Sometimes a reader will send along something that is a post all in itself. Like the following, for instance, from Gary Schamburg:
So—my first look at the web this morning starts at the Drudge Report and the headlines . . . The Surge has failed and Reid calls military officer “incompetent.”
And yes—WE, that’s ALL American citizens, should be mad as hell! This past week, Sen Reid’s approval rating was at 19%, and the Dem Congress at 27%; meanwhile President Bush is at 37% (Rasmussen). Keep that in the back of your mind as you read the following Breitbart article.
Also—stick around to see what people who really understand the Art of War think about the Iraq situation. And finally—watch the Dennis Miller video—again—to remember what a tool Reid is for the Islamofascists. Yes—I’M mad as HELL . . . !!
Iraq surge a failure, top Democrats tell Bush
Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop “surge” policy was a failure.Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.
“As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results,” the two leaders wrote.
“The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.
“It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.
“In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.
The letter appeared to preview a fresh showdown over Iraq between anti-war Democrats and the president, just a few weeks after Bush forced his foes to strip troop withdrawal timelines from a 100 billion dollar emergency war budget.
It also came a few days after the US military mourned its 3,500th soldier killed in action in Iraq.
Pelosi and Reid told Bush in the letter that they planned to send him new legislation to “limit the US mission in Iraq, begin the phased redeployment of US forces, and bring the war to a responsible end.”
On Tuesday, Reid said that Senate Democrats would attach troop withdrawal deadlines to a Defense Department Authorization bill, due to be debated within weeks.
The next critical point in the showdown between Bush and Congress over Iraq is expected in September, when US commander in Iraq David Petraeus is due to report on progress in the strategy to “surge” up to 30,000 more US troops into the war-ravaged nation.
Even senior Republicans have said they expected the president will have little choice but to make adjustments in the Iraq strategy, once the report is made public.
Why The Most Important Stuff Is Not Reported
June 13, 2007: The terrorists have changed tactics, and so has the United States, and that says much about where the battle for Iraq is going. There are fewer bombs going off in Baghdad, so the bombers are trying to make each one count more. Thus, in the last week, three truck bombs took out bridges and overpasses, seeking to make life miserable for an many Iraqis as possible. This is because, despite all the dismal news from Iraq, what doesn’t get reported is that most of the country is quiet, and there has been 4-5 percent growth in the overall economy for the past four years. Actually, there was a huge jump in economic growth, about 40 percent, in the year after Saddam fell. That has now settled down. Anyone who has been to Iraq, particularly American soldiers, can’t help but notice the traffic jams, shops full of goods, and all those Iraqis walking around with their new cell phones. Yes, it’s a war zone, but it’s also a growing economy.
The Terrorists are also trying to get through to Shia religious shrines, as part of the al Qaeda strategy to enrage the Shia enough to cause a civil war in Iraq. To that end, a second successful attack was made on the Shia Golden Mosque was made, bringing down the two minarets (which are a distance from the golden dome of the mosque itself.) This has enraged Shia, but that is not making much difference. The Iraqi army and police are mostly Shia, with a Kurdish minority. The Shia security forces regularly terrorize Sunni Arab civilians, and encourage them to leave mixed (with Shia or Kurds) neighborhoods, and either leave the country, or move back to wholly Sunni Arab areas, like the Baghdad suburbs, or western Iraq. Iraqis Sunni Arab neighbors have already told the terrorists, publicly and privately, that they will not come to their aid. At least not as long as the Americans are there. The Arabs can count, and note that for each American soldier killed, at least ten of the attackers die.
Another new terrorist tactic, which is already backfiring, is the threat to execute soldiers and police that have been captured. This would mean videos on the web of Iraqi soldiers and cops getting their heads cut off. That goes over real well with Iraqi civilians. who are already very anti-terrorist. Even most Sunni Arabs are fed up with the pointless (it hasn’t accomplished anything in four years) terrorism. As a result, most Sunni Arab tribal and religious leaders have made, or are negotiating, deals with the government, or American combat commanders directly. In Sunni Arab areas, it’s become quite common to see tribal gunmen fighting it out with terrorist gangs, especially foreign ones allies to al Qaeda.
The Shia take if for granted that they are now in charge, and are maneuvering among themselves to see who will have the most power, and loot. Corruption and lack of civic spirit continue to be the biggest problems in Iraq. This sort of thing does not make loud noises, so does not get into the mass media much. But what is done about corruption, will have more to do with Iraqs future, than the battle with terrorists.
Honesty About Iraq: How are we doing?
The United States can usually win even postmodern wars abroad if it can play to its strengths  which are marshaling our enormous material, intelligence, and technological advantages to defeat the enemy before he inflicts enough casualties to convince an affluent and comfortable public at home that such losses are simply not worth the envisioned aims.
So how are we doing?
As expected, many of our traditional advantages are being nullified.
How can Americans use air superiority against an enemy that hides among civilians and dares them to destroy infrastructure essential to our friends?
We create sophisticated communications at great cost and investment; the parasitical terrorists simply bore into them and use them at no cost and sometimes with greater effect than do their inventors (e.g., Why are not jihadist websites deemed as dangerous as IEDs, but not attacked in similar fashion?).
Money and know-how can rebuild Iraq along the designs of Western material society  but that only makes it more vulnerable as a single transformer blown up or a pylon brought down can suddenly take away the newly found improved life. It’s not just that a suicide bomber with a $100 vest can destroy $1 million worth of electrical infrastructure, but in the gruesome equation cast the American engineers into the role of the incompetent or sinister by their failure to repair and rebuild faster than an illiterate can destroy.
The globalized media is an American epiphenomenon, but the narrative of the war is still the IED, not the purple finger. We apparently have no way of convincing the world that the primordial enemy commits daily something far worse than the sexual humiliation of the entire Abu Ghraib fiasco. Somehow “thousands have been killed†is never qualified as those mostly butchered and blown up by insurgents  since the loose use of the passive voice lends a general sense that somehow Americans are directly involved in, or responsible for, the killing.
Our soldiers are fighting brilliantly, and history will record they are defeating the enemy while suffering historically low casualties. But if the sacrifice of American youth is not tied  daily, hourly  to larger strategic and humanitarian goals by eloquent statesmen who believe in the mission, then cynicism follows and, with it, despair.
The establishment of consensual government in Iraq, with the concomitant defeat of jihadists, will have positive ripples that will undermine Islamism and help to cleanse the miasma in which al Qaeda thrives. But again, unless explained, most Americans will not see a connection between the ideology of the head-drillers and head-loppers we are fighting in Iraq and those who try to do even worse at Fort Dix and the Kennedy airport. The war to remove Saddam was won and is over; the subsequent and very different war in Iraq that followed is for nothing less than the future of the Middle East  and now involves everything from global terrorism and nuclear proliferation to the world’s oil supply and the future of Islam in the modern world.
We need to confess that the jihadists are not only keen students of insurgency warfare, but good observers of the American psyche. We think their kidnapping, childish infomercials, gruesome tactics, and horrific websites are primordial and counterproductive; but they are more likely horrifically simple in inciting the most basic fears and self-preservation instincts of ordinary people. Precisely because decapitation belongs to a different century makes it more gruesome now, not less. Because the al Qaedists steal many of their talking points from the Western Left does not make them unimaginative as much as eerily familiar. And because we can daily predict the serial barbarity of the jihadists makes it not so much unimaginative as savagely inevitable.
So what to do?
We can quibble and fight about tactics on the ground, manpower numbers, strategic postures toward Iran and Syria, the need to prod the Iraqis, but our problem is more existential. Either stabilizing Iraq now is felt critical to the United States and the West or it isn’t. If the Left is right that it isn’t, then we should flee; if they are wrong, and I think they are, then we must start using our vast cultural and media resources to explain what is at stake  in a strategic and humanitarian sense  and precisely what it is costing America and why it in the long run is worth it, and how we have adjusted to counter our enemies who in the last four years have not won in Iraq or anywhere else either.
By our relative inaction on these critical informational fronts, we are only raising the bar impossibly high for General Petraeus when he reports back to Congress in the autumn. For election-minded Republican senators and representatives (whose defection alone can end the war) the barometer of success unfortunately may be soon not be improvement in six months, but only an impossible demand for absolute victory in 2007.
So more explanation, less assertion; more debate with, rather than dismissal of, critics. And the final irony? The more brutal honesty, the less euphemism and generalities, the more Americans will accept the challenge.
Another source—NRO tank :
Marines Fed Up With Politics [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
The Los Angeles Times (hardly a bastion of conservatism) can no longer deny the reality of how the troops feel.
Fact is, U.S. Marines are sick of the politics about Iraq. And, as I’ve been reporting, they are tired of the distorted  and often flat-out wrong  poll findings about how they (the troops) are supposed to be feeling about the Iraq war.
Under a sweltering Iraqi sky, [Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding general of Marine Forces Central Command] asked for questions from his troops.
Many were reluctant, but Marine Lance Cpl. Jack Kessel, 19, of Raleigh, N.C., stepped forward. Something had been gnawing at him as he and his buddies go about the business of winning hearts and minds in al-Anbar province: “How are we supposed to fight a war when people back home say we’ve already lost?â€Â
...
Marines continue to exceed their re-enlistment goals. A recent study showed that those who have deployed twice to Iraq are more likely to re-enlist than those who have gone once. The Marine least likely to re-enlist is one who has not deployed to Iraq.
...
Mattis told the Marines to believe their own eyes rather than news accounts about who is winning the war. Don’t be discouraged by politicians and pundits who haven’t been to Iraq: “Don’t hold it against them. The only reason they have that freedom of speech is because you’ll fight for it.â€ÂDennis Miller—one more time.
A lot to chew on, I realize, but hell—what else do you have to do this morning/afternoon?
I mean, it ain’t like Hooters is having a bikini contest today, is it?
And when you’re done with that, here’s some more!:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “incompetent” during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.
Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.
This is but the latest example of how Reid, under pressure from liberal activists to do more to stop the war, is going on the attack against President Bush and his military leaders in anticipation of a September showdown to end U.S. involvement in Iraq, according to Democratic senators and aides.
Pity Reid’s indignation wasn’t in evidence at Petraeus’s confirmation hearings.
But remember, folks. It’s about scruples—not about a desire to take whatever position is expedient to retain power, up to and including trying to cut the legs out from under the military, even while professing how much you truly love the troops.
DANCE, HARRY! BEFORE JANE HAMSHER STARTS TALKING ABOUT THE RELATIVE SMOOTHNESS OF YOUR VAGINAL WALLS!
Stucco.
The dems of the last 4+ years have reminded me of a three year old throwing a temper tantrum. They want something, they can’t have it, and they’re randomly lashing out at the person preventing them from getting what they want.
The Republican “leadership” from 2000-2006 was no great shakes, but it’s a wonder anyone could vote for the maroons now running Congress.
Petraeus has his flaws. He has a LOT of them, actually – but he has at least one that may be useful, and that’s his colossal vanity. I guarantee you there was some swearing this morning when that remark hit MNF-I headquarters, and a few members of the Lincoln Brigade were probably privy to a description of Harry Reid that’s likely unprintable. But c’est la guerre. He doesn’t want to lose in part because it’s his ass, and he got to the top of his profession by making sure it wasn’t his ass. That counts for something. He has a need to win. And we need a winner there, not another aging congenial team player.
I hate to say it (because I once worked for the SOB), but he’s the best chance we have. He has surrounded himself by some of the smartest young officers in the Army. The bottom line is that if these guys can’t come up with a solution, the whole national defense establishment can’t – because the people Petraeus took over there with him are the smartest guys the Army has.
Of course, if Senator Reid has any suggestions, I’m sure they would be willing to listen. But this isn’t Nevada real estate, you know?
Shut your putrid piehole Harry Reid, the stench of defeat is most foul.
BTW, has Jane Hamsher been talking about the relative smoothness of, um, you know?
Because if she is, I may just have to pay a visit to Firedoglake. That kind of info comes in handy sometimes.
Please. Senator Twatwaffle.
Come to think of it, Reid is sort of a cunt.
Nota Bene: Lest anyone take offense, cunt = asshole according to St. Mandy of Vaginal Empowerment. So take it up with her.
I can’t be bothered. Thanks to Jeff, I was reminded that I do have
a Hooters Bikini contest to go to.to go eat lunch.Mayeb I’ll try Hooters.
For lunch. Because I like their wings. And it’s close by. And cheap.
What?
Don’t know if you all have heard it, but the Pajamas podcast with Austin Bay and Gen. Petraeus’s chief of counterinsurgency (David Kilcullen) is interesting. Kilcullen indicated the surge hasn’t even really begun yet. All they have been doing is putting people into place and securing neighborhoods. Has this even been reported anywhere else?
Listen here: http://blogs.pajamasmedia.com/blogweekinreview/
I’ve mentioned it before, FA, but you’re correct. I’ll post that as a separate link sometime later this afternoon.
Senate majority leader Effing Twatwaffle (D-NV).
Is Reid really gunnning for a single digit approval number? Cause I think he’s got a chance…
When will Americans finally recongize that they who kiss the asses of people who want to kill us are unpatriotic? How can people dismiss Reid’s remarks that demoralize our troops and aid and abet our enemies, unless they support our enemies?
Liberal Democrats hate America. Why else would they so coddle the enemies of the nation?
Reid really is a cunt (see the New International Amanda Marcotte Abridged Dickshunary).
Because of the nuance.
Seems like Dems are going to try to simultaneously go full throttle on healthcare (Sicko premieres June 29) and climate change (Live Earth, July 7), while preemptively declaring defeat in Iraq in time for September’s report by Petraeus, which will follow on the heels of their annual Hurricane Katrina Remembrance Marathon.
happyfeet – How does that triumvirate of libtard issues differ from any other time of the year?
Losing the war ? Check
National healthcar ? Check
Global warming hysteria ? Check
Knotty (naughty) pine.
That’s true, JD, but they have the media in pocket to an uncommon degree this year, with newshooks that are external yet complementary to the party message. It’s all very synergismy.
Full name: Pantywaste Twatwaffle
Was Senator Twatwaffle talking about the Fatah surge in Gaza being a failure??
MSM outrage begins in 3…2…1
Wow, it’s in short time in existence Polico has been wrong about so much? How many “scoops” haven’t been. And, here you guys are spinning all this wrath on “unnamed sources familiar with conversation?” Wow, if only the AP got that kind of respect (is that the problem? They actually name their sources?)!!
JD, I fancy myself a liberal, not a Democrat, but I fail to see how Democrats have f*cked up Iraq. They aren’t blowing up US soldiers; that would be foreigners and Iraqis. And the President has now had four years (of his stated goal of 50) to help pacify that country and not one damn thing has changed. To blame Harry Reid for that is ridiculous.
While I’m at it, I understand taking a shot at Pace, who so successfully politicized the office of JCS that one forgot it was not officially staffed by the RNC, but, if Harry called Petraeus “incompetent,” then that’s wrong. Petraeus deserves his chance to succeed in the strategy that this own CT strategy manual indicates he doesn’t have enough troops to pull off.
Anonymous sources reporting scandalous things about Harry Reid. That Politico is AWESOME.
Effing is his middle name. His full name is Slimey Effing Twatwaffle.
Odd that you would mention it, because the Hooter’s in Jacktown IS having a bikini contest tomorrow. See you there.
Yup. You’re still the same delusional defeat-fetishist you always were.
You forgot they have no compunctions about doing absolutely anything to get it, either.
I give up, how many?
timmah – Nothing has changed ? I get it, you are just demonstrating willful and/or aggressive ignorance. Did I say the Dems fucked up Iraq ? No. Not even close. First, that would assume that it is, in fact, fucked up, a premise I do not accept, and is not borne out by reality. Second, given the context, I was saying that their message is, and has been, that we are losing in Iraq.
I suppose these clowns expect us to publish our actual war planning, in advance, to give the NY Times and timmah a chance to declare them wrong, prior to implementation.
Nothing has changed, Timmah? Gee, that only demonstrates your utter ignorance of current events. Good job.
Those “foreigners and Iraqis” have a battalion of Lord Haw-Haws in the Democratic Party. Haw-Haw never picked up a rifle, never threw a grenade but he was still invited to the big necktie party after the war.
JD, you said “losing the war.” If you meant something different, because, as is evident, you were being pithy and making a point through humor, then I apologize for accusing you of what McGehee, God love him, is not afraid to come right out and say (“defeatocrat”, clever and insightful! Right up there with Re-thug-lican.)
Onward
Robby, could you tell me what has changed? Is there a political solution to the insurgency that has been passed in the last 24 hours? Has the oil-sharing law been changed? De-Baathification? I suppose, given the Pentagon’s report of this a.m. that more Americans have died recently, but to me tha implies not much has changed.
Iraq is in chaos and has been since the looting started after the fall of Saddam. You want to make a big deal of purple fingers, smoking Fallajuh ruins, Haditha massacres, Abu Garib, Parliament inaction, unworkable Constitutions, etc, you go right ahead and maintain there’s a huge difference….which, given the latest Iraqi polls of the Iraqi people, there may be. After all the majority of them say life was better with Saddam (properly phrased “is your life better now than in 2003).
But, you’re right and don’t let anyone, Iraqi, American, or Harry Reid tell you different, big guy
Stupidest thing you ever wrote.
I didn’t say “defeatocrat,” I said “defeat fetishist.”
You’re the one who read that as a partisan dig. I wonder why?
Let me correct that for you timmah:
Wow, I assume in it’s short time in existence Politico has been wrong about so much! How many “scoops†haven’t been. And, here you guys are spinning all this wrath on “unnamed sources familiar with conversation?” (Just because they are on the ground in Iraq does not mean they actually know anything more then twatwaffle partisan hacks in DC) Wow, if only the AP got that kind of respect (is that the problem? They actually name their sources?) Jamil Hussien for example!!
JD, I fancy myself an elitist, Knee-jerk Liberal, not a Democrat, I therefore refuse to see how Democrats have f*cked up Iraq. It’s easy, I just put on my patented truth blinders. They aren’t blowing up US soldiers, only helping the foreigners and Iraqis that are blowing up our soldiers by controling the narrative(that the war is lost and always has been because HE LIED). And the President has now had four years,of his stated goal of 50,(honestly I am being willfully obtuse here) to help pacify that country and I refuse to admit that one damn thing has changed. Again, the blinders help. To blame Harry Reid and the rest of the twatwaffle, surrender-monkeys for that is correct, but not fair.
While I’m at it, I understand taking a shot at Pace, who refused to admit the war is lost and therefore politicized the office of JCS that one forgot it was not officially staffed by the RNC, but, if Harry called Petraeus “incompetent,†then that’s wrong, but technically correct. Petraeus deserves his chance to succeed in the strategy (as long as we lose the war and sweep the elections in 08) that this own CT(that I can’t or won’t link to and never actually read) strategy manual indicates he doesn’t have enough troops to pull off.
Anonymous sources reporting scandalous things about Harry Reid. Its like you guys took a page from the DNC playbook! That Politico is AWESOME.
There thats better!
Because we can just look at numbers of dead to tell who’s winning and losing.
Idiot.
Is there a competition? Cause we can just declare you the winner of that one now and get it over with.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is “incompetent.”
Reid acknowledged similarly disparaging Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.
But Reid, whose comments to bloggers first appeared in The Politico, also told reporters: “I think we should just drop it.”
Heh, I’ll bet he did.
HTML hell, I tell ya. Rescue me?
Timmah is looking for “political” solutions to the insurgency? Get a clue. The “insurgents” want Iraq to be a terrorist thug haven. There are not “political” solutions to that goal.
Evidently, timmah thinks that the Gaza Strip ought to be replicated across the world.
It is simply untrue to say that nothing has changed in Iraq.
The situation is an exceptionally complex one, even by Arab standards, which in great part is why we did not continue to Baghdad in 1991.
Having deposed Saddam, we have a resposibility to Iraq and to ourselves to establish in his place a functional regime.
Because this process of change is being led by the United States, rather than say the Russians or the Chinese, the option of replacing one murdering dictator with another is not on the table.
And so the armed forces of the coalition have to wear down a number of disparate and conflicting enemies who obey no rules of war, while being held by their own politicians and media to the high standards of military conduct that in general are, rightly, associated with the civilisation currently going under the name ‘the West”.
The determination and endurance needed to complete this task successfully will be enormous. It will also require the unqualified support of the populations across the West whose soldiers are fighting this war on behalf of us all.
This is not an imperial adventure. It is the front line in a clash of civilisation against barbarism.
It is not fitting that the leader of the majority party in power in the Senate should denigrate the prospects of success of his country’s armed forces or the competence of their commanders to achieve the task they have been given.
Mr Reid’s conduct has been shameful and it is not easy to see how he can remain in his position.
furriskey – Every time I try to type something like that, I get distracted by some brain-poundingly stupid comment, and wind up composing something full of piss and vinegar. That was very well said. Mumtaz !
Entirely possible, timmah, but it’s still quite accurate. It’s hard to tell the AQ agitprop from the Harry Reid’s press releases at times. Do you not think that the insurgents/AQ are not listening and taking heart that victory is near?
la shukr ala wajib..
Is that Egyptian dialect ?
I can still cuss like a sailor in Arabic, but after over a decade, my skills are getting rusty.
Afwan, ya sadeeki.
“synergismy”
Winner of the best new word contest. It even sounds good when you say it out loud. Thanks happyfeet.
I thank God Reid and Pelosi are the Defeatocrat “leaders” instead of someone competent. The Democrat Party is squandering a historic opportunity. Good.
Of course since timmyb is no Democrat, he won’t argue against this.
I can’t wait for timmah to confront the fact that the Reid statement was confirmed by Reid.
Mainly I can’t wait for that because he’ll never do it.
Here’s all NPR reported on Reid’s remarks – a brief in their “Hourly News Summary” at the top of the page here:
In NPR’s defense, Pravda didn’t report Reid’s remarks either.
You know it’s tough for Dingy Harry when Taylor Marsh is taking shots at him. But then, you can expect a mixed bag…
Pace became CJCS in October of 2005.
tw: theres72 of them waiting! Allah told me so!
Well, had Taylor a show and a crack research staff, she wouldn’t have made that mistake now, would she?
YET ANOTHER ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE!
I love this place, even when I feel like I’m in over my head.
And furriskey, I agree with JD. Your elucidation of the Iraqi war and the shameful behavior of Reid is excellent for its relentless logic and dispassionate expression. I have copied it to my arsenal of references for later use.
This Taylor Marsh bit tweaked my cynicism a bit:
Indeed, why? Perhaps it was because he really never said it to Pace?
Oh, Jesus. He did. not. go there.
So, less than 3 weeks after the fall of Kabul, bin Laden is, according to this account, out of the country. Tora Bora wasn’t really a hot pursuit until the second week of December; again, by this account, bin Laden was probably out of the region by that time.
Possibly we might have captured or killed bin Laden if we’d gotten more troops in country more quickly. The logistics of a massive troop and equipment airlift that don’t violate the airspace of one or more other sovereign countries, though, is a nontrivial problem.