Iraq Gets Worse. What a shock.

[koboshi]

See what happens without [sarcasm] tags?

No shit.
Calm down everyone, it was merely hyperbole.

[HaemishM]

It's worrisome when George Bush speaks about the transfer of sovereignty on June 30, but makes absolutely no statement whatsoever about who they will transfer it to. I mean, shouldn't we have fucking known this already?

Um, Iraqi governing council?  Or am I missing something?  I am known for missing things.

But the administration has not said definitively who in Iraq is actually going to receive the transferred power. The Governing Council is supposed to only be an iterim body, and the Constitution which would actually set up a true interim government hasn't exactly met with approval.

As for the link to Afghanistan, keep in mind that while the Soviets were occupying there, the US was busy training "freedom fighters" to fight off the Communist occupation. The Mujadeen (sic) was one of those groups. Guess who was one young freedom fighter in Afghanistan during the 80's, trained by the US to evade Soviet military and internation law enforcement?

Your friend and mine, the Arab with spunk, Osama Bin Laden.

This tangent brought to you by the letter, OH FUCK ME.

[Margalis]

Idealogues form their opinions first, then dig up facts that weakly support their opinions. That is the main problem here.

Our government, at least the Excutive Branch, believed we would be welcomed with open arms - because they wanted to believe that. It fit with their view of the US and the world.

And so they dug up reasons to believe that. Hey Saddam was so bad, we would just HAVE to be better, right? That's pretty much the entire argument right there.
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Nobody who performed any objective analysis believed we would be welcomed in Iraq. This is par for the course for this administration.

Abstinence only sex ed doesn't work, but the administration wants to believe it does. The administration wants to believe global warming doesn't exist. The administration wants to believe tax cuts are great because we have so much money we should be giving it back - and then, tax cuts are greats because we have a huge deficit and need to spur the economy!
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In similar discussions on WT.org, a lot of people said something to the effect of "well, I WANT leaders who have convictions!" So do I. But not poorly formed ones that don't jive with reality. My definition of a strong conviction is "we should do our best to keep the populace informed" or "we should put the interests of American's ahead of our own as officials." NOT "we need a missile defense shield dammit!!!" (Missile defense shield, where have you gone?)

If you make a decision without considering facts, and won't reconsider based on the facts, that's a sign of a stupidity and politicking, not conviction.
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This administration came in wanting to topple Iraq from day 1. Luckily for them 9/11 helped them "sell" their case, they invented a convenient reality (they'll love us in Iraq if we do this) and here we are now. This was entirely predictable from the get go. I'm not a CIA member or intelligence expert and it's obvious to me.

[Foix]

Anti-US Outrage Unites a Growing Iraqi Resistance

Some caveats:

1. It's anecdotal, as journalism tends to be.
2. It's from the New York Times.

That said, I think it gives a good picture of why an unknown number of Iraqis are frustrated and angry with the situation in their country: Shi'ites previously indifferent to al-Sadr rallying around him now that he's under attack, Sunnis desperate and miserable now that they're a threatened minority, a lack of effective law enforcement apparatus, the usual rise of nationalist sentiment in the face of occupation, unfortunate gaffes on the part of American soldiers due to lack of cultural and religious understanding, resentment about civilian casualties during the fighting and the fact that, in a culture like that of Iraq where violence is praised and revered, fighting still has the old tribalist purpose of winning honor and glory.

Also from the Winning Friends and Influencing People Department:

Iraqi battalion refuses to deploy to Fallujah. They don't want to 'fight Iraqis.'

Members of the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council have both individually and collectively condemned American action in Fallujah, and have called for an end to the siege.

I'm not normally the sort to preach things like conciliation and seeing things from the perspective of the enemy, but it seems as if pretty much every group in Iraq has condemned our activities in Fallujah, and that should tell us something. It might have sounded like great macho chest-pounding in the White House, like something that would reverberate well with those 'NASCAR dads' who are the ridiculous voter buzzword of the '04 campaign: four mercenaries in our employ get killed in Fallujah, so we'll surround the place, bomb the hell out of it, starve it into submission and force the citizens to turn over those responsible for the killings.

Did the outburst of violence in Fallujah demonstrate that the residents are angry and have grievances they believe to be legitimate? Yes. Could the perpetrators of the violence likely have been received into American custody without the deaths of a lot of Marines and a lot more Iraqi civilians? Probably. But the government was apparently swayed by the murmur of outrage over the Fallujah killings and decided that public opinion, which had forgotten the matter by the time the week was out, demanded the Big Stick, a demonstration of American power and resolve. What were the results? A lot of people are dead; Iraqis across the political, ethnic and religious spectrum hate us even more; the perpetrators of the murders are still at large.

Well, at least the Kurds still like us.

[HaemishM]

Almost all of the problems we are having in Iraq can be traced back to a lack of any good, clear intelligence, from the top level to the lowest grunt soldier. The soldiers there aren't really trained to be policemen, and they sure as hell don't understand or are even that well-educated in the culture of Iraq. They might have a general understanding of Islamic culture in the abstract, but I bet less than 1% of them could tell you what the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni (and I don't even know myself). On the macro level, our intelligence either did not know nor would not be allowed to say just how US troops would be welcomed in Iraq after Saddam's downfall. Thus we got the mantra that they'd be welcoming us with open arms, which has not been the case.

These aren't the French 1942. These are more like the Vietnamese 1968 style. Some might like us, some might not, and some desperately want to feast on our eyeballs. And there's no way to know the difference.

[WayAbvPar]

These are more like the Vietnamese 1968 style.

If we get a huge influx of Iraqi 'boat people' and they bring something as yummy as this, then this whole debacle might be worth it.

[eldaec]

less than 1% of them could tell you what the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni (and I don't even know myself)

What I think I vaguely remember learning at school:

The Sunni and Shia schism happened when muslim_prophet_01 died, and two uncles or something both tried to take over leadership of teh muslims. The shia wanted to have a war with arab_tribe_01, while the sunni felt it more important to go 'convert' arab_tribe_02.

(I suspect this explanation works with only very minor modification for any number of other religious schisms across the middle east and elsewhere since forever.)

Also, one of these sects (I forget which) were, in a war that followed shortly after the schism, responsible for the invention of trousers. It would seem that at the time this was a major breakthrough in battlefield science; apparently they find found that slicing up skirt-wearing unbelievers is much easier when your leg wear is appropriately bifurcated.

Here in the UK we have a hideously expensive producer service broadcaster, known as the BBC, and so we are also kept espeicially well informed on up to date initimate detail of Shia/Sunni culture:

- Shia are more likely to have beards, and enjoy waving their arms about a lot.
- Sunni are more likely to wear lighter colours. Khaki is quite popular. Facial hair is generally restricted to mustaches.

[Comstar]

Iraq has had FIVE THOUSAND YEARS of civilaistion. Bush wanted to install Democracy in 9 months.


Anyways...I now think the US (and small other contingents) have lost this counter insergency (except the British, who AFAIK, havn't taken hardly any causlaties latly). The US won't and CAN'T stay there for a decade with more troops (Hussien kept things under control with a million men).

Prediction: The coaltion will pull out...possibly trying to hand it over to the UN, who will be incapable of doing anything except get shot at (UN needs US militry support to win anyway). Iraq falls into a civil war and breaks up into 3 nations (Kurdistan, which at some point gets invaded by Turkey, An Iranin co-belligenet which acualty forces MORE pressure on Iran which then undergoes it's OWN civil war, and a old Iraq that's a dictatorship).

Bush loses in November and goes off to write his memories and blames it on all on everyone else. He goes down in history as the man who broke american militry invincability.

Expect some cool war movies in the mold of Black Hawk Down and 3 Kings in about 10 years.

[Foix]

For those of you who, like myself, enjoy wasting time by speculating on the political future of Iraq:

Hussein-Era Army Officers Return in Security Move

Although it makes sense that the government is belatedly heeding the Iraq experts who said that disbanding the Iraqi Army outright would lead to chaos (by making hundreds of thousands of armed and disgruntled men unemployed) and overstretch (by denying the Coalition the use of Iraqis as auxiliaries and security forces), this really seems like the worst of both worlds: former Iraqi Army officers are going to be brought back into the military, but only those who deserted in the face of the American invasion. Isn't running away the one area in which the current Iraqi Civil Defense Corps is already amply familiar?

[HaemishM]

The ones who didn't run away were killed in the fighting. All 6 of them.