Despite Tony's infatuation with George, the UK has always been a lot more realistic about this Iraqi venture than 1600 Penn. Ave. British forces outside Basra have essentially stood down for a reason.......... the whole thing is completely fcuked up, and it won't make a blind bit of difference if the Union Jack flies or doesn't fly. Three provinces handed over to Iraqi control......... Basra to go and the UK is out. Enjoy!
Thank God we've still got the Poles!
Oh, wait ...
I updated the post with a little map recap. not for the faint of heart.
Ken Pollack doesn't give a shit what happens as long as his paychecks and media appearances keep coming. In a just world he'd be pelted with rotten fruit whenever he showed his face in public.
Pisser of a thread; Hub...been needin' this one.
How much bandwidth we got? :o)
i DO have my doubts about the Brits assumption that what Petraeus is going to say in the September "assessment" will lead to a relatively quick drawdown of american troops.
I just don't see
bush willingly starting to pull troops out. I think that's going to have to be forced on him, and a substantial part of the forcing is going to have to come from republicans...the ones who still seem to be willing to stand around the gangplank while wringing their hands and farting and tapdancing.
As we know, when the lid comes off, anything could happen, and this entire cock-up is about control, and control by bushCo. Too much potential shit coming down, for him/them to relax even a mostly failed lockdown, IMHO.
This may even be a kind of jawboning on the Brits part;
"It's going quite well, and we can leave, just about anytime; right, Mr. Preznit? (especially, you stupid, ungrateful piece-of-shit, since your people are saying we've already been defeated)"
I'm not sure how much protection the Brits have been giving the convoys that are rolling up and down the Kuwait-to-Baghdad highway. I mean, they WERE there, and they went after any militias who were kicking up their heels, for some time, but now, I think they're saying, and rightly so:
"That's it. Someone tell Gordon Brown that legacy-covering for george bush's arse was NOT part of the mission statement.
We're calling it good. It's about out of our hands now, and when we leave, it DAMN sure will be out of our hands, and Blair can put on some kevlar and set up a perimeter around the airport, and cover OUR asses, as we bail, or he can take the mid-east "peace envoy" bone that bush tossed his favorite poodle, and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Either way, we're done."
At this point, the american military is becoming a wild card in the whole thing. I think that enough of them are quietly telling congress that this is a lost cause, and that nasty little question (Which may be John Kerry's best legacy, of "How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?") is kicking in, as we speak, that a lot of our grunts, from the top down, may start going off the reservation, and doing it more publicly than it's been done before.
Whatever happens, for bush and his coterie of loon-crusaders to face up to what they've created, is going to be a reality check of Himalayan proportions. I just don't know it they can, or will, do it. The Goldwater Swat Team may have to go through the white house like it was the caves on Suribachi.
But I'm glad that the British military is facing the truth, and is thinking of saving their troops lives, instead of saving george bush and the GOP's political asses.
THAT takes far more courage than Tony Blair's goosestepping the British military into this misery.
I remember reading a post of Mr. G's, oh, about 2 years ago? This was his exact point, how the hell do we get our people out of there? Everything is so much worse than we know. Reading the foreign papers and seeing their videos of Iraq that we are not allowed to see is very crushing. Along with all this police state -like crap I, well I don't know what to do or to think. We have been sold down the river by everyone it appears.
Tanbark,
I agree that it remains to be seen what Petraus says next month. I dont think that is linked to the Brit withdrawal. I think their bags are packed.
ye gods.
I know this isn't a fair question, but as someone who doesn't know about war at all, I 'd like to ask anyway: what would be the best case scenario for getting our troops out of the area? all of them?
does it require asking XXX for a cease-fire, and getting the hell out?
I'm sure it's the generals on the ground and other experts who'll give the orders, but is there a scenario we can hope/agitate for, once we've gotten the criminal White House to make the political decision or have it taken out of their hands?
We can just use all those ponies and flying monkeys to get our troops outta Iraq!
Why all the long faces?
All you have to do is go here for the truth: US Finishes a "Strong Second" In Iraq War.
Why are these guys always in front of the news? scary...
The British recall how long it took them to quell the last Iraqi insurgency (if I recall correctly, it started about 1920 and kept going until the British left in the 50s). TE Lawrence's book on the subject should have been required reading at the Pentagon in the runup to the war.
As it is, I think the war pundits deserve a warm spot in the unfashionable end of Hell for what they've done.
allow me to put on my tinfoil hat for a second....Why are we al assumeign that our curent administration wants the military in one pice when this is over....or have the aility to get out easily??? The upper ranks of our goverment and military are filled with dominioist types...armodedan is a lot easier to launch if your military is hobbled and stuck on the other side of the world.
hey huberis who controls the air port, the army or blackwater? we may literaly have no way out.
then again nver ascribe maliciousness where incompantancy can explane the situation.
One of the hardest things in life is to look at a situation and admit that there is no "right" answer. To paraphrase Sarah McLachlan "This is going to hurt like hell..."
I can't see any way to get 160,000 troops out of there without casualities on both sides. Give a timetable and it is possible that the insurgents will hold thier fire in reserve for the coming massive civil conflict, but they will still want to go after a few targets of opportunity.
All in all, it won't be clean nor simple. This is proably why the British want out now... the coming withdrawl is going to be so much worse.
Amuseinc: our best hope for a less bloddy withdrawl is for the next president to make nice with Sadar (perhpas some high end gear to not shoot us in the back as we run). but then we run the risk of them not winnign the civil war, then whoever wins it will be pissed off at us. another option would be to make nice with the Sunni, kurds, and turks at the same time...good luck with that.
US uneasy as Britain plans for early Iraq withdrawal.
-You're damned right they're uneasy.
They have to find bodies to take the place of the British.
Well, Mitt has some sons, don't he?
Enlist the fuckers!
"One of the hardest things in life is to look at a situation and admit that there is no "right" answer.
One trenchant sentence, Amuse. :o)
And if you're running for prez, it's even harder, to say: "This can't be fixed."
As a candidate, you're supposed to say:
"I can fix this."
"We're fucked!" won't get you many votes.
Still, I'd like to see one of them (preferably, Edwards) have the courage and the intellectual honesty to say it.
And Moonglum; I think YOUR last sentence is spot on, too.
Too many people talking and believing that bush and the borgs planned this.
It's nonsense. They didn't have a clue that they would be up to their assholes in bodyparts and chaos, 4 and a half years after they pulled the trigger on Iraq. They, themselves, believed all the bullshit about a "cakewalk" and "a war that would pay for itself" and "the Grand Square in Baghdad named after George Bush."
Here's how stupid they were:
they actually thought they could crank up that old post-WWI Mosul-to-Haifa pipeline, run it across SYRIA, for God's sake, and down into Haifa, where the Israeli's would happily take their cut of IRAQI oil, before it was loaded onto tankers bound for america and europe, and neither Iraq nor Syria would object.
Just like the rest of their Barney Fife "liberation" invasion, it was utter fantasy. Not Hitlerian planning; or at least, not very good Hitlerian planning; just comic-book day-tripping.
The old "Mayberry Machiavelli's" comes to mind, every day.
Trying to put a city the size of Los Angeles into lockdown long enough to make it to November, 2008, is not the "plan" of smart, cyinical, corporate greedheads; it's the "plan" of a bunch of dumb, utterly venal (they DO make the cut for "cynical") lying ciphers, whom are looking at what they've created, and are shitting green nickels. And whose plan has at least gotten simpler:
"Can we hang on until the election?"
Which brings us to the rather relevant question of whether or not the democrats will, in the coming months, put the screws to the GOP with daily reminders about who knocked up Rosemary, and force them to force Cheyney and bush from office, and then help us get the troops out of the civil war that bush created...
OR: will they just keep pissing and moaning, and slathering their little bungholes with vaseline for the next reaming by the lamest lame-duck administration in
the history of the country, which will guarantee that THEY will get blamed for the inevitable denouement, when
our military has lost the choice of cutting a deal, and exiting in some order, or having to make an opposed withdrawal.
Your choice, Donkeys.
Your choice, Donkeys.
Tanbark
We'll take Stabbed-in-the-back for $1000, Alex.
Ken Pollack might want to see that Union Jack flying over Iraq but I'd say the Iraqis have probably had enough of that over the last century. The Iraqi people and the British people want the occupation to end. Ken Pollack and Tony Blair didn't. That mattered when TB was grand master. If Gordon Brown has any political sense of forging a legacy different than his predecessor he will get out as soon as possible.
The overlapping brigade deployments that constitute the "Surge" must also come to an end. Fifteen months in the sandbox is unconscionable. More bad shit in Iraq and here for years to come are coming this way.
If the only price that Mr. Pollack has to pay is professional disgrace, then he will have gotten off easy.
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