Thursday, May 20, 2004
U.S. Troops, Iraqi Police Raid Chalabi's Home and HQ
:: The candidate that tells America to leave on schedule most convincingly will be the ideal leader for the future of Iraq. He will be stressing what Americans, Iraqis, but not terrorists, want: America to pull out right when everyone is ready -- no sooner or later.
I can easily imagine planners in Iraq want to distance themselves from Chalabi, who is seen as an outsider because of his previous close ties to the Pentagon and exile status. Now he is free of that and should run on a "Pull out on June 30th" campaign and accelerate elections.
Also, I saw it here first, but have been thinking it for a while, that the amount of bad news coming from Iraq has been growing. I choose my words with purpose, as there is, I think, a fairly constant, slowly progressing situation on the ground. But now the news is shifting to more and more doom and gloom.
What we are going to see is the following: as the US begins pulls out after a successful transition of power on June 30th, talk of American defeat and "cut-and-run" response to terrorism will grow.
So before the war, the argument was Saddam's weapons were contained. Clearly that was wrong with his support of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Palestinian bombers. These terrorists are not contained by borders; they only know martyrs and infidels.
Then in the run-up to Iraq, the argument was that civil war was inevitable. That clearly has not happened.
Then at the start of the war, there was talk of tens of thousands of American casualties. That hasn't happened. The press and the left try really, really hard to make it sound like less than 1000 of 130000 is a lot. It isn't.
Then with looting and lack of electricity, the talk was of no real plan and criticism of the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Now that power is back on, the looting has been stopped, Iraqi police and army units are being rapidly trained, and none of Saddam's old soldiers have started a significant civil war, that talk has stopped.
There are problems, but they are only temporary stand offs where laser like use of force and diplomatic means prevent large civilian casualties and bleed the insurgents dry through slow attrition. Note that talk of Bush using diplomacy and avoiding force are not mentioned at all to counter quacking about his war-like nature.
And now finally, after Iraq has not fallen apart, after services are up and running, after Saddam's support of terrorists and weapons programs are certainly over, as we approach an inflection point in US involvement, talk about pulling out in response to terror will grow.
This type of journalism helps no one. Please ignore it and read multiple blogs to get an impression of the truth on the ground. You certainly won't get it with the template agenda seen coming from major news sources.
UPDATE::Wow, After months of blogging I doubled my total page views in an hour. Thanks Instapundit! Scroll down and read as much as you like :). I'd love feedback too.
:: The candidate that tells America to leave on schedule most convincingly will be the ideal leader for the future of Iraq. He will be stressing what Americans, Iraqis, but not terrorists, want: America to pull out right when everyone is ready -- no sooner or later.
I can easily imagine planners in Iraq want to distance themselves from Chalabi, who is seen as an outsider because of his previous close ties to the Pentagon and exile status. Now he is free of that and should run on a "Pull out on June 30th" campaign and accelerate elections.
Also, I saw it here first, but have been thinking it for a while, that the amount of bad news coming from Iraq has been growing. I choose my words with purpose, as there is, I think, a fairly constant, slowly progressing situation on the ground. But now the news is shifting to more and more doom and gloom.
What we are going to see is the following: as the US begins pulls out after a successful transition of power on June 30th, talk of American defeat and "cut-and-run" response to terrorism will grow.
So before the war, the argument was Saddam's weapons were contained. Clearly that was wrong with his support of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Palestinian bombers. These terrorists are not contained by borders; they only know martyrs and infidels.
Then in the run-up to Iraq, the argument was that civil war was inevitable. That clearly has not happened.
Then at the start of the war, there was talk of tens of thousands of American casualties. That hasn't happened. The press and the left try really, really hard to make it sound like less than 1000 of 130000 is a lot. It isn't.
Then with looting and lack of electricity, the talk was of no real plan and criticism of the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Now that power is back on, the looting has been stopped, Iraqi police and army units are being rapidly trained, and none of Saddam's old soldiers have started a significant civil war, that talk has stopped.
There are problems, but they are only temporary stand offs where laser like use of force and diplomatic means prevent large civilian casualties and bleed the insurgents dry through slow attrition. Note that talk of Bush using diplomacy and avoiding force are not mentioned at all to counter quacking about his war-like nature.
And now finally, after Iraq has not fallen apart, after services are up and running, after Saddam's support of terrorists and weapons programs are certainly over, as we approach an inflection point in US involvement, talk about pulling out in response to terror will grow.
This type of journalism helps no one. Please ignore it and read multiple blogs to get an impression of the truth on the ground. You certainly won't get it with the template agenda seen coming from major news sources.
UPDATE::Wow, After months of blogging I doubled my total page views in an hour. Thanks Instapundit! Scroll down and read as much as you like :). I'd love feedback too.
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