Is the situation in Iraq improving?

[RedFury]

@Ryan_Liam

So if we withdraw from Iraq, and a horrendous amount of ethnic cleansing happens because of this, you won’t be then jumping on the bandwagon saying ‘Why did the US leave those people to be massacred’ or ‘See? I told ya so, the minute the US left they would be butchering each other’

To answer your hypothetical, no, I won’t. Or else why would I keep on saying “US out now.” And if I did, you’d be more than within your rights to call me on it.

Which, of course, doesn’t change the preeminent fact one iota – what’s happening in Iraq IS your fault anyway you look at it. Doubt you’d find many examples of hypocrisy in my posting history. I have no reason to change said pattern now. Brash, almost always as far as the rules allow per forum (though I admit to working Tom and other good kind overtime now and then), hypocrite, seldom never, IIRC.

@Ryan

I see no reason as to why the US should leave now, I’m with the ‘we broke it we fix it’ crowd.

Of course you don’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be arguing. But both factual and common sense rebuttals you’ve had a plenty and ignored, and secondly, it appears to me you simply gloss right over then to “stay on agenda.”

Given the desperate situation, why is this a bad thing, I mean come on, they’re doing it to ensure that some frigging semblence of infrastructure and medical treatment is still possible. Because Hussein stopped doctors going to other countries for ideological and political reasons, we’re to compare the current government to that one because they’re doing it for completely different reasons? Come on.

“Completely different reasons”? You’ve got to be kidding me. One is as political – if not more – than the first. Burn a couple of more brain cells and the similarity of goals should become rather obvious

[RTFirefly]

Story here.

BAGHDAD – Nearly three months after the U.S. military launched a new strategy to safeguard Baghdad’s population by pushing American and Iraqi forces deeper into the city’s neighborhoods, defending their small outposts is increasingly requiring heavy bulwarks reminiscent of the fortresslike bases that the U.S. troops left behind.

To guard against bombs, mortar fire and other threats, U.S. commanders are adding fortifications to the outposts, setting them farther back from traffic and arming them with antitank weapons capable of stopping suicide bombers driving armored vehicles. U.S. troops maintain the advantage of living in the neighborhoods they are asked to protect, but the need to safeguard themselves from attack means more walls between them and civilians.

At a moonlit outpost on the edge of Baghdad’s Sadr City one night last week, 1st Sgt. Donald Knapp balanced himself on a concrete barrier suspended by a crane and slowly guided a heavy slab into position. It was 3 a.m., and Knapp and a few other soldiers were working through the night to fortify their camp.

Over four days, the soldiers erected hundreds of sections of wall and reinforced them with barbed wire and 300 truckloads of sand. They pushed out the walls of the camp, known as a joint security station, and blocked approaching roads with serpentine barriers.

Dozens of mini-Green Zones all over Baghdad.

There are real problems in adapting the appropriate strategy for 2003 to the environment of 2007.

[RedFury]

FYI: Iraq Is Not Our Country

@C. Reese

***A few reminders: Iraq is not our country. Our invasion and occupation are illegal, being in violation of both international law and our own traditions. We were lied into war. We are still being lied to. Both the Bush administration and the Democrats intend to maintain American troops in Iraq indefinitely.

The catchy little phrase “If you break it, you own it” might apply to unpurchased merchandise, but it definitely does not apply to nation-states. You don’t gain title to your neighbor’s house just because you blow it up. We definitely broke Iraq, but that only gives us the burden of sin. It does not entitle us to the country.

It’s easy to forget that when you listen to American politicians in both parties talk about what Iraq has to do or ought to do or should do. The Iraqi government does not have to do anything we tell it, and so far it hasn’t, despite promises to the contrary*.**

The phrase now being heard most often around Baghdad is “Iraq is finished.” That’s according to Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for Asia Times Online. I urgently recommend his piece “Baghdad: Up Close and Personal.” He and two Iraqi journalists toured the “Red Zone,” which is all of Baghdad except the heavily fortified Green Zone. Compare what he saw and heard with what you hear from the talking heads in Washington.

<snip>

The reason I say both Democrats and Republicans intend a long-term military presence is because that’s what they say if you listen closely. The so-called withdrawal deadline of the Democrats stipulates some troops left in country. To quell an insurgency, if you can do it at all, usually requires about 10 years.

You can see by the casualty figures – overwhelmingly Iraqi – that we are not doing the main fighting. We lose people daily, but so far in the single digits. And we will go on losing people no matter what tactics we employ as long as we stay there while the Iraqis fight a civil war. We can, with our sick devotion to legalese, say it is not an occupation, but the Iraqis call it an occupation, and they don’t like it worth a toot.

When American politicians say if we leave, there will be chaos, that’s a joke. There is chaos there now…

– highlights mine.

---

More:

Sunni demand could unravel Iraqi government

You’re free to do your own reading on that one if so interested…

[RTFirefly]

From this morning’s WaPo:

“What we had been doing for 3 1/2 years didn’t keep up with the sectarian violence spreading so swiftly,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., the senior U.S. commander for Baghdad. The new approach “will take every bit of the five brigades” of combat troops now flowing in as reinforcements in the city of 6 million people, he said.

Well, geez, for 3 1/2 years, this Administration has been telling us we’ve been making progress in Iraq.

So were they lying to us for all those years, and if so, why can we trust them now? Or did the military just not realize for all that time that things were getting out of hand - and if so, how do we know they know what the hell’s going on now?

[RTFirefly]

More from the above link:

The limited U.S. troop presence was one reason that sectarian killings soared out of control in Baghdad after the February 2006 bombing of an important Shiite mosque in Samarra. That spurred what U.S. officers now call the sectarian cleansing of most of eastern Baghdad and large swaths of the west – as Shiites forced Sunnis out of all but a few enclaves – a movement that was arrested only with the troop increase this February.

“The sectarian cleansing is pretty much done on the east side” of Baghdad, said a U.S. military official. But since the influx of U.S. and Iraqi forces began, he said, “for the most part the Shia expansion is frozen where it is.”

For the past few years, we’ve been basically combatting the Sunnis and arming the Shi’ites. Guess we went too far, huh?

The problem is, the reduced sectarian cleansing is at least in part due to Sadr’s thugs standing down in Baghdad. That won’t last any longer than the surge does, which means it can’t be a surge; it’s got to be more or less permanent.

That doesn’t sound so good.

Another vital aspect of the strategy to secure Baghdad, commanders said, is to array more forces on the periphery of the capital to block Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen from using the outskirts for staging attacks.

“The Baghdad belts or support zones” have “always been the generator of violence in Baghdad,” Odierno said. As a result, he plans to allocate about half of the final two incoming brigades in outlying areas.

Because Iraqi forces are concentrated inside the city, fewer are available to go to the outskirts to partner with U.S. troops, who must cover large areas, he said. In western Baghdad’s Mansour district, for example, about 3,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops are covering an area with 300,000 people. “That’s huge,” said Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl, the U.S. commander for the area.

Still, the decision to place U.S. troops in both Baghdad and the outskirts has led to concern among some officers that their forces will be spread too thin. “If we lose Baghdad, it’s game over,” said one officer. “We need to concentrate forces in Baghdad and be really ruthless in accepting risk elsewhere,” he said.

Not enough troops. Nowhere close.

[Squink]

U.S. Embassy: wear flak jackets, helmets

A sharp increase in mortar attacks on the Green Zone — the one-time oasis of security in
Iraq’s turbulent capital — has prompted the U.S. Embassy to issue a strict new order telling all employees to wear flak vests and helmets while in unprotected buildings or whenever they are outside.

The order, obtained by The Associated Press, has created a siege mentality among U.S. staff inside the Green Zone following a recent suicide attack on parliament.

Surge may not be changing attack rate:

Partial data on attacks gathered from five U.S. brigades operating in Baghdad showed that total attacks since the new strategy began in February were either steady or increasing. In some cases, certain kinds of attacks dipped as the U.S. troop increase began, only to begin rising again in recent weeks. Overall, “the number of attacks has stayed relatively constant” in Baghdad, said one U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name.

[Squink]

@Martin Hyde

The elected government of Iraq speaks for the Iraqi people, that is the situation around the world people do not make foreign policy decisions through polling, their governments make them. That’s how it has to be.

Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.
…
Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that’s called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.

I would hope we aren’t arrogant enough to ignore the Iraqi people. I suspect we are.

[Cervaise]

Arrogant? No no no. It is a burden for the white man to know what’s best for his dark brothers. Get it straight.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

@Squink

Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation I would hope we aren’t arrogant enough to ignore the Iraqi people. I suspect we are.

Now, now, having broken them, it’s our duty to fix them – even if that means wholesale gelding.

[Ryan_Liam]

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, **according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition. **

Bolding the last part.

Even if they did sign it, anything coming from the Sadr movement is to be taken with a pinch of salt.

[RTFirefly]

@Ryan_Liam

Bolding the last part.

Even if they did sign it, anything coming from the Sadr movement is to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Why? Do you think Sadr doesn’t really want us out of Iraq?

I’d say the evidence is overwhelming that he does.

[elucidator]

@EddyTeddyFreddy

Now, now, having broken them, it’s our duty to fix them – even if that means wholesale gelding.

Don’t really see why a bit of gold worked in as a colorful highlight is any thing to be concerned about, despite the old proverb about “gelding a lily”, so…excuse me, what? Oh, “gild the lily”? OK, so “geld” is…what? WHAT! Are you insane! This is wrong! Totally wrong! Keep your distance!

[Squink]

AP confirms the story:
Majority of Iraqi lawmakers call for timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops, lawmaker says

The bill would require the Iraqi government to seek approval from parliament before it requests an extension of the U.N. mandate for foreign forces to be in Iraq, al-Rubaie said. It also calls for a timetable for the troop withdrawal and a freeze on the size of the foreign forces.

[XT]

Whoohoo!! Lets hope they vote for us to get the fuck out of there soon then! Happy days!

-XT

[Subterraneanus]

Every day, in every way, Iraq is getting better and better
Every day, in every way, Iraq is getting better and better
Every day, in every way, Iraq is getting better and better …

[elucidator]

But what does it mean? To this jaundiced eye, it means that the Shia dominated “government” of Iraq has decided that having American troops and American firepower available to slaughter Sunni “insurgents” (a term of simply marvelous flexibility) is more trouble than its worth. They’d just as soon not have so many witnesses at hand for the pending vigorous theological debates.

Upside: AlQueda in Iraq is beshitting themselves, the Shia will make very short work of them.

Down: the usual gory detritus of vigorous theological debate.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Hmmmm… The democratically elected government of Iraq decides it wants the US out and demands it. The US is forced out and the place descends into chaos. The US loses control of Iraq, its oil, and those lovely big bases we’ve been building. Whose fault is that? Who lost Iraq?

Democratically elected… democratically… democratic… Damn those Democrats for losing Iraq!

[Ryan_Liam]

@RTFirefly

Why? Do you think Sadr doesn’t really want us out of Iraq?

I’d say the evidence is overwhelming that he does.

Of course he does, he rose up in 2004 twice. What’s this got to do with anything?

However, since Sadrists are unavowedly anti Coalition, I’m saying take what they’re claiming with a pinch of Salt.

AP confirms the story:
Majority of Iraqi lawmakers call for timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops, lawmaker says

The Iraqi bill, drafted by a parliamentary bloc loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was signed by 144 members of the 275-member house, according to Nassar al-Rubaie, the leader of the Sadrist bloc.

[Squink]

The white house comments on the draft bill:

The White House questioned whether Sadrists had the votes in parliament.

“The president of Iraq, the vice presidents, and the prime minister all support keeping U.S. troops in Iraq,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Washington. “The Sadrists often makes these claims, yet rarely produce a bill, let alone a majority.”

The support of 144 members in a 275-member house, certainly sounds like a majority to me. Do the president of Iraq, the vice presidents, and the prime minister even have a vote in this under the Iraqi constitution?

[Merijeek]

@Squink

The support of 144 members in a 275-member house, certainly sounds like a majority to me. Do the president of Iraq, the vice presidents, and the prime minister even have a vote in this under the Iraqi constitution?

I don’t think it’s the math so much as a representative of Sadr’s group claiming they have the votes. A little independent confirmation could bust all of it wide open. Or closed. Whichever.

-Joe