You have to say, it’s a sign of political progress in Iraq that DC lobbyists are being paid good money to help overthrow the PM.

Isn’t this sort of necessary? You know, in the Shakespearean sense? We toppled a military dictator, we put into place a “democratic” system, and now we are going to replace the democratic system with… a military dictatorship. We will have gone full circle, but with hundreds of thousands of dead, accomplishing nothing, a folly completely of our own making.

It’s almost like it has to be done. Not just because, well, the government there is incompetent, but to finally cap off Bush’s legacy.

The police aren’t there to create disorder, they’re there to preserve disorder.

And I see there are a few commenters here who can add things up as well as I can *blogwhore*

After all, Maliki has been making snarky noises about going “elsewhere” for aid if the U.S. abandons him (probably to Iran or Syria). THAT’D put an awful cramp in the “Liberate The Oppressed of Iran And Keep The Mullahs From Gettin’ Nukes” project we seem to be on the road to. *second blogwhore*

Wasn’t the entire justification for this deadly fiasco (after the WMD fallacy was fnally, finally, finally exposed by the pliant MSM who helped push the fictions for so long) that “we were bringing democracy to the mideast” and “getting rid of a cruel despot”?

So…..that we can put in our very OWN anti-democratic fascistic regime, replete with ruthless military strongmen?

Uh……Oh. Okay. I’ll go back to my DVD collection now and stop asking questions.

But it’ll all turn out just great. What could possibly go wrong?
</snark>

Just how EXACTLY do these jamokes want to re-create the conditions of Vietnam?

We’ve had:

An election to install a government viewed as illegitimate by a sizable chunk of the populace;

An escalation in the number of troops in the operational area;

Deals cut with local tribesmen to support our side;

‘Strategic hamlets’ and ‘De Lattre forts’ (h/t Gilliard, miss ya, man)

Extended tours of duty breaking the morale of the military;

Increased antiwar feeling back home dismissed by the government;

Resorting to ‘body counts’ as a means of showing progress;

Atrocities committed against the civilian populace, and coverups of same;

Death squads roaming the streets;

Threats of an air offensive against neighboring countries seen as sources of supply and refuge for the insurgency;

And now rumors of a military coup to depose the guy we supposedly were backing.

What’s next, Ayatollah Sistani immolating himself? That’s about all we haven’t had yet, isn’t it?

M. Bouffant said,

August 24, 2007 at 5:53

Yeah DEMIZE!, I read an article many years ago about a woman @ a peace demo (I think in Chicago possibly against Bush War I in 1990 or ‘91, maybe even earlier) a cop asked her something like, well, who would keep order if the commies (or whoever) took over, to which she replied: “There’ll always be bullies like you to push people around & ‘keep order.’”
Ahh yes,and to that the fine gentleman replied,touche madame.Touche indeed.

Yep, weird, ain’t it. They loved their country just like americans love theirs. And they struggled to make shit work, with a crappy, corrupt, rotten government and crippling sanctions.

Yep. Here in america, with our kind, benevolent government and our infrastructure all A+, how could we have any sympathy for a nation of smart, patriotic folks trying to do the best they could? Crazy, huh?

Now the educated folks are all leaving. Abandoning the country of their birth, the place that for them is HOME, because some asshole thought it would be cool to deploy his military.

How completely sad this will take decades to understand. But one thing cannot be misunderstood. We’re the bad guy. Yep, us, good clean wholesome americans? We’re the terrorists, the aggressive invaders, the thugs who killed in wholesale for our own purposes. Live with it…

mikey

That’s becoming increasingly common among both Republicans and Democrats, probably because us a way to exit gracefully by saying “hey, we tried but these fuckers are just crazy!!”

August 23, 2007 at 23:15

All those insurgents can get their old “Baathist thug” jobs back. Interestingly enough, some of these gentlemen already have a fair amount of experience in applying aggressive interrogation techniques, which will really help out the training budget.

Only problem will be that the intermittent Iraqi electrical supply means they’ll have only a limited time each day to shock people’s nuts.

Good times, good times. Oh well done,Bravo,Bravo!!!!

It’s kind a morality play, with the protagonists being sorely tempted by the thought of dudes smoking thick, meaty, tumescent pole. And then they all become “conservatives” and cheer on the invasion of remote, sand-filled nations while they stay, err, behind, to fight the battle on the homo front.

Twenty bucks at a time.

I’m pretty sure I can get an advance from Regnery Publishing.

Um yes, well the – Hey! Over there! FAGS!

I had to listen to that shit victor david hansen on NPR’s talk of the nation today. That calm-talking prick manages to use sentences structured in such a way as to make you think all the chaos in Iraq just “happened”, and certainly he and his types share no blame in that, and by golly, leaving now would cause chaos and genocide! Like chaos and genocide haven’t already been occurring; shall we talk about US-made cluster bombs, or is that just too inconvenient?

I spent some time yesterday reading the reports by Anthony Cordesman. They say the same thing as the NYT op-ed by the soldiers and are quite detailed in their assessments (Although the conclusions reached are iffier)

Bush just keeps blabbering about insurgents and terrorists when there are at least 4 different skirmishes going on. We can’t articulate what the end goal is, how to get there, who the bad guys are or what we are supposed to be doing.

I keep wanting to cover it in my blog (shameless blogwhoring alert) but I keep getting distracted by other stuff. There is so much shit going wrong it’s depressing to even start on it, it’s a giant mountain of fuckups.

People want simple explanations – us vs. the terrorists. I guess the simple short version is “we’re fucked.”

Hey, credit where credit where credit is due. It stopped an existential threat to the US in its tracks for seven critical years — Democratic control of the House, Senate, and Executive.

Iraq isn’t a war so much as the world’s most expensive campaign commercial. Or think of it as the civil-war equivalent of Munchhausen’s-by-proxy.