Iraq State of the Union
____________An Op-Ed piece citing the surge's success in crime reduction says, "there’s a chance that Bush’s worst blunder — a pre-emptive invasion based on faulty premises — might turn out better than his detractors thought possible (Bush's Reversal of Fortune.)"
However, an inside story on the five soldiers killed Monday says, "Influential members of al-Sadr's movement said Monday that they have urged the anti-American cleric to call off the six-month cease-fire when it expires in February (Five Soldier die in Restive Mosul.)"
George W. Bush is inconsequential in determining the outcome in Iraq, and al-Sadr is instead a deciding factor, as it is his unilateral cease-fire that is allowing the U.S. and Iraqi government forces the freedom of action to fight al-Qaeda Mesopotamia. If and when al-Sadr cancels his cease-fire, that will usher in a defining moment in the conflict, exceeding the effect of The Surge.
A surge is when al-Sadr puts 100,000+ trained, equipped and dedicated fighters back into the equation. Do our analysts not recognize this fact?
Reality must be addressed. The violence level in Iraq has nothing to do with the security or defense of our homeland from any terror threats. Iraq and Afghanistan are not the key issues. The mission of securing America starts at our shores, and should be realistically addressed with pro-active terrorism counteraction measures.
As the WaPo notes today, there is an "appalling gap" found in homeland defense readiness.
A congressional commission reported Monday,
The situation is rooted in severe readiness problems in National Guard and reserve forces, which would otherwise be well-suited to respond to domestic crises but lack sufficient personnel and training, as well as $48 billion in equipment because of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves."
This is a waste of assets that this country can ill-afford to squander.
As an aside, the same paper ran a sidebar on President Bush's grandiose gesture to lay aside $300 million in Pell-type grants for public school children to apply to attending private or parochial schools. Talk about generosity -- $300 million is less than a few minute's funding for the Phony War on Terror. I guess we could call it the No War Left Behind fund. Greg Palast covers it well here.
$300 million is an insult, not an initiative.
--Jim
Labels: al-sadr deciding factor, apalling gap in national security, iraq blunder, PWOT, war on terrror
posted by Lisa at 3:47 PM
3 Comments:
Hell I loved the why Greg covered that even I knew something is wrong with the country.
Yes, if Sadar comes back into this, then it's my boys & girls caught in the middle. Just bring them home NOW.
jo6pac
Sadr has been the de-facto head of state there for a long time. i have been trying to come up with my "that's when i knew we had truly lost" moment for vietnam. part of it is trying to live through this time of year in 2008 when the events of the winter of 1968 still roil around. some of the folks are saying that the use of two mentally handicapped girls to deliver remote controlled explosives is a sign of desperation on the part of the insurgency. others might say that it is a demostration of a will to violence that far, far exceeds our own. david halberstam says that his vietnam defeat moment was when he saw the buddhist monk self-immolate in saigon. lt. colonel larry evans (founding member of special forces) said that he knew our efforts were doomed when he started seeing junior officers sent to combat commands as punishment for misdeeds stateside. right now, i think my own moment was when my team and i kept a provincial commander from doing a "taxation" on a village we were living in and protecting. he didn't collect that day, but we were split up as a team and all reassigned elsewhere.
the only thing that has a chance of keeping sadr out of this fight is if he becomes convinced that the u.s. will leave without having to be chased out. then it would make strategic sense to keep his troops and weapons in reserve for the real fight to happen when we're gone.
jo,let's don't forget the Sunni crime watch boys that we do not call militias. They'll be a force to reckon with should they decide they no longer like our bribe money.//
MB,Sadr seems to be the only player that understands insurgency and he didn't even read the new phoney FM.Your assessment of his intentions are logical: he's marshalling his resources AND preparing the battlefield.Strange how this is missed by our intell agencies.I'll bet his forces are building hardened bunkers similar to the Hisbollah types seen in the last Isreali shoot em up.
jim
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