It will be the job of all true American patriots to remind subsequent generations of Americans how George Bush and the Republican Party created this unmitigated and historic disaster.

Pelosi 2007 - Freedom can't wait 'til 2008!

I know its probably not kosher to say this, but I found the story kind of funny, almost endeering.

Its hard to see how the Iraqi army has much chance of improving, when the best Iraqi fighters are insurgents, in the badr brigades, or with the Mehdi Army.

Does litter bother you? It bothers us.

But how much? Can you take a walk and not have it drive you crazy? Because it's always there. Somebody tosses a half-finished Slurpee out the car window because they couldn't handle brain freeze. Or a fool thinks its OK to flick a still-burning ciggybutt without looking and it ends up in a baby carriage or in someone's trouser cuff.

Well, all right, I'm just talking about a crumpled-in-the-gutter mundane Whopper wrapper or somesuch. Left by an ignorant bastard minutes before. Do you make an unholy crimson-faced stink? Alert your fellow pedestrians? Demand immediate action? Would you do that?

The little moron could be hiding in the parking garage watching you, shivering with glee, and before long he'll be tipping over trash receptacles, drunk on recognition.

Best not to glorify bad citizens. An anonymous sanitation crew is what's needed.

I'm not going to doubt the truth of your story, even though I don't trust the liberal controlled media. But I think you should look at the good news coming from Centcom before you jump to conclusions about how bad Iraq is.

First Link

"Iraqi Army graduates first sniper class

The Iraqi Army recently expanded its advanced marksmanship course to give their military a much-needed asset in the battle for the streets of Iraq’s cities – highly capable and lethal Iraqi snipers."

Second Link

"Iraqi Security Forces captures insurgent, detains seven suspects Multi-National Corps – Iraq PAO

Special Iraqi Army forces, with Coalition advisors, captured a suspected insurgent and detained seven additional suspects during a raid Sunday near Taji The insurgent is believed to be part of a cell that provides safe houses and staging areas for attacks and other operations in Baghdad to al Qaeda in Iraq."

Both of these stories are telling us Iraq is doing a lot better than you make it sound.

On a related note, it looks like someone tried to kill Muqtada Al-Sadr today. He wasn't hurt.

http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2006/12/assasination-attempt-on-al-sadrs-life.html

An 11-hour pitched battle with insurgents?

Sounds like major combat operations STILL haven't ended three and a half years in.

Sounds like major combat operations STILL haven't ended

Maybe "Major Combat Operations" is just one of those cute army names for chow. I can imagine a burrito cooked up on an aircraft carrier might end up with that sort of name. Maybe Bush was just announcing that the celebratory snacks had run out. He is down home and folksy you know?

Or am I just engaged in some pre-national-return-to-sannity thinking?

U.S. radio jammers seeking to hinder communications between insurgents ended up blocking the Iraqi soldiers' walkie-talkies

I hope they fix that problem next time.

It looks, at the present time, as though the Shi'ites will be unable to conquer the Sunnis, even should they try.

"I'm not going to doubt the truth of your story..."

What a stunning admission from Al. Can it be that he's actually smarter than the President of the United States? Nah, but it seemed that way for a second. He goes on to laud the "good news" coming out of Iraq.

And who needed that damn ozone layer, anyway?

FUBAR

Who in the Iraqi Defense Ministry proposed this & why did Casey approve it?

Why did both the Americans & the Iraqis only have a few hours notice/planning time?

Who alerted the insurgents to the operation?

Drones showed insurgents moving into ambush positions. Why didn't commanders have access to this info before they went in?

Not to mention crap like this: U.S. radio jammers seeking to hinder communications between insurgents ended up blocking the Iraqi soldiers' walkie-talkies...

I'd say the Iraqi foot soldiers didn't panic anymore than our youngest soldiers do when they're ambushed.

FUBAR Part 2

All this in addition to the secterian loyalties issue, of course.

Partition.

Tilli - an even more relevant question is, why was
the offensive initially "billed by U.S. officials in Baghdad as an Iraqi-led success??" Why are US officials being so dishonest as to take a failure, and using it as a case study, possibly causing unnecessary deaths for future operations?

Also, that's gotta be the fake Al, because he's referring to press releases from Centcom. That pretty much makes it worthless.

During the summer of 1775 on a hill outside of Boston, a group of farmers and shopkeepers gathered to oppose the most highly trained and diciplined army in the world. The redcoats formed their regiments and charged up the hill expecting to overrun the rabble with no problem. The rabble drove them back with heavy losses. They formed again and charged a second time. Again they were driven back. Enraged, the British took off their packs, fixed bayonets and charged again. The rabble ran out of powder and shot so they took bolders from their earthworks and rolled them down the hill. Out of ammunition and lacking bayonets, they had no option but to retreat. No ammount of training or equipment can make up for a lack of a will to fight.

There's an astonishingly naive paternalism both in Drum's intro & the LA Times article. It also perfectly illustrates how the US got everything so wrong before, during & after invading Iraq. (Big Hint: IT'S THEIR COUNTRY)

Some examples:

1. "The Iraqi Armies 9th Mechanized Division - the most highly regarded Iraqi unit in the country..."

Uh...yeah right... & that would be "highly regarded" by whom? The Iraqi public? The Iraqi religous, political or militia leaders? The sheiks? Oh.... & BTW - cute name, "9th Mechanized Division" soooooo local & richly evocative of a warrior civilization, thousands of years old. Can't imagine why the EE-Rack 9th Mech are having trouble convincing locals they're anything other than Yankee mercenaries...

2. The operation was initially "billed by US officials as an Iraqi led success" in which Iraqi troops did heavy lifting & US troops functioned mainly as "military advisors". However, "the plan to let the Iraqis take the lead in the battle was quickly scrapped..." Hello? Take the lead??? In an operation absolutely defined by foreigners? Riiiiight. Is that like 'the plan to "let" Palestinians take the lead in their self-determination was quickly scrapped when they voted for Hamas"? This operation was conceived, planned, advised & then dishonestly reported by US officials. However when the "highly regarded" Iraqi 9th Mech didn't adequately perform their function of attacking fellow-Iraqis (as conceived, planned & advised by foreign invaders) their major participation was "quickly scrapped". Gee, I wonder if anyone ever bothered to ask any Iraqis - commanders, soldiers, translators, politicians - what they thought of this US conceived, planned & advised operation in the 1st place? (Big Hint #2: They didn't.)

3. Drum, The LA Times & US Military can't help but shudder to think, what the "mainly Shiite" 9th Mech. would have done if "they'd been ordered into battle against Shiites". For BIg Hint #3, perhaps they could imagine this scenario:

The Chinese Army has invaded (to "liberate") the USA, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans & destroying most major infrastructure. Lawlessness & (eeeek) anti-Chinese insurgency have erupted, making every American region a battlezone. As an elite member of a hastily reconstituted emergency US civil police force, highly regarded & directed by Chinese military command, YOU are transported to an urban area of reputed anti-Chinese insurgency. You are ordered into battle against people who look & talk like you, by people who don't. How effectively will YOU carry out these orders?

Put the Bush twins in the first wave of the next 'assault'...

djoaquinoz: Great post.

What Drum (and most Americans) don't understand is that the whole "Shiite hates Sunnis" thing is a fabrication by Bush and Co.

Remember, the (Arab) Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites fought a 8 year war against Shiite Iran.

Bush and Co. are the instigators of the so-called Iraqi civil war. At least they are trying their damndest to get a civil war going. It is called "divide and rule." The British used it to great effect all over the world.

They have hired various vicious thugs to kill multitudes of both Sunnis and Shiites, and dump the bodies. Then they pin the blame on the other side.

These American paid killers often torture these poor farmers just for the media SHOCK value (not to find out what seed they planted in the spring, as some claim).

The fact that so many random people are tortured (or at least reported tortured by the lying press) shows that this is all for its SHOCK and propaganda value.

Anyway, this allows the vicious Americans to claim that the people doing most of the killing (ie, the Americans) need to stay "to prevent killing/genocide."

Since Drum believes that the Shiites hate the Sunnis and vice-versa (as the lying press intends him to believe) he sees it is only natural that they would wish to kill each other. However, the reality is somewhat different.

It's time to end this sad and tragic farce and withdraw American troops immediately. Those who say there will be a bloodbath if we leave, aren't paying attention to what is already happening. Leave today!!

Times article rings true and lines up with stories I've heard from Marines coming back from Anbar: Iraqi troops, aside from small pockets of relative success, are a disaster, a phony army fighting a phony war. Which is why all plans for Iraq, from both sides of the aisle, are just so much hot air.

If we leave militias will fight bloody war for control of key areas which will very likely lead to regional war tween Sunni and Shia. We might be willing to let that happen if we thought Sunni would win. They wouldn't. Therefore there are only two options: turn Iraq into a brutal police state and force a resolution upon the factions; or choose sides.

djoaquanoz: All I can say is that was a fantastic post.

You put into words what I've been thinking or feeling since the occupation began but could not really articulate. How much empathy does a person have to have to put himself in the situation of the average Iraqi living under a despised military occupation?

Evidently, more than I had thought. Even an intelligent person like Kevin seems to buy into many of the basic premises of this article without thinking of its (other) implications.

Boy, how did Nancy Pelosi and those Democrats ever get us into this quagmire?

Al, that's great; we're training Iraqis to be better snipers. Given that a lot of people in the Iraqi military are insurgents or sympathizers, that probably will mean more dead US troops.

So when do we start supplying them with tanks, artillery, combat helicopters? Oh, wait, we can't trust them not to use them against us.

1. "The Iraqi Armies 9th Mechanized Division - the most highly regarded Iraqi unit in the country..."

djoaquinoz said:

Uh...yeah right... & that would be "highly regarded" by whom? The Iraqi public? The Iraqi religous, political or militia leaders? The sheiks? Oh.... & BTW - cute name, "9th Mechanized Division" soooooo local & richly evocative of a warrior civilization, thousands of years old. Can't imagine why the EE-Rack 9th Mech are having trouble convincing locals they're anything other than Yankee mercenaries...

The former Iraqi Army was a professionalized military, structured along the lines of the Soviet bloc. It organized itself into two groups--the elite Republican guard and the regular army units. It designated units either by "mechanized" (which means infantry transported in APCs) or "armor" (tanks). There were elite units, auxilliaries and other types for specialized functions. It was also organized into corps and army commands. So, your cute little comments aside, it rests on the structure that once existed for a reason--it lets them remain a part of something they are familiar with and that worked for them in the past. As for "who held the unit in high regard" well, follow this link and you'll see none other than Vice President Cheney visiting the unit.

2. The operation was initially "billed by US officials as an Iraqi led success" in which Iraqi troops did heavy lifting & US troops functioned mainly as "military advisors". However, "the plan to let the Iraqis take the lead in the battle was quickly scrapped..."

djoaquinoz said:

Hello? Take the lead??? In an operation absolutely defined by foreigners? Riiiiight. Is that like 'the plan to "let" Palestinians take the lead in their self-determination was quickly scrapped when they voted for Hamas"? This operation was conceived, planned, advised & then dishonestly reported by US officials. However when the "highly regarded" Iraqi 9th Mech didn't adequately perform their function of attacking fellow-Iraqis (as conceived, planned & advised by foreign invaders) their major participation was "quickly scrapped". Gee, I wonder if anyone ever bothered to ask any Iraqis - commanders, soldiers, translators, politicians - what they thought of this US conceived, planned & advised operation in the 1st place? (Big Hint #2: They didn't.)

You seem to be saying that the US military, in its advisory role, is not up to the task of supporting the Iraqi Army. Since the Iraqi Army doesn't have its own intelligence arm up and running, any movement against the insurgency would need HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT or other information to go on BEFORE the operation could be executed. After over three years, it is not asking a great deal to expect the Iraqis to take the fight to the insurgency--this is the only way to bring our troops home and this is the stated goal of the President--we will stand down when the Iraqis stand up. You seem to think that the Iraqi Army should be operating in a vacuum--sorry, we're no closer to sorting this out than we were over three years ago.

3. Drum, The LA Times & US Military can't help but shudder to think, what the "mainly Shiite" 9th Mech. would have done if "they'd been ordered into battle against Shiites". For BIg Hint #3, perhaps they could imagine this scenario:

djoaquinoz said:

The Chinese Army has invaded (to "liberate") the USA, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans & destroying most major infrastructure. Lawlessness & (eeeek) anti-Chinese insurgency have erupted, making every American region a battlezone.

What a terrible scenario. Logistics, please? Did these troops come over some magical land bridge? In supertankers? Where did they land? What happened to the ability of US air power to stop this invasion from happening? Was it a flying spaghetti monster?

djoaquinoz said:

As an elite member of a hastily reconstituted emergency US civil police force, highly regarded & directed by Chinese military command, YOU are transported to an urban area of reputed anti-Chinese insurgency. You are ordered into battle against people who look & talk like you, by people who don't. How effectively will YOU carry out these orders?

Your scenario is ludicrous and childish beyond belief. First of all, every member of the Iraqi army should be there because they want to stop the insurgency and stop the killing of innocent Iraqis. That is without question--they are not there to simply kill their fellow citizens; they are there to stop the killing of civilians.So, they should be motivated to do their job. Second, there is no basis in reality or plausibility for your scenario, primarily because insurgencies are supported by the local populace. An intelligent way to counter an insurgency is to gain the trust of the people and appear to be a legitimate alternative to the insurgents. Allowing the Iraqi army to stand up and fight and direct its own operations gives legitimacy to the Iraqi government.

And if the Iraqi government can appear legitimate, then the insurgents will lose popular support.

Unfortunately, this is not happening and that's the point of Kevin Drum's post.

Can you please come up with something more...plausible? Your childish rant doesn't hold water.

We're not leaving Iraq before Bush's term is over unless the Iraqi army is proclaimed ready to take over security duties. Not actually ready mind you, just proclaimed ready. So, what is the answer to this problem? Simple really, Bush just says "The Iraqi army is ready and able to defend their nation, we're leaving". Reports such as your post aren't to be believed. They're delusional. The Iraqi army is within months or even days of taking over the fight. Just ask Bush.

"You are ordered into battle against people who look & talk like you, by people who don't. How effectively will YOU carry out these orders?"

In a war between invading hordes of Chinese, and a Republican executive branch, I'd probably carry out my orders quite effectively.

Here's the Vice President of the United States having lunch with members of the US Army and the 9th Iraqi Mechanized Division in December, 2005.

Here's the defense write-up of the visit:

Cheney visited Iraqi and U.S. soldiers at Taji Military Training Base to observe joint training exercises by the troops. The Vice President congratulated the soldiers for providing security for the successful elections, Multinational Force Iraq officials said.

While on base, the vice president was escorted and briefed by Army Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, and Iraqi Maj. Gen. Bashar Mahmoud Ayoub, commander of 9th Iraqi Mechanized Division. Dempsey and Mahmoud discussed their units' recent successes and equipment.

Cheney then viewed a demonstration of traffic-control-point training by Iraqi soldiers and U.S. advisers before lunching with troops and airmen assigned to the base, officials said.

My question is, what was the substance of that briefing and why is it, one year later, this unit is a disaster in the field?

Joe:

Bush and Co. are the instigators of the so-called Iraqi civil war. At least they are trying their damndest to get a civil war going. It is called "divide and rule." The British used it to great effect all over the world.

First of all, Bush and Co. are no where near as competent as the British so that analogy falls flat on its face. It is more apt to say that there is a civil war because Bush and Co. did nothing to stop it. The failure to deploy enough troops to Iraq in March and April 2003 allowed the country to descend into chaos; de-Ba'athification and the mismanagement of the Coalition Provisional Authority exacerbated the problem; over three years of 'stay the course' and a failure to adapt to the realities on the ground have made the situation much worse than anyone could have imagined.

They have hired various vicious thugs to kill multitudes of both Sunnis and Shiites, and dump the bodies. Then they pin the blame on the other side.

The vicious thugs are operating in their own interests, and an oft-overlooked aspect of the violence in Iraq involves non-political violence: in the ensuing chaos of the dissolution of the Ba'ath Party, organized crime syndicates sprouted up all over Iraq. They have been engaged in the standard protection rackets, importing stolen vehicles and reselling them, importing drugs or alcohol and kidnapping.

These American paid killers often torture these poor farmers just for the media SHOCK value (not to find out what seed they planted in the spring, as some claim).

Farmers? How many farmers do you think there are in Iraq, dude? At the rate people are being killed, I would say all the farmers are dead and now they're working on someone else. What you claim to be SHOCK value sounds like a half-baked attempt at explaining away something with as little possible evidence or analysis as possible.

The fact that so many random people are tortured (or at least reported tortured by the lying press) shows that this is all for its SHOCK and propaganda value.

No, its because they are victims of chance and are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is why many Iraqis now carry identification in two names--one Sunni, one Shia--to try to stay alive.

Anyway, this allows the vicious Americans to claim that the people doing most of the killing (ie, the Americans) need to stay "to prevent killing/genocide."

Tin foil hat slipping off? No, sorry, that's not what's going on, but thanks for playing. The US has not done enough to prevent the insurgency and is not supporting a legitimate Iraqi government because of many flaws in the Iraq policy enacted since 2003. Every mistake we could make we did make.

Since Drum believes that the Shiites hate the Sunnis and vice-versa (as the lying press intends him to believe) he sees it is only natural that they would wish to kill each other. However, the reality is somewhat different.

You're not acquainted with reality. The schism between Shia and Sunni is almost as old as Islam itself and if you had a cursory grasp of the differences between them, you would be able to understand this.

Here's the nickel tour:

History
Ali is the central figure at the origin of the Shia / Sunni split which occurred in the decades immediately following the death of the Prophet in 632. Sunnis regard Ali as the fourth and last of the "rightly guided caliphs" (successors to Mohammed (pbuh) as leader of the Muslims) following on from Abu Bakr 632-634, Umar 634-644 and Uthman 644-656. Shias feel that Ali should have been the first caliph and that the caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Mohammed (pbuh) via Ali and Fatima, They often refer to themselves as ahl al bayt or "people of the house" [of the prophet].

Al -

Getting your information about the progress of Iraq war from Centcom is like getting your information about the progress of a law suit from the plaintiff's attorney.

I can not wait to hear the Decmocrat strategic exit plan.

The "Run like Hell" plan is sure to be a winner with the liberals.

Maybe "Slink like Sissy" would be a better title.

The post above was not by me. Just some stupid troll again. I am working on it. Pretty soon we'll have those guys beat. Just wait.

From now on, all posts that do not have the code words "shoot, move, communicate" are not by me.

But, PR, what if the trollies begin using that phrase too? I don't think this system of yours will work.

Oh, so when you refute the little troll, he has nothing left by 'spoof' posting - see 9:34am and 9:36am.

That clears that up.

Answer the refutations, little troll. Or don't. As if anyone cares...

Thanks to the spam filter, you can see our little troll postings are spaced about a minute apart--Joe is the same poster who spoofed me.

I guess when people can answer your little rant with facts and analysis, this is all you have left.

Takes an intellectual to 'spoof' post when their little world starts to crumble around them.

Krak! Pow! Ouch!

You're on fire today Pale Rider. Go get them.

No thanks, spoofer.

Kevin, at first I read your post as saying the 9th Mechanized Division is the "most highly retarded Iraqi unit in the country"

Got a chuckle out of that.

OK, folks.

I will not feed this troll any more today; but he will glom on to someone else and we've already seen him 'spoof' Kenji and Keith G.

There will be lots more of this shit, and until we get some comment deletion or moderation, this little berserker troll is not going away.

Any 'Pale Rider' post you see from this point on is from the troll who was using the handles 'nok' or 'Joe' or 'djoaquinoz.'

No shit--we've seen this little troll's site and he is a psychopath, very similar to that guy in California who was mailing fake anthrax to people. This one has NO ethics or values. This one is obsessed with violence and Islam in a most unhealthy way.

Orwell is definitely a troll, too. His post is just two minutes ahead of the spoof post.

Btw, before I go: I am definitely NOT a girl. That "blog" someone posted at another thread and pretended it was mine: not mine.

Remember, Pale Rider: Guy. And not Gay.

And it's Official now, from NPC radio - Iraq is worse then when Saddam was in power, more people dying than when Saddam ruled. And if Saddam can be tried for crimes against humanity, and now that we see that Bush is new butcher of Baghdad, I would say we give Bush/Cheney a fair trail at the Hague. It's more that Saddam got - a fair trail I mean? Lawyers and judges murdered needless. If Bush were concerned about real Democracy, the hague would have been a good place to start, except it was only unimportant to Bush to allowed looting and burning of the museum, the universities, the schools whereby and thus the only thing Bush protected was the oil ministry building and the oilfields.

"Times article rings true and lines up with stories I've heard from Marines coming back from Anbar: Iraqi troops, aside from small pockets of relative success, are a disaster, a phony army fighting a phony war. Which is why all plans for Iraq, from both sides of the aisle, are just so much hot air."
_________________

The Times article is also reminiscent of many, many descriptions of how Koreans fought during the Korean War. US troops thought the Koreans were practically useless and told many tales about how, during Chinese attacks, the KATUSA soldiers would hide in their bunkers never firing their weapons and allowing the Chinese to move up to throw grenades in the firing slits. Throughout the Korean War, no competent military unit wanted a Korean unit on their flank.

Today, the Korean military is considered to be extremely competent, far better than most of our allies.

When a unit of mixed experience, such as when there are American advisors present, gets into combat, the natural tendency is to take over. We need to get past that if the Iraqi units are ever going to gain enough experience and confidence to do their own fighting. That means letting them take casualties and getting their butts kicked from time to time.

Don't make too much of press reports of this kind. War is always messy and most of the progress made is easy to dismiss or forget.

They definitely deserve a "fair trail" Cheryl. You silly little slut.

When US troops are ordered to kill Americans in US cities, I hope they act like Iraqis.

I would suggest the refusal of Iraqis to fight against their own ethnic/religious factions is a sign of their humanity. This refusal to kill their fellow citizens could only be considered 'dismal' by those who accept the mission goals of Bush's War Against the Human Beings of Iraq.

Say no to AP’s shoddy work

Sunday, December 3, 2006 - Updated: 02:46 AM EST

When a company defrauds its customers, or delivers shoddy goods, the customers sooner or later are going to take their business elsewhere. But if that company has a virtual monopoly, and offers something its customers must have, they may have no choice but to keep taking it.

That’s when the customers, en masse, need to raise a stink. That’s when someone else with the resources needs to seriously consider whether the time is ripe to compete.

The Associated Press is embroiled in a scandal. Conservative bloggers, the new media watchdogs, lifted a rock at the AP.

Curt at Floppingaces, www.floppingaces2.blogspot.com, led the charge. He thought there was something strange about an AP report, and took a second look at it, then a third look. He and others blew the lid off it. The AP is making up war crimes. But the resulting stink in the blogosphere has barely wrinkled a nose in the mainstream press. The ethics-obsessed Poynter Institute seems to be oblivious to it.

It has to do with the AP’s Iraqi stringers and an oft-quoted Iraqi police captain named Jamil Hussein. Problem is, the Iraqi police say Capt. Hussein does not exist. The Iraqi police and U.S. military say an incident described in an AP report - Iraqi soldiers standing by as people were burned alive in a mosque - didn’t happen. Another AP-reported incident, U.S. soldiers shooting 11 civilians, also never happened, the military says.

When the AP was forced to acknowledge this situation, it did so in a story about a new Interior Ministry policy regarding false reports. The AP buried the fact that its own false report prompted this new policy.

The AP stands by its reporting.. The AP has cast “Capt. Jamil Hussein” simply as someone not authorized to speak, and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll has sniffed morally: “Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.”

The AP has another Iraqi stringer problem. Photographer Bilal Hussein is in U.S. custody, and the AP has been clamoring indignantly for his release. AP reports have buried the U.S. explanation that Hussein is being held without charge because - quite aside from producing photos that showed him to be overly intimate with terrorists in Fallujah - he was in an al-Qaeda bomb factory, with an al-Qaeda bombmaker, with traces of explosives on his person when he was arrested.

The AP, of course, has been delivering unbalanced reports about U.S. national politics for some time, as when President Bush, whom AP reporters despise, is barely allowed to state his case on an issue before his critics are given twice as much space to pummel him. The AP, once a just-the-facts news delivery service, has lost its rudder. It has become a partisan, anti-American news agency that seeks to undercut a wartime president and American soldiers in the field. It is providing fraudulent, shoddy goods. It doesn’t even recognize it has a problem.

This is the point at which, another big American industry learned, people start buying Japanese. But as an American newspaper, if you want to provide your readers with affordable regional, national and international news, you have to deal with the AP.

If newspapers don’t have an alternative, readers do. It’s called the Internet. That’s why newspapers, if they don’t want to be dragged further into irrelevance and disrepute, have to tell The Associated Press they are dissatisfied with its product.

Three hours in the dark to plan for a division-level op? And the Iraqi generals agreed to this? And the American generals consented?

Sounds like a real-life "Operation: Get Behind Darkie." Amazing only one soldier died, actually.

Hostile, you are so right.

BTW, Bolton is joltin', as we speak.
And not a moment too soon.

What Kenji said. Also, Cheryl is the biggest idiot on Political Animal. Her/his/its idiotic ramblings are polluting every thread. Try spell check next time, Cheryl, of STFU.

"Slink like Sissy"

That is a direct quote from Guckert to President Bush.

Corruption is the second insurgency,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1962245,00.html

A recent audit by his inspectors found that more than 14,000 guns paid for out of US reconstruction funds for Iraqi government use could not be accounted for. Many could be in the hands of insurgents or sectarian death squads, but it will be almost impossible to prove because when the US military handed out the guns it noted the serial numbers of only about 10,000 out of a total of 370,000 US-funded weapons, contrary to defence department regulations. . . .

A culture of waste, incompetence and fraud may be one legacy the occupiers have passed on to Iraq's new rulers more or less intact. Mr Bowen's office found that nearly $9bn in Iraqi oil revenues could not be accounted for. The cash was flown into the country in shrink-wrapped bundles on military transport planes and handed over by the ton to Iraqi ministries by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) run by Paul Bremer, a veteran diplomat. . . .
A potentially far more serious problem has been the way the US government decided to give out reconstruction contracts. It split the economy into sectors and shared them out among nine big US corporations. In most cases the contracts were distributed without competition and on a cost-plus basis. In other words the contractors were guaranteed a profit margin calculated as a percentage of their costs, so the higher the costs, the higher the profits. . . .
According to a Sigir review published in October, Kellogg, Brown and Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company) was awarded an oil industry repair contract in February 2004 but "direct project activity" did not begin until November 19. In that time KBR's overhead costs were nearly $53m. In fact more than half the company's $300m project costs from 2004-06 went on overheads, the audit found. . . .

It's like a limitless credit card with no obligation. These companies created a situation in which it was guaranteed that the more they could pad their costs the larger their profit margin. It's the nude face of Republicanism stripped to its pornographic soul.

I have been spoofed at 11:21 AM.

Spoofer, the 'r' key is right above the 'f' key.

Of course, the classic,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1962245,00.html

A California company, Parsons, had its contract terminated this year after it was found to have finished only six of more than 140 primary healthcare centres it was supposed to build, after two years work and $500m spent. However, the contract was ended "for convenience", meaning Parsons was paid in full. In a police college Parsons built for $75m in Baghdad the plumbing was so bad that urine and excrement rained down from the toilets on to the police cadets. Parsons left a sub-contractor to do repairs but in general there is little punitive action that can be taken for shoddy work.

This Iraq thingee is not going so well. Let's attack Iran instead, they should be pushovers:

__________________

JIHADIS AND WHORES (Asia Times)

Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women.

The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian "tourists" entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards

in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world's fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in Iranian women explains Iran's predicament.

To understand Iranian politics, cherchez les femmes: the fate of Iranian women sheds light on the eccentricity of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. By Spengler's Universal Law of Gender Parity, the men and women of every place and every time deserve each other. A corollary to this universal law states that the battered Iranian whore is the alter ego of the swaggering Iranian jihadi.

In the interest of balanced reporting, I cite the history of Jewish prostitution before delving into the Persian example. The Jews have lived long enough to be defeated more often than any other people. After Spain expelled them in 1492, the Jews sold their women so widely that the character of the Jewish prostitute figured prominently in 16th-century literature, notably in one of the earliest novels, La Lozana Andaluza (1528), a story of refugee Spanish-Jewish whores in Rome. After Russian pogroms drove Jews out of the Pale of Settlement in the late 19th century, Jewish women became the raw material of the white-slave traffic, supplying Argentina as well as Western Europe. [1] Jewish prostitutes are almost unknown today, a measure of the revival of the Jewish nation.

These distasteful facts bear directly upon Iran's national decline, and the impulses that push the Iranian leadership toward strategic flight forward. Iran's plunging birth rate, I observed in essays past, will burden the country with an elderly population proportionately as large as Western Europe's within a generation, just at the point at which this impoverished country will have ceased to export oil. By 2030, Iranian society will collapse.

One does not have to destroy an opponent's military forces to defeat him. Russia collapsed without a single shot fired when Mikhail Gorbachev and his generals understood that they could not compete with Ronald Reagan's United States. The Islamic world also has been defeated, by a globalized economy in which the US dominates the top, and China blocks entry at the bottom. As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran's population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today's soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them.

That is why it is folly to approach Iran as a prospective negotiating partner, and meaningless to offer the clerical government security guarantees, for the threat to its security arises from within. Once a people has determined to extinguish itself, nothing will prevent it from doing so. There is no doubt as to the demographic data, which come from the demographers of the United Nations. But it is one thing to read the statistics, and quite another to consider the millions of intimate decisions that together sum up to national suicide.

What is it that persuades women to employ their bodies as an instrument of commerce, rather than as a way of achieving motherhood? It is not just poverty, for poor women bear children everywhere. In the case of Iran, deracination and cultural despair impel millions of individual women to eschew motherhood. Prostitution is a form of psychic suicide; writ large, it is a manifestation of the national death-wish, the hideous recognition that the world no longer requires Ukrainians or Moldovans.

Iranians already behave like a defeated people. That is why they are so unstable, and so dangerous. The new Persian Empire masquerading as an Islamic Republic is a wounded beast. The rural misery and urban squalor that drive Iranian women into the brothels of Dubai and Brussels contrasts sharply with neighboring Azerbaijan, whose economy will double in size by 2010 as new oilfields come online, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Half of Iranians do not speak Persian, and half of those speak Azeri. Azerbaijan's oil wealth is a giant magnet; it must attract either the largest national minority in Iran, or the military attentions of Iran itself. If a Kurdish state asserts itself out of the ruins of Iraq - a long-delayed justice for that ancient and resilient people - Iran's Kurds will be tempted to throw off the Persian yoke.

The proliferation of Iranian prostitutes in Western Europe as well as the Arab world helps explain the country's population trends. The European Commission's most comprehensive surveys of human trafficking found that Iranian women made up 10-15% of the prostitutes working in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. [2] "Fatima" from Persia has become as familiar as "Natasha" from Belarus. Iranian whores long have been a scandal in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which periodically round up and expel them.

It is hard to obtain reliable data on prostitution inside Iran itself, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it has increased since Ahmadinejad became president last year. Anti-regime sociologists claim that at least 300,000 women are whoring in Tehran alone. The ADNKronos website reported on April 25:
Prostitution is on the rise in Iran ... Sociologist Amanollah Gharaii Moghaddam told ADNKronos International (AKI) that he believes Iran's deteriorating economy and the high unemployment rate among youths to be the main causes of this worrying phenomenon. In Iran, 28% of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 are unemployed ... The age of prostitutes is increasingly younger, and girls as young as 12 are selling their bodies on Iran's streets. Overall, the number of prostitutes is also on the rise and there are an estimated 300,000 of them in Tehran alone ... Nevertheless, Gharaii Moghaddam says "the number isn't so high when compared [with] the 4 million unemployed only in Tehran and the 5 million drug addicts today in Iran".
The clerical regime vacillates between repressing prostitution and sanctioning it through "temporary marriages", an arrangement permitted under Shi'ite jurisprudence. In the latter case the Muslim clergy in effect become pimps, taking a fee for sanctioning several "temporary marriages" per women per day.

These numbers cannot be verified, to be sure, but the spillover of Iranian prostitutes into Western Europe and the Gulf states suggests that the actual numbers must be very large indeed, so large, in fact, as to help explain the frightful rate of Iran's demographic decline. Along with Albanian, Chechen and Bosnian women, Iranian prostitutes are living evidence of the dissolution of the traditional Muslim society that purports to shield women from degradation.

Islamism (or what George W Bush has called "Islamo-fascism") responds to the crisis of faith. As I wrote on November 8, 2005:
The crisis of modernization first of all is a crisis of faith, and the attenuation of religious faith is the root cause of the birth-rate bust in the modern world. Traditional society is everywhere fragile, not only in the Islamic world; by definition it is bounded by values and expectations handed down from the past, to which individuals must submit. Once the bands of tradition are broken and each individual may choose for herself what sort of family to raise, religious faith becomes the decisive motivation for bringing children into the world ...

The collapse of traditional society has brought about a collapse of birth rates across cultures. Cultures that fail to reproduce themselves by definition are failed cultures, for the simple reason that they will cease to exist before many generations have passed.

That is why the Islamists - Muslims who seek a new theocracy - display a sense of extreme urgency. They are not conservative Muslims, for they reject Muslim society as it exists as corrupt and decadent. They are revolutionaries who want to create a new kind of totalitarian theocracy that orders every detail of human life. [3]
Nothing is more threadbare than the claim of Islamists to defend Muslim womanhood. Islamist radicals (like the penny-a-marriage mullahs of Iran) are the world's most prolific pimps. The same networks that move female flesh across borders also provide illegal passage for jihadis, and the proceeds of human trafficking often support Islamist terrorists. From Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur to Sarajevo to Tirana, the criminals who trade in women overlap with jihadist networks. Prostitutes serve the terror network in a number of capacities, including suicide bombing. The going rate for a Muslim woman who can pass for a European to carry a suicide bomb currently is more than US$100,000. The Persian prostitute is the camp follower of the jihadi, joined to him in a pact of national suicide.

How much empathy does a person have to have to put himself in the situation of the average Iraqi living under a despised military occupation?

It would seem to me that anyone who has seen the movie (and wingnut fav) "Red Dawn" would easily understand the motivation behind the Iraq patriots who are fighting to free their country from foreign occupation, but then I am always losing money overestimating the intel of the 'merican public.

That's a great article, Nina. Where did you find it? Can you post the link, too?

The article exerpted above at 1129am violates copyrights, as well as being written by a hate speech purveyor named 'Spengler' for the Asia Times. The source of this information likely followed an urge by hate speech fomenter Roger L. Simon to go and retrieve it.

Citing this article in whole violates the copyright rules of this blog/this site and it should be deleted.

The Spengler article was almost certainly posted by that troll, Pale Rider. He's polluting all the threads today.

Sure, but we should still attack Iran. That's definitely a good idea. It's not a real country, after all. Just a Persian empire; like Yugoslavia was not a real country, just a Serbian empire.

Nina is a whore to Bush's mission. She is paid in Iraqi blood.

The real question is whether the US allows the Iraqi Army to continue morphing into an all-Shiite force, then "picks a side" in the civil war by backing the Shiites:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16150223.htm

This would explain the Saudis calling Cheney over and suddenly issuing threats about needing to defend their Sunni brethren. It also explains the Saudis calling Israel to discuss the Palestinian peace process - since Israel will not benefit from a Shiite dominated Iraq that empowers Iran and Hezbollah, and the Saudis see a possible "enemy of my enemy" relationship with the Israelis for this reason.

I think there's a debate going on in the White House, but it's not over whether or not to withdraw. Rather, the debate is whether to move onto Iran and Syria and make it a regional war...or whether to team up with the Shiites in Iraq and try to "win" the civil war. Indeed, this debate may even pit Cheney vs. Bush. For Cheney, the issue is not so much Iraq but the entire Middle East - his natural inclination is to widen the war to include Iran and Syria. Bush, on the other hand, has a lot more invested in "winning" in Iraq - making the option of teaming with the Shiites to crush the Sunnis a lot more attractive.

Me not so clever. Just to learn a use kampooter. Nina dumb girl. SHe like a boosh.

>>That's a great article, Nina. Where did you find it? Can you post the link, too?

Posted by: CFShep - the real one

Transparently not me. As if.

Damn it. We need verified, by email, registration on this site. Alternet and HuffPost manage. Why not PA?

The poster above, is NOT the real CFShep. The only real one has "real" in the handle. That's how you know.

Somebody ripped my name at 7:45. No idea why. So going back to sleep now.

I hate the Iraqi army; almost as much as I hate the American army; go Navy, beat Arny!

That article is here,

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK21Ak01.html

For Cheney, the issue is not so much Iraq but the entire Middle East - his natural inclination is to widen the war to include Iran and Syria.

Cheney will not rest until the entire Middle East is on fire. Satan's like that.

Hey, cld, I was just about to post that link. Isn't that, like, copyright infringement?

Btw, word on the street is that Senator Santorum is a shoe-in to take Bolton's job at the UN.

BruceR wrote:

"Three hours in the dark to plan for a division-level op? And the Iraqi generals agreed to this? And the American generals consented?

Sounds like a real-life 'Operation: Get Behind Darkie.' Amazing only one soldier died, actually."
___________________

Bruce makes a good point. A division, even a small, Iraqi division, includes thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles. A division-sized operation is miles in extent and can take days to deploy unless it is already in fighting positions ready to jump off.

In addition, the fighting described in the article is hardly large enough to describe the operations of any entire division. What was described is more on the scale of a company-sized fight, rather than a major battle.

So, why is the article written in such a way that the experiences of three American enlisted advisors in a single fight are used to describe the entire division? And are we to believe that the American officers interviewed said only the chosen quotes - those used to put the entire operation of a division in the worst of lights?

I'm not saying anything - but I'm just saying....

Trashhauler, you fucking conservo-troll. Go away.

John Bolton tries to block measure commemorating the end of slavery in the western hemisphere,

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002070.php

Because he objects to being associated with the Durban Declaration, by which he means the WCAR Declaration and Programme of Action,

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/slavery-letter/

Read the whole thing here,

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/WCAR2001/WCARDeclaration/measures.htm#Plans

These people aren't responsible for anything and they're trying to make sure there won't be any kind of precedent suggesting they might be responsible for anything in the future.

The other day I read or heard this quote,

'ideology is a blanket meant to keep out new facts'

but I can't remember where I heard it.

Hostile wrote:

"Trashhauler, you fucking conservo-troll. Go away."
_______________

Hostile, pointing out flaws in an article that generates an entire thread is hardly being a troll, unless you interpret anything less than full agreement as being troll-like. If we are supposed to be "reality-based," it hardly serves that purpose if every negative utterance or desciption is swallowed without question. I didn't pick the article, Mr. Drum did. Fair is fair.

Few events in war, certainly large unit actions, are entirely without nuance. Yet, are being we asked to believe that the entire 9th Mechanized Division capabilities and reactions are summarized by a fight of such limited scope?

Hey SHITHEAD. This is serious!!! We need to move on Washington to get Herr Bush impeached. Anyone weakening our case is a whore to Bush's mission. They are paid in Iraqi blood. You, too.

So fuck off, troll.

Trashhauler, it is not me. Someone is spoofing. Although you and I often disagree, I try and save my epithets for the president and prefer to argue with logic and demonstration.

Here are a couple of good paragraphs from George Will:

The national government is gossamer, but subgroups are solid. They are in an intensifying melee that has, according to Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, "genocidal stakes." Writing in the National Interest, Biddle says that "the downside risks" for any group that is party to a power-sharing deal include extermination by mass violence from rival groups. America cannot now credibly promise protection commensurate with that risk.
...
And absent adoption of the McCain policy -- a substantial increase in forces -- America's waning influence on events may derive from the increasing likelihood that the scant protection that American forces now provide will be withdrawn.

Dept. of Bad Analogies on December 4, 2006 at 2:09 AM

I don't know whether anyone else has commented, but that was smart. Not only is it intelligent, but it smarts.

In case anyone's wondering why Charlie is being so childish and spoofing everyone's handles:

Let's just all remember my prediction that the GOP will retain BOTH Houses of Congress this fall - you think today was bad - you ain't even seen the October surprise yet.

Posted by: Cheney on June 13, 2006 at 10:50 AM | PERMALINK

That explains it: this is what total losers do.

In case anyone missed in, all comments/debate have been shut down by Charlie and his little troll friend "nok".

Yeah, Charlie.

Where'd you and your little friend "nok" go?

Kinda childish to think you can bully people off an open blog just because they can take your pissy little arguments and turn them into mush at the drop of a hat...

Shoot move communicate - isn't that what you like to sign off with.

Guess what we've been doing, Charlie?

Guess what we're getting a hold of...

Ooh! I don't want to tell. It's such a wonderful gift. A wonderful surprise.

Trashhauler, when this clears up, I have a bit of a polite disagreement with you...

Charlie?

Where's Charlie?

Hello, Charlie.

How are you Charlie.

We missed you Charlie...

trashhauler:

When a unit of mixed experience, such as when there are American advisors present, gets into combat, the natural tendency is to take over. We need to get past that if the Iraqi units are ever going to gain enough experience and confidence to do their own fighting. That means letting them take casualties and getting their butts kicked from time to time.

Did you actually read the article? The entire division did not go to battle.

From the article:

"In August, when we started Operation Together Forward to secure Baghdad, we called on a bunch of units to assist," said U.S. Army Col. Douglass S. Heckman, the commander for the 9th Division Military Transition Team. "This division was the only one that moved into the operation. The others balked."

What does that tell you?!? As of Friday, this was the only unit they believed that they could rely upon to go up against a mere 70 insurgents. AND THEY WOULDN'T DO IT. Unbelievable.

But Friday's battle suggested that even Iraq's best trained and equipped division is far from having the ability to operate independently. Heckman said attrition and liberal leave policies meant that only 68% of the 9th division is even on duty at any given time.

Another American advisor complained that the division had only 65% of the weapons and other equipment that it had been allocated by the U.S.

Where the hell is the other 35% of the gear that was allocated to it? Sold off and in the hands of the insurgents, most likely.

trashhauler: Don't make too much of press reports of this kind. War is always messy and most of the progress made is easy to dismiss or forget.

That's a cop out of the first order. Things have to be bad if this is happening here at the end of 2006--this division was considered one of the few that could be relied upon and if you read up above where I am not being spoofed, I included a link to a December 2005 visit from Vice President Cheney to see this unit, the 9th Mechanized Division, being trained.

What the hell have they been doing for an entire year? Oh, that's right--going AWOL and selling their weapons.

And the article clearly refutes what the administration apologists were saying about this operation being handed to the Iraqis at the last minute--this is done to foil any attempt by the infiltrators into the ranks of the Iraqi Army to warn their insurgent brothers.

God, this is pathetic. Anyone apologizing for this has to be insane. Or bought and paid for. Maybe both...

Where are you Charlie? You're active on the other thread?

Please do your little 'spoof' posts. They're so entertaining. Too bad they won't drive anyone off the blog.

Charlie, I'm sorry. All of the above posts are from someone pretending to be me. I've got no beef with you, it's trashhauler I'm after. Please don't be mad.

Guess again, Pale Rider spoof at 2:28pm

Charlie, we're going to backup comms anyway, so don't worry. I've heard of this service "hotmail" where they have free email accounts. We're going to use that. Eats, shoots, leaves.

If your purpose is to shut down commentary and drive people off this blog, forget it.

Wanna see if we can hit 700 comments? Let's see if we can hit 700 today, Charlie.

Your vain attempt at running the show is over. You're done.

Guess again, another Pale Rider spoof at 2:31. Pathetic, why don't these guys quit?

Pale Rider spoof at 2:32; nice work Charlie. Too bad you suck.

And another one at 2:36, man, you can suck a tennisball through a garden hose.

Is that enough proof?

Unlike those of us who actually have lives, Charlie has the distinct advantage of being a lonely old man who has nothing to do but sit in front of the computer all day making an ass out of himself until his black heart gives out, weak and diseased from years of spewing bile.

Don't you wish you hadn't pissed away your life so that you had a loving family who actually wanted to spend time with you, Chuckles? Don't you wish you'd had enough self-respect and self-discipline to comport yourself in a way that you could have earned the respect of others? Don't you wish you'd actually done something with your life so that you'd have worthwhile to look back on?

I'll bet you do.

Oh well, too late.

Instead your spend your waking hours every day on this blog with people who revile you. Think about that. How fucking sick and disturbed must you be to waste your life like this?

I'd say pretty fucking sick and disturbed.

No, I mean, the one at 2:36 was really me. Shit. I'm losing track.

Pale Rider spoof at 2:41pm

The first time I sparred with Charlie he linked a comment to his church, Saddleback. I accused him of advertising for a bareback rider and he was infuriated.

Punji--

This one?

http://www.saddleback.com/flash/default.htm

Lake Forest, CA? Rick Warren?

I was looking at that site and this weird music started playing.

Do you think Charlie has a purpose-driven life?

Yes, Warren's Lake Forest, CA church. It was the first time I had ever heard about it.

"a bareback rider?"

That's the funniest thing I've read in a good long while--Punji, thanks for the info.

Please--by all means--take a shot at Charlie if you are so inclined...

I guess you had to be part of the discussion to 'feel' Charlie's infuriation. At least I felt I scored one on the venerable old troll.

I do not think I predicted a Kerry win. As a matter of fact I was quite pissed at Kerry and the Dems for losing in 2004. Still am.

Punjii scored!

Plus he's great at predicting stuff. We keep him around here for figuring out what to do about trools.

I'm here to kick ass and eat ice cream. Just too bad thethirdPaul's not here. That would really scare the hell out these wingnuts. When you're riding with thethirdPaul you don't even need you're backup comms. You just shoot, move, communicate.

And who are you, son? Spock, I kick your ass. You have like, daddy issues, or something. uh-huh.

eats shoots and leaves

I guess you had to be part of the discussion to 'feel' Charlie's infuriation. At least I felt I scored one on the venerable old troll. I really do. Then again, often times, I feel like I've scored. Yet it turns out I never do. Does this happen to you, too, a lot, Spock?

In our area we have had mothers writing to the local newspaper saying that their sons and daughters in the American forces had to flee because the Iraqi troops to which they were assigned chose not to react when fired upon. Like John Kerry said in the "70's, who will be the last to die for a mistake? Say what you will, but what he said was profound.
Sleeping a bit better since the midterm elections? I hope. Keep thinking hope, optimism and the eventual end of this national nightmare.

Good job, Punji.

Too bad Charlie's just not man enough to handle being made to look like an ass...

Probably wishes for a little bareback/brokeback action...

Pale Rider is my sock puppet. I think of him as my funnier alter ego. Brokeback *snort* saddleback. You see?

Fucking comedy gold.

Yeah, that's about right. Now, this Iraq thing is obviously going to the shits. So the troops have to come out. But where to? Obviously to Kurdistan and Kuwait, to be ready for when we start hitting Iran. Here are some good ideas for Iran:

1. Proclaim that Iranian nuclear weapons are intolerable. Do not get into an argument about where we have them so why can't Iran? We don't like Iran, we're stronger than they are, so we are going to disallow this because we can. End of story.

2. DOW Iran. Do not build a coalition - if the Brits want to come they can -, or talk about democratization or regime change. Use the UN veto as needed to forestall international action. Let the rioters burn down Paris - Europe is utterly irrelevant these days.

3. The only reason anyone cares about Iran is oil. Other than that, its just another 'i-stan' without the warm fuzzies. US strategy is about the oil.

4. The vast majority of Iran's oil is along the coast of the Persian Gulf. Bad for them, good for us. The opening stages of the war are like Desert Storm; mass air attacks ranging all across Iran to blow up its air force, sink its navy, etc. Marine and air assualt take the oil fields. No attempt is made (beyond a buffer zone) to move inland past the fields.

5. The Marine/air assualt bridegheads are reinforced by regular army. No attempt to expand them. Let that nutty Iranian president proclaim jihad - it really doesn't matter what he does.

6. Expel all Iranian civilians in the bridgeheads to unoccupied Iran. Bring in non-islamic engineers to repair the production facilities, and start the oil flowing. Keep most of it for us, sell some real cheap to China (the Other Country that Matters), and maybe the UK. Sell some at market prices to other countries.

7. With China bought, international opposition may increase, but no one will actually get into a shooting war with us. Let them expel us from NATO, kick us out of the UN, etc. It doesn't matter. With the Other Country That Matters quiet, it's all just background noise. So what if Chirac's approval rating goes up 4%. Doesn't change the fact that France (and the EU) are on an economic and demographic deathspiral.

8. Announce that until Iran complies with our (ridiculously unnacceptable) demands, that we will maintain possession of the oil fields. If the Iranian Army is stupid enough to try and fight, smash them (our army excels at that). Yeah, it's static defense, but so what? We're that much better than them and have lots of naval support.

9. Let the Iranian president, government, and people rant all they want. They can do nothing. Use air strikes to smash Iran's nuke facilities; it doesn't really matter if we get them; they don't have bombs, and no one is going to help them.

10. Smash direct Iranian attempts against either Afghanistan or Iraq. Withdraw into fortified enclaves in Iraq if Sadr's people make trouble. Make vague promises (which we have no intention of keeping) to the Iraqi shiites about reparations after this whole very unfortunate business is over. Get the Sunnis on our side by promising revenge against the shiites. Promise the Kurds a slice of northern Iran - deliver on that one.

11. Don't leave. Prep to stay for years. With no native population, there's no insurgency. The Iranian President will be shown to be an utterly impotent blowhard. Loudly broadcast the Iranian oil money going to us, and not the Iranian population. Let events in non-occupied Iran go as they will; make no attempt to establish a friendly Iranian government.

12. Make a massive domestic investment in alternative fuels - especially fusion and hydrogen tech. The only solution to the mideast is to leave - and we can't do that until the oil problem is solved.

Yeah, I'm not even posting on this thread.

What an incompetent dumbass.

Jesus--spoof much?

Look at this kid freak out--he's unhinged.

Tell me I'm not drawing blood out of this little bitch.

He's absolutely frothing at the mouth.

Why does he remind me of Don P?

It's Charlie. He keeps following me.

Most of the Pale Rider's on this thread are not me. Just Charlie.

Most of the Pale Rider's on this thread are not me. Just Charlie.

No, Pale Rider doesn't "follow" anyone. That is your major mistake.