With al Qaeda defeated and violence down 70% things look much better in Iraq except for the impending Turkish invasion.
The Surge and the Defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
With al Qaeda defeated and violence down 70% things look much better in Iraq except for the impending Turkish invasion.
The Surge and the Defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq…
Article comments
26 - bliffle
Defeating AQI is a pyrhic victory. They are not AQ or even a child of AQ, but merely wannabes. They've been persistently demonized by the Pentagon for propaganda reasons.
The admin is pushing Iran Invasion as the antidote to the stagnant war in Iraq. Just as Iraq was once pushed as the antidote to the lost war in Vietnam. And just as Vietnam itself was pushed as the antidote to the stalemate in Korea.
The idea that More War is the antidote to Lost War should by now have been thoroughly debunked.
But no! Now come the keyboard warriors advocating New wars! Now we have the president of the failed Iraq Invasion loudly proclaiming for war with Iran, and rattling the saber against Cuba, which one would think had earned the right to set their own course.
And when the Iran bombing (already authorized by the Kyl-Lieberman act) fails to deter Iran, as they already say, then what war comes next? Syria? Cuba? What?
There is no end to this war madness once the first draft of the intoxicating liquor is imbibed. There is no course possible except the war course. No one can point to where it ends. To quit before The End would admit cowardice, they say. It would forsake the sacrifice of those who have gone before, they say.
No ones forethought can be entertained, for it weakens the grip of the war party on the national consciousness.
We may not know where this war madness ends, but we can predict how: nuclear warfare. BANG!
Now THERE's your REAL war!
27 - moonraven
Hmmmm. Nalle calls his OPINION pieces NEWS now. When was that Orwellian change in nomenclature approved?
I had two e-mails from Iraq today that describe the situation there very differently.
Nalle would undoubtedly dismiss my sources since they are Iraquis, they are not living in Miami, and they are university professors (and therefore hopefully) a bit more educated than his latest protege on this site--for whom he is standing in front of the mirror doing tongue flexibility exercises....
The bottom line is this apocryphal headline:
Autopsy Shows Victim Healthy But Dead from Massive Heart Attack
28 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
SHUV" SHEL HANAIL"N - Return of the Plastic: Warnings of War
My friend and neighbor Mike from Texas traveled into Jerusalem today with the little lady. He saw this on the major daily, Yediot Ahronot, took a photo, and sent the following e-mail.
Hi Folks~
In today's Israel major newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, the headlines screamed...
להצטייד בניילונים ובסרטי הדבקה מרחב מוגן ולאחסן בבית שימורים ומים
"Equip and prepare yourselves with plastic sheetings, sticky tapes, protected room, also canned food and water..."
IDF says that there is no need to panic but are asking residents to take advantage of these calm days in preparation for the coming war...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The IDF is warning of war and telling everybody to prepare. This was NOT found on either the Hebrew or English websites of Yediot Ahronot.
So what's the bottom line here? The bottom line is that all the yowling about Jerusalem being divided, about peace being negotiated with the PA, about declarations of principles, Annapolis, and all the blah blah baloney going on that is occupying everybody's attention is a smoke screen to hide the real threat - a war coming soon. Keep your eyes on the ball folks and ignore the big ugly images on the wall. The ball is attached to a missile coming the way of Tel Aviv.
29 - Dan
Thanks for the update on the war Dave.
Ruvy: "The Turks are bad-asses. They're meaner than all hell, and have seen the weaknesses of Americans - who do not know how to improvise in the absence of needed equipment as well as they or the Israelis do."
Sounds similar to what was said about Sadam's so called "elite republican guard". Then when the shit hit the fan, they were surrendering to reporters.
Improvisation is what the Iraq war has all been about. The American military man is the fiercest, most resourceful, and noble warrior the world has ever seen. Even when saddled by the "weakness" of liberal Democrats.
If the Turk's are the "bad asses" you portray, then they won't mind dying, should they be stupid enough to rely on your type of ill-informed smear of American military valor.
30 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Dan,
I'm not smearing American valor.
The Americans have regularly held war-games in the eastern Mediterranean with both the Turks and the Israelis for a while now. The American sailors were great guys and good fighting men. The Israeli sailors, not as well equipped (in fact badly equipped) did better than the Americans in the war games because they knew how to improvise better.
I'm working on the assumption that the Turks are equipped in a fashion similar to the Israelis - that is to say not well at all. And I'm working on the assumption that they, used to deprivation as a way of life, will be able to improvise better.
This is not an issue of valor or courage. The American fighting man is an excellent soldier and is the best equipped soldier in the world. But Americans, are not like either Israelis or Turks in that they generally have what they need and have not lived (comparatively speaking) lives of deprivation. While two year veterans may know how to improvise, this ability, all important in the chaos of battle, is not as strong in Americans as it is in Turks or Israelis.
In a given battle between Turks and Americans, I assume that the Americans would win - but the price in blood would be very high - much higher than it has been in the last four years of fighting in Iraq.
31 - moonraven
Since there is no draft, the US military is composed of:
1. a bunch of dead-ender mercenaries
and 2. the very poor who hope to survive to use their military benefit to get a green card or an education.
The second group must also be considered as mercenaries.
If it sounds outrageous that someone would accept the money those folks are paid to come hom in body bags to defend private business interests, just keep in mind that there folks in other countries--in the Third World that will defend private business interests for a few extra points of grades at their private universities. Not even for money.
Stupidity is the most available commodity on the planet.
32 - Dan
Ruvy, your entitled to the opinion, but I would be suspicious of those results. Being well equipped also means being well trained for improvisational situtations. A life of deprivation doesn't equal improvisational superiority.
The core of our military strength is not a "two year veteran" looking for free college tuition, although they're more than helpful, and deserving of much gratitude. But we have military family traditions extending back generations. Young men groomed to be warriors. Men whose fathers and grandfathers have faced sacrifice and death. Those are the ones who make enemies die.
The error you make in assuming a battle with Turks would be bloodier for Americans, is in not recognizing that the battle would most likely be a more conventional one where our guys wouldn't need the handicap of preserving innocent life. That type of battle would be a route. And the Turks likely know this.
33 - moonraven
I do not believe recruiters should be using this site.
34 - Dave Nalle
I had two e-mails from Iraq today that describe the situation there very differently.
Well, why don't you write those first-hand reports up as an article and submit it to the site. Contact Eric Olsen from the home page to get set up to do it.
Dave
35 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Dan,
A couple of points for you to consider.
The Turks took a bad beating in World War I. They got creamed by the Brits who drove them out of the Sinai, Gaza, Jerusalem and chased them all the way to Damascus, and again by the Brits who drove them out of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. They won only one significant battle in that war - the battle to defend Gallipoli. Jemal Pasha, the fellow who later led Turkish forces in driving the Greeks out of Ionia in 1922 was the commander; he took the name Kemal Attatürk after the war and became the founder of modern Turkey.
It is his martial spirit that hovers over the Turkish military even today. The Turks were bad-asses in Korea. Americans who fought along side them noted just how vicious they were. Turks have not changed since then.
Finally, the other thing you really need to comprehend is that the Turkish military is utterly unlike the Iraqi one. They are proud and have a tradition of upholding the sovereignty of Turkey against the world (that's how they were born) and against the corrupt politicians who try to wreck the country whenever they can. So they are similar to the American military that way. In defending their homeland against American attack, or in holding off American forces sent to protect Kurdistan (northern Iraq) they would take a heavy blood toll. For the Americans, even if it was a victory, it would be Gallipoli all over again.
I do not speak out of lack of respect for the American armed forces, but out of a healthy respect for the Turkish armed forces and what motivates them.
36 - Dave Nalle
Defeating AQI is a pyrhic victory. They are not AQ or even a child of AQ, but merely wannabes. They've been persistently demonized by the Pentagon for propaganda reasons.
They drew tens of thousands of fighters from all over the region who might have been engaged in terrorism and insurgencies in other areas and got them killed or imprisoned. That weakens the pool of people al Qaeda anywhere else can draw on, because we have to assume that suicide bombers and terrorist murderers are a finite resource, even in Islam.
The admin is pushing Iran Invasion as the antidote to the stagnant war in Iraq. Just as Iraq was once pushed as the antidote to the lost war in Vietnam. And just as Vietnam itself was pushed as the antidote to the stalemate in Korea.
I sure don't see this happening. I realize you hate Bush with a fiery passion, but right now it looks like he's taking a pretty sensible course of indirect confrontation, even if he's keeping his options open. Bush isn't a lunatic warmonger and he does have senible advisors, you know.
The idea that More War is the antidote to Lost War should by now have been thoroughly debunked.
It's an idea which exists mostly as a fantasy of the left, I think.
But no! Now come the keyboard warriors advocating New wars!
Really? Where?
Now we have the president of the failed Iraq Invasion loudly proclaiming for war with Iran,
Really, when? Hit me with a link to this loud proclamation.
and rattling the saber against Cuba, which one would think had earned the right to set their own course.
Rattling a saber? He offered to help Cuba out economically so that it can have a stable transition to democracy when Castro dies? How is that sabre rattling?
And when the Iran bombing (already authorized by the Kyl-Lieberman act) fails to deter Iran, as they already say, then what war comes next? Syria? Cuba? What?
Why are you so obsessed with invading everyone?
There is no end to this war madness once the first draft of the intoxicating liquor is imbibed. There is no course possible except the war course. No one can point to where it ends. To quit before The End would admit cowardice, they say. It would forsake the sacrifice of those who have gone before, they say.
Who is this 'they' except for some fabricated straw man or a few lunatics from the fringe?
No ones forethought can be entertained, for it weakens the grip of the war party on the national consciousness.
What mythical 'war party' are you referring to?
We may not know where this war madness ends, but we can predict how: nuclear warfare. BANG!
Now THERE's your REAL war!
You're off your meds, right?
Dave
37 - Dan
Ruvy, we just have a difference of opinion about a hypothetical confrontation. I don't impugn the quality of Turkish fighters.
I recently had the privilege of tuning in to a radio interview with one of the surviving Doolittle Raiders from WW2. His story is a very illustrative one of American military improvisation, and valor.
After the Japanese sucker punch at Pearl Harbor, and the near devastation of our Pacific fleet, it was decided that a bombing raid was needed on the homeland of Japan. For no other reason than to boost moral at home, and to wipe the smirk off of the emperors face.
Every man from his 17th bomb group volunteered for the unspecified, extremely hazardous mission. The details that were gradually made known to them were that they were going to launch Airforce Bombers from the deck of a Navy Aircraft Carrier for the first and only time in history. It was the only way.
Numerous modifications had to be made to the aircraft, and the plan was to drop their payloads then fly on to friendly mainland China to attempt a landing since it was logistically impossible to return to the Carrier.
They were spotted by a Japanese Picket about 170 miles before their launch point. They destroyed the enemy ship, but not before it had radioed the news of the impending attack.
Knowing they would now be forced to splash the bombers down in the Sea of Japan they took off anyway. Most of them had never even parachuted before and their training consisted of being told to wait a few seconds before they pulled the cord.
The bombers took off 5 minutes apart independently because a formation was impossible given fuel requirements. Miraculously all 16 made it off the deck.
After a succesful raid with only sporadic anti-aircraft fire they proceeded to their uncertain fate.
Luck was with them though when a storm gave them enough of a tail wind to make it to the Chinese mainland.
Many of them made it and bailed out successfully, but some died in crashes, about ten were unaccouted for, a few were taken prisoner and subsequently starved and tortured. The Japanese military eventually slaughtered about 250,000 chinese civilians for helping rescue the majority of airmen.
After his rescue, this man didn't even return home. He went on to be shot down over Africa, and was held prisoner by the Germans until after the war.
I'm not sure how this guy could fit his balls into a flight suit.
That's the kind of military men we had then, and still do today.
38 - REMF
bliffle, re #18;
Dittos.
39 - REMF
Re #14;
"so you are hard core pro-war???"
Well, yes he is brian. But only in the sense of writing about it on a blogroll.
40 - RJ
Since there is no draft, the US military is composed of:
1. a bunch of dead-ender mercenaries
and 2. the very poor who hope to survive to use their military benefit to get a green card or an education.
The second group must also be considered as mercenaries.
A vile slander. But I expect nothing else from our wonderful little moonraven.
One of my best friends volunteered for military service after getting his college degree, but before 9/11. He re-upped sometime in 2004 or 2005, after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He's been sent to South Korea, Japan, and Oman, as well as other places in the Middle East. He's not at all uneducated or unintelligent. And he's certainly not a merc, with a wife and two beautiful children at home. He's just a patriot. (And, for the record, he's a Democrat.)
The idea that America's volunteer military force is comprised of nothing but blood-thirsty war-mongers and impoverished rubes is nothing more than a disgusting anti-American smear. But again, I have come to expect little else from moonraven and her communist ilk.
41 - RJ
"For the Americans, even if it was a victory, it would be Gallipoli all over again."
So, you think it would lead to approximately 250,000 American causalities? And a roughly 5-4 casualty ratio?
Not terribly likely. But, again, it's not gonna happen anyway.
42 - Dave Nalle
We don't fight battles the way Gallipoli was fought anymore. Body armor, mechanization and improved medical technology and procedures keep casualties much lower than they were back then. To have equivalent casualty levels to Gallopoli we'd need an enormously larger battle, something even even bigger than Mukden with millions of men on each side. It's not going to happen in Iraq or Kurdistan or even Iran. For that kind of casualty count we'd need to go up against Red China.
Dave
43 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
A Dave points out, in order to have the number of deaths there were at Gallipoli, you'd need lots more soldiers than are on the ground now.
But in terms of losses, the Americans would be bloodied badly in a confrontation with the Turks.
The same would hold true in a confrontation with Israelis IF the traitors commanding them now were relieved, and standard Israeli battle tactics of fighting to win were-instituted.
44 - moonraven
Dave: I assume that your suggestion was a joke.
I have made it very clear that I will write Z ERO articles for this site as long as you are part of the editorial "staff".
The price of authentic journalism is your very bald head, Nalle.
RJ:
Moonraven is anything but little. Statuesque is the correct term.
"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."
45 - Dan
In the case of our corrupt main stream media, silence speaks louder than words or actions.
I just learned from Bill O'reilly that not a single American soldier or a single Iraqi soldier was killed in the previous week.
The success in Iraq should be the second biggest story of the year, with the disgraceful media coverage of it being the first.
46 - Martin Lav
Blif # 26
Excellent post!
47 - moonraven
Bill O'Reilly is now the gospel????
That guy would not know the truth if it bit him in the ass.
You gotta be kidding.
48 - Dave Nalle
I have made it very clear that I will write Z ERO articles for this site as long as you are part of the editorial "staff".
MR, I didn't mean to suggest that anyone wants you to write for BC, I just wanted to point out that the door is open. As a member of the editorial staff I actually do something productive here, while your previously stated purpose is only to disrupt and distract with your silly antics, so it's unlikely that anything you wrote would actually be worth publishing.
And I do understand your need for a convenient excuse for not exposing your lack of writing skill to public examination. [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
Dave
49 - Dan
Well, moonraven, it's either the truth or it's not.
If it's a lie, or even an honest mistake, then it will be exposed with the delicacy of a sledgehammer.
50 - Dave Nalle
I just learned from Bill O'reilly that not a single American soldier or a single Iraqi soldier was killed in the previous week.
At least O'Reilly is doing something useful with his time. I'm not surprised this wasn't reported in the MSM, but I had noticed the general decline in news from Iraq. Given that they only cover bad news from Iraq you can assume that when the media stops discussing Iraq that means things are going well there.
Dave
51 - Marcia L. Neil
Uh, the war is being fought by relatives of U.S. citizens who would vote "no" to give pay raises to military personnel as a political action. (Why no? Because the military troops have been incredibly lax at kicking terrorists and influence-networkers off the telephone lines.) The Grassrootspa.com website tells us that someone named Murtha has proposed an extra tax to pay for the war -- instead, let all the University alumni associations chip in to settle the bill, since ROTC exists to choose 'qualified' candidates to send into potentially hazardous overseas duty.
52 - Dan
I think intelligent folks are gradually waking up to the disgrace that the MSM has become.
Fewer people challenge the fact of main stream media bias with much conviction anymore.
It's more a question of degree, and purpose now.
53 - RJ
"At least O'Reilly is doing something useful with his time. I'm not surprised this wasn't reported in the MSM, but I had noticed the general decline in news from Iraq. Given that they only cover bad news from Iraq you can assume that when the media stops discussing Iraq that means things are going well there."
Cite, from the AP:
Sharp Drop Seen in US Deaths in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) " October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths and Americans commanders say they know why: the U.S. troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al-Qaida and Shiite militia extremists.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch points to what the military calls "Concerned Citizens" " both Shiites and Sunnis who have joined the American fight. He says he's signed up 20,000 of them in the past four months.
"I've never been more optimistic than I am right now with the progress we've made in Iraq. The only people who are going to win this counterinsurgency project are the people of Iraq. We've said that all along. And now they're coming forward in masses," Lynch said in a recent interview at a U.S. base deep in hostile territory south of Baghdad. Outgoing artillery thundered as he spoke.
Lynch, who commands the 3rd Infantry Division and once served as the military spokesman in Baghdad, is a tireless cheerleader of the American effort in Iraq. But the death toll over the past two months appears to reinforce his optimism. The question, of course: Will it last?
As of Tuesday, the Pentagon reported 28 U.S. military deaths in October. That's an average of about 1.2 deaths a day. The toll on U.S troops hasn't been this low since March 2006, when 31 soldiers died " an average of one death a day.
In September, 65 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.
Yep. It seems like, as soon as the war in Iraq starts turning our way, the MSM decides it's not an important enough issue to give much coverage to anymore.
Why, it's almost as if their goal has been to destroy our morale, and weaken domestic support for the war! But, nooo, that couldn't be the case. The MSM is perfectly objective...
54 - REMF
HONOR THE FALLEN
"Army Staff Sgt. Robin L. Towns Sr., 52, of Upper Marlboro, Md.; assigned to the 275th Military Police Company, 372nd Military Police Battalion, Washington, D.C. National Guard; died Oct. 24 in Bayji, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee during combat operations."
- from the militarycity web site ("valor")
55 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"I'm terrified that in a few years I might suffer a similar mental breakdown."
Aw, don't worry yourself too much, Dave.
Barry Chamish, the Canadian born Israeli researcher who exposed the real killer of Yitzhak Rabin, recently suffered a stroke. Knowing him as I do, I wasn't all that surprised - but that is besides the point. His writing, which did suffer damage for a time, has improved and he has recovered all of his writing/researching skills.
Nevertheless, the real enemy of us writers is not typos, as Sholem Aleichem complained decades ago, but strokes and other diseases of the brain which prevent clear thinking.
56 - Ninja
"Given that they only cover bad news from Iraq you can assume that when the media stops discussing Iraq that means things are going well there."
What insight!
Given that they only cover bad news from California you can assume that when the media stops discussing the forest fires that means things are going well there.