Unforgivable : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Shiite Cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr is threatening to let a six-month cease fire between his militia and U.S. forces expire within the next few days. This is the same man who is responsible for the deaths of countless American troops and certainly has the potential to be responsible for more. Troops who are now preparing to deploy to Iraq could very well face the wrath of Al-Sadr along with his Mahdi army. All while the Bush Administration ignores him and allows him to blatantly operate with impunity.
This is a tragic disgrace that I will never be able to digest. It is bad enough that the Bush administration ordered the unwarranted military invasion of Iraq -- a total act of un-American hostile aggression. As a direct result, Muqtada Al-Sadr, and all those alike, have been murdering thousands of U.S. troops while Bush places all the blame directly on Al-Qaeda.
I don't deny that there are elements of Al-Qaeda and other terror networks in Iraq. Any terrorist in the Middle East who wants to kill an American now has an opportunity to infiltrate Iraq's borders and take a shot at any one of our 165,000 troops sitting stationary over there. But for a political and religious figurehead like Al-Sadr to emerge into prominence on a platform of killing U.S. troops, while we grant him amnesty and simultaneously send more troops over to be killed by him, is a crime.
I have raised this issue in the past and every time I am peppered with "look at the Anbar province." We gave a free pass to Sunni insurgents with gallons of American blood on their hands for their promise to defeat Al-Qaeda even though they were formerly allied with them. In addition, we are providing them with money and weapons. So are we hiring our former enemies as mercenaries to defeat the same enemy? It seems to me that they are basically promising to fight themselves.
What do we tell the parents of all the U.S. troops that have been killed by these insurgents in Al-Anbar and Sadr city? That we found it necessary to befriend the people who killed your child and "oh by the way, freedom isn't free." Sorry, but I'm not buying that brand.
Where are all the patriotic red-blooded Americans chanting "stay the course" on this premise?
If we trust these former insurgents turned allies enough to arm and finance them in an effort to outsource the mission of defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq, than that is all the more reason to start the process of getting our troops out of there.
Our brave men and women in uniform have extraordinarily carried out their mission with success and honor.
When the Bush administration decided to forge an unholy alliance with the very same insurgents that our troops are being sent over to fight, they forfeited any excuse to keep our troops there indefinitely. We are very likely on borrowed time with our new found friends -- and sooner or later we will be fighting them again.
It is just endless -- all courtesy of George W. Bush.
I can't believe those who say we withdraw combat troops and leave American advisors and trainers to live with Iraqis who could sell them for cash or other reasons with no rapid reaction American force to come to the rescue.
AC Gunships are nice and so is UAV missle support, but for my old bones, ain't nothin' like boots jumping to the ground from planes or helicopters. Blackwater can secure the cloistered hugest embassy in the world that so far hasn't been able to deliver on any political benchmarks the Iraqis themselves developed to justify "Bush's THE SURGE" letting our troops avoid being BEHEADED (I thank the Lord I never had to see or deal with that) by the troops we sent them to advise and train.
You are the new soldier and I say to you as an old soldier that, when the Iraq mess is solved one way or another and if Afhanistan is not a threat to America, as a Vietnam veteran who lived though the RIF's (Reductions in Force) and reductions in benefits when we pulled put by bi-partisan action, believe the following poem alleged to be written by a veteran of the British Lord Marlborough upon returning from a difficult campaign back in the 1600's:
God and the Soldier, We adore
In time of danger, not before;
The danger past and all things righted,
God is forgotten, and the Soldier slighted.
Ain't gonna happen if Jim Webb stays in the Senate and the RK critics of a vote on FISA that his "redneck senate" class mostly voted the same way, don't get him unelected.
I wish you the best in your efforts and, while I'm sure we both appreciate and thank those who tell us "thank you for your service", those become hollow words when the danger is past and we need funds to overcome those who scream "with NO TAX Increase" to make all things righted (domestic programs that really are important)by reducing military and veterans personnel pay and benefits (note that I don't say weapons and other programs that the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about, and Dick Cheney made a "sole-source" drain on our treasury without oversight of any kind, even afetr the fact).
I guess that you're not Black, so it's okay politically if I say you are very articulate and persuasive. Think about going to law school and running for office if you haven't already done so. Pakistan has shown the reason Shakespeare said that (I paraphrase liberally) you can't create a dictatorship UNLESS YOU FIRST KILL ALL THE LAWYERS!
Hoo-Aah or whatever is the new term for "Airborne all the way"
As they side with one faction, the losing side begins to attack the U.S. When the U.S. starts befriending the new problem group, the enemies of that group begins attacking the U.S. as well.
During the whole process, the U.S. arms and trains each of these groups.
It seems to me that a lot of the surge was the different groups having a cease-fire to get weapons and get training from the U.S. This means that we are arming and training the people who will probably start warring, between each other and against the U.S., again since no political agreement has been forged in the window of opportunity that the bribing of insurgents have produced. At least we will know exactly who is arming the insurgency, I guess.
The title of the comment is a paraphrase from Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who in 1910 was quickly ousted by what started as a centrist revolution demanding a democratic process. He said these words as he was going into exile to Francisco I. Madero, the leader who started the Mexican Revolution, warning him that he had taken up a task that was a lot bigger than he could handle. It was: Madero was quickly assassinated and the civil war lasted about 20 years.
Diaz also went down quickly, like Saddam Hussein. And Diaz had also brokered a peace with different warring factions within the country through brutal political repression. His work, just like that of Saddam's, wasn't appreciated until they were gone and trouble erupted.
Madero, like Bush, wanted to bring democracy to Mexico. Madero, like Bush, didn't fully understand that removing the dictator was going to unleash a complex political and military conflict between a number of warring factions which the dictator was able to contain. And Madero, like Bush, couldn't handle it politically.
The process had to be played out once it started in Mexico, and I believe that it seems like it will be played out in Iraq as well. We may be just slowing down the inevitable by being there.