Saturday, June 17, 2006

The Good News from Iraq

An AP report tells us how well the "security crackdown" in Baghdad is going.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A series of explosions struck commercial areas in Baghdad within hours Saturday, killing at least 17 people and dealing a blow to a huge government operation to secure the capital.

The blasts — seven within five hours — brought the death toll around Iraq to at least 23 people. The bombings also wounded at least 72. A day earlier, a suspected shoe bomber blew himself up inside one of Baghdad's most prominent Shiite mosques, killing 13 people.

Two of our soldiers are missing from a checkpoint south of Baghdad.

Car bomb and mortar attacks occurred in the Sunni city of Mahmoudiya.

Other violence.

Here's the item that really caught my eye:
Gunmen attacked the house of Iraqi army Col. Makki Mindil, killing him after engaging his guards in a gunfight.

If that's "standing up," coffee is a cure for insomnia.

Ah, but there is good news.
There has been a slight decrease in the number of Iraqis reported killed since al-Zarqawi died June 7. In the nine days before the airstrike, 307 Iraqis were killed, compared with 262 in the nine subsequent days, according to an Associated Press tally.

So we've got that going for us. But we have to temper our enthusiasm with the fact that on the same day al-Zarqawi was killed, Iraq's director general of the State Company for Oil Projects was kidnapped.

Another Mission Accomplished, Another Corner Turned.

In his weekly radio speech today, young Mister Bush announced his new plan to succeed in Iraq, which consists of "continued sacrifice" and "more patience."

I wonder how much better that will work than the "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" he announced in November 2005 at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Or from the plan he announced in May of 2004 in a speech he gave at the Army War College.

Or the plan he announced in February 2003.

Or the plan he made with help of the Project for the New American Century prior to even taking office in January 2001.

And then we have the magnificent, non-binding, stay-the-course GOP "legislation" just passed in the House of Representatives which was nothing more than a piece of pro-Bush cheerleading.

Criticize the left. Pander to the right. Stand up. Stand down. Fight! Fight! Fight!

Yeah. That will do the trick.

One of my hardcore conservative acquaintances who is a Vietnam veteran insists to this day that "We only needed eighteen more months, and we could have won."

"Could have won what?" I ask him

"Victory," he says.

"And how would you have defined victory in Vietnam?" I say.

"Winning," he says.

"So you can't define 'winning' or 'victory,'" I say, "but we'll let that pass for now. Let me ask you this. After ten years, you only needed eighteen more months to defeat a third world country?"

"Hell, we could have done it in six months, if they'd let us."

"If you could have done it in six months, how come you couldn't do it in ten years?" I say. "You know, that whole line of reasoning sounds like a little kid at bedtime, wanting to watch the end of a baseball game on television, saying, 'five more minutes, mom. The game's almost over.'"

The game's already over in Iraq, but if we're not careful, we'll be giving the war hawks another five minutes until another ten or twenty years have gone by.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his weekday commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.

10 comments:

  1. I've similarly asked conservatives to define what "winning" in Iraq means. They start sputtering and finally stall out at, "a free and democratic Iraq."

    So I tell them, "Okay, Iraq elected a free and democratic government. We've won. Time to declare victory and go home."

    Thus far, I have not received any adequate answer for why we shouldn't, given that the conditions on the ground meet the stated criteria for victory. But then, wingnut logic is a contradiction in terms...

    - BT

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  2. "Free and democratic Iraq."

    Yeah. That's why we invaded, all right.

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  3. We need to leave Iraq like yesterday. I am so sick of warmongers who never saw a uniform much less a war outside a t.v. wanting to kill kill kill. I am not proud to be an American right now.

    I never bought this war, NEVER. This is a war for oil.

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  4. What makes a "boom" a litus test? How about this, oil has peaked in the late 90s. We have no constant flow of oil. Iraq is simply a source, hence the reason for the war.

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  5. Anonymous7:46 AM

    I agree with Moksha. It was for oil and to have a "'boom' as a litmus test" in not a reasonable requirement.

    After all, we went to war without a plan after we toppled Saddam. We were lied to for the reason for the war...oil and to destabilize the ME. Yes, there is the oil..in the ground, but they keep blowing up the supporting infrastructure. Yet, PNAC and our "leaders" never considered that we should have a plan and they never considered that they just might be pissed at us for staying and staying.

    There is to much $ to be made. And by God we are going to make it!

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  6. Did anybody catch the oil execs on Russert Sunday?

    It's not their fault prices are so high, they're not reallly making that much money.

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  7. Anonymous11:02 AM

    Shit, I ask conservatives to name anything at all that Bush has done right. They can't even answer that one. I mean hardcore bush worshipping backwash 29%ers. You'd think they'd be able to come up with a better answer than Clinton, blah blah blah.

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  8. Anonymous4:40 PM

    Bush and his cronies seem to like calling him the Commander in Chief of the country. While he is commander in chief of the military, I'm reasonably sure this is not yet a military dictatorship, thus he is the president/chief executive of the country and the commander in chief of the military. However, if he wants to refer to himself as a military-type leader and run around in a flight suit and everything, then let's get a military man's opinion on something. Cmdr, when you were CO of that squadron, were you "personally" responsible for everything that might have gone wrong? No, but did you accept responsibility for everything as the CO? Just asking. I remember hearing that you can delegate authority, but not responsibility.

    Musmanno,
    "and what they didn't have they could have asked for".
    Maybe. But how would they know what to ask for if they are told that they have been given all they need to have?

    http://feinstein.senate.gov/crs-intel.htm

    Portions of this CRS report detail exactly what intelligence Congress is NOT allowed to have. It's interesting. They don't give congress some things that would perhaps allow them to independantly determine the voracity of the sources, while the executive branch policy makers have all of that stuff at the ready. Sure, they aren't tailored to that sort of thing in general, but what is the limit of due diligence when you're talking about a war? I'm not trying to stick up for them, but it's clear that they didn't have access to all of the intel, so it would make me happy if we could clear that up right now and stop using it as an excuse.

    As for the oil thing, it's obviously not so much that they wanted to keep all of the oil for themselves. That hasn't worked out so well. I think a more reasonable approximation of their goal is to control the flow of the oil. The CPA immediately canceled all existing oil distribution contracts (which were going to places in Europe and Asia, but not to the US), and then redistributed them based on Bush's myterious formula of who had helped us fight the war. Now we can reward friends and punish everyone else by denying them access to Iraq's still expansive oil fields for the forseeable future. As some fields start to peak and decline, at least compared to rising demand, fields like Iraq's that haven't been used so much over the last few years will be vital to the countries that have access to them as these emerging industrial powers start to struggle over what oil remains.

    Can I prove the intentions of the architects of this war? No, but that sure is what happened as a result of it.

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  9. Not looking to stir things up more here, but I'm one who rejects the notion that the voters are responsible for the actions of the elected--especially when the elected keep their agendas hidden while running for office.

    Election to office is not a blank check to abuse power.

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  10. Got me there, Lurch ;-)

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