I could do an Iraq news roundup, but this Associated Press article is good enough. The key portion of it?
U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said there has been an average of 34 attacks a day against U.S. and Iraqi forces in the capital over the past five days. The daily average for the period June 14 until July 13 was 24 a day, he said.
“We have not witnessed the reduction in violence one would have hoped for in a perfect world,” U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news briefing Thursday. “The only way we’re going to be successful in Baghdad is to get the weapons off the streets.”
Caldwell said militias and death squads have responded to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s call for a crackdown by intensifying attacks to derail Iraq’s new unity government.
Last month, al-Maliki announced a security plan for Baghdad, including up to 50,000 police and soldiers on the streets, more checkpoints, and raids in neighborhoods where violence is high. But with surging attacks in the capital – including the kidnapping of high-ranking Iraqi officials – leading politicians from Shiite and Sunni parties have declared the plan a failure.
I don’t know how many more times we declare a new initiative a failure without drawing the proper conclusions. What is going on in Iraq is a total catastrophe. It’s a catastrophe from a humanitarian point of view. I don’t know what it will take for the right-wingers to acknowledge this and demand accountability. I mean, can we please agree that Donald Rumsfeld needs to find a job in the private sector? Les Aspin resigned over Mogadishu, for Chrissakes. That was honorable. The Greeks killed or exiled their failed military leaders. All we ask is that Rumsfeld be fired.
Meanwhile, Ayatollah Sistani is still calling for calm and still fighting for peace. I can only imagine the carnage that would ensue if Sistani ever lost his patience and called for retaliation. It’s not like the Shi’ites are really listening to him now, but with his blessing the bloodletting could reach unimaginable proportions.
I know my government will not listen to me, but they need to acknowledge total abject unconditional failure and beg the international community to forgive us and help us prevent a civil war of Rwandan proportions. Either that, or we should just get out and pray that the world will not lump us in with some of history’s worst actors.
The tragedy is that your brilliant compilation will fall on deaf ears OR- ears that belong to the members of the choir! No matter what is said, unless and until the non-listeners are actually personally hit over head, these fools will refuse to admit that they have been lied to.
AAARRRRRRRRRGH!
…a three-year exile to Sadr City. Task: Reacquiring antiquities looted from Iraq’s museums via a door-to-door search. No body armor.
or perhaps to Ramadi— OR
Do you think they might accidently stumble upon them in those new multimillion dollar summer cottages they bouth on the Maryland shore last year? Probably would’nt have a clue how they ended up there??
“…pray that the world will not lump us in with some of history’s worst actors.”
I’m afraid we’re past the prayer stage on that score.
The lesser of evils, perhaps, but I don’t want the Noble Duke of Plaza-Toro in my private sector. Maybe he can afford to retire.
sitting in a closet writing up “lessons learned” for Katrina response. Hell, these guys can’t even evacuate US citizens from Lebanon without looking like keystone cops.
If they had just secured the arsenals as they swept through – even if they did think they would be greeted with open arms and flowers. If they had just looked at the Iraqi army not as an enemy but as people doing a job. If they had just looked at the tensions between Sunni and Shite. If they had just committed enough troops for the on-going ground war. If they had just not let go of the dissenting generals and upper echelon. If they had just realized that failure was a possibility. If they had just know what the result was that they wanted other than taking over Iraqi oil wells and pipelines.
If they were just. Which they are not. And now we have a whole shitload of problems with Shites cheering the Hezbollah on and cheering on the civil war in Iraq.
Hi Boo,
Heartbreaking what the poor Iraqi’s are experiencing. Every time I read these articles my eyes well with tears. I read in the last week that even we Progressives are complicit in these horrors. We still file and pay our taxes, and its our money that’s being used to perpetuate these atrocities.
So I must respectfully disagree with your statement:
Darth Cheney, America’s Caligula, and Goering Rumsfeld are responsible for so many atrocities over the years, that resigning or returning to private industry is no longer an option we should allow for either of them.
If you look at Rumsfeld’s bio, you will see there are few sketchy years when he supposedly served in the Individual Ready Reserves. Interestingly these are the same years that George Bush Sr was working as a covert CIA operative, listed as analyst, while simultaneously acting as a “reputable businessman” President of the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company, in Houston, Texas.
From the time of Kennedy’s Assasination, through Carter and the hostages being held to enhance Regans election, BCCI, Iraq/Iran War, Iran Contra, Gulf War I through the last 6 years to the present day, Rumsfeld and Cheney have served as Capo’s for the Bu$hCo Crime Family.
Rumsfeld needs to be held accountable for his horrific litany of crimes and pay the Karmic price he has earned a hundredfold.
Bush has been a failure his entire life, littering the landscape with botched ventures and blown opportunities. What he has helmed was willed, arranged or given him by relatives or their friends and business associates. He doesn’t want highly competent people showing him up and experiencing success at what they do. He hires other failures like himself. This is an executive that was going to put Bernie Kerik in charge of homeland security. That’s all you need to know about his hiring philosophy.