This has been our focus for the past couple years, yet this administration's leadership continues to fail in Iraq. From today's Wall Street Journal online edition. I'll wager there's not much liberal bias in the WSJ (that's just my opinion though)...

How is this leadership something I should stand behind? Where's the international support to give us a hand? Oh wait, that takes diplomatic skills.

Nevermind.

-D

The only way we can get out of Iraq is with the help of other countries. We've trashed Iraq and we will not be able to set up a government there. We should leave as soon as possible but we must help rebuild the country. We must financially and physically support the UN and other countries in rebuilding Iraq. It won't be easy but that must be the direction.

I do not understand at all why Colin Powell has not resigned to this point. He was the only voice of reason in the top circle of decision-makers, warning those clowns "If you break Iraq, you bought it."

Now that our oil-lusty leaders have destroyed that country, there is no way out for the foreseeable future. We are all going to be paying for it for a long time to come. $200 billion spent so far, and blowing through $5 billion a month for the foreseeable future.

There won't be money to fix up the damage from these hurricanes, at the rate we're going. Now that would be an interesting debate. Sorry, we can't rebuild the infrastructure in Florida and other devastated locales in the South, because all our discretionary funds are being spent in Iraq. Rather, being held in accounts designated for Iraq, because the country is too unstable to even get contractors in there to do the work that the money was allocated for.

Iraq is broken and now what do we do with it?

George W. Bush, thanks for saving us from all those evil-doers :roll: .

Not sure either, but if Bush wins a second term, you can bet Powell won't stick around.

I can't wait till I am an old man and can read about what happened finally during the planning stages for our Iraq invasion.

I feel the Iraqi invasion was solely about protecting american interests abroad. It can't really be argued that it has prevented attacks on American soil or in any measure has even benefited american "public" interests at home. There might be financial/economical interests that are being served but they aren't so obvious yet.

RLC and Cheney would argue that we have to take the battle to the terrorists, or in this case a large culturally different country that may or may not harbor terrorist and additionally might have a weapon or two that we don't think they should have. Following that logic we've got a big list of countries to hit next, the axis of evil being a subset of the big list. I can only lump people like RLC and tmagoo into the category of "revenge seekers" and "fear mongers". They want a pound of flesh from Islam and they want Islam to remember whose got that pound, less they think of doing anything like this again.

Clearly this logic isn't working. It hasn't worked for Israel and it won't work for us. We can't swallow the middle east anymore than Israel could swallow the people of Palestine. We created a mess and now some real strategy will be required to reverse it humanely. I don't think Bush and his staff have proven to be those strategicians.

I don't see anything but pride preventing us from saying to the world that we are going to need help for this troubled region of the world. I think the world agrees with us that this place needs help. The kind of help were providing isn't going to work short or long term. We need a responsible plan to get them to the type of Sharia based democracy they might be able to live with or else we need to get out of there and quick.

http://news.scotsman.com/internation...?id=1080302004

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken

Free hint for opponents of Bush's Iraq policy -- try to see if you can make your case without bringing in the eeeevul Jooos, huh? Then maybe people will start to take you seriously.

(Well, I won't, I don't detect anything close to an argument above. But somebody might.)

tmcgee

McGee - the simple fact is that we are making many of the same mistakes that the Israelis are making in Palestine.

Using Apache warships and other planes to strafe and bomb urban settings (claiming that we are making surgical strikes) is doing nothing other than turning moderates against us. That happened to the Israeli, as well.

We seem to be losing Iraq at an ever escalating rate.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

Is that jew bashing I just saw, criminy.

Bush administration can't settle political differences with France and others so won't ask for security help, so Ajil al-Yawir goes begging.

http://tinyurl.com/4nrxu

The Iraqi national elections are 4 months away. Preliminary polls start in october and it's probably a fair bet that polling won't happen very successfully in all of the hot zone cities. Without proper polling there won't be proper elections. Obviously the insurgency knows they need to halt or delay the elections and they also need to keep the interim Iraqi government from establishing a viable security force since we've asserted it's an impossible task for us alone. I suspect that's why al-Yawir is pleading his case to Nato again. Bush had already started focusing his eyes on infrastructure and oil but, sigh, today the state department wants to move loot, 3.5 billion, back onto security. Damn radicals let us pump that oil!


More on Powell's comments today about the insurgency and the new/old Bush plan

http://tinyurl.com/4sz3v

Some good news, maybe about Najaf after al-sadr left. Kind of a suspicious source though.

http://tinyurl.com/65dbh

__________________
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken

Do you sit in a dark room frothing at the mouth? I don't even understand this statement or how Judaism relates to what we're talking about. How is that a sane comment?

Republicans like this are what we need less of in the party. Maybe it's really Santorum in disguise.



-D

Of course not. Weren't you the one sanctimoniously telling me all about how "I didn't know you and I shouldn't make judgements" yadda yadda yadda? But I guess that only applies to you, huh?

"Israel swallowing up Palestine?" I mean, what the hell? What does that have to do with anything? Especially since they're building a wall, which, whatever you think of it, is exactly the opposite of "swallowing up" anything.

The far edge of the left is, I think, generally anti-Semitic. I'm not saying the original poster is, though. Hence my suggestion to leave the eeevul Jooos out of it.

You know this, right? As a "Republican" you should, it's everywhere in Republican circles. If you don't know it, you're choices are (a) I'm not a Republican (b) I'm not too bright, neither of which sounds appealing to me, anyway.

Oh, please. We're still pretending? I've been paying attention to your posts, and I see you listen to NPR and get all "icky" whenever guns come up in the conversation. Every time you open your mouth you prove my point.

Readying myself for the inevitable self-justifying/self-regarding non-answer, as you do tend to squeal when somebody hits back,

tmcgee