If you want to try to read into it you can make that statement, but if you want to take it at face value, it is an observation and no judgment in it at all.

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By "terrorists" do you mean the small group of actual terrorists are you one of those people who refers to the entire Islamic faith as "terrorists"?

I think our success at marginalizing and defeating the actual terrorists has everything to do with influencing the popular opinion of the Islamic masses.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

no i know not all arabs are terrorists. but al-jazeers gonna hate us no matter what we do. you think all of a sudden they'll do a positive story about U.S. policy? i doubt it. So why bother trying to please them?

iraq is sucha mess i dont know what we can do except start over from scratch

By "fine with it" I did not mean to imply Patreus supports assasinations, just that he doesn't think our official policy should be to do anything about it. Neither would he support doing anything about these attacks against women in Basra I would assume - it just doesn't warrant concern in the big picture of "the surge". Thats not that important to the kind of Iraq we are building in the big picture aparently.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

Have you ever watched it? They do always give Israel its chance to put its two cents in. In their view, they are doing fair-minded journalism. You and I may differ with them on that, but I think its foolish to write of the importance of getting your message out on Arab media.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

What is the time frame for bringing democracy?

I dont know. It wasn't my stupid plan, it was Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld's stupid plan. Sometimes W talks like because of the elections of the current Malaiki government that they already have full fledged democracy. Remember W scolding Putin that they should model thier constitutional reforms on Iraq?

I think the whole project of "imposing democracy" on a society with no experience of it with military force is innately self-contradictory.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

so what are we supposed to do? just quit and let the terrorists takeover iraq?

I believe this is why bin Laden popped up with another tape just as Petraeus was sitting down with the Senate in September. OBL needs the U.S. to continue in Iraq and, therefore, decided to informally back up Bush's argument by helping to remind people that he was still there. (Not that OBL has anything to do with Iraq, but a connection seems firmly rooted in many Americans' imaginations.)

You maybe need to clear up who you define as "the terrorists". There are dozens of different militias active in Iraq and they all hate echother just slightly less than they hate the US occupation.

I think that ultimately the only way the harsh ethnic divisions in Iraq will be settled enough to allow some degree of stability there so we can pull out without leaving chaos behind us is to encourage a high degree of "federalism" giving each ethnic enclave a high degree of regional autonomy. The truth of what success the surge has had has as much derived from letting this happen on a defacto basis (paying Sunni tribal leaders to police themselves and fight Al Queda in Iraq). Those tribal leaders formerly were content to help al Queda in Iraq (who did not exist till after we invaded) up until a few months ago and the Malaiki government is deeply opposed to us funding them because he sees them as a threat to the power of his Shiia dominated ruling coalition.

I think a lot of of what Sen. Biden says about Iraq and federalism (as well as Republican Mike Huckabee for that matter) is pretty astute.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.