Well, yes, I WOULD say quite confidently that we had already blown it by December 2005, and the catastrophe of 2006 is confirmation. Take any measure you want, including those enumerated by Bush: barrels of oil pumped, megawatts of electricity generated/hours of availability. I forget what else. To his, I would add, of course: U.S. and iraqi casualties, number of insurgent attacks per week/month, number of international refugees from Iraq and internally displaced people, Iraqi polls. All the trends are bad. I don't think there's even one measure that would indicate success. It's really a slam dunk...
- Hugh
Is the Iraq War part of the War on Terrorism ?
Moderator: CHGPA BOD
OK Hugh,
If we have lost in Iraq, as you opine, .....WHO HAS WON???
Not Saddam and his henchmen, not the Sunni's, not the Kurds...The Shia were already a majority in the current government so it can't be them.
Who are the leaders of the allegedly winning side, and where are their govenmental institutions....I haven't seen them?
Clearly, the only defeat in Iraq is in your mind and the minds of other defeatists,.... not on the ground in Iraq.
Marco
If we have lost in Iraq, as you opine, .....WHO HAS WON???
Not Saddam and his henchmen, not the Sunni's, not the Kurds...The Shia were already a majority in the current government so it can't be them.
Who are the leaders of the allegedly winning side, and where are their govenmental institutions....I haven't seen them?
Clearly, the only defeat in Iraq is in your mind and the minds of other defeatists,.... not on the ground in Iraq.
Marco
Well, EVERYBODY has lost, of course! But the Shi'a are the big winners in terms of power that they never had before, at the cost of thousands kidnapped, tortured with electric drills, executed and dumped. Multiple bombings daily. The middle class is leaving - forced out. Shi'a who live in Sunni areas, likewise. They are now in charge of a country in chaos, full of poverty and violence. Hurray!
Iran is another big winner - Iraq was always their biggest threat. They can meddle there now, but don't worry, Shi'a or not, Arabs hate Persians.
Al Qa'ida: thousands of new recruits; plenty of practice using IEDs on U.S. troops. Networks for finance and supplies of weapons working smoothly - which they never had in Iraq under Saddam.
I never thought I would say it, but given the piss-poor U.S. performance, the national interest would have been better served by leaving Saddam in place.
- Hugh
Iran is another big winner - Iraq was always their biggest threat. They can meddle there now, but don't worry, Shi'a or not, Arabs hate Persians.
Al Qa'ida: thousands of new recruits; plenty of practice using IEDs on U.S. troops. Networks for finance and supplies of weapons working smoothly - which they never had in Iraq under Saddam.
I never thought I would say it, but given the piss-poor U.S. performance, the national interest would have been better served by leaving Saddam in place.
- Hugh
As for the Kurds, they were doing pretty well under U.S. air cover - they had a sanctuary from Saddam. They're still doing pretty well, but to quote Plutarch, "call no man happy until he is dead": both the Turks and the Iranians will come down on them like a ton of bricks if it looks like a truly independent Kurdistan is about to be born. - Hugh
It's not just the Kurds doing well in Iraq...14 out of 17 Provinces are doing very well and mostly peaceful. And the economy there is not as dire as you suggest and is actually doing pretty well....of course the mainstream press does NOT report this.....they can't.....they are stuck on only reporting the daily bombings and other "bad news"....very rarely is any of the "good news" reported. Little wonder that many Americans view Iraq negatively considering the press coverage, not unlike Vietnam.mcelrah wrote:As for the Kurds, they were doing pretty well under U.S. air cover - - Hugh
Almost all of the violence is occuring in 3 Provinces where there are significant mixed populations of both Shia and Sunni moslems.
As I stated previously, I do not understand how you can be so pessimistic and defeatist in your views of Iraq. Finally someone in the Admin, specifically Cheney, is speaking up and refuting the misinformation from the MSM and the Dems regarding Iraq.
Marco
The problem is that the three "problem" provinces are the populated, industrial ones. It's like having a disaster that wipes out both coasts of the U.S. and saying "yeah, but 35 out of the fifty states are doing just fine - we still have Tennessee and Montana and South Dakota..." (Then again, maybe that WOULDN'T be such a disaster 
The Kurds are doing well because they have functioning institutions that they built up under the protection of Operations Northern and Southern Watch (air cover against Saddam). As Biden and others have articulated, the Shi'a militias in the south could probably govern there. The problem is the multi-ethnic middle - which doesn't have much oil.
My prediction: the U.S. will be out in 12/18/24 months and the Iraqis will fight it out, achieving the partition that I allude to above. At this point we are just arguing over the futile U.S. effort to stave off reality.
By the way, there's a good article about Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president of Iraq, in the New Yorker. He's really a Kurd first and an Iraqi second, but he recognizes that an open declaration of an independent Kurdistan would cause Turkey, Iran, and Syria to jump on it with both feet. So the best way for him to serve his people is to preside over the failed Iraqi state for a while longer to provide some window dressing...
Hugh
The Kurds are doing well because they have functioning institutions that they built up under the protection of Operations Northern and Southern Watch (air cover against Saddam). As Biden and others have articulated, the Shi'a militias in the south could probably govern there. The problem is the multi-ethnic middle - which doesn't have much oil.
My prediction: the U.S. will be out in 12/18/24 months and the Iraqis will fight it out, achieving the partition that I allude to above. At this point we are just arguing over the futile U.S. effort to stave off reality.
By the way, there's a good article about Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president of Iraq, in the New Yorker. He's really a Kurd first and an Iraqi second, but he recognizes that an open declaration of an independent Kurdistan would cause Turkey, Iran, and Syria to jump on it with both feet. So the best way for him to serve his people is to preside over the failed Iraqi state for a while longer to provide some window dressing...
Hugh