Hot Air Mobile
Home The Vault Gear About
Hot Air -- get your fill


Audio: Iraqi ambassador can’t believe U.S. would walk away from the mess it’s made

posted at 11:30 pm on July 19, 2007 by Allahpundit
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly

Believe it. Biden gave Ryan Crocker a message at the Senate briefings today to take back with him to Baghdad: “We’re not staying. We’re not staying. (There’s) not much time.” So much for Odierno’s estimate that he won’t be able to properly assess the merits of the surge until November. As I write this, there’s a report on the wires of our great moral tutor, the Messiah himself, shrugging off the prospect of genocide as a justification for continuing the troop presence on grounds that genocide’s happening in Africa too and we’re not traipsing off to prevent that. That’s an odd subject on which to take a hard egalitarian line, and god only knows where it leaves the left’s table-pounding about Darfur, but it’s also flatly, knowingly incorrect. Click here and listen to Iraqi ambassador Samir al-Sumaidaie explain the difference. If you can’t spare five minutes to listen to the whole thing, fast forward to the second half. Money:

To have created a mess and to turn around and walk way from it, apart from the fact that it is immoral in my view, it is not without a price. The price will be a destabilized Middle East, rampant international terrorism, which is bound to visit you here at home sooner or later. So, some clear thinking has to be made about the price.

The left would argue that “shortsighted, self-defeating, and immoral” describes the whole war, but as Sumaidaie says, even if you believe that’s true — which he seems not to — what good does that do Iraqis now if it’s used as an excuse to pull out and abandon them to their fate? The disconnect here is that for the left this is, has been, and forever will be Bush’s responsibility, not America’s, so the culpability for genocide is his (and conservatives’) alone. If you look at it that way, Obama’s Darfur analogy makes perfect sense. Democrats didn’t enable the genocide in the Sudan and Democrats didn’t enable a genocide in Iraq, so why should they commit troops for either? You see now why they’re so paranoid about blame: they don’t want any responsibility for the consequences of what’s about to happen, even though they’re the ones in charge of Congress.

I meant to link this WaPo piece the other day but never got around to it. Read it now. It holds out some hope that withdrawal wouldn’t be cataclysmic, just “ugly.” Pentagon war games show the Shiites pushing the Sunnis out of Baghdad and into Anbar, a SCIRI/Sadr mini-civil war in the south with Iran playing a major role in some form of another, and the Kurds pleading with U.S. troops to station themselves up north and act as a de facto insurance policy against a Turkish invasion. Endgame: partition. The question is how many would die on each side before the sectarian populations were finally settled into their new mini-states. And the other question is, if the military believes this is inevitable, whether we should be encouraging those population transfers now while we’re still around to keep them semi-orderly.


Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Trackback URL

Comments

Comment pages:

Endgame: partition.

I have always thought that yeah, this would be the easiest way of bringing down sectarin violence.
It does leave, however, the question of what will take place in Anbar after the partition. Will they allow a safe haven for operations conducted by al-Queda? (I know they have turned against them for the time being, but what happens when the American Tribe is no longer dominant in the area and able to provide support and secruity to the populace?) Will the Sadr controlled area allow Iran a conduit and haven for enacting anti-American policies? Will we be able to prevent a Kurdish/Turkey war in the north?
If splitting them up would bring peace I would support that course of action fully. I just can’t see a neat and nice end if we simply partition and leave.

VolMagic on July 19, 2007 at 11:43 PM

Troops are already in Iraq, keeping them in Iraq would likely prevent a bloodbath, removing them before the security situation is say at the level of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, would be irresponsible.

Unfortunately, unless someone comes forward, and explains in detail to the public what the plan and goal is, the democrats may just get away with causing yet another genocide.

Canadian Imperialist Running Dog on July 19, 2007 at 11:47 PM

A pity Biden and the other poli-pimps dont; grasp the first fact of any conflict: stick together, or you embolden the enemy.

Now that it is too late, and they are emboldened, the question becomes:

do we encourage their militant lunacy even further by slinking away, excusing our retreat with weasel words about “redeploying”?

- or:

-do we guard the oilfields, Kurdistan and the borders between Iran and Syria, and let the Iraqis, after 4 years or training, get their asses in gear and defend themselves …from the foreign jihadists… and also from themselves (i.e. get over their suicidal sectarian silliness and build a stable country for their children’s future instead of warring over medieval minutae)?

People are no suffering from “war fatigue” but b.s fatigue.

Primarily the b.s. behavior of the irrational, self-defeating Iraqis.

(Beheading, and revenge killing and blowing each other up, nearly every day, as if it were something normal.)

And the irrational, self-defeating homegrown surrenderistas.

People are weary that we waste our blood and treasure for a people who don’t seem to appreciate the chance we are giving them.

Instead of building a free, prosperous, healthy democracy, they descend into primeval bloodthirsty vendettas.

Over a blown Golden Dome. Or a dead heir to the mantle of a dead “prophet”.

We have better things to do than babysit the infantile.

That’s the essence of the “weariness”.

profitsbeard on July 19, 2007 at 11:50 PM


Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously *. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis,” Obama said between stops on the first of two days scheduled on the New Hampshire campaign trail. “There’s no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing U.S. presence there.”

The greater risk is staying in Iraq**, Obama said.

* ** I always thought Obama had two pie holes.

And from WaPo:

That was the conclusion reached in recent “war games” exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. “I honestly don’t think it will be apocalyptic***,” said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But “it will be ugly***.”

*** The difference between apocalyptic and ugly?:

Hillary Clinton winning the Presidential nomination vs. losing it to Barak Obama.

Mcguyver on July 19, 2007 at 11:57 PM

Allah, explain to me how you’re gong to seperate the 40% of families that are mixed Sunni and Shiite. I’ve never once seen or heard an Iraqi who wasn’t in Al Qaeda or JAM speak about how sectarian division is even possible let alone desirable. This is so frustrating. The Iraqi sectarian war will last forever because so many families are mixed. This plan for partition is totally divorced from reality, just as Reid and Biden’s view of the surge is divorced from reality.

Also, just because Biden says we’re out, don’t mean we’re out. If people put their money where their mouth is we can buck up flagging support among Rep. Senators and Reps in the House.

The Apologist on July 20, 2007 at 12:00 AM

* ** I always thought Obama had two pie holes.
Mcguyver on July 19, 2007 at 11:57 PM

That’s why I’m experiencing a shortage of pumpkin pies.
Damned two faced, greedy Democrats!

Mcguyver on July 20, 2007 at 12:02 AM

The other problem with partition is that it would probably leave us with a three-way situation reminiscent of India-Pakistan tensions, but with Turkey’s paranoia about the Kurds, Saudi Arabia’s loyalty to the Sunnis and Iran’s ambitions thrown into the mix. It’s not hard at all to get to an endgame featuring a three-way all out war with those countries directly involved and the Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Gulf States involved to a lesser extent, and all fighting it out mostly within Iraq’s borders. And that’s not going to leave any of those combatants hermetically sealed off from instability within their own borders–look for the Saudis to get wobbly before any of the others do.

Sweet dreams, Harry Reid.

Bryan on July 20, 2007 at 12:03 AM

Frankly, they should either put up, by cutting off funding, or shut up and let the military and CIC do their jobs.

synycalwon on July 20, 2007 at 12:10 AM

Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis,” Obama said

Allmighty Obama knows best.

________________________________________________________

AQ being the common enemy is actually the saving grace.

The three factions learn by having a common enemy what war between them feels like.

No end in sight unless they agree.

I cannot state this too many times. So I will say it again.

AQ being the common enemy is the saving grace. By the time they have won over AQ, they will realize the value of working together if they want a country of their own.

Mcguyver on July 20, 2007 at 12:14 AM

Somewhat Off Topic

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070720/ap_on_el_pr/obama_ap_interview

That means Obama no longer thinks protecting the Sudan is worth it.

Thanks Obama I was just wondering.

F15Mech on July 20, 2007 at 12:20 AM

These war games were not done by the Pentagon. Instead:

That was the conclusion reached in recent “war games” exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson

Then he went to the WA Post with the results? Taken at face value, I would say, knowing nothing else, that maybe, just maybe he left out al-Qaeda in the equation. Where is al-Qaeda in his report? Is al-Qaeda just sitting around letting eveyone push them out of Iraq? Wouldn’t they cause a lot of devistation and try to regain ground in al-Anbar and Baqubah where they were successful in the past? And with us gone, why not? Who would prevent them? The tribes are fine when they have US backup and air support, but they have proven ineffectual on their own.

bnelson44 on July 20, 2007 at 12:26 AM

Bryan is right, partitions are always messy affairs that can take decades to hash out, so its not gonna be close to a panacea. There’s gonna be fighting for a long time in a partition, but that’s what I think is gonna happen.

I was gonna say too, doesn’t Obama’s rejecting staying in Iraq because of genocide basically mean he wouldn’t pursue the Darfur crisis for the same reason? Sounds like it.

Bad Candy on July 20, 2007 at 12:26 AM

Disgusting. Was there no way to avoid this? If the Republican base had held their noses last November, the GOP would still be in charge, but the left would be shrieking even louder. That, in turn, would have caused the most worthless and already wobbly GOP congressmen to crap their pants and run for cover by now.

Consequently, we’d probably still be on the verge of an immoral, indefensible, short-sighted and foolishly reckless retreat.

How did we get here? Good Christ, how did we get here? Don’t they know what harm they’re going to do, not only to this country but the rest of the world, too?

They should all be run out of office. Every last one of these bastards without a spine.

Kensington on July 20, 2007 at 12:28 AM

There’s gonna be fighting for a long time in a partition, but that’s what I think is gonna happen.
Bad Candy on July 20, 2007 at 12:26 AM

But is the fighting going to be mostly inside Iraq? Or will it engulf the region and (eventually) reach America? How soon after the bloodshed begins in earnest will the Dems be crying for us to open up for the Middle-Eastern refugees?
Or, even if they don’t, how long before some “refugees” enter America via the open borders?

VolMagic on July 20, 2007 at 12:46 AM

Does anyone know what sect of Islam Obama’s school taught when he attended? Sunni, Shite, Wahabist?

Egfrow on July 20, 2007 at 1:31 AM

The Dhemocrats loved it when Vietnam descended into genocide. They partied like rock stars. They CAN’T wait for the genocide in Iraq to start and will do everything in their power, even have slumber parties, to make it happen.

Mojave Mark on July 20, 2007 at 1:35 AM

You know what? I’ve wargamed Gettysburg, and the south won…

I’ve wargamed the Battle of Britain, and the Germans won…

I’ve wargamed Waterloo, Borodino, and about 100 other Napoleonic battles, and had very mixed results…

Wargames are nothing more than a guess… based on rules set up by umpires to TRY to come out with a reasonable conclusion based on moves by different commanders… and cannot really potray how a population will react…

Romeo13 on July 20, 2007 at 1:52 AM

“Superficial thinking”

I’ve got to remember that one.

Big S on July 20, 2007 at 2:09 AM

Maybe someone can explain how it can be that the “situation” in Iraq is SO BAD between Sunnis and Shiites that there will be a genocide if “we” leave, and yet at the same time as believing that, also believe that there can be any significant hope, even if “we” stay for another 4+ years, that the Sunnis and Shiites can get along well enough together to build George Bush’s “Iraqi democracy that respects the rights of their people, uphold the rule of law and fight extremists alongside America in the war on terror”.

The two beliefs seem incompatible to me.

Keep in mind that there are not enough “al-Qaeda in Iraq”, aka “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia”, aka “AQI”, aka “faux al-Qaeda”, or real al-Qaeda for that matter in Iraq, to do that anything like by themselves.

MB4 on July 20, 2007 at 2:13 AM

Iraqi ambassador can’t believe U.S. would walk away from the mess it’s made

The Iraqi Ambassador must not have studied much modern history, must not understand Democrats at all.
For the last 40 years they make a mess of EVERYTHING they get involved in, and always walk run away from the mess.

Then they leave it to the Republicans to try to fix. Then they rewrite history to blame their screwups on the Republicans who at least tried to prevent or at least fix the situation in the first place.

LegendHasIt on July 20, 2007 at 3:13 AM

Scenario:

There is a brutal man in control of the apartment house down the street from you. Most of the residents of the apartment house are very afraid of him, he has even beat up people in the apartment house, and would like someone to get rid of him.

You go over grab his a$$ and bring him to the law and he never comes back to the apartment house.

Now the people in the apartment house blame you because the toilets are stopped up and the roof leaks and some of the apartment house residents are fighting each other.

They say you can’t leave until everything is OK fine and you are a bad person if you do.

You have already been there for more than four years trying to help. A pesky neighbor has started to tell you that you should just go home, but he has not done anything to make you do that.

What do you say to them?

MB4 on July 20, 2007 at 3:25 AM

Hello Iraqi Ambassador you should have gotten a hint when the DEMs promised Iraq was going to be another VietNam. It’s called surrender and they do it constantly.

Buzzy on July 20, 2007 at 3:35 AM

Partitions are neither permanent nor do they “settle” things.

Cyprus was partitioned in the late 50’s or early 60’s, and in 1974 Greece invaded and tried to take over the Island (both Greece and Turkey claimed it as being theirs). War between two NATO allies resulted. And Cyprus is STILL partitioned, today, except that Turkey’s slice is bigger.

Korea is partitioned. We’re still stationed along the DMZ and the North still hasn’t given up its designs on the south. Unless the regime in the north falls, we will, no doubt go to war there, again.

Vietnam was partitioned. And we all know how that ended up. The North invaded and tried to overthrow the south. After 56,000 US KIA, we pulled out and the Democrats made sure that the next time the north invaded after that, that the Vietnames would lose and that is exactly what happened.

Partitioning Iraq will not settle anything. Shiiteland would want revenge against the Sunnis. Sunniland want’s the oil that the Kurds have. Kurdland wants their own state that would include parts of Turkey and Iran as well.

But who cares?

Obama and the rest of the traitor party don’t give a crap about any Iraqi genocide. And this includes Biden. Just like they didn’t give a crap about Cambodia’s Pol Pot and the millions he murdered or the 800,000 Vietnamese executed by the Communists and the hundreds of thousands of tribesmen in Laos who fought with us.

Liberal Democrats are the monsters among us.

They’re cold, murdering bast*rds just like their old Soviet masters were. The death of human beings doesn’t faze them — that’s why they adore abortion and “mercy killing” of the lame and elderly.

Oh, they’re willing to spend US blood and treasure on places that don’t matter to America, where we have no interests at all. So they can feel good and tingly self righteous. Places like SOMALIA, KOSOVO, BOSNIA, where they can’t really fight back. Or course, Clinton let Rawanda happen (Tutsis don’t vote Democratic anyway, so WTF and to hell with them!) in 1994. Cigarman was still smarting from the beating Osama bin Laden gave him in Somalia. Because in Mogodishu, the enemy DID fight back and Clinton, like all liberal Democrats doesn’t have the stomache (spelled COURAGE) to fight our enemies.

They’re great on “sending messages,” like blowing up asprin factories and murdering donkeys in empty terrorist camps in Afghanistan. But when it comes to actually engaging the enemy, those that don’t commit treason in helping them, run away like the little girly-men they are.

But other than “sending messages,” DEMOCRATS REFUSE to defend American national security interests. Period.

They screwed the Vietnamese and the Cambodians. They screwed the Somalians, too. And now, they’re about to screw the Iraqis. And they fully turn the sacrifice of American blood into worthless mud. God Damn Them.

georgej on July 20, 2007 at 5:37 AM

Partitions are neither permanent nor do they “settle” things

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

…traitor party … … Liberal Democrats are the monsters among us. They’re cold, murdering bast*rds … …

My God, you are talking about roughly a third of Americans. Probably another third to some degree. If someone at kos or moveon finds your comment, and has nothing better to do, they will have a field day. They will think that they have died and gone to heaven.

And now, they’re about to screw the Iraqis.

They are too late. The Iraqis beat them to it.

MB4 on July 20, 2007 at 5:57 AM

MB4: “My God, you are talking about roughly a third of Americans.”

Yep. They are the monsters among us. How else would you quantify their behavior? You have to be an IDIOT to not know that millions of people are going to die in the violent collapse of Iraq if we pull out now. Even the New York Times admits it. And yet, they either deny it, or don’t care. They want Bush defeated and to hell with the consequences.

Some of these “people” are the very same people STOOD BY and watched Pol Pot murder 2.25 million Cambodians. First they pretended that it never happened; that it was overblown rhetoric from the right. Then they started to JUSTIFY it as being necessary to achieve social justice. Then, when the scale of it reached genocidal levels, they blamed Nixon, and (believe it or not), some even try to apply moral equivalence to blame Ronald Reagan.

Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby wrote:

“In the name of a radical utopia,” The New York Times recalled in its long obituary, “the Khmer Rouge regime had turned most of the people into slaves. . . . Dictatorial village leaders and soldiers told the people whom to marry and how to live, and those who disobeyed were killed. [Those] who did not bend to the political mania were buried alive, or tossed into the air and speared on bayonets. Some were fed to crocodiles.” Nearby was a photograph of human skulls — emblem of the dreadful “killing fields” in which the communists butchered a quarter of Cambodia’s people.

But nowhere in the Times story was there a reminder that the Khmer Rouge was able to seize power only after the US Congress in 1975 cut off all aid to the embattled pro-American government of Lon Nol — and that it did so despite frantic warnings of the bloodbath that would ensue. President Ford warned of “horror and tragedy” if Cambodia was abandoned to the Khmer Rouge and pleaded with Congress to supply Lon Nol’s army with the tools it needed to defend itself.

To no avail. US troops had come home two years earlier, but American antiwar activists were still intent on effecting the “liberation” of Southeast Asia. Radicals like Jane Fonda, David Dellinger, and Tom Hayden stormed the country, denouncing anyone who opposed communist victory in Cambodia and Vietnam. On the campuses, in the media, and in Congress, it was taken on faith that a Khmer Rouge victory would bring peace and enlightened leadership to Cambodia.

“The growing hysteria of the administration’s posture on Cambodia,” declared Senator George McGovern, “seems to me to reflect a determined refusal to consider what the fall of the existing government in Phnom Penh would actually mean. . . . We should be able to see that the kind of government which would succeed Lon Nol’s forces would most likely be a government . . . run by some of the best-educated, most able intellectuals in Cambodia.”

Liberal Democrats caused the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam. That’s history. Liberal Democrats pretended that the genocide wasn’t happening. That’s history, too. Liberal Democrats stuck their fingers in their ears and went “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA” when people tried to tell them what was really happening in Cambodia. Just like they are trying to do today.

The New Republic told its readers that the ouster of Lon Nol should be of no concern, since “the Cambodian people will finally be rescued from the horrors of a war that never really had any meaning.”…

…On April 13, 1975, [Sydney] Schanberg’s dispatch from Phnom Penh was headlined, “Indochina without Americans: for most, a better life.”…

…On the op-ed page, Anthony Lewis was calling “the whole bloodbath debate unreal. What future could possibly be more terrible,” he demanded, “than the reality of what is happening to Cambodia now?”

As the death marches out of Phnom Penh proceeded, Lewis went on making excuses for the Khmer Rouge. He mused that it was “the only way to start on their vision of a new society.” Americans who objected were guilty of “cultural arrogance, an imperial assumption, that . . . our way of life” would be better….

…The “scholars” were the worst. Gareth Porter and G.C. Hildebrand of the Indochina Resource Center insisted that Pol Pot’s horrendous cruelties “saved the lives of tens of thousands of people…. Twenty-three years ago, American leftists cheered, justified, and denied as the communists plunged Cambodia into a nightmare of atrocity.”

And you dare to complain that I label them for what they are? They were monsters then, and NOTHING’S CHANGED! They are going to repeat their performance in Iraq!

They’re older and grayer now, but their ranks are swelled by a new generation of USEFUL IDIOTS who intend to turn a blind eye to the murder of millions of Iraqis. Just because they hate George W. Bush.

If a group of people not only stand by, but advocate the very actions which will bring about genocide, then you cannot call them anything but monsters. Because that is what they are.

And if the people of DKOS are upset because I dared to tell them that they ‘wear no clothes,’ then f*ckem. They ARE what I say they are. And they will wear that label forever.

georgej on July 20, 2007 at 7:11 AM

I agree with MB4, the Iraqi’s screwed this up. Instead of using the blueprint of war from WWII, we gave them, for lack of a better word, a perfect war. Less casualties and less damange to the infrastructure to their country and what have they done? They march in the thousands, not against the terrorists or against the Sunni & Shite murderers, they march against America.

Regardless of what Mr. Iraqi Ambassador says, the Iraqi’s lost this war.

Georgej, I don’t believe that all Democrats follow what their party members say or do, just as not all Republicans do. If you have to damn half of the nation, start your own blog.

moonsbreath on July 20, 2007 at 9:58 AM

The U.S.A. did cause the mess in Iraq.
We are about to run away and leave the mess.

The Senators who want to leave the mess say that we should go back to working with out Allies. The Iraqi exit question is, after we abandon our allies in Iraq where will we find some other county to trust us?

The tag “monster” will be hung around the neck of President Bush because he will be assigned the fault. Here’s a clue. When first tuning into a hearing on C-Span I can quickly tell the party of the Pol by the question. If the question is about the past to find fault the Pol has a “D” by their name. If the question is about what to do next to make it better the Pol has a “R” by their name.

TunaTalon on July 20, 2007 at 10:01 AM

People just don’t have the attention span for this kind of war. They want to go back to playing their Xbox.

aengus on July 20, 2007 at 10:05 AM

The question is how many would die on each side before the sectarian populations were finally settled into their new mini-states.

That depends, are you talking about body counts in the next few years or the next millenium?

The Dark Age mentality and religious driven culture of the Middle East was there before we came, has persisted while we are there and will be prevalent long after we’re gone. The death-obssessed mentality of radical Islam has gone far beyond being an incurable desease, it has transitioned into a genetic deformity passed on in the bloodlines and nurtured by the brainwashing of generation after generation of the terrorists of tomorrow.

Other than Israel building a nuclear arsenal, what other accord, agreement, peace negotiation, diplomatic solution or foreign intervention has had any effect on the bloodthirsty nature of the barbaric jihadists or positively altered the volatile landscape of the Middle East?

Nukes have kept the enemy at the gates of Israel, but the rest of the Middle East is still boiling over with Arabs who want to kill one another, and will, in great numbers, as they have for thousands of years – all in the name of Allah.

fogw on July 20, 2007 at 10:18 AM

“Shortsighted, self-defeating, and immoral.”

That’s the Senate, alrighty.

mojo on July 20, 2007 at 10:29 AM

U.S. intelligence analysts, however, have a somewhat different view of al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq, noting that the local branch takes its inspiration but not its orders from bin Laden. Its enemies — the overwhelming majority of whom are Iraqis — reside in Baghdad and Shiite-majority areas of Iraq, not in Saudi Arabia or the United States. While intelligence officials have described the Sunni insurgent group calling itself al-Qaeda in Iraq as an “accelerant” for violence, they have cited domestic sectarian divisions as the main impediment to peace.

This is fundamentally wrong and tells you all you need to know about our “intelligence analysts”.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. command announced on Wednesday the arrest of an al-Qaeda leader it said served as the link between the organization’s command in Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s inner circle, enabling it to wield considerable influence over the Iraqi group.

Bergner told reporters that al-Mashhadani carried messages from bin Laden, and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, to the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.
“There is a clear connection between al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda senior leadership outside Iraq,” Bergner said.

After all this time, after clear examples of what took place in Afghanistan and is now happening in Pakistan, neither our “intelligence agencies” nor the majority of people in DC have a clue about the threat we are fighting. The don’t understand or refuse to admit the jihad threat.

Depressing.

JackStraw on July 20, 2007 at 11:36 AM

It all reminds me of the quote from Stalin, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.” People like Rosie O spout the insane number of 650,000 Iraqis killed by “us” that they claim to care about so much (even though it’s a crazy, made-up #), they don’t care about the millions that will be slaughtered in the most brutal way possible. It’s where moral equivalence leaves you when you follow it to it’s extreme. It’s chilling.

acleaver on July 20, 2007 at 11:56 AM

The Dhimmis are walking a tightrope alright. Interesting to see how they’re going to try to pull us out of Iraq and turn around and blame it on Bush. It’s amazing to me that most of the Dhimm candidates are campaigning on mostly the war in Iraq. Without that, they have nothing, even with it they don’t have much, except their hate for Bush.

4shoes on July 20, 2007 at 11:57 AM

moonsbreath: “If you have to damn half of the nation, start your own blog.”

Half the nation are Democrats? Not hardly. No more than about a third of the voters are Democrats, registered or otherwise. Another third are Republicans, and the rest are independents. Within 3 or 4 percentage points either way, varying from election to election.

If the Democratic base (the numerical base, not the base that scream their hatred of Bush the loudest) wants their party to take a different road than Harry Reid/Nancy Pelosi’s cut and run and surrender to Al Qaeda, then they had best speak up now. If they remain silent, then THEIR party will be known as the the modern day Copperheads; the party that cut and run in Iraq.

Just as their party attempted to undercut Lincoln and surrender to the other side during that other unpopular war, the Civil War, and where the term “copperhead” was coined.

Just as their party DID surrender South Vietnam to the North.

The part of the party that is directing it today is the hard left. The part of the part that I once belonged to (4 decades ago), the “conservative” branch, if it still exists that is, had better start speaking up now. They had better reign in Reid and Pelosi. They had better tell their leadership to STOP listening to the nutroots and start listening to them, before they betray the Iraqi people the way they betrayed the South Vietnamese and almost betrayed the Union.

The 2006 election was NOT A MANDATE TO SURRENDER TO AL QAEDA IN IRAQ. They have no sweeping majority. They have a majority of *ONE* vote, that’s all, in the Senate. They have only a small majority in the House. They cannot even override a Bush veto without Republican assistance.

The Democratic Party drove Lieberman, the only sensible liberal out there, out of the party. They made Zell Miller, a conservative, throw up his hand in disgust and retire. Wilson, FDR, Truman, and JFK would not recognize their party today as their leadership cares little about the welfare of this country, and only cares about increasing their political power. Or a former Democrat Bob Just put it: “das party uber alles.”

The plain fact is, the same people who were responsible for the genocide in Cambodia — and generation of liberals that followed them — are poised to abandon the people of Iraq to the tender mercies of Al Qaeda, Sadr (and Iran), and the remaining Ba’athists. That is what they intend to do.

The last poll I saw (which was several months ago, true) still showed that even the majority of Democrats (53%) wanted America to prevail in Iraq. Among Republicans, it was almost 80%. So it isn’t REPUBLICANS or the President that isn’t listening to the people.

Iraq is a country of about 25 million people. And if liberal Democrats get their way, you can count on multiple millions of them being murdered in what will happen afterward.

Tuna Talon says that the title of monster will be hung on George W. Bush over Iraq. Well, the MSM and the Democrats will no-doubt try to lie and spin their way into doing just that, just as the liberal Democrats tried to spin their way out of accepting responsibility for the genocide in Cambodia. And, Tuna, you’re right; we bail from Iraq and NONE of our allies will ever trust us again. In fact, we won’t have any, because nobody respects a backstabber.

Isn’t it ironic how the Bush-haters prattle on about how Bush has cost us international respect, and fail to see that an America that can’t be trusted to keep its word, no matter what, will have even less respect?

Are the Iraqis responsible for their fate? Yep. fogw, you hit it right on the head. 1400 years stuck in the mindset of 7th Century nomads lends itself to sect-driven warfare, murder, and power grabs on the part of some. But Iraq is a nation where the majority of people do not really care if the followers of Hussein prevail or not. Their own polls show that. They want a prosperous, peaceful Iraq. They’ve intermarried. Their neighborhoods were once integrated (and are now being religiously segregated by the death squads). They prized modern ways and were educated, despite of having to suffer under a murder like Saddam.

These sectarian killers are the MINORITY in Iraq. Really. At least right now. Until Al Qaeda started blowing up their holy places, the Shia weren’t interested in “death squads” and attrocities. Al Sistani, their leading Ayatollah specifically told them to not fight other Iraqis (or us Americans, as well). The fact that the Sunni tribes in Anbar, who were in opposition to the newly elected government and largely sat out the elections, are now working with the government to rid themselves of Al Qaeda is a sea-change difference. Can’t the liberal Democrats see this?

In the last 6 months, the worst province has been pacified because the Iraqis living there no longer want war.

In the last 6 months, the Iraq government has taken complete control of several other provinces and is in the lead on most of the others.

3/4 of the people of Iraq are not fighting, not us, not each other. John Burns said the other night that 90% of the “sectarian” violence is coming from Al Qaeda now, more than half of whom, we are told, are FOREIGN fighters, not even native Iraqis.

And, here we are, right on the cusp of victory, the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS want to toss it all away.

Why?

Why in God’s name do they want to pull out RIGHT NOW and not wait until September like Reid and Pelosi promised?

Why do they want to force us to lose the war AND cause the genocide of millions of Iraqis, especially now, when time is on OUR side; when momentum is on OUR side?

Why do their allies in the MSM deliberately lie and overstate the bad news and ignore the good? Why does the MSM ignore Michael Yon’s story? Or that of Steve Miska?

Why?

I say it is because they are the same kind of people they were in 1975. They are the same hypocrites and haters of America now that they were then. They have the same lack of humanity now they had then.

They are the same monsters NOW as they were THEN.

America, I give you the liberal Democrat!

georgej on July 20, 2007 at 1:12 PM

Comment pages:


You must be logged in to post a comment.