This is what victory looks like to Paul Wolfowitz:
BAGHDAD — Iraq has asked the United States for new arms to beat back the dramatic resurgence of al-Qaeda-linked militants in a western province and would like U.S. troops to train its counterterrorism forces, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview Thursday.
The Iraqi leader said he provided the wish list after a phone call with Vice President Biden on Tuesday. U.S. officials said it might be easy to deliver those weapons, which include assault rifles and artillery, to Baghdad soon.
“Some is on hand, and we can supply it quickly,” a senior American diplomat said Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
Any questions?
More business for our world-class arms trade industry! Isn’t that pretty much our dictionary definition of “victory”? What’s the problem here?
/snark
No, it’s ALL GOOD!
The rebels are using the weapons we left behind.
And now, the MIC gets to ship new weapons to the Iraqi military and police.
Some of which will be stolen, or somehow or other end up in the wrong hands – the rebels – calling for MORE arms from our MIC!!!
PROFITS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow. That’s like the Underpants Gnomes’ business plan, except with the question marks filled in!
One of the benefits of permawar.
Where would Maliki like this training to happen?
How many times have we trained those troops?
When I was a child every coup was immediately followed by a promise to “schedule free elections” as soon as American aid could be secured. Woody Allen even used that line in his early movies I think.
This seems to be the iraqi equivalent code.
Maybe they had Luntz focus-group-test-it and found that
“requesting arms/weapons and training for our troops”
scores higher than
“get all the possible f*king stuff we can use to destroy our own civilians and keep US arms factories operating and the US military engaged in getting their own new stuff.”
Because in the next round of Pentagon budget meetings:
“#1: We gave all our stuff to the Iraqis and it has to be replaced. That’s non-negotiable. And. #2: We’re not just gonna take the same stuff the Iraqis have now. We’re the US f
king military. We can’t have the same sh*t our proxies use. They’re not the Israelis for f*ks sake.”
The great thing about America is that we have become mankind’s biggest marks. The con works on us every time. Sometimes it pays well, sometimes it just keeps the lights on. But it always works.
Mooslims for $2Trillion, Alex.
The answer is: Iraqi Freedom
“What is the surest way that my children will graduate from an Ivy League college debt free?”
Should have been clearer on that final excerpt from NeoCon Liberation Champions Week on Jeopardy with Richard Perle answering.
The other contestants were Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith.
Final scores were predictable –
Prince of Darkness: won a lifetime of untraceable cash delivered by a pallet drop out of a C-130 somewhere in the vicinity of Fallujah. He just has to find it and get it home.
Paul Wolfowitz – was close to Perle until he wagered everything on a Daily Double.
The answer was: General Shinseki
“Who said we know exactly where the WMDs are?” was his response
and lost.
The fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth – who got every single response wrong including his response to Alex on his personal hobbies.
“Well, Doug it says here that you LIKE to pluck the wings off flies and then set them on fire.”
“I don’t pluck their wings off first!”
“But this is the card you filled out for us, Doug.”
“That must have been a different reality I created.”
The Obama administration is coming back for the bite of the apple it missed in the Status oF Forces Agreement that Bush concluded in 2008? Who exactly is in control of the US military now–John McCain and Lindsey Graham? Or is this Presidential policy?
Is this setting up the argument to “stay the course” in Afghanistan?
And can’t Maliki go to Iran for the arms?
Oh yes. US jobs. Well, maybe not US jobs but profits of US-flagged corporations.
Iran is broke. Helping Hezbollah is about all they can afford. I think Maliki wants some serious free weaponry.
And who’s backing the al Qaeda? Why, it’s our very good allies Saudi Arabia.
Well… those despicable religious fanatics are someone’s ally… surely they aren’t yours or mine. Maybe Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase?
Bob, just for the sake of your Arabic credibility “the Al Qa`eda” is redundant. Al is “the” in Arabic. 😉
Also, people shouldn’t say “Shari`a law”. That’s redundant too, kind of like saying “Halacha law”.
Just so you know.
It seems crucial to me that we be reminded whenever such events are reported (since the pathetic, useless corporate media won’t): there was no al Qaeda presence in Iraq until Bush’s War Crime of invading under false excuses a country that had not attacked us and was no threat to do so opened the door to invite them in.
So… Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. He invaded Kuwait. He slaughtered thousands of shia and was a despicable human being who murdered and tortured millions. Al Qaeda is no different, but who cares? We just swapped one devil for another.
The Iraqi people were given an opportunity to overcome tribal/religious hatred and they refused to take advantage of it. As far as I’m concerned they can all go to hell where they will meet Osama bin Laden and the US military. They all deserve each other.
Love the way you blame the victim, Neil. Way to go.
There are no victims in iraq.
Hm. Guessing the million (give or take few 100k) prematurely dead Iraqis would dispute that . . . if, of course, they could (but being dead, not so much). I would suggest “no winners” is probably a better formulation.
Perhaps that would be a better rhetorical formulation. But who killed those thousands of people? I didn’t. You didn’t. Some were killed by the US military (and shame on all who did that!).
Mostly, though, they killed each other just as they have killed each other for decades. I’m all out of sympathy for them.
Well, no.
My statement is based on several studies using standard epidemiological methods (2 of them published in the British medical journal The Lancet). These study designs estimated the number of post-invasion “excess deaths”, in comparison to the pre-war death rate, among Iraqis.
I.e., “excess deaths” reasonably attributable to the fact of the invasion. “Kill[ing] each other just as they have killed each other for decades” would be accounted for in the pre-invasion death rate.
There is some kind of karma screwing over the Iraqi people. It’s hard to watch, but I’m guessing they deserve their fate.
And you, sir, can go straight to hell for that ignorant, hideous remark.
Oh come on now… neither you or I can affect their lives in any meaningful way. They are going to prosper or suffer as a result of their own decisions. Our views are irrelevant.
So, dictatorial, Shiite-Iranian suck-up Nouri al-Maliki wants our help after his hostility towards the Sunnis brings Iraq back into civil war: Nice going, Asshole. Very “statesmanlike.”
But, but, the Sunnis are allied with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, so it’s in our interest to support a regime that’s allied with Iran?
Wait, wait, I’m confused. Maybe we shouldn’t support anybody. But, but, “You break it you bought it.” Right?
“You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to? You may ask yourself, Am I Right? Am I Wrong? You may say to yourself, ‘My God, what have I done!?’“
It would have been nice if that scumbag Wolfowitz had asked “where does that highway lead to?” when he was championing this tragic, illegal and disgraceful war of choice we started 11 years ago. People are still being killed in their thousands because we were too arrogant and stupid to understand what we were unleashing when we invaded this country just because the Neocons wanted to see “someone’s” ass kicked in the region after 9/11, and “W” had this Oedipal thing about Saddam.
I hope we do nothing more in Iraq. We’ve done enough damage as it is, to no good end whatever. The place is now like Syria. We have no dog in the fight, despite much spilled American blood.
The idea of our selling more weapons there makes me want to puke.
That’s pretty much right on. Thanks for saying it.
And some US Senators are ready for a repeat performance in Iran. Disgusting and downright stupid.
I have tried to block the latest Congressional war fantasies for Iran out of my mind: doesn’t bear thinking about. But since you comment, let’s spin two scenarios out:
1. The Curtis LeMay “Bomb them back into the stone age” strategy. The “cheap in American lives” approach would be to unleash a vast aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities (that we know about); their oil industry; and their power grid. Inevitably, some aerial assets we use would be manned, and heaven help the Americans who get shot down over Iran.
What would this campaign accomplish? Undoubtedly, it would destroy the Iranian economy and make miserable the lives of millions of Iranians, you know, ordinary people like Neda Agha-Soltan who just want to live in a just society with a measure of freedom. Undoubtedly, we’d kill thousands of them as “collateral damage” too.
Putin and the Chinese would love this. We could expect them to provide a steady stream of technology and weapons to Iran to oppose the aerial campaign in the same way they supported the North Vietnamese during our misadventure there. No thank you.
Our bombing Iran would unleash a wave of asymmetric warfare and suicide bombings outside that country that would make Iraq look like child’s play. Let’s remember that in the Iraq-Iran war the Ayatollah sent thousands of child soldiers into the front lines. Does anyone doubt for a second that the theocrats in Iran now would see our attack as a vindication of their ideology and use any means available to fight back?
I shudder to think how much we would enable the very darkest forces of Islamist extremism were we to bomb Iran. Beyond the short term “success” of blowing things up in country, we have no way to gauge, or truly prepare for, the terrorist blowback. What is clear from our Iraq experience is that wars of choice have “unintended consequences,” or, as Rummy would say, “unknown unknowns.”
I haven’t even mentioned the economic chaos that would come with disruption of the oil markets, nor the incredible stupidity of such a move now that there is an Iranian government in place that actually seems willing to negotiate.
2. A land invasion. Do we think again that “we would be greeted as liberators” were we to invade? Iran is a much larger country than Iraq, with rugged terrain and topography. Cf. Afghanistan. Our armed forces have been weakened by the decades-long fighting we have embarked on in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is madness to think that the “volunteer military” has the assets now to invade and successfully occupy a place like Iran. There is no way we could fight such a war without full mobilization (a new draft, and economic belt-tightening), and the political will for that here is lacking. A land invasion with our current force structure would be madness.
My prescription: let Obama negotiate the best deal he can with Iran, and if Israel doesn’t like it, let them “handle the problem” on their own.
Yep – exactly.