Saddam’s old soldiers, the ones the US promised not to fire and Bremer fired are still killing Shiites and ethnically cleansing towns and neighborhoods. Rogue Sadrist, Badr Corp, tribal and neighborhood Shiite gangs do the same. Then there’s conflicts between various smuggling and criminal rackets. That’s one of the big reasons
the Sunnis in Anbar turned on the foreign jihadis. The foreigners, besides being fanatically religious assholes, are horning in on their rackets and when they protest the salafists have no qualms about blowing up a local Sunni mosque or bazaar to try to exert their dominance.

This is all still going on right now while the surge strategy is to supposedly provide breathing room for the Iraqi government to make the political compromises that will satisfy everybody enough to stop killing our guys and each other.

In reality it’s not happening. Because of our presence there isn’t any pressure on the dominant Shiites and Kurds to rein in the corruption or deal seriously with the Sunnis. Why should they? They’re getting aid money to skim and coalescing their power. There never will be any political deals allowing for our pull out as long as Bush and Cheney have their way. The Bushies know as soon as we leave there will be video of Iraqis of all stripes celebrating in the streets their victory over the occupiers. The Malikis will either bug out for Tehren with their booty or immediately make anti American pronouncements to hang onto their jobs or at least keep from being strung up from lamp posts like Mussolini by their own people. That’s why our military is pointlessly chasing a couple thousand AQI around from one province to another. Bush doesn’t want us to leave on his watch so he can blame losing this fiasco on his successor.

Read some Iraqi opinion polls. Respect the will
of their people and our people. That is what democracy is all about.

http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55

George Bush and Dick Cheney have proven themselves time and time again to be lying, criminal incompetents. Nobody with any sense would follow their policies at this late date.

But geez man you are echoing all the talking points of the left that are so predictable.

The dollars for the war substitute was one data point and the 25% deadenders stuff you were spewing is just the update of the 29% bull that was being thrown months ago.

I read blogs left right center and lost in space to see how all the sides come down.

You are a cookie cutter blind paster of thought without any real analysis lead around by your nose from your echo chamber tinfoil buddies.

New Orleans has almost a kill rate today that equals the kill rate when they had almost double the population.

Also you picked the wrong example with the Dutch thingy, since I am descended from my grandfather who is Dutch and came to this country.  I have visited there many times.

In each point you express you are loosing on the logic, but you get “feel good” points. 

Does it make you feel good that you are expressing all the logic capability (or lack thereof) and all the talking point of the Kos Kids and the DU Dummies?

You sir are more inclined to do your social manipulation of your percieved universe than I ever would.

By my suggestion that the people of New Orleans would better be served by living in a safer short commuting distance from New Orleans and get themselves out of their self imposed kill zones if you think the better solution is to throw them back there and recreate a proven disaster then you need to examine your premise.

My wife and I traveled many times to New Orleans over 40 years time frame and the last time we were there we said no more the place has fallen on hard times of their own destruction and it was no longer worth the trip.

But take your prosaic nirvana view and keep yourself enraged as much as you need.

Reality will pass you by. 

I see you care as much about the people of New Orleans as you do Iraq. Just pawns to be moved around at your whim in vast social engineering projects. You would have fit right in Saddam’s inner circle.

There’s not a lot of difference between New Orleans and the Netherlands except in the Netherlands they don’t build pretend dams and dikes to protect themselves. It’s not rocket science, it’s a matter of actually funding what needs to be done. But why do that when we can spend money on bridges to nowhere? Or drowning and then resurrecting a great American city as a Disney version of itself. That’s Republican governance for ya. God next year can’t come soon enough.

Really I’m 119lbs how about you  , you deadender stuff peggs you as all the talking points of all the left you keep spouting.  Nope I do my own reasearch and decide on fact which seem to be foreign objects to you.

What’s left of the Iraqi parliament is considering whether or not it’s worthwhile holding a no confidence vote to get rid of Maliki.

You wouldn’t think thats because of a power struggle between him , Sistani and Sadr would you?  Also Maliki is likely to form a new coalition in the near future.As for New Orleans please try to make sense. Who is going to work in these ‚Äúbusiness units‚Äù
if you make “housing of residential nature” (what other kind of housing is there btw?) off limits? And you do realize a huge part of New Orlean’s business was tourism right?

 I lived in New Orleans for 3 years and I saw it killing off it’s own at a terrible murder rate and lots of other violent crime.  I left a couple of years before Katrina, and tourism was already taking a dive due to the safety conditions.  Random killings of innocent people in the crossfire of drug turf battles during the Mardi Gras parades sort of effect people that way.

Yup and I know places you can only put temporary business housing (think Hotels and convention centers) to ease evactuation prior to a storm.  No mass populations to move out.

North of New Orleans there is plenty of area for housing that would not be any where near as dangerous as New Orleans itself.

There were whole areas outside the French Quarter that were basically near war zones not safe to travel in with little hope for change.

Rebuilding only commercial stuff would allow larger areas for port facilities helping to employ more people in other things besides tourism.  Re use of the land could even allow larger tourist oriented business to be developed.

Simply putting a lot of people in housing in such a flood prone area is asking for trouble and it was only a matter of time before a disaster like Katrina had to happen.

What’s left of the Iraqi parliament is considering whether or not it’s worthwhile holding a no confidence vote to get rid of Maliki. The Bush Administration is trying to figure out if there’s some way they can oust him too. In the meantime he’s admitted to the Iraqi people his government can’t protect them from each other and has told them to all arm themselves. Easy enough to do as there’s still somewhere between 250,000 and a million metric tonnes of munitions in the country.

We’re fighting some pissant Iraqi jihadist wannabes named Al Qaeda in Iraq that surely would be exterminated by Shiites, Kurds or even Sunnis if we left and why? Because there’s nobody else we can fight. US forces are allied with Suunis in Anbar. We have backchannel ties to Sadr and his Mahdi Army to keep them fomr killing our guys. Maliki is tied directly to the Badr brigades and the other mainstream Shiite militias. Hell, we’re training them in the Iraqi Army to be even more effective sectarian killers. The Kurds are our allies too.

They’re all killing each other (and us when they feel like it) but we don’t dare take them on or our supply convoys would be decimated instead of just harassed. So to make it look like we’re doing something Bush has our soldiers playing whackamole in the desert and finding IEDs within shouting distance of Iraqi army checkpoints.

The American people want us out of Iraq. The Iraqi people want us out of Iraq. The Bush Administration deadenders and the Iraqi aid sucking emigres who spent most of their adult lives in Tehren or Damascus in Maliki’s government want us to stay. It’s democracy promotion Republican style.

As for New Orleans please try to make sense. Who is going to work in these “business units”
if you make “housing of residential nature” (what other kind of housing is there btw?) off limits? And you do realize a huge part of New Orlean’s business was tourism right?

Simply because of what they are doing locally this will drag on for years as a cow to milk that in a lot of other areas would already be well on it’s way to recovery.

Central Command Baghdad has specifically denied arming any of the local tribes or groups.

They bring their own weapons they already possess.

Oh yeah and for 10 billion a month, we could have declared New Orleans a flood buffer zone like many other places have been an made it totally off limits to housing of residential nature and only allowed business units.

I has been done elsewhere, do your homework.

We’ve been there for over 4 years. Iraq doesn’t need an air force and I sure as hell am not willing to buy them one or wait around for them to figure out how to bomb their own people. As for logistics they can figure that out themselves. Saddam’s army didn’t have any problem figuring out how to feed and arm themselves, it’s not that hard.

$10 billion a month. For that kind of money we could have rebuilt New Orlean’s levees out of gold.

The only recently got their first Mechanized Armour Brigade and their Air Force consists of a few transports and choppers and small surveillance craft (think Piper Cub).

They have almost no trained logistic support mechanism in place and rely totally on coalition forces to handle that task.

Precipitous withdrawal would leave them with no air support and no logistics support.

Just how would they stand up to any outside threat from regional opponents.