Why do you insist on twisting what I say into something I didn't say?
You: But I'm glad to see you acknowledge that the Surge is having some success, even if it means you have to distance American troops from getting any credit for it.
Me: The successes in Anbar are not the result of the surge, the successes predate the surge, the reports of the switch began, if I recall correctly, sometime last fall--this success is the result of the non-fundamentalist Sunnis getting fed up with fundamentalist crap and deciding that they simply had to get rid of the them
I did NOT say that the "Surge is having some success" in that sentence. And it has nothing to do with "distance[ing myself] from American troops". American troops don't know who Al Qaeda members are. The Iraqis do.
You: To repeat: AQ in Afghanistan/Pakistan says they are the part of the same group as AQI, and AQI agrees with them. AQI is staffed at the highest level with many of the same guys who are part of AQ. So on the basis of what evidence do you disbelieve them? What makes you insist they are not the same group and have different goals?
Me (really, the key point of the whole post]: The issue of whether or not the leadership of Al Qaeda in Iraq has any interaction with the leadership of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan is therefore irrelevant.
My point in saying the above was that you and Bush are trying blow this group up into a big bad bogeyman, and while they may well be bad, they aren't very big and won't be "taking over" in Iraq even if Americans leave. Neither the Sunnis nor the Shia would permit it.
Why won't you use your common sense? They could get fed up with the crap all they liked, it wouldn't make a difference if al Qaeda was the only outfit in town with big guns, organization, and utter ruthlessness.
Al Qaeda in Iraq doesn't even come close to having the support or the infrastructure that Saddam had in place. And they are NOT "the only outfit in town with big guns, organization, and utter ruthlessness." Far from it. This is yet another fantasy that you would like to foist on others so that you can pretend that the US presence in Iraq is still legitimate, fighting people who everyone agrees need to be fought rather than stuck in the middle of a civil war. And that is the assessment on which we disagree. If I actually believed that Al Qaeda would be simply taking over in Iraq if we left, I wouldn't say get out, or even significantly reduce our forces there, and get after the Real Deal. But I don't. |
