.

“It seems very controlled and deliberate and concentrated on expanding the area they control,” he said.

The Sunni forces are being bolstered by support from insurgent strongholds in the West. The Shiite militias are using neighborhoods in the north, specifically Shuala and Sadr City, as bases of operation. There is also increasing evidence that militia members from southern cities like Basra are coming to Baghdad to join the fight.

“I believe everyone, to some extent, is influenced by the militias,” Colonel Miska said. “While some Iraqi security forces may be complicit with the militias, others fear for their families when confronting the militia, and that is the more pervasive threat.”

Looking at a map he had his intelligence officers create, which highlights current battle zones and details the changing religious makeup of neighborhoods, Colonel Miska noted just how many different forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.

“Who would design this mess?” he said. “It is like an orchestra where everyone is playing a different song.”

His main focus, he said, is trying to establish some kind of unity of command.

As it stands, the police and military answer to different ministries, and within the police force the bureaucracy is divided even further between the regular police and the national police. On top of that are about 145,000 armed men who work as protection detail for the Facilities Protection Services, with minimal oversight, according to United States military officials.

There are also thousands of Shiite militia members and Sunni insurgents posing as security forces.

Colonel Miska tried to define where American forces fit in the tangle of competing interests, which is only further complicated by the complicity and direct participation of top government officials.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/world/middleeast/28sectarian.html?hp&ex=1167368400&en=ccc353334198d299&ei=5094&partner=homepage

How on earth is this a war that we can continue to fund and to fight?  This is madness.

[Plane]

"It would be useful to simply have a plebiscite on whether the Americans stay or leave every six months."


Suits me.


With one caveat we can also go without being asked to go .

[Xavier_Onassis]

Suits me.


With one caveat we can also go without being asked to go .
=========================================
\I can agree with this entirely.

But the Juniorbushies plan to stay until oil is flowing at an optimum rate, and profits are flowing into their supporter's coffers even faster.

They have learned ZILCH about the various religious factions and their expectations.

The USA was woefully unprepared to start this war, but even after over three years, they do not have ample translators. Unless six is what you would call 'ample'.
'

[BT]

Weary and Alone, Bush Still Playing to Win in Iraq
By David Ignatius

WASHINGTON -- Watching President Bush in recent weeks has become a grim kind of reality TV show. In almost every news conference, speech and photo opportunity, the topic is the same: What to do about the grinding war in Iraq. Bush has let the facade crack open -- admitting that his strategy for victory isn't working -- but then he struggles to rebuild it with new words of confidence.

The stress of the job -- so well hidden for much of the past six years -- has begun to show on Bush's face. He often looks burdened, distracted, haunted by a question that has no good answer. When a photographer captures him at ease, as in a sweet Texas-romance picture of Bush and his wife Laura that appeared in People magazine last week, it's like he has escaped the Iraq sweatbox.

I grew up in a Washington that was struggling with the nightmare of a failing war in Vietnam. The government officials of that time were people who behaved as if they had never known failure in their lives. They had the rosy confidence of the chosen -- "the best and the brightest,'' as David Halberstam put it. But then the war began to grind them down. I see that same meat-grinder at work now. Bush and his officials are strong characters; they work hard not to let you see them sweat. But the anguish and exhaustion are there.

Bush is not a man for introspection. That's part of his flinty personality -- the tight, clipped answers and the forced jocularity of the nicknames he gives to reporters and White House aides. That's why this version of reality TV is so poignant: This very private man has begun to talk out loud about the emotional turmoil inside. He is letting it bleed.

Bush opened the emotional curtain at a news conference last week. A reporter noted that Lyndon Johnson hadn't been able to sleep well during the Vietnam War and asked Bush if this was a "painful time'' for him. He gave an unexpectedly personal answer: "Most painful aspect of my presidency has been knowing that good men and women have died in combat. I read about it every night. And my heart breaks for a mother or father or husband or wife or son or daughter. It just does. So when you ask about pain, that's pain.''

Bush's "state of denial,'' as Bob Woodward rightly called it, has officially ended. He actually spoke the words, "We're not winning,'' last week in an interview with The Washington Post, coupling it with the reverse: "We're not losing.'' But in truth, he cannot abide the possibility that Iraq will not end in victory. So a day after his "not winning'' comment, he half took it back, saying: "I believe that we're going to win,'' and then adding oddly, as if to reassure himself: "I believe that -- and by the way, if I didn't think that, I wouldn't have our troops there. That's what you've got to know. We're going to succeed.''

Policy debates in this White House are often described as battles between competing advisers -- Dick Cheney wants this; the Joint Chiefs favor that; Condi Rice favors a third outcome. This kind of analysis implies that Bush isn't really master of his own house, but I think it's a big mistake. The truth is that with this president, the only opinion that finally matters is his own. And he's a stubborn man. Military leaders can tell him it's a mistake to surge troops into Baghdad, but that doesn't mean he will listen.

Bush says he doesn't care what happens now to his poll numbers, and I believe him. He broke through the political barriers a while ago. I sense that as he anguishes about Iraq, he has in mind the judgment of future historians. He said it plainly in an interview last October with conservative talk-show host Bill O'Reilly: "Look, history is interesting.
I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether ... the decisions I made made sense.''

What makes reality TV gripping is that it's all happening live -- the contestants make their choices under pressure, win or lose. So too with Bush. He is making a vast wager -- of American lives, treasure and the nation's security -- that his judgments about Iraq were right. The Baker-Hamilton report gave him a chance to take some chips off the table, but Bush doesn't seem interested. He is still playing to win. The audience is shouting out advice, but the man under the spotlight knows he will have to make this decision alone.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/12/bush_still_playing_to_win_on_i.html

[Plane]

I remember how much this office aged Carter , and how his style of leadership was exausting him.


Is Bush the antipode of Carter in style and method?

Do we fail either way?

[BT]

Do we fail either way?

I don't believe Bush is as hands off as Carter had the reputation for being hands on.

I do know that Bush is certainly not the demon some portray him to be, nor is he as stupid as "conventional wisdom " would like for us to view him.

And this article helped reinforce that impression.

[_JS]

This is the question before you.

Is violent radical islam worth stopping in its tracks.

If not now, when.

Your representatives knew that was the core question and that is why they voted as they did.

Your polls reflect disatisfaction with Bush, the way he has prosecuted the war and a discomfort with the causualties that occur in any war.

Interesting Bt.

I don't believe i ever made that claim, so i guess my "ridiculous" question was met by a "ridiculous" response.

However, if not there, where.

If not now, when?

So, you aren't relating Iraq to being the central stage on the "war on terror?" It sure looks like it to me. What else did you mean when you used the sentence: Your representatives knew that was the core question and that is why they voted as they did.? And then went on to talk about the casualties that occur in any war?

If not there, where?

By all means explain to me how fighting sectarian guerilla combatants in Iraq is preventing radical religious terrorism?. I agree with you that we have to be there, but not for the head in the clouds reasons you are giving here. Primarily because we screwed up. Royally. Now we owe it to the people of Iraq not to abandon them to a massive civil war if it is even possible.

If not now, when?

Irrelevant question because it presents a false dichotomy. We'll be fighting them now and in the future. If we would look beyond hammer to nail solutions we might be able to overcome this circle of violence.

[_JS]

Well, that's one opinion.  One not shared by those who can grasp the concept of connections both direct & indirect that were present between terrorists and Saddam's regime, when we went into Iraq.

An invasion that failed every reasonable just war theory. 

And "no" nothing will stop radical Islam "in it's tracks" outside of nuking a determined location that every Islamofascist radical happens to at.  Since that is as unlikely as the Earth's rotation reversing, the best we can do is keep knocking it down, bit by bit, where & when we can.

Yes, that worked well in Northern Ireland. It continues to be sound policy for Israel. Oh wait. No, it failed miserably in Northern Ireland and Israel only creates more and more enemies for every time it retaliates violently. Wow, what a brilliant plan you've stumbled upon. An historically useless plan of constant violence, they'll never see that one coming.

Or does Js have a suggestion that will stop radical Islam "in its tracks"?  Hint, "being nice" to them won't work

We could try acting like Christians.

[BT]

JS,

I have never claimed Iraq was the central front in the war on terror, but it certainly is a theater in that war. Jusat as Afghanistan is and the electronic warfare that is going on monitoring chatter and financial transactions.

And though you claim the war is sectarian , the sects they belong to are religious in nature (Shiite vs Sunni) and their tactics certainly utilise terror as a main weapon. I don't know any other way to describe car bombs indiscriminately aimed at civillians.

And if not now-when,  is a valid question. When will the american people have the stomach to face up to terror in the form of Al queda and hezbollah and hamas, the various militias  and their state sponsors?

Are you comfortable with  Iran becoming a nuclear power? Would you be comfortable if Hezbollah or Hamas had access to those weapons?

[BT]

We could try acting like Christians. 

So much for separation of church and state.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I don't believe Bush is as hands off as Carter had the reputation for being hands on.
======================================================
You would like to hope that our country is not being run by some incompetent boob. But the evidence is that it is being run by a fool or assortment of fools that have put us into an unwinnable war

Look at the friggin' evidence.
---------------------------------------------



I do know that Bush is certainly not the demon some portray him to be, nor is he as stupid as "conventional wisdom " would like for us to view him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, he's not a demon. He lacks the intelligence to be a demon. A demon would have a semi-workable plan. This clown has nothing,. He's an empty suit, a figurehead.

No, he's a simple-minded  patsy who was hired because they knew he was loyal and wound do as he is told, regardless of the lnearly total lack of sense of his marching orders.
 
Cheney and a cabal of oilmen is in charge. They are so incompetent that they have actually split the oilmen cabal into two factions, the second being Jim Baker's crew.

Juniorbush is the WORST president ever. He makes one long for Warren G Harding, who at least was a stud, and one thaqt did the country the courtesy of dropping dead.

Of course, Cheney needs to drop dead, too, for President Pelosi to finally restore competence before January 2009.

I suggest we all contribute to the 'Extra Cheese for Cheney Pizza Fund' to enhance his bad cholesterol, should Juniorbush do us Harding's one act of statesmanship. I hear he ate some bad salmon in Alaska.

Let's send Juniorbush to Sitka.






 

[_JS]

And though you claim the war is sectarian , the sects they belong to are religious in nature (Shiite vs Sunni) and their tactics certainly utilise terror as a main weapon. I don't know any other way to describe car bombs indiscriminately aimed at civillians.

It is terror that would not have existed in Iraq without our invasion. Is there any doubt in that? Hence my point that we screwed up the country and that's why we have to stay. But it is sectarian violence - just like Northern Ireland or Israel.

And if not now-when,  is a valid question. When will the american people have the stomach to face up to terror in the form of Al queda and hezbollah and hamas, the various militias  and their state sponsors?

Probably at the same point when the American people realise that Israel is no land of milk and honey with a perfect democratic government (more democratic than the United States according to some...). What do you want Bt? A country full of people reciting Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori? The truth is that some people see that it is a mixed bag. Israel isn't this perfect little homeland for Jews that is innocently targetted by evil Arabs. Every once in a while they get to see the other side - a Palestinian woman holding her dead, lifeless baby. They get to see that Iraq isn't this brilliant democratic regime that Bush and Rummy promised with freedom "spreading" like water filling a container. The truth is Bt, that despite 11 September, international terrorism kills less people worldwide than industrial accidents. It is an exaggerated threat and whether you like it or not, eventually people will recognize that.

So what is it you want? A nation in fear of al Qaeda? A nation lining up to kill in Iraq? A nation willing to enlist in the Israeli military? I just don't understand. Is it not the right of Americans to dislike the Iraqi War? You and I both believe that American troops should remain in Iraq, but we cannot force that view onto others. Isn't that a principle of Jeffersonian democracy?

[BT]

What is worth fighting for? Who is worth fighting for? That is what i want to know.

[Xavier_Onassis]

What is worth fighting for? Who is worth fighting for? That is what i want to know.

===========================================================
A stable Iraq might be worth fighting for, but this fighting would have to be done and won by Iraqis.
___
Good guys are worth fighting for, but there are virtually none of those. Everyone involved in this morass is too defective to be called a good guy.

[sirs]

An invasion that failed every reasonable just war theory. 

An invasion that accomplished precisely what it's primary objective was --> Regime change, and the prevention of any of Iraq's WMD being transferred into the hands of terrorists, such as AlQueada.  How that's a "failure" is beyond me   

that worked well in Northern Ireland. It continues to be sound policy for Israel. Oh wait. No, it failed miserably in Northern Ireland and Israel only creates more and more enemies for every time it retaliates violently. Wow, what a brilliant plan you've stumbled upon. An historically useless plan of constant violence, they'll never see that one coming.

Boy, you do have this nearly obsessive need to apply Northern Ireland to everything middle east.  Moving that aside, you continue to demonstrate an apparent mindset that we just haven't been nice enough to these terrorists.  That we haven't gone above and beyond the call in being pleasant, "understanding"...appeasing enough.  Beyond the complete unrealistic naivety of such, the fact remains that in some cases military intervention becomes a necessary evil.  No one likes it, no one hopes it'll go on indefinately, but you'd think those who despise it, especially when it's supposedly applied "unjustly", the then approach at implying supporters of this current war on terrorists are war lovers, who supposedly disregard any & all forms of diplomacy or civility, simply demonstrates the emptiness of the charge, and worse, a complete lack at dealing with the reality of current events and ACTS of those same terrorists you think we can placate.

Or does Js have a suggestion that will stop radical Islam "in its tracks"?  Hint, "being nice" to them won't work

We could try acting like Christians.

You're now advocating implimenting Christian doctrine within our Governmental foreign policy??