holla @ p-nis

SexNinjaMcDeath: Never forget: it is and always will be George Bush's disaster.

middle_age_man: There is no clean exit from Iraq that doesn’t involve Iran propping up what’s left of the Iraqi government and nobody is going to be able to sell that to the American public.

The US government has confirmed its willingness, in principle, to discuss the conflict in Iraq with its neighbour, Iran.
David Satterfield, a state department adviser, told a Senate committee the timing of such talks was under review.

Lefen: The trouble is that the newly-elected Iraqi government is weak, so The Coalition can't leave any time soon or as Sexninja rightly points out, the country will just dissolve into civil war and split up.

Wrecker: Bring our soldiers home.

jwalker:

But wouldn't the bad guys just take over?

Wrecker:
Maybe, but don't care. Iraq may have been a threat at one point, but they are not a threat any longer.

Wrecker: Freedom and independence are earned. They cannot be given to a people like a goddamn fruitcake...

Lefen:

Iraq was never an international threat. Blair knew Iraq had no WMD prior to the invasion.

Hadley began with a candid evaluation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: "The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests al-Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."

Having been frank about the problem, Hadley then entered a dream world to discuss ways it might be solved. He offered his boss an elaborate set of initiatives that should be urged on the hapless al-Maliki. The first one gives a good flavor of the Hadley plan for success: "Maliki should compel his ministers to take small steps - such as providing health services and opening bank branches in Sunni neighborhoods - to demonstrate that his government serves all ethnic communities." Others included compelling al-Maliki to overhaul his personal staff to make it ethnically diverse, shake up his cabinet and bring in competent technocrats, and insist that all ministers renounce violence in all forms.

How would Bush carry out Hadley's correctives? "We can help (him) in a variety of ways," Hadley wrote. If al-Maliki thinks he isn't in a position to follow all of the Americans' good advice, "we will need to work with him to augment his capabilities." Among the steps Hadley proposed:
"Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki's new political bloc. . . . Consider monetary support to moderate groups that have been seeking to break with larger, more sectarian parties, as well as to support Maliki himself. . . . Provide Maliki with more resources to help build a nonsectarian national movement."

In other words, the national security adviser told the president 42 months after this disastrous war began that we can still fix it. Yankee ingenuity - pulling this lever, pushing that button - can make things turn out the way we want them to. There you see the peculiar strain of hubris that led the United States astray four years ago in Iraq - and four decades ago in Vietnam.

Jawlessjoe: As much as I hate us being there, to leave now would 100% collapse Iraq.

Sadly, we started it, and we're suck there now.

Thank god most of 'em can't reach the US with their nukes (easily/yet/untilnextthursday)

mcgarpat:

North Korean and Iran are close.....Watch out for the man with the blue turban. ~~~ Nostradamis

Jawlessjoe: ...a lil of California, so no big loss yet

In the "60 Minutes" interview, taped last week, Bush said he wasn't bothered by his low approval ratings and called himself the "educator in chief," arguing that sharing his views would help to overcome public and congressional resistance. "I'm going to have to keep explaining," he said.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.