What We Will Be Up Against As We Try To End the War and Occupation of Iraq: Among all the media blowhards, this Editorial in the Washington Post appearing in tomorrow's paper may stand out in it's contempt for Democracy and the people and it's insistence on war and permanent occupation: "Mr. Obama on Iraq: His hint of softening on his unrealistic withdrawal plan is only sensible.
The Villagers have spoken! All hail the new "sensible" Iraq policy of Barrack Obama! Finally, he's come to his senses, according to the Post anyway. Of course, it doesn't matter that he really hasn't "changed his position," it's inevitable that he would, since it's the only "sensible thing to do."
Well, I'm glad that we cleared THAT up! Obviously we don't want an exit strategy from Iraq that doesn't leave massive bases behind, and a "Status of Forces Agreement" that allows U.S. Troops to attack any other country (Iran and Syria, You're Next!") without the consent of the Iraqi government! Because "like it or not," our occupation of Iraq "involves vital U.S. interests" i.e. OIL INTERESTS, of course.
Then we can have a peaceful occupation of the nation with the greatest untapped proven reserves of oil in the world. And, just coincidentally of course, Friends of the Bush familycan finally get back control of those Middle-Eastern oil-fields.
So kind of the Washington Post to tell us that Obama must change his position on Iraq in order to be more in line with the "sensible" people who were war-cheerleaders all along, and now are all chanting "the surge has worked."
Mr. Obama on Iraq
His hint of softening on his unrealistic withdrawal plan is only sensible.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008; Page A14
BARACK OBAMA has taken a small but important step toward adjusting his outdated position on Iraq to the military and strategic realities of the war he may inherit. Sadly, he seems to be finding that the strident and rigid posture he struck during the primary campaign -- during which he promised to withdraw all combat forces in 16 months -- is inhibiting what looks like a worthy, necessary attempt to create the room for maneuver he will need to capably manage the war if he becomes president.
. . . .
In fact, Mr. Obama can't afford not to update his Iraq policy. Once he has the conversations he's promising with U.S. commanders, he will have plenty of information that "contradicts the notion" of his rigid plan. Iraq's improvement means that American forces probably can be reduced next year, but it would be folly to begin a forced march out of the country without regard to the risks of renewed sectarian warfare and escalating intervention in the country by Iran and other of Iraq's neighbors.
Who cares if 60% of the American people want the U.S. to "Set a timetable for removing U.S. troops and stick to it regardless of what is going on in Iraq as found in a USAToday/Gallup March 13, 2008 poll, or the 64% who would prefer "the next President remove most U.S. troops in Iraq within a few months of taking office?"
That was always a "non-serious" opinion held by the lunatic fringe of the "left" in fact a "strident and rigid posture" in the Post's terms that is "is inhibiting what looks like a worthy, necessary attempt to create the room for maneuver he will need to capably manage the war if he becomes president."
Iraq is swimming in oil, so we can't leave, no matter what the American people might want. Now we're this close to securing those Production Sharing Agreements that were the entire point of the war!
Meanwhile back in the real world, beyond the beltway circle-jerk:
* Shiites demonstrated in Sadr City, Kufa and other southern Iraqi cities in the thousands on Friday against the Status of Forces Agreement being hammered out between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration, complaining that it sells out Iraq's sovereignty to the US.
In Iraq today, . . . success now can be measured in less deaths; and, by all usual counts, Iraqi deaths have indeed been falling since the height of sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing in the early months of 2007. In part, this has occurred because millions of people have already been driven out of their homes and many neighborhoods, especially in the capital, "cleansed." At the same time, in Sunni areas, significant numbers of insurgents have joined the Awakening Movement. They have been paid off by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, while, assumedly, biding their time until the American presence ebbs to take on "the Persians" -- that is, the Shiite (and Kurdish) government embedded in Baghdad's fortified, American-controlled Green Zone.
As a result, cratered Iraq -- a land with at least 50% unemployment, still lacking decent electricity, potable water, hospitals with drugs (or even doctors, so many having fled), or courts with judges (40 of them having been assassinated and many more injured since 2003) or lawyers, many of whom joined the more than two million Iraqis who have gone into exile -- is, today, modestly quieter. But don't be fooled. So many years later, Iraqis are still dying in prodigious numbers, and significant numbers of those dying are doing so at the hands of Americans.
If enough ethnic cleansing occurs of course, then the Iraq war will have been a success, since the country will be depopulated, but the oil will remain safely in U.S. hands.