You send me to the New York Times? Please. Try the various veterans’ blogs and publications; their viewpoint is quite at odds with the bought-and-paid-for stooges at the Times.

As far as questioning whether violence is actually down, if you cannot trust the numbers you might want to turn to anecdotal and descriptive evidence. Here’s one report that demonstrates the improvements in security lately:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/19/world/middleeast/20071120_BUILDUP_OVERVIEW.html

Comment by thirdparty — January 21, 2008 @ 3:19 pm

From whom do you want this evidence? The very people that did exactly that? Try holding your breath. You have to be very loyal to ignore all the evidence there is that nothing happens there without American money and power getting directly involved. it’s the only reason it’s still such a disaster there.

Comment by thirdparty — January 21, 2008 @ 3:16 pm

You know, as long as you believe a single word from this government about anything, you’re going to have credibility problems. Bushco has engineered this debacle all along to fail, as soon as the situation went south shortly after the invasion and “Mission Accomplished”. If Clinton is going to keep combat troops there to engage Al Qaeda, they won’t be there long, since Al Qaeda is vitually non-existent, and only grows in response to the wholesale presence, illegally, of many thousands of Aemrican troops. You have no idea why, or even if, violence is actually down, you have only the words of proven liars and sociopaths. The Bush regime is playing for time; every move is calculated to run out the clock and leave the mess to the next administration.

Fred, I take offense to that. Please point out my factual inaccuracies as you see them. Have you ever considered that you have your own reality? Is it possible that you might just be wrong, ever?

Comment by thirdparty

man, are you plunger?

Comment by Fred — January 21, 2008 @ 3:13 pm

No, I’m not plunger. Who’s that?

Spin, spin, spin….you are a master of spin. Leaving troops to protect bases and conduct counter terrorism activities is not the same as leaving “combat” troops in Iraq and you know it. And launching “targeted missions to foot out and shut down terrorist cells” is, again, not leaving combat troops in Iraq.

Don’t tell me that Hillary doesn’t support combat missions when the facts are readily available to you:

Clinton said she supports a phased redeployment of troops from Iraq but would leave a small number in the country to carry out combat missions against Al-Qaeda members.

You go on, Bilbo:

Do you want to tell me who the opposing military organization is? The insurgents, AQI, Saudi nationals, Iranian nationals, people trying to throw out the occupying force? What we are doing in Iraq isn’t even war. It is an occupation, and nothing more.

Perhaps you should ask Hillary, John and Barack what they are aiming to target with troops when they are inaugurated.

Moving on, I just request some evidence of US tampering with Maliki’s elevation to Prime Minister, if not evidence for him being “selected,” as you say, by his party and then by voters.

You guys, predictably, accuse me of not being in touch with reality, talking this to death, spinning to death, etc. That’s fine, it comes with the territory here and on blogs generally. When someone has an honest disagreement, that debate may hold up for a little while but eventually it collapses into name-calling. Again, that’s fine and that’s your choice. But I’ve been answering your questions gladly, and you’ve done an OK job of addressing my points as well. As I believe one of you acknowledged earlier, there aren’t good options on Iraq.

Still, in the past year, we have set back al Qaeda and managed some economic and political gains at the local level. So, I don’t see this as being endless and hopeless – I see a light at the end of the tunnel, although it is distant. We have CLCs helping us and greater cooperation among Shia groups, although we are still a long way away from stabilizing the country. It’s just that I see progress being made in the form of dramatically reduced violence, mainly, and I fear what will happen if we withdraw and create a security vacuum.

To open this debate up more, if you guys would like, are there specific proposals you favor on Iraq?

Comment by thirdparty

man, are you plunger?

no, that’s just what happens when you try to talk to someone that has their own set of facts that they want you to accept, even if they are based on nothing. You just want to talk this thing to death until you get it your way…..you have no interest in reality.

Fred, I take offense to that. Please point out my factual inaccuracies as you see them. Have you ever considered that you have your own reality? Is it possible that you might just be wrong, ever?

Iraq was never a threat to us and it never was a base for “terrorism”. It is now, because we made it that way. The country that is harboring terrorists is Pakistan. So, I guess we should invade Pakistan, don’t you agree.

So you are saying that because Senator Clinton say “they are going to pay a price” she means she will invade that country? That’s a pretty big leap, even for a rightard. She has also said, on numerous occasions, that she will always try diplomacy first.

Comment by bilbobaggins — January 21, 2008 @ 2:32 pm

You’ve put words in my mouth. I never said Iraq was a base for terror, and I agree that it is not a good claim to make. That doesn’t mean Hussein didn’t support terror, but to say it was a “base” is an exaggeration. The point was about terrorism in general; if we know a base exists somewhere, perhaps we should go after it.

Thanks for calling me a “rigthard,” that’s a great way to keep this discussion respectable. Anyway, you’re defending Hillary Clinton, and that’s your prerogative. I’m just suggesting that her rhetoric was just like Bush’s on the “with us or against us” idea that the left, and myself, usually despise.

Look, I don’t think the quotes I’m raising from Hillary and others is all that relevant to the substance of this debate. But I can’t help put point out the hypocrisy of these politicians when they are attacking Bush on both substance and style and then act an a similarly egregious fashion. I gave you an example of style with Hillary, here’s some substance from John Edwards after the Iraq war began:

I think that we were right to go. I think we were right to go to the United Nations. I think we couldn’t let those who could veto in the Security Council hold us hostage. And I think Saddam Hussein being gone is good. Good for the American people, good for the security of that region of the world, and good for the Iraqi people.

And then when asked, “If you think the decision, which was made by the president, when basically he saw the French weren’t with us and the Germans and the Russians weren’t with us, was he right to say, “We’re going anyway,” Edwards replied:

I stand behind my support of that, yes.

You’re almost there Fred. He doesn’t want to “talk this thing to death”, he wants to spin this thing to death. Everything he has written is nothing more than his rightard spin version of reality. There is no truth in what he says and no reality in what he says.

Nouri al-Maliki (formerly Jawad al-Maliki) was selected to be Prime Minister on April 21, 2006.

He was selected. And are you going to try to tell us that the US had NOTHING to do with this selection? If they had it to do over, do you really think the Iraqi Parliament would again choose Maliki as their Prime Minister knowing what a stooge he is for the United States? Do you really think that Maliki is acting in the best interests of the Iraqi’s? If you answer yes to any of those questions, I question your mental health.

Comment by thirdparty

no, that’s just what happens when you try to talk to someone that has their own set of facts that they want you to accept, even if they are based on nothing. You just want to talk this thing to death until you get it your way…..you have no interest in reality.

That’s a process story, unsexy by definition, but that doesn’t change its importance. This move speaks to the degree to which occupation and democracy are mutually exclusive, and to how Bush and Maliki must run roughshod over the Iraqi legislature (not to mention the U.S. Congress), sacrificing opportunities for political reconciliation along the way, in order to maintain an almost universally despised American military presence in the country.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=14633

The UN extended the mandate for one reason only. Because Bully Boy Bush and the US told them to. I have to say that it amazes me how the UN caves to the United States when we haven’t even paid our dues for years and constantly bad-mouth the UN. Bush is only interested in the UN when he can use them to achieve his illegal purposes, otherwise he disses them every chance he gets.

Spin, spin, spin….you are a master of spin. Leaving troops to protect bases and conduct counter terrorism activities is not the same as leaving “combat” troops in Iraq and you know it. And launching “targeted missions to foot out and shut down terrorist cells” is, again, not leaving combat troops in Iraq.

To tell the truth, what we are doing in Iraq is not combat, it is occupying.

From Wikipedia:

Combat in warfare involves two or more opposing military organizations, usually fighting for nations at war (although guerrilla warfare and suppression of insurgencies can fall outside this definition). Warfare falls under the laws of war, which govern its purposes and conduct, and protect the rights of soldiers and non-combatants.

Do you want to tell me who the opposing military organization is? The insurgents, AQI, Saudi nationals, Iranian nationals, people trying to throw out the occupying force? What we are doing in Iraq isn’t even war. It is an occupation, and nothing more.

Iraq was never a threat to us and it never was a base for “terrorism”. It is now, because we made it that way. The country that is harboring terrorists is Pakistan. So, I guess we should invade Pakistan, don’t you agree.

So you are saying that because Senator Clinton say “they are going to pay a price” she means she will invade that country? That’s a pretty big leap, even for a rightard. She has also said, on numerous occasions, that she will always try diplomacy first.