SilverNRed

That same link says 27,000 can operate and take the lead role in operations with US support. It's in the next sentence! It's more than a little disingenuous to focus only on the number that you care about for your point in the article. Obviously those 27,000 will be the next 27,000 who can operate completely independently. What is the US support that 27,000 needs anyway? Air support? What? The article also mentions equipment shortages which emphasizes how difficult it is to build up on army basically from scratch.

They were angry at us before the war. They were angry with us when we removed the dictator who killed his own people by the hundreds of thousands. They are angry with us now for helping rebuild. Maybe, just maybe, the "Arab Street" needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. An entire culture based on US/Jewish conspiracy theories isn't doing them any favors.

"Or maybe not" indeed. I'm not over there but if I was, I'd be wondering why the Muslim world is falling further from the top of the heap in the world when it comes to economics, medicine, culture, etc. while the US remains at the top and China and India are taking off. Perhaps some introspection is in order.....

Link Nice work, American Media.

That may be the result of living in a dictatorship. North Koreans generally don't act up either. I imagine people in countries next to Iraq are wondering why the Iraqis are voting and they are not. And I doubt those suicide bombers attacking mosques are actually making suicide bombing more popular.

So you really think there are only 700 Iraqis ready to fight even if we've been letting them take the lead in operations several times in the past months. The start of the war has nothing to do with winning the war. Though Democrats, especially in the Senate, seem to think the two are basically the same thing. That is exactly the implication every time someone trots out the number of US soldiers who have died or the fact that they are dying. And my point is it's not hard to be lethal. How many people does it take to set off a car bomb? What needs to be achieved is Iraq has to be strong enough to stand on its own 2 feet without constant supervision from us. It'll be years before we're out of there completely so the goal is the steadily transfer power to them. Stamping out the insurgency while rebuilding the country and training Iraqis may not be possible. I think out goal should be to outlast them until the Iraqis are strong enough to take over and do the heavy lifting. We can't leave before that happens. If you want to argue that Iraq would be better off because leaving would force them to step up, that's another argument.

Al Qaeda seemed to gain strength following their "success" in Mogadishu (I say "success" because the operation that Black Hawk Down was based on was technically a success but they did manage to kill enough Americans that we ran). And bin Laden has been clear about his "strong horse" theory. So, yes, I think more people are likely to join up with Al Qaeda if there is the perception that they are achieving something. In contrast, fewer people are likely to side up with them if they see elections in Iraq and terrorist attacks on mosques and civilians.

That's the spirit! We can't win if we kill the terrorists and we can't win if we don't kill the terrorists! No wonder you think things are going so badly.

Thanks, boss. Was the rest of it any good?

Saw that too. Keep your fingers crossed. Other Link Almost too good to be true, considering his family publicly denounced him in Jordan today. You wonder if attacking Jordan caused one of his pals to say the hell with this and tip off the coalition.

Probably the fact that there are about 25 million Iraqis not taking part in the insurgency. And there is a limit as to how quickly we can train them. A relatively small group of people can still blow up cars and kill civilians but they aren't growing in influence and popular support. Zarqawi is desperate enough that he's just lashing out at any soft targets he can find, to the point where he just killed any sympathy/support he had in Jordan. How on earth can anyone look at the coalition/Iraqi forces and the terrorists, and come to the conclusion that the terrorists are winning? It's really not that difficult for 2-3 people to blow up a car and murder some people, but they aren't achieving anything. While we're continuing to transfer power/sovereignty to the people of Iraq, what are the terrorists working to do besides kill civilians and even attacking mosques? In other words, tell me how they plan to win. Better question for anyone in favor of immediate or announced removal of US forces: Why wouldn't the terrorists view that as a victory? Wouldn't this embolden them in the future by making the US a "paper tiger" like we were after Somalia? It's basically the only victory they can possibly achieve. And if "losing" the war means we're taking casualties and suffering setbacks, then the United States has "lost" every single war it has ever fought.

So we're losing? Tell that to the guys over there. Like Matt Lauer did. 1. We are winning and we've accomplished a whole helluva lot in just over two years. 2. Announcing that we're leaving, either tomorrow or in sixth months, doesn't help.

If Murtha didn't understand how the media would report his statements, he's too out of touch to be in Congress. These are the same people calling him a "hawk" when he's been publicly saying the war is "unwinnable" for at least 18 months. Like he didn't think he was giving NYT, LAT, WP, and al-Jazeera the headline they were all dreaming about.....

Waving a white flag yesterday or announcing that we'll wave the white flag in six months really doesn't seem that different, does it? And the seem people demanding we retreat will be the ones screaming that "Bush lost the war!" after we do.

No, I'm saying this was worse. They sounded like high schoolers petitioning the school board to have the prom moved somewhere.....

Unfortunately, all the headlines in the US and around the world said something along the lines of "Leading Democratic Congressman calls for Immediate Withdrawal". So whatever Murtha was trying to say yesterday, he ended up saying something that caused a whole lot of damage.

I watched some of it and I'm amazed at what poor public speakers we have in Congress.

No, seriously......

The only way we lose this war is if it turns out that our politicians don't have the will to win it (something our military men and women certainly do have). More and more, it's looking like that's the case.

Maybe not such a good idea.

Ana's flashbacks are next week.

The way out is victory. That should be priority number one right now. Sadly, it isn't because plenty of Republican senators are losing their backbone and plenty of Democrats are trying to rewrite history so that people don't know they were in favor of the war two and a half years ago. Even W just woke up from a six month coma and realized he's supposed to be out there talking about why winning the war is important. It's embarassing the people we have as our "leaders" these days.

Can't read stuff if it's italicized, huh? The intelligence was bad. How does complaining about it now actually help us win?

Does it matter that many individuals with as much experience as Murtha, many of whom are actively taking part in the war in Iraq, disagree with Murtha? Why is his opinion suddenly the most important? You can read stuff from the soldiers actually fighting the war who wonder why everyone back home thinks they're losing. The "we're losing because we are" mentality is baffling. Wrong. Completely wrong. Cheney did not question the patriotism of people who disagreed with the administration. He questioned the patriotism of Democrats who spoke of the importance of removing Saddam and voted for the war and are now trying to say they were all completely misled by the administration - essentially rewriting history. Rewriting history to clean your own hands and cut down the war effort is unpatriotic. John Murtha didn't do that and the reporter who asked him to comment on Cheney's statements both screwed up what Cheney said and who he was referring to (not that you expect reporters to actually be able to do their jobs these days). Civilians have always been the ones sending people to war in this country. FDR anyone?

In that case, I'll just say that no, what I said doesn't mean soldiers in the field are never wrong, but that I'm in no position to judge them. And neither are you and neither is Campy. We aren't being shot at so we can't judge them based on what weapons or tactics they're using to fight insurgents/terrorists. I'd feel pretty silly calling a guy coming back from Iraq a war criminal based on a newspaper article I read on the internet. Bottom line is I'll give our troops the benefit of the doubt over the reporters trying to "cover" the war (and by "cover" I mean come up with breathless, sensationalized stories).