Is the situation in Iraq improving?

[elucidator]

No doubt! Its a simple matter of seizing the bull by the tail and facing the situation!

So - we mobilize every military, semi-military and psycho-military force in America, down to and including the Camp Fire Girls, and swamp Iraq with such overwhelming force of arms that everybody surrenders…

Or we send in Chuck Norris…

Or, what, exactly?

[scotandrsn]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
… I seriously hope we do, but I hope they don’t request it.
[/QUOTE]

Because our current efforts there are accomplishing what, exactly?

[elucidator]

Hey! No guts, no gory!

[RTFirefly]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I agree, it makes perfect sense. Obviously if he fled the country because of an increase in U.S. military activity, it only follows he’d want us to leave so he could return in safety.
[/quote]
OK, I misunderstood you to say he wanted out of Iraq, not that he wanted us out. (The latter is also true; just no need to discuss it. He’s wanted us out pretty much since we got there, regardless of his and our relative situations.)

You’re making the assumption that I denied the Iraqis want us to leave, I’ve never denied they have–I just said that’s for the Iraqi government to decide, not a pollster. I want what’s best for the Iraqi people, I think us staying is what’s best for them. I think us ignoring their request to leave would be a blow against their sovereignty and to ignore a request to leave from their government would do even more harm than staying, so if they request us to leave, I seriously hope we do, but I hope they don’t request it.

That’s a reasonable stance to take. I would still contend that the Iraqis in the government, having more to gain from our presence than the Iraqi population as a whole, is for that reason less representative of the wishes of the people than they ought to be on this question. And it’s the opposition of a large portion of the Iraqi people to our presence, not the attitude of the government, that dooms our mission there.

[tagos]

Hesitant as I am to pit the cursory insight Chatham House have into the situation against the awesome expertise of some in this thread but I’m going to give it a go anyway.

Iraq close to collapse

Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation, UK foreign policy think tank Chatham House says.

Its report says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country.

It warns there is not one war but many local civil wars, and urges a major change in US and British strategy, such as consulting Iraq’s neighbours more.

<snip>

The briefing paper, entitled Accepting Realities in Iraq, says: “There is not ‘a’ civil war in Iraq, but many civil wars and insurgencies involving a number of communities and organisations struggling for power.”

Mr Stansfield says that although al-Qaeda is challenged in some areas by local leaders who do not welcome such intervention, there is a clear momentum behind its activity.

Iraq’s neighbours also have a greater capacity to affect the situation on the ground than either the UK or the US, the report adds.

Iraq Faces Grim Future

The leading foreign policy think-tank, Chatham House, is warning that Iraq faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation.

A new report from the London-based Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, argues that the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in large parts of the country, as a range of local civil wars and insurgencies are fought.

<snip>

Dr Stansfield contends that the American security surge is moving violence to different areas, but is not overcoming it.

Certainly there is a growing sense in London and Washington that the American Commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, is likely to ask for more time to continue the surge later this summer in order to deliver results.

That will confront the Bush Administration with a real dilemma.

The president has vetoed a bill that would have set a deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

The bill was approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Congressional opponents of the war believe the veto signals that now it is the president alone who must take responsibility for continuing America’s involvement, and the casualties.

The report urges the governments in London and Washington to change track.

It says the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, leader of the Mehdi army (one of the major Shia militias), should be included as a political partner - no longer treating him as an enemy.

And it also calls for increasing the involvement of other countries in the region.

Despair Stalks Baghdad

Trying to get into the centre of Baghdad earlier this week offered one view of how far away the Americans and Iraqi authorities are from gaining control here.

We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb.

US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out.

While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air.

You won’t have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.

One was at the Sadriya market in the city centre, where a massive car bomb killed more than 140 people.

<snip>

Just a month ago there was a cautious - very cautious, but still real - sense of optimism among many Baghdadis that the plan was starting to work.

The daily count of bodies found around the city - mostly Sunni victims of targeted sectarian killings - had dropped off significantly.

The Shia militia of Moqtada Sadr, which was blamed for most of these murders, was largely obeying orders to put away its weapons and co-operate with the security plan.

A woman pleads with US troops after the arrest of a relative
Troops often come face to face with terrified and exasperated Iraqis
But there is a deadly and familiar equation here.

With official security forces apparently unable to protect Shia communities, pressure is growing on the militias to do so again.

And there are signs their death squads have returned to work. The body count is creeping up again.

<snip>

An average of 80-90 Americans die each month. And US personnel have just had their tours extended by another three months.

But, as it has always been since the 2003 invasion, it is the Iraqis who suffer most.

No-one knows the exact figures, but at the end of another week of unspeakable, random carnage, hundreds more Iraqi families are grieving.

Exhaustion and despair hang over the country.

And there are no signs of change.

The Quarterly Report on “Measuring Stability and Security in
Iraq:” Fact, Fallacy, and an Overall Grade of “F” (WARNING - pdf)

If the US is to win in Iraq, it needs an honest and objective picture of what is happening. The media can provide some of this picture, as can outside experts and scholars, but only the US government has the resources and access to information that provide a comprehensive overview of the situation.
The quarterly report to Congress issued by the Department of Defense, “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,” is supposed to be a key document to achieve this goal.

Like the State Department weekly status report on Iraq, however, it is deeply flawed. It does more than simply spin the situation to provide false assurances. It makes basic analytical and statistical mistakes, fails to define key terms, provides undefined and unverifiable survey information, and deals with key issues by omission.

• It provides a fundamentally false picture of the political situation in Iraq, and of
the difficulties ahead. It does not prepare the Congress or the American people
for the years of effort that will be needed even under “best case” conditions and
the risk of far more serious forms of civil conflict.

• The economic analysis is flawed to the point of absurdity.

• No meaningful assessment is provided of the success and failures of the US aid
effort, and no mention is made of the corruption and mismanagement in the aid
effort.

• There is no meaningful analysis of oil developments, budget and revenue
problems, and future needs for aid.

• The threat analysis is fundamentally flawed, serious understates the level of civil
conflict, and fails to provide a meaningful risk assessment.

• Very real progress in the development of Iraq regular forces is exaggerated and
the need for major continued support and aid is largely omitted.

• The basic problems in the police, justice system, and governance that represented a major threat and risk are omitted to the point where the analysis is so distorted as to be useless.

The US cannot afford to repeat the mistakes it made in Vietnam. The strategy President Bush is pursuing in Iraq is a high risk strategy for Iraq. If it is to have any chance of success, it going to take bipartisan persistence, and sustained US effort. This requires trust, and trust cannot by built without integrity.

The American people and the US Congress need an honest portrayal of what is
happening, not lies by omission and “spin.” They need credible reporting that builds trust. They need to accept the real world risk and costs, and accept them. The latest version of “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” does not meet this goal. It is both dishonest and incompetent, and is a serious indictment of the professional integrity and competence of every individual and agency involved in drafting it.

So no. Things are not getting better and the lying liars are still lying to us. And people who should by this time know better, are still believing them.

[Fear_Itself]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I’ve said it a few times. Unequivocally yes we should leave if they pass such a bill.
[/QUOTE]
But doesn’t that put the lie to the whole “we must fight them there or they will follow us here” meme? Does Iraqi sovereignty trump our own security? Or was that just more alarmist nonsense ginned up by the White House to scare the sheeple?

[RTFirefly]

[QUOTE=tagos]
So no. Things are not getting better and the lying liars are still lying to us. And people who should by this time know better, are still believing them.
[/QUOTE]
Aw, c’mon, it’ll be a cakewalk! The insurgency is in its last throes!

[Czarcasm]

[QUOTE=tagos]
So no. Things are not getting better and the lying liars are still lying to us. And people who should by this time know better, are still believing them.
[/QUOTE]
IMO, this isn’t about believing or disbelieving. There are some people think that being on the “winning” side of a debate somehow makes them a winner by association. The longer they stay on one side of a debate, the more they have emotionally invested in the outcome. Eventually, they don’t care if their side is right, as long as their side is winning. To them, the ends justify the means, because the ends just don’t matter any more.

[tagos]

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Aw, c’mon, it’ll be a cakewalk! The insurgency is in its last throes!
[/QUOTE]

They are practically surrendering.

In the northern city of Mosul, more than 200 Sunni Arab insurgents launched a sophisticated attack on several targets using suicide car bombers, rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and improvised bombs, said Maj. Gen. Watheq al-Hamdani, the top police commander in Mosul. Four police officers died in the fighting, while 14 others were wounded along with 16 civilians, General Hamdani said.

The attack began at dusk when gunmen tried to storm the main provincial jail, the commander said. When police forces responded, the insurgents attacked them with six suicide car bombs and 14 bombs planted on surrounding roads.

As Juan Cole says informedly:

Al-Bawaba reports that: "At 6 p.m. Wednesday, some 10 gunmen hijacked a bus in Baqouba . . . The attackers . . . left with 23 male passengers as hostages . . .

and also:
“An apparently co-ordinated attack by five suicide car bombers and [as many as 200] gunmen backed by mortars and bombs killed four policemen in the northern Iraqi city Mosul on Wednesday night and injured 30 other people, including 14 police officers, police said.”

Hmm. 200 men is a large company. You just don’t get a guerrilla company operating openly that often. It is even rare that they fight during daytime in platoons (say 20 men).

This was in part a bid to release more prisoners. Mosul is a city of 1.5 million or so in the north, 80% Sunni Arab, and a lot of US soldiers have been withdrawn from it for the surge in Baghdad.

[tagos]

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
IMO, this isn’t about believing or disbelieving. There are some people think that being on the “winning” side of a debate somehow makes them a winner by association. The longer they stay on one side of a debate, the more they have emotionally invested in the outcome. Eventually, they don’t care if their side is right, as long as their side is winning. To them, the ends justify the means, because the ends just don’t matter any more.
[/QUOTE]

Point taken. But how on earth, given the overwhelming evidence, can these people think they are on the ‘winning’ side?

The only information sources that support that view is the completely discredited US Govt with its Fantasy Iraq metrics.

I wish they were right and I was wrong but it just ain’t so.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

One of the ironies about Iraq at the moment is that success and failure of the surge are supposed to have the same outcome – a drawdown of the troops. From that perspective, the Iraqi insurgents, of whatever stripe, know that all they have to do is wait a couple of months, then they’ll have a much freer hand to insurge. Good time to take a little holiday, if you’re an insurgent. Recharge the batteries, and come back strong in September!

[Merijeek]

[QUOTE=tagos]
Point taken. But how on earth, given the overwhelming evidence, can these people think they are on the ‘winning’ side?
[/QUOTE]

Because their asses aren’t the ones being shot at.

-Joe

[RedFury]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Also, last I checked just because you pull out a quote from William Blum you don’t get to crown yourself King. William Blum is no more an authority on anything than a coked up schizophrenic ranting about the CIA on the street corner.
[/QUOTE]

Quite a CV for a “coked up schizophrenic ranting about the CIA on the street corner.”

William Blum

Than again, maybe you don’t like him because he speaks the truth – street corner or not.

:::shrug:::

---

Bet you don’t like Scott Horton either: 19,000 Iraqis Disappear Into U.S.-Run Prisons

American Democracy at its best!

[flight]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Not so. Your assumption that there’s no way to “stop the fire” is ludicrous.
[/QUOTE]

Anything that would have any chance of stopping it would have to be quite different than what has been done so far. The, “add some more troops” method seems to do squat, and after an initial benefit that may have been due to how they reported the numbers, things continue to worsen. There is no reason to believe that anything the kid with the matches is capable of doing is going to fix things. I honestly cannot think of anything that would be able to turn this around short of a draft and multiplying the number of forces we have there by two or more. Even that seems unlikely to fix things at this point.

The worst part is that even if we get out now, we will likely have to go back in. Iraq is on its way towards “failed state”, and with the attention that terrorist groups are now giving it, it will likely become a hotbed for them. Then it is only a matter of time before we NEED to go in, like we did in Afghanistan, to take out a real threat unlike the imagined one that put is there in the first place.

Perhaps I am wrong though. Perhaps the child in your analogy has Superman’s freeze breath. Just let me know what that equates to in the real world so we can fix this mess.

[Czarcasm]

[QUOTE=tagos]
Point taken. But how on earth, given the overwhelming evidence, can these people think they are on the ‘winning’ side?

The only information sources that support that view is the completely discredited US Govt with its Fantasy Iraq metrics.

I wish they were right and I was wrong but it just ain’t so.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not talking about winning in Iraq, I’m talking about winning right here in the U.S.A.. They hooked up with Georgie and his pseudo-conservatives, and now that Mr. Bush has shown that the only way he can increase his political power(and by extension, the political power of his supporters) is by being a “war” president, then by ghod we’re gonna be at war for as long as possible. They are not trying to end this war-where’s the financial or political power in that? Every time a political crisis pops up, another wartime tragedy occurs. Every time it looks as if this war is winding down, another wartime tragedy occurs. How many times does this have to happen before someone says,“The last time I saw this many timely coincidences was on a soap opera.”?

[marshmallow]

[QUOTE=flight]
The worst part is that even if we get out now, we will likely have to go back in. Iraq is on its way towards “failed state”, and with the attention that terrorist groups are now giving it, it will likely become a hotbed for them. Then it is only a matter of time before we NEED to go in, like we did in Afghanistan, to take out a real threat unlike the imagined one that put is there in the first place.
[/QUOTE]

Things get real fun when the jihadists start trolling the 2+ million refugees for recruits. Sure, a lot of the expats are living decently but then there are the big tent cities in no man’s land. I wonder how long it’ll be until we start bombing them a la Clinton.

Also, as a callous aside, does anyone else ever feel a little…well, haughty isn’t the right word, but just sorta amused at the idea of all the hundreds of suicide bombs that have taken place? Yeah, yeah, I know IEDs are the main threat and suicide bombs can be a poor man’s guided missile but it just seems so…ineffecient. It seems better to bomb and run away to fight another day. You know, analyzing the tactic from an objective viewpoint and all…

[tagos]

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
Things get real fun when the jihadists start trolling the 2+ million refugees for recruits. Sure, a lot of the expats are living decently but then there are the big tent cities in no man’s land. I wonder how long it’ll be until we start bombing them a la Clinton.

Also, as a callous aside, does anyone else ever feel a little…well, haughty isn’t the right word, but just sorta amused at the idea of all the hundreds of suicide bombs that have taken place? Yeah, yeah, I know IEDs are the main threat and suicide bombs can be a poor man’s guided missile but it just seems so…ineffecient. It seems better to bomb and run away to fight another day. You know, analyzing the tactic from an objective viewpoint and all…
[/QUOTE]

Martyrs begat martyrs and more recruits. A suicide bomb has a sophisticated targeting brain. The bottom line is - suicide bombing is easier than bombing and escaping.

‘Haughty’ is not the emotion you should be feeling. Do you remember the bit is Apocalypse Now when Kurtz recounts the story of the severed arms? His awe at the Will it demonstrated the enemy has?

We face an enemy so determined on nothing less than total victory they will kill themselves, blow up fellow citizens etc et bloody savage cetera. While we are quite happy to take a cavalier approach to innocent deaths we cannot be that deliberatley ruthless and even if we were it would just strengthen the enemy.

That is what should have kept us out of Vietnam, where we were intervening in a war for liberation the vietnamese had been fighting for centuries. And it damn well should of at the very least caused us to go into Iraq with our eyes open, not filled with Chalabi tales of flower storms.

If anything the insurgents, driven by religious fervour on top of sectarian nationalism, are even more determined than the vietnamese.

Like in Vietnam we could kill millions, we could do a Fallujah on every city in Iraq, and still they would fight us.

The implicit racism involved in these sorts of discussions never cease to amaze me. The British or the Americans would not be cowed by displays of force by an occupier. We would never give up, particularly if it was a Muslim occupation army. And I’d lay any odds we’d have ranks of suicide bombers. So why do we think the various Iraq insurgencies are ever going to cry pax?

And even if we did somehow come up with the pretty ruthless approach taken in Vietnam - all the Agent Orange, free-fire zones, Operation Phoenix extra-judicial assassination and torture programmes, even if we had a regime as strong and united as the various Saigon regimes (an abysmally low standard the Iraqi regime is nowhere near meeting) - we would still not win. We could kill, crush, maim, burn and destroy all we liked and still not win. Bearing in mind the insurgents only have not to lose.

We’d be setting the rest of the Muslim world alight. We would drive them into the open arms of China and a resurgent Russia.

As i’ve said repeatedly over the years in various threads - Since the early 80’s I’ve been marching and protesting western support for and collusion with Saddam. I beleived the international community had a right and a duty to intervene.

But that had to be the real international community not 2 anglo-saxon, christian countries and a handful of browbeaten allies. And it had to be done with the right motives (eg not as a geo-strategic move by a superpower bent on imposing its own unfettered free market, secular western template) and most of all - done competently.

We had one chance to demonstrate that liberal interventionalism had a place at the world table and we could not have blown it more than if we’d actually sat down with a piece of paper with Intervene at the top and Ignominious Defeat and Total Chaos at the bottom and planned the intervening stages.

Everyone involved should be impeached for the grotesque level of incompetence displayed.

[Der_Trihs]

[QUOTE=marshmallow]
Also, as a callous aside, does anyone else ever feel a little…well, haughty isn’t the right word, but just sorta amused at the idea of all the hundreds of suicide bombs that have taken place? Yeah, yeah, I know IEDs are the main threat and suicide bombs can be a poor man’s guided missile but it just seems so…ineffecient. It seems better to bomb and run away to fight another day. You know, analyzing the tactic from an objective viewpoint and all…
[/QUOTE]
Well. First, suicide bombers have that whole martyr thing going for them. Second, no doubt quite a few really believe that they’ll go to paradise. And finally, I expect for many they really don’t care if they die simply because we’ve destroyed all hope for them. What do the Iraqis have to live for, thanks to us ? If you are Iraqi, why not die trying to kill the monsters who have ruined your country, ruined your life, and killed so many of your friends and family ? Death is the rational choice in a hellhole like Iraq; the suicide bombers are going to suffer a lot less than the Iraqis who live.

[flight]

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Well. First, suicide bombers have that whole martyr thing going for them. Second, no doubt quite a few really believe that they’ll go to paradise. And finally, I expect for many they really don’t care if they die simply because we’ve destroyed all hope for them. What do the Iraqis have to live for, thanks to us ? If you are Iraqi, why not die trying to kill the monsters who have ruined your country, ruined your life, and killed so many of your friends and family ? Death is the rational choice in a hellhole like Iraq; the suicide bombers are going to suffer a lot less than the Iraqis who live.
[/QUOTE]

While you may be right about the motivations given to the bombers themselves, those motivations were put in their head by people with no intention of dying any time soon. For them, guided missiles taken from the near infinite supply of hopeless masses make a wonderful weapon for their cause. They also have the benefit of not being able to be caught afterwards and give up their superiors.

[Merijeek]

[QUOTE=flight]
While you may be right about the motivations given to the bombers themselves, those motivations were put in their head by people with no intention of dying any time soon. For them, guided missiles taken from the near infinite supply of hopeless masses make a wonderful weapon for their cause. They also have the benefit of not being able to be caught afterwards and give up their superiors.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, but how many generals are out there charging machinegun nests and kicking in doors in Baghdad?

The people with the ‘Grand Design’ are never the ones flying the bombers or strapping on the suicide vest.

-Joe