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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (39493)	7/12/2007 9:52:36 AM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541772

What is ya all's assessment of this editorial ? My thoughts, for what they're worth: Flushing insurgents from their bases is like Whack-A-Mole; they just pop up elsewhere. The Green Zone, the safest area in Iraq, was hit with dozens of projectiles yesterday, resulting in multiple deaths and casualties. A significant portion of the Iraqi central government boycotts both cabinet and parliament meetings. That $12B per month (including Afghanistan) that the war costs does not go down the tubes; a significant portion goes to well-connected firms, the WSJ base of haves and have-mores. Of course they want the surge to continue.

To: Suma who wrote (39493)	7/12/2007 10:30:58 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 541772

I hope Ms Kagan is right, but while I don't doubt our surge might have some temporary effect in a few places, I don't think it can work long term. It will work where we surge for as long as we are surging, and where we are not surging (and we can't surge everywhere, we simply don't have the troops) violence will reemerge. I don't know what Mr. Bush thinks will happen after we stop. The country is in much worse shape now, and many of it's educated people have left. The surge isn't going to cure this. The only thing the surge can do is tamp down the violence for a while, but I see no evidence that anything is being put in place to keep the violence down should the US stop using its military to suppress the violence. I think the reason Republicans now are turning negative on Iraq is they see it as a commitment without end- and frankly, they are right to worry about that.

To: Suma who wrote (39493)	7/12/2007 11:10:29 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 541772

Kagan was just on the Diane Rehm show with Wesley Clark. She is an apologist and said a lot of idiotic things. I don't even know if she believes herself. Maybe she does--people can rationalize almost anything, facts and events be damned. Just to give one example: she said that Iraq is the central front in the "war on terror" because Zawahiri recently said so on a tape, and called for militants to converge on Iraq to fight the Americans. Well, gosh, good thing we take Zawahiri's word for things. If I were him sitting along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, I would say the same thing. Better to have 150,000 American GIs and another 170,000 private contractors in Iraq than along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Clark took her on fairly well, but could have been much tougher, IMHO.

To: Suma who wrote (39493)	7/12/2007 12:16:29 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541772

Moving Forward in Iraq The "surge" is working. Will Washington allow the current progress to continue? BY KIMBERLY KAGAN A very strange piece. I tried to find some evidence for the assertions and found two kinds. One, such as assertions that the Maliki government is accomplishing reconciliation, is only a hope which she tries to pass of as a certainty. Every other reputable source, including more than a few Republican senators, assert that the Iraqi government is doing nothing. In fact, we know there is a no confidence motion lurking around somewhere. The second kind of evidence is that of making small sectors safer. I've seen that argument made by reputable sources as well. So I take it as said. The problem has been holding those zones. Once the US troops leave, the zone/sector reverts back. Lots of those stories. One wonders when we'll finally, if ever, get out of this present political culture in which simply flat out lying is acceptable.