Those “neocons” that liberals love to hate used to be part of the center left. Zel Miller was right when he said he didn’t leave the Democratic party–it left him. Lieberman recently said the same thing.
BryanS on April 19, 2008 at 2:37 PM

Actually, Reagan said it before they.

I hear Jimmuh Carter will be going to Basra to meet with
the Mahdi army to “help” neogotiate the peace.

robo on April 19, 2008 at 1:41 PM

He better hurry before it’s too late and he’s not “needed.”

Comparing Iraq, Phase II, to the American Revolution between 1775 and 1781, things seem to be moving at a fair pace for the new government.

Iraq, like most countries, has not had the luxury of folks like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Hancock, however.

BBC News
Moqtada Sadr said he was giving the government a “last warning”, and urged it to take “the path of peace”.
“I’m giving the last warning and the last word to the Iraqi government,” Moqtada Sadr said.
…..

Yeah. 52 BDE is getting regen’d.

I had a IA CPT tell me a joke about the Basrah IP.

Q: “What do dinosaurs and the Basrah Police have in common?”
A: “They are both extinct!”

I am sure glad the INP came down here. I like not getting roketed anymore…

conservative educator on April 19, 2008 at 11:10 PM

Go, sit in the corner!

1. 52nd IA Bde should never have been fielded that soon and it broke.
2. The 1300 was not all IA, it was ISF. 1300 out of 30,000.
3. It was about 500 IA from the green 52nd Bde (3000). About 3 percent of the IA there at that point and all from the greenest Bde in the IA at the time.
4. Just under 800 Police, almost all local or about 4 percent.
5. Surprisingly, concidering the INP’s reputation, only 44 from the INP’s 1000 man BPPF deserted.
6. What is not mentioned is what was done when it became apparent they had bit off too much. The Iraqis moved an entire division into Basrah within five days.
- 1st IA Div HQ from Anbar.
- 3rd IA Bde from Diyala.
- half of 1st IA Bde from Anbar.
- 14th IA Bde from Salahadin.
- Karbala IP Emergency Response Bde.
- INP ERU Bn (equivalent to FBI HRT).
- Hillah SWAT Bn.

That is difficult for any force.

The last time the US did a comparable move (without any prior planning), the 82nd and 101st were eating at Burger King and only had their personal ammo for the two weeks it took for the USMC’s MPS equipment and ammo to arrive for the Army to borrow from (Saudi-1990)…

Compared to Aug 2006 when the IA could not move three battalions with a month’s notice, that is a considerable improvement…

Yeah, when many republicans were starting to waffle on iraq(Romeny) he dragged the Bushies into canning Rumsfeld and implementing the overdue “surge”. He also has led the fight to stop pork barrel spending i.e. earmarks and such and was vicious during the investigation of Abramoff and political corruption even on our side of the isle. Maverick is going to make a great president. Mark my words , when it’s all said and done, Maverick will be remembered with the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

THE CHOSEN ONE on April 19, 2008 at 3:16 PM

You give McCain way too much credit, and sell Rumsfeld way too short. From all evidence, McCain simply wanted the conventional approach to the Iraq war of sending in a huge, overwhelming force. Rumsfeld’s approach was far superior for the first phase of the war. Rumsfeld was proven correct when the smaller force he inserted did exactly what some “experts” said was it was inadequate to do: defeated the Saddam army in record time.

This didn’t surprise me at all. I know our military, and they do warfare very, very well.

However, once the enemy had collapsed, we shifted from invasion to occupation. And here I had more concerns, because our country’s history shows clearly that we don’t do occupation all that well.

That’s right: in spite of the never-ending stream of leftists calling us “imperialistic,” we just … aren’t.

When the occupation started, suddenly the State Department was in charge instead of the DOD. DOD still had a mission, but they were often overridden by State. Given that, it’s not really fair to blame Rumsfeld for everything that went wrong.

The surge brought in only a marginal number of extra troops: far under what the retired generals and McCain had suggested originally. It has worked, not because of the greater number of troops, but because of the shift to a true counter-insurgency mission and the willingness to work with locals and within the tribal structure of Iraqi life.

For all that, the surge would not have worked nearly as well if Al Quaeda in Iraq had not made themselves so odious that the Americans started to look like the better bet after all.

McCain deserves great credit for standing firm about Iraq, but he can’t take credit for creating the surge or the counter-insurgency tactics now in use.

He does get credit for promoting the surge once it was proposed, though.

Well done, carry on and Thank you!

ChosenOne…it’s true that the Brits have been ‘less than aggressive’ here but that’s because their Rules of Engagement are very restrictive. Since the Americans have been here the past 3 weeks the militia has been getting pounded…literally. The militia has been run out of town for the most part and they’re getting plastered when they pop their heads up in the surrounding areas. We call it “whack-a-mole” when our forces go out to greet them with full air support.

I talk with local Iraqis on a daily basis and they are so thankful that the Americans came to town. If you look American, many Iraqi strangers will come up and shake your hand and in their very limited English say “thank you America”. Something Sen. Kerry and Murtha will never do.

Come on, Ed, give them a break. It’s only because they’re bitter.

Either way, it’s still nothing but bad news from Iraq. Think of all that the reporters could have accomplished if they had put this much thought and effort into real IN DEPTH REPORTING.

Oops, sorry, what was I thinking. (sometimes I crack myself up!)

Hey maybe the Democrats will luck out and a bunch of people will get killed. No doubt that would just tickle them pink.

Do you know these people? Do you have some inside information? AlQaida has been threatening to wipe us off the face of the earth for some time now and Sadr is acting like the Black Knight in the Monty Python movie.

Remember him?

A Reuters headline from today(full article under Hotair headlines).

One doesn’t give these ultimatums unless they fear their imminent defeat. If your as bad ass you say you are just fight, and stop with the verbal rhetoric. This guy is on his last leg, Ayatollah Al Sistani is the senior voice in this region and even he is with compliance to a central government. Go get Sadr, put his ass on a stick. It will only help the central gov’t in the future and will send a signal to Iran. The signal being that we came into your back yard and routed your puppet. Guess who’s next.

njcommuter on April 19, 2008 at 6:24 PM

Yeah, that’s exactly what Basra has been under British control. They put up a perimeter, but don’t control the inner workings or political sentiment. The Sherman approach is EXACTLY what is needed here. The only way you can win here is devastating force, not Shia to Shia political handshakes. Terrible analysis, dude.

Keep the champaign on very heavy ice.

In fact, McCain should be able to come up with a faster withdrawal plan than that slow poke Obama who obviously does not recognize all this progress.

The value of an Arab democracy in the Middle East, or anything resembling it, should be evident. To many it is not, but it should be: it will prove that you need a strong government, not a Strong Man. A government strong enough to replace a Strong Man will be strong enough to stand up to fifth columns and to secure its borders. Iraq is centrally located, easily threatened, and easily a threat. It is said that at the Battle of the Bulge, as Americans soldiers dug in at Bastogne, one of them said “It looks like they’ve got us surrounded, the poor b—–ds.” That is what the more fearful planners in Iran and Syria must think about.