BBC News: "George Bush's troop surge in Iraq appears to be working... An estimated 1,000 people a day are returning across Iraq's borders having previously moving abroad to escape the violence, Iraqi authorities say... One factor in their return is likely to be a sharp and sustained drop in all kinds of violence, particularly in parts of the capital Baghdad, following a US-Iraqi military 'surge'."London's Times:
Road from Damascus: Iraqis are voting with their feet by returning home after exile The figures are hard to estimate precisely but the process could involve hundreds of thousands of people. The numbers are certainly large enough, as we report today, for a mass convoy to be planned next week as Iraqis who had opted for exile in Syria return to their homeland. It is one of the most striking signs that not only has violence in Baghdad and adjacent provinces decreased dramatically in recent months, but confidence in the economic and political future of Iraq has risen sharply. Nor is this movement the action of men and women who could easily reverse course and turn back again. Tighter visa restrictions imposed by Damascus mean that those who are returning to Iraq cannot assume that they could quickly retreat again to Syria if that suited them. This is, for many, a one-way decision. It represents a vote of confidence in Iraq.NY TIMES: Around Baghdad, Signs of Normal Life Creep Back: "With security in Baghdad improving, residents across the city are taking steps to return to normalcy. More Iraqis are traveling between Shiite and Sunni areas to shop, work and go to school. While there are still neighborhoods too dangerous to enter, interviews across the city reveal the personal ways Baghdad residents are fighting to reclaim the lives they lost."
NY POST: "THE situation in Iraq has improved so rapidly that Democrats now shun the topic as thoroughly as they shun our troops when the cameras aren't around..."
It must hurt the poor pessimistic dears terribly to have to admit that General Petraeus' "surge" is working, but the good news is now breaking out of from blog commentators like Michael Yon and Michael J. Totten, and on out into the mainstream. That in itself is good news.
12 comments:
Ha ha... the New York Times must be talking through gritted teeth, considering they engaged in treacherous anti-war sentiment for all those years...now having to backtrack and face reality.
The reality which none of you seem to want to face is that the entire premise for this war has been proven over and over again, publicly and embarrassingly to be total horseshit.
They might as well finish the job now, seen as how pulling out will only create a bigger raging clusterfuck.
Save your Rand quotations, I’m so fucking not interested.
I don't think that's at dispute here softcock. The point is that the US Democrats seem keen to say that the surge is not working and the war is being lost. That appears to be untrue by these reports. The war may indeed be full of horseshit, but America still rocks, jihadis still suck, and I much prefer it when the former wins and the latter loses.
Gee softy, given you comments, why do you come to the site and read material that upsets your small soft head so much? You must be a masochist or worse, a fuckwit!
LGM
Good news indeed. Congrats to Gen. Petraeus & the Bush admin.
Softcock, are you an impotent? If you can't get the thing up, I suggest you go to K'Rd, so that transvestites over there fix your problem.
The success of Gen. Petraeus' strategy is a vindication of classic cointerinsurgency doctrine, whereby securing the local population - even while making your own forces more vulnerable - is prioritized over seeking out and killing the enemy.
Phil, I hear that the General's advisor in this is an Australian Lt. Colonel. One very smart man.
The US will prevail. The US should be supported by all of us free nations, because they have defended the freedom we enjoy today since the end of WW2.
Tonga is one of those that supports the US in Iraq. The late King Taufa Tupou the 4th, when the government sent the first contingent of 64 about 2 years ago, that Tonga owes the US for its role in defending the small Pacific Island during WW2 against the Japanese aggressions. King Taufa Tupou the 5th and the government sent 55 soldiers to Iraq in August (2007) for a year's deployment.
Tonga sends soldiers to Iraq
KG: Yes, his top adviser is Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, formerly of the Australian army, who has a PhD in anthropology, and is an expert on South-East Asian insurgencies.
You can see some of his writing at the Small Wars Journal.
Calling me a fuckwit! touche!
I will spell it out real simple like so you idiots can grasp the principles involved.
Softcocks Law 1.
Avoiding a clusterfuck is better than pulling a clusterfuck out of the fire.
Softcocks Law 2.
Law 1 becomes very important if shitloads of people will get killed in said clusterfuck.
Its easy to sit back in your easy chair in suburban NZ gently stroking you cock to fox news, I imagine it might be harder to get that loving feeling in downtown Baghdad. Fucking weekend warriors.
The situation is outwardly similar to Churchill or Lincoln going through their rolodex of generals, firing the failures until finding one that wins. Counter-insurgency doctrine is nothing new, the British anti communist campaign in Malaya is an example. The problem of providing security and a normal existance for a population seems to have escaped Donald Rumsfeld as he overode his own planners. His presence is not missed in defence circles, nor in the homes of thousands of bereaved American families.
One thing is vastly overlooked. That is, the declining chaos and carnage has less to do with what the US did and more to do with what the Sunni enemy did. He finally had a gutsfull of where Al Qaeda and its foreign jihadis was taking him. The sheer pitiless evil of these nutcases activating their crackpot sharia law reached tipping point when AQ started executing Sunni sheiks. The Sunni negotiated with the coalition and Iraqi armies to stand back while they tipped these mongrels up. Since then the war has lived up to its classification as a quagmire--for Al Qaeda. They have been drawn into a killing field and are being destroyed.
I have nothing but respect for the the US soldiery in staying the distance under a flawed strategy. Their worst problem is, as always, behind them; in their planner's bunkers, in the press the television and in the craven and rotten ranks of the Democrats and their liberal supporters.
Now the tide appears to be turning, watch for a rush to support the war from these chameleons.
It is what you expect from that sort.
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