So, seven out of eight inspected Iraqi reconstruction projects, limited to the Iraqi areas that are actually safe enough to inspect and chosen randomly within that constriction for inspection by the U.S. federal government, once declared successes are now significantly impaired. I guess when people complain that the press allegedly isn't reporting successes in Iraq they're really just whining over an astoundingly high 87.5+% success rate. It's nice to see our tax dollars hard at work wasting away, doing nothing. With successes like these, who needs failures?
We needed a study to tell us that throwing money at a corrupt government, from a corrupt government, through a corrupt contractor would result in waste? I applaud you Liet, I had no idea Iraq was such a mess. Truly.
Nah, we don't need a study for that. But I do wonder how Bush apologists will spin the fact that an organ of the Bush administration concluded that Bush's successes have an 87.5% failure rate.
Wait. Are you saying Al Jazeera's New York print edition has something bad to say about the Iraq war?
No, he is saying that the Federal Government has something bad to say about the Iraq War, and that people like you will have to try and rationalize away the source. Like you just tried to do.
Well, the ironic thing is that the three goals - WMD's (so to speak) Saddam gone, and a Democratic government were all accomplished. if bush has been wise, he would have bailed out within three months of the election of the government and let them do what they had to do to defend it. what is going on now is very much a "police action" more so than a war in the calssic sense. And police actions almost always end badly if they end at all
What? If there ever were any WMDs, they are now in the hands of enemies who have nothing to loose from using them. And everyone else who even suspects the US might irrationally regard him as hostile someday has every reason to build WMDs. Saddam is gone only to be replaced by several mad men of his own caliber, and engaged in active war rather than contained and starved. And the "Democratic government" is neither democratic, nor does it govern the country.
Psst! If we say it enough times, it will become true! Truth be told, the Iraq war was a good thing. It could've been handled better, but still, we are making a difference in the country, we are stabilizing the Middle East, we are defeating Islamic terrorism on its own turf, and we are setting up the leverage to solve the Iran problem. While Harry Reid, CBS News, and the NYT all seem to take some sort of perverse pleasure out of the US losing and would like nothing better than to accomplish another Vietnam, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, I hope the American people won't let that happen.
Yes, you're making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world to live in. With no security and a lack of basic amenities by creating a massive schism between shia and sunni and having a policy most in the middle east see as a 'war on islam'? no, you are creating, then killing 'terrorists'/insurgents by the thousand load. If it was your country, wouldnt you fight for it? Ahh more war, more death, more terrorist creation and more of the 'war on islam'
This would be worth a giant laughing smilie if it weren't really so sad. It wasn't its turf before you came, and you're not defeating it.
Indeed. The Iraqi "government" passes no laws, doesn't control the army, doesn't control any territory, and generally seems to be a government in much the same way that a toaster-oven is a bottle of beer.
Psst, when they say "defeating Islamic terrorism on its own turf" what they mean is "making sure it all happens in the middle east" Because as well all know, the middle east is one generic area with interchangable countries and laws. You can say many things that were bad about Iraq before we went in, however it being a hotbed of terrorism is definitely not one of them.
Nothing in my life has served to convert me from rabid warhawk to "let's get the fuck outta there" isolationist as our current involvment in Iraq.
Ok, everyone who has actually been in Iraq since 2003, raise your hand. Packard, since you seem to know so much about it, surely you've been there, right? Liet? NOTE: Please note that I am not claiming to have ever been to Iraq.
[action=Ancalagon]raises hand.[/action] And while by no means do I think this war is over, or that we will lose it, I will say that if we pull out now, leaving Iraq in it's current state the war will have been a failure. Iraq today is not a democracy, it's government can't govern, it's Army is no better than a band of thugs, and the country is in shambles.
Iraq is not a democracy? By what definition? Just because certain elements of their populace chose not to participate doesn't invalidate the results - they weren't forced to not participate, they chose not to vote, and that's a valid choice in any democracy. Anyone see the two CNN correspondents that returned from Iraq this week getting interviewed? They said security there was dismal, but that democratic plans to force the President to remove US soldiers from the area starting in the next few months were 'delusional.' As far as London and Madrid go, I'd say those aren't overtly relevant to how effective the war is in Iraq - because those were those countries own citizens deciding to immolate themselves to kill those pesky heretics. AQ was by no means calling the shots, they just acted as an ideology under which to act. Iraq is tangential to that - they were incised as soon as coalition forces attacked Afghanistan.
As I tell Henry when discussing Venezuala, elections do not a democracy make. At present we have a 'govenment' elected solely on a sectarian basis. No platforms, no policies, they just elect who gets to divide up the spoils.
Oh, and there was an interesting information on the reconstruction a while back on NPR - turns out there was quite a bit of disagreement about the two proposals. The Army Way, which is what won initially, was what that article is looking at - huge construction projects, apartment buildings, schools, roads... tangible infrastructure assets that the Corps of Engineers knew how to build, and politicians could point at and say 'we built this'. But like the maintenance failures cited above, there's many, many cases where they have been vandalized or damaged due to negligence. The State Dept wanted to fund a jumpstart to the economy instead, mostly soft projects like job training and education, which would allow the Iraqis to bring themselves up by their own bootstraps. They obviously lost the political battle until the middle of 2006, when the fact that there simply weren't trained personal in Iraq to maintain the big projects became overwhelmingly evident. Though I will say it's hard to argue about building schools - as long as someone is there to teach once it's built. In one example the corps of engineers and contractors built a brand new Iraqi office building that was state of the art, that you could find in any Western city. It sat there crumbling without a sufficient maintenance budget, without electricity, and without any Iraqi businesses capable of paying the vastly reduced/nominal rent.
I dont think you have to have been there to have an opinion. After all, people who have been there have sometimes opposing opinions
What does that have to do with anything? Isn't that just a variant on "If you love the War on Terror so much, how come you're not fighting in it?"
The Army has since shifted focus. Now instead of big projects, we are focusing on the community level. Installing basic plumbing, trying to arrange garbage disposal, repairing roads, etc.
I agree 100%. But watching the news does not an expert make. Packard and Liet talk about it as if they know everything about it.
