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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (17973)	2/22/2007 12:35:20 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Attacks in Baghdad down by 80% Sunday, February 18, 2007 Since the multiple bombings in Shroja market district on the 12th, Baghdad hasn’t seen any major attacks and there’s a tangible decrease in all kinds of attacks. Not only official statements say so (Defense ministry officials said today that attacks are down by 80% in Baghdad). It’s a reality I live in nowadays, at least in my neighborhood and its surroundings. It is also what I hear from friends and relatives in other parts of the city. We are hearing fewer explosions and less gunfire now than two weeks ago and that, in Baghdad, qualifies as quiet. I agree with what some experts say about this lull in violence being the result of militants keeping their heads down for a while. It is also possibly the result of the flight of the commanders of militant groups. Grunts left without planners, money or leaders wouldn’t want to do much on their own. During my tour in Baghdad today I had to pull over to be searched at several checkpoints — something that has rarely happened to me before. When you are searched soldiers or policemen check the identity cards of passengers, and the registration papers of the vehicle along with a thorough physical search. Checkpoints deal even more strictly with large vans and cargo trucks. The interesting thing about new checkpoints is the constant shifting of their location. One hour the checkpoint would be here and two hours later it would relocate to another position within the area. I think this helps security forces avoid becoming targets instead of hunters. In addition to soldiers and policemen, most checkpoints have one or more traffic policemen reportedly being equipped with laptops that enable them to flag suspected vehicles by offering instant access to vehicle-registration databases. Side by side with new security efforts is a campaign to clean and redecorate many streets, circles and parks in Baghdad. New trees are planted and damaged street medians and sidewalks are being refurbished. This offers a small yet much needed breeze of hope and normalcy to the traumatized city. The most significant and encouraging development is certainly this report from al-Sabah: Brigadier Qasim Ata, an authorized Baghdad Operation spokesman, told al-Sabah that for the 3rd day in a row dozens of displaced families are returning to their homes. 35 families returned in Madain, 7 in hay al-I’ilam and small numbers of families in various districts of Baghdad. Later reports in the local media indicate that the total number of families that returned home is as high as 130 families across the city, including several families in the, until recently, hopelessly violent district of Hay al-Adl. The report adds that Maliki ordered that the Bab al-Muadam and al-Shuhada bridges on the Tigris be reopened to traffic next week. This decision came in response to the “notable increase in traffic activity which in turn is a result of the growing feeling of safety”. Confirming what we said earlier about the recovery of civilian activity, the spokesman said “most stores in the Alawi al-Hilla districts have reopened after times when this area was a scene for repeated terrorist attacks”. As the effort continues in Baghdad, four other provinces are launching simultaneous plans to support operation ‘Imposing the Law’. Officials in the provinces of Diwaniya, Salahaddin, Wasit and Babil announced that the security forces are implementing a security plan to support and empower the ongoing operation in Baghdad, and to deal with the threat of possible infiltration by terrorists coming from Baghdad. The progress made so far invites hope and optimism, but it’s still too early to celebrate. Terrorists will keep trying to carry out attacks similar to those in Sadriya or Shorja. They want sow as much death and destruction as they can in order to shake the people’s confidence in the security plan. Such criminals attacks are still quite possible in Baghdad, but even if happen we must not let that stop us from pursuing the objectives of our efforts to stop the death and deterioration, to turn the tide and make progress. Posted by Mohammed @ 00:45 iraqthemodel.blogspot.com

To: RMF who wrote (17973)	2/23/2007 6:31:44 AM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Democrats Disingenuous in Their Anti-War Rhetoric By Victor Davis Hanson Why did a majority of Democratic Senators - such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Chuck Schumer - vote to authorize a war with Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002? And why is this war now supposedly George Bush's misfortune and not theirs? The original fear of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, of course, played a role in their votes - but only a role. In the 23 writs that authorized force to remove Saddam, senators at the time also cited Iraq's sanctuary and subsidies for terrorists. Then there were Saddam's attempts to assassinate a former United States president; his repression of, and use of weapons of mass destruction against, his own people; and his serial violations of both United Nations and Gulf War agreements. If paranoia over weapons of mass destruction later proved just that, these other more numerous reasons to remove Saddam remain unassailable. Nevada's Sen. Reid summed up best the feeling of Democrats that there were plenty of reasons to remove Saddam Hussein in a post-9/11 climate. He reminded his Senate colleagues that Saddam's refusal to honor past agreements "constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict." But it was not just fear of Saddam alone that prompted Democrats to authorize the use of force to remove him. There was the more general, liberal notion of using American arms to stop violent dictators. While the Democratic Party has a strong pacifist wing, its mainstream has always advocated a global promotion of American liberal values - sometimes through the use of preemptory force. Many Democrats in Congress, for example, had earlier authorized George Bush Sr. to fight the first Gulf War to stop Saddam's mad drive to absorb Kuwait. In 1999, House Democrats sought, but failed, to pass congressional authorization for President Clinton's ongoing air war against Slobodan Milosevic. Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama have long lamented that the United States did not preempt in Africa to stop the Rwandan genocide. In contrast, George Bush, not Al Gore, ran for the presidency in 2000 promising to end Clinton's humanitarian interventions, whether in the Balkans, Haiti or Somalia. As then-candidate Bush put it, "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building." Throughout American history, it was usually the Democratic Party that proved the more interventionist. Democratic Presidents - whether Woodrow Wilson in 1917, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939-40, Harry Truman in 1950, John Kennedy in 1963 or Bill Clinton in 1999 - long battled Republican isolationists who insisted that it was never in America's interest to fight costly wars abroad unless directly attacked by a foreign nation. Again, why then did the majority of Democratic Senators vote for the present war in October 2002? One, they rightly concurred with the president's post-9/11 conversion to the idea that removing a Middle Eastern mass-murdering regime and leaving a consensual government in its place could be a key component in winning the war against Islamic terrorism. And two, their party had always believed that the United States can sometimes make things better abroad by stopping tyrants and dictators. By the same token, why do many of these same initial supporters of the Iraq war four years later now promise either to withdraw troops or to cut off funds, and so often hedge on or renounce their past records? Partisan advantage explains much of the present posturing against an opposition president. But mostly, the rising Democratic furor comes as a reflection of public anger at the costs of the war -- and the sense that we are not winning. Unlike the invasion of Panama (1989), the Gulf war (1991), the Balkans war (1999) or even the Afghanistan conflict (2001-2007), Iraq has taken over 3,000 American lives. Had the reconstruction of Iraq gone as relatively smoothly as the three-week removal of Saddam, most Democratic candidates would now be heralding their past muscular support for democratic change in Iraq. So instead of self-serving attacks on the present administration, Democratic senators and candidates should simply confess that while most of the earlier reasons to remove Saddam remain valid, the largely unforeseen costs of stabilizing Iraq in their view have proved too high, and now outweigh the dangers of leaving. But they should remember one final consideration. The next time a Democratic administration makes a case for using America's overwhelming military force to preempt a Milosevic or a mass murderer in Darfur - and history suggests that one will - the Democrats' own present disingenuous anti-war rhetoric may come back to haunt them, ensuring that such future humanitarian calls will probably fall on ears as deaf as they are partisan. realclearpolitics.com