Dms Demand 'Monumental' Progress in Iraq

[red states rule]

With all the good news coming out of Iraq, Dems are now backed into a corner. Now they say they need monumental progress in Iraq to give up their surrender plan



Now they say they Democrats need 'monumental' progress in Iraq
By S.A. Miller
August 3, 2007

Democrats, including the party's conservative "Blue Dogs," say it will take "monumental" improvement in Iraq — not the current blips of success — to sway them from pushing for a U.S. troop withdrawal after a September progress report.

"The military victories are just episodic," said Rep. Jane Harman, a hawkish California Democrat and chairman of the Homeland Security intelligence subcommittee.

"It is doubtful that there will be a silver bullet, or even a brass bullet, in this report that will turn this thing around."

Rep. Charlie Wilson, a freshman Democrat from a conservative blue-collar Ohio district, said he "would definitely need monumental proof, not just an isolated improvement."

The remarks echo the opinion of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, who aides say is "not willing to concede there are positive things to point to" in Iraq, despite recent upbeat assessments from Pentagon officials, House members who toured Iraq and even from a liberal Washington think tank.

The Democrats' antiwar base also will not budge, regardless of what is in the Sept. 15 report from Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq.

"No matter what the Petraeus report says we will continue to call for the speedy and safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops," said Medea Benjamin, spokeswoman for the feminist antiwar group Code Pink.

The Democrat-led Congress continued to hammer the war issue yesterday, with a near party-line 229-194 House vote approving a bill that would limit time of troop deployments.


for the complete article

progress in Iraq

[avatar4321]

of course monumental is a subjective standard. And its that way so it doesnt matter what news comes out its not going to be monumental by the Democrat standards.

[PostmodernProphet]

so in other words.....they have reached their conclusions on the September report....in August.......

[red states rule]

of course monumental is a subjective standard. And its that way so it doesnt matter what news comes out its not going to be monumental by the Democrat standards.

The Defeatocrats will be backed into a corner, and the terrorists best hope for victory will crash and burn

[red states rule]

so in other words.....they have reached their conclusions on the September report....in August.......

August 03, 2007
Casualties of Anti-War
By Marc Sheppard

The left's anti-war forces sustained heavy casualties earlier this week. And, judging from both strategy shifts and painful screams heard throughout the liberal blogosphere, many of the fallen were high value propaganda targets.


It's no secret that Democratic strategists see failure in Iraq as a blood-soaked red carpet leading them to the White House next year. So much so that even before the president officially announced the initial 20,000 troop surge in January, opposition party leaders were scrambling to denounce it as a doomed and desperate last-gasp effort to save a failing policy.


And yet, the Dem-controlled Senate did unanimously add a fourth star to surge proponent General David Petraeus's shoulder to confirm his selection as Iraq Multi-National-Force commander just two weeks later. And while Senate Dems expressed great confidence in the man who had co-authored the Army's Field Manual 3-24 on Counterinsurgency a month prior, they somehow saw nothing duplicitous in their equally unanimous rejection of the surge plan it had inspired.


The Battle to Purge the Surge


Consequently, in February, while Petraeus focused his forces on Baghdad -- particularly Sadr City, a stronghold of Shiite militias -- and began engaging al Qaeda in the Diyala province, Pelosi's House was passing a resolution to oppose his mission.

In March, U.S forces began clearing al Qaeda from Ramadi and moved into western Baghdad, capturing or killing al Qaeda operatives both in Abu Ghraib and in the capital's Mansour district. That's when House Democrats voted to remove those same forces by August 2008.

April and May saw new surge units continuing to successfully clear extremists from increasing numbers of regions while Congressional Democrats continued their unsuccessful attempts to legislate the battlefield.

Then, in June, just as the real surge (Operation Phantom Thunder - a coordinated and simultaneous offensive against insurgent strongholds throughout central Iraq) was launched, opposition leaders also jumped into action. Majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to the president, declaring the fledgling surge an unmitigated disaster:

"As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results. The increase in U.S. forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation. It has not enhanced America's national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on U.S. forces have increased. In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for U.S. troops."
Apparently unperturbed by such brilliant military guidance and with July surge-forces now at 30,000, the progress achieved has been anything but a failure. For instance, over and above successful clearing operations in and around Baghdad, aligned U.S and Iraqi forces have driven the insurgents from Baquba, in Diyala province, and from the Euphrates valley in Anbar province.

Furthermore, sectarian killings have abated, primarily because the strategy, as Kimberly Kagan reported last month, had:

"dramatically decreased Shiite death squad activity in the capital. Furthermore, U.S. and Iraqi special forces have removed many rogue militia leaders and Iranian advisers from Sadr City and other locations, reducing the power of militias."
And July military casualties, both American and Iraqi, were way down, as was the number of Iraqi police killed. Arrests and insurgent deaths, on the other hand, were both up.

Yet Democrats continued to sing the "surge is a failure" opus and even attempted to amend a critical July defense appropriations bill with language calling for beginning a redeployment of U.S. troops in as little as four months.

And, while the complicit media ignored or downplayed virtually every one of these significant advances, they continued to blur reality to foment despair through the over-emphasis of sectarian violence, gory roadside bombing details, and continuing coalition casualties. Yet, three things remained clear:

Next month, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will be tendering a long-awaited progress report to the nation.
Any hope the Democrats have of flipping the necessary Republicans to their surrendering side while maintaining the votes of their own "Blue Dog Coalition," rides on calamitous conclusions.
Removing American Forces from Iraq remains an unfulfilled promise to many taking credit for the current Congressional majorities. Election Day is 15 months hence and counting.
Of course, thanks to the lopsided reporting, it appeared that the Democrats might receive an early Christmas present in September.

Until, that is, this week.


Fox News Sunday Bloody Sunday

Arguably, Newt Gingrich squeezed off the first salvo of the week's mêlée when he appeared on Fox News Sunday. Responding to Senator Russ Feingold's call to begin "redeployment" even before the Petraeus report card, the former Speaker and presidential hopeful described a Democratic left wing unconcerned with the facts and "deeply opposed" to our victory and "deeply committed" to and willing to legislate our defeat.

When Feingold's segment followed, host Chris Wallace asked whether his plan ignored signs that the surge was working. Dismissing the very premise, he replied (with my emphasis throughout):

"I'm happy to acknowledge any signs of success, but the truth is since this surge began, we've had some of the highest numbers of American deaths and some of the greatest tragedies in Iraq of the entire period."
Notwithstanding the preceding double-talk, the Wisconsin Democrat surely spoke clearly but a day early when he concluded:

"So I'll give all the respect to General Petraeus' remarks that are due, but every indication I get -- and I'm on the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, so I get a lot of information on this -- suggests that it is virtually impossible that he's going to be able to give the kind of rosy scenario that you've concocted here." [emphasis added]
But Monday Morning gave them a warning (of what was to be)

Monday's New York Times contained a surprising Op-ed by Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack which reported that "we are finally getting somewhere in Iraq." Under the shocking title A War We Just Might Win the two Brookings scholars, having freshly returned from Iraq, ravaged liberal talking points with words the likes of:

"Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference."
In stark contrast to the pessimism represented by Feingold, the two analysts - both ardent critics of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq -- did give a "rosy scenario," in which Marine and Army units focused on helping Iraqi civilians attain security and basic essential services. They further reported "civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began" as its direct result. And that the surge-deployed additional troops have empowered the Petraeus tactic of holding areas until fully secure to prevent insurgents from retaking them once Americans depart.

High marks were also given to the policies which "revive the local economy and build new political structures." And, shattering the oft-spoken liberal lies about the dependability of Iraqi security forces, most of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders have apparently been dealt with:

"The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq)."
Senator Feingold likely wished he could rewind to the previous day when he read first of a local mayor whose greatest fear was a hasty American departure, and then, the Times' knockout punch conclusion:

"But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."
Ellison Wonderland

Monday also saw the AP report a weekend trip to Iraq by 6 congressmen, including Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn). As the first and only Muslim in Congress, it's likely that his unique access to local sheiks was expected to uncover a deeper element of anti-American sentiment

Didn't happen - in fact, what local leaders in Ramadi told Ellison reinforced the report of O'Hanlon and Pollack -- that they had partnered with U.S. and Iraqi military officials to virtually drive al-Qaeda from the city. And, as violence has been reduced, so have the number of anti-American sermons, with religious leaders instead meeting regularly and cooperating with U.S military officials.

Ellison was reportedly quite impressed observing Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, U.S. commander of Anbar province, greeting people with "As-Salamu Alaykum," and by the smiles and waves the gesture elicited.

An outspoken Iraq and Bush critic, Ellison nevertheless declared Ramadi a success, adding that,

"there was a general level of respect and calm that I thought was good."
Brown Versus the Bored of Confrontation

When anti-war bastions loudly cheered the departure of Tony Blair from Downing Street, they expected it to further diminish British resolve in Iraq and advance its retreat. So they held their collective Bush-bashing breath during the Sunday/Monday first meeting between the President and the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, anticipating immediate relief.

They got none.

Emerging from the meeting, Brown shocked the crowd by declaring the west involved in a "generation-long battle" against radical Islamic terrorism. And, while surrender-mongers stood with mouths agape, he blessed the American mission in Iraq as worthwhile, promising to stand by President Bush's efforts to promote democracy there and in all of the Middle East:

"We are at one in fighting the battle against terrorism, and that struggle is one that we will fight with determination and with resilience and right across the world"
But the final blow was dealt by Brown's response to war-opposing reporters' mynah-birdlike insistence that violence in Iraq has more to do with feuding factions than Al Qaeda:

"In Iraq, you're dealing with Sunni-Shia violence, you're dealing with the involvement of Iran, but you're certainly dealing with a large number of Al Qaeda terrorists. There is no doubt, therefore, that Al Qaeda is operating in Iraq."
Anti-Warfare is Also the Way of Deception

Given all this terrible good news, what's the "Bush Lied - People Died" party to do? How do you add a date-certain withdrawal to defense spending legislation based solely on the "surge is a failure" lie when the latest facts on the ground simply refuse to cooperate, and September's benchmark report looms so near?

If you're James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the first thing you do is to admit to The Washington Post that an encouraging assessment from Petraeus would "be a real big problem" for Democrats. That's right, Manic Monday also found the House Majority Whip warning fellow Dems to "wait for the Petraeus report" before taking any further devious Iraq actions. His fear is that good news would be bad news in maintaining Blue Dog anti-war sentiment and votes, putting a timetable out of reach. And so, implies Clyburn, let's not rub salt into our own wounds.

But the political bleeding continued on Tuesday, even as the physical flow ebbed. The American death toll for July was reported at 73 -- the lowest in eight months. Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, second only to Petraeus himself, explained that while the initial surge into militant strongholds had increased casualties, they were now "going down as Americans gained control of the areas."

In other words - the now fully implemented surge is working to expectation and the misinformed contrarians were wrong.


No problem - Dems and the MSM will simply toggle between denying and ignoring that fact. Just as they've denied the nature of Al Qaeda in Iraq and ignored its recent attempts to use chemical weapons against Iraqi civilians. Ditto requests for their plan to prevent the untold civilian casualties of anti-war associated with cutting and running, which may now include a repeat of what happened to the Kurds of Halabja (video).

Sure enough -- with hopes of an unfavorable review quickly fading, a new stratagem has arisen, with anti-war disinformation brigades launching a surge of their own. Suddenly no longer concerned with military matters, today we are being barraged with statements like those from ABC News ("In the critical, political arena, the picture is bleak") or from Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), who in April declared "that the troop surge plan in Iraq has failed," yet today quipped:

"We've made some progress in the surge, we've made some military progress. But I think [Petraeus will] be honest enough to say we've made no political progress."
As is often said of its counterpart, it's becoming abundantly clear that truth is the first casualty of anti-war.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/casualties_of_antiwar.html

[red states rule]

Dems would rather believe the Daily Kos then Gen Petreus on what is happening in Iraq

[theHawk]

If you're James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the first thing you do is to admit to The Washington Post that an encouraging assessment from Petraeus would "be a real big problem" for Democrats.
Thats pretty sick. This sac of shit should be convicted of treason.

[glockmail]

of course monumental is a subjective standard. And its that way so it doesnt matter what news comes out its not going to be monumental by the Democrat standards.
The only bar that the Democrats would agree on is one that they can raise later on.

[Hagbard Celine]

Well then, why don't they just funnel a little money into the statue-building fund and have done with it?

[red states rule]

Thats pretty sick. This sac of shit should be convicted of treason.

The only thing that matters to Dems is their power. Their country, the troops, national security, and killing terrorists mean nothing as much as their political power


Well then, why don't they just funnel a little money into the statue-building fund and have done with it?

I hope the Dems do just that

Then the DC pigions can shit on it. The same thing the Dems are doing to the troops who are trying to win this war

The Iraq Shuffle
The congressional Democrats waltz around inconvenient facts.
by Matthew Continetti
08/13/2007, Volume 012, Issue 45


Last week, when the New York Times published an op-ed arguing that Gen. David Petraeus should be allowed more time to pursue his counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, supporters of President Bush's "surge" got excited. The political momentum seemed to shift in their direction. But Bush's supporters shouldn't get carried away. They are in danger of seriously underestimating the ability of those who believe the war is lost or was always unwinnable to ignore, deny, and attack all news of positive developments. They should not underestimate the popularity of what you might call the Iraq shuffle.

Antiwar activity seemed to crescendo in July, when leaks to the New York Times and Washington Post suggested the Bush administration was planning a significant reduction in American forces or a major shift in strategic goals in Iraq in coming months. The leaks--combined with congressional demands for a progress report on political and security "benchmarks" in Iraq and public criticism from several GOP senators that the current war strategy isn't working--caught the administration off guard. It scrambled to complete the progress report, explain the lack of political progress in Baghdad, and fight off further Republican defections.

It appears the administration was successful. In the House on July 12, only 4 Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the "Responsible Redeployment from Iraq Act," fewer than the 10 Democrats who crossed party lines to vote against the bill. And in the Senate on July 18, only 4 Republicans voted with Democrats to invoke cloture on Levin-Reed, the most popular antiwar amendment mandating major troop reductions by next spring. When the vote failed, Senate majority leader Harry Reid pulled the Defense Authorization Bill from the floor rather than allow votes on Republican amendments that probably would have passed easily. Meanwhile, the USA Today/Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans wanted to hear Gen. Petraeus's scheduled September report to Congress before supporting any drastic moves to end the war.

Those developments set the stage for a hard week for antiwar congressional Democrats eager to cause maximum damage to the administration before the August recess. It all began on Monday, July 30, when the headline "A War We Might Just Win" appeared on the Times opinion page over a piece by Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. The two left-leaning national security experts, backers of the invasion of Iraq but also critics of the administration's "miserable handling" of war policy, recently returned from their second (O'Hanlon) and third (Pollack) trip to Iraq. They found that the United States is "finally getting somewhere," at least "in military terms." O'Hanlon and Pollack conclude: "The surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

These words, coming from two well-regarded members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment and appearing on the nation's most liberal editorial page, resonated profoundly among war supporters in the White House and Congress. Right-wing radio talk show hosts began citing the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed, as did House Republicans during a debate on Iraq policy. Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani told talk show host Bill Bennett that when he read the piece, "I dropped my coffee." Supporters of the surge, who had long been aware of positive developments in Anbar province and elsewhere, felt as if their message finally was getting out.

for the complete article

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/953iszir.asp

Hacker Proves How MSM is Fooled by al Qaeda Photochopped Images
By Warner Todd Huston | August 5, 2007 - 06:44 ET
At the Black Hat computer Hacker's conference held in Las Vegas last week, Neal Krawetz of "Hacker Factor" showed how easily the MSM has been tricked into believing the fake images that al Qaeda has offered to further their propaganda. Krawetz specifically referred to two images, one the July 27, 2006 image of al Qaeda second in command al-Zawahiri supposedly sitting in a modern television studio. It was an image that had the tongues of the MSM and pundits alike wagging. How is it, they clucked, that al-Zawahiri could be sitting in a modern television studio yet still could not be found?

Krawetz demonstrated how the elements of the two images, however, are special effects and not real.

Krawetz showed another image of al-Zawahiri from July 27, 2006, showing him seated in what appears to be a television studio. Krawetz said many people who saw this video were outraged that he could sitting in a television studio somewhere, yet the U.S. government couldn't find him.

Image analysis suggests that the studio and the various pictures positioned in the studio around him were added later. Again, a halo around al-Zawahiri suggests that he was shot in front of a monochromatic screen and pasted into a new background.

The fake TV studio image sure fooled Tucker Carlson of MSNBC's The Situation Room. On January 30th Tucker said:

Well, not only are they still here, but they seem to have access to a television studio. I‘m looking at the tape right now. I know you‘ve seen it. It‘s on our screen this minute. It looks like it was shot in a studio, and it also appears that al-Jazeera Television had word that this tape was coming. They were prepared for it before it arrived. These guys are not living in a cave.

Not living in a cave? Since the images are fakes, the idea that Tucker had that folks like al-Zawahiri are living in high style despite all the pressure the US has put upon him is not so obvious.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien was similarly fooled by the images. On CNN's American Morning aired on July 27th, 2006, O'Brien marveled at the freedom that our enemies supposedly enjoyed.

S. O'BRIEN: A final question for you, Peter. We're looking at this tape, and I've got to tell you, it looks like he's in a television studio. I mean, it's lit. They've got murals behind him. You know, here is a guy who is -- it is not a shot out in the desert with a canvas up behind him, hiding the scene.

What do you make of something like that? I mean, it's fairly, you know, good quality.

What do we make of "something like that," Soledad? Obviously, you want us to imagine that all we have done has resulted in absolutely no success if you want to promulgate the idea that al-Zawahiri has all the comforts of modern life despite what we have done in the war on terror thus far.

One thing is sure. The hacker conference has proven once again that the American MSM is the best friend that al Qaeda has.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2007/08/05/hacker-proves-how-msm-fooled-al-qaeda-photochopped-images

The Turn
Defeatists in retreat.
by William Kristol
08/13/2007, Volume 012, Issue 45


Hot July brings cooling showers, / Apricots and gillyflowers, as Sara Coleridge's doggerel has it. But for the American antiwar movement, this July brought only a cold drizzle, wilted blossoms, and bitter fruit.

For the Iraq war's opponents, July began as a month of hope. It ended in retreat. It began with Democratic unity in proclaiming the inevitability of American defeat. It ended with respected military analysts--Democrats, no less!--reporting that the situation on the ground had improved, and that the war might be winnable. It began with a plan for a series of votes in Congress that were supposed to stampede nervous Republicans against the continued prosecution of the war. It ended with the GOP spine stiffened, no antiwar legislation passed, and the Democratic Congress adjourning in disarray, with approval ratings lower than President Bush's. It began with Democratic presidential candidates competing in their antiwar pandering. It ended with them having second thoughts--with Barack Obama, losing ground to Hillary Clinton because he seemed naive about real world threats, frantically suggesting that he would invade Pakistan.

July also began with the liberal media disparaging the troops. It ended with the liberal media in retreat. The New Republic had to acknowledge that its pseudonymous soldier's account of an incident purportedly showing the dehumanizing effects of the Iraq conflict was a lie: It had taken place in Kuwait (if it happened at all), before this imaginative private ever saw the horrors of war. The New York Times was so shocked to discover in late July that
public opinion hadn't continued to move against the war that it redid a poll. The answer didn't change.

This last incident, though minor, is revealing. On July 24 the Times reported that a new survey had found an increase in the number of Americans retrospectively backing the liberation of Iraq:

Americans' support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. . . . Support for the invasion had been at an all-time low in May, when only 35 percent of Americans said the invasion of Iraq was the right thing and 61 percent said the United States should have stayed out.
In the Times's view, as explained on its website, this result was "counterintuitive"--so much so that the editors had the poll repeated to see whether they had "gotten it right." Turns out they had.

As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto commented: "Well, two cheers for the paper's diligence, but this also seems to be about as close as we're going to get to an admission of bias: an acknowledgment that those at the Times are flummoxed that the public is not responding the way they expect to all the bad news they've been reporting."


for the complete article

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/950rsadr.asp

Getting Iraq Wrong


The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president. But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country. How distant a dream that now seems.

Having left an academic post at Harvard in 2005 and returned home to Canada to enter political life, I keep revisiting the Iraq debacle, trying to understand exactly how the judgments I now have to make in the political arena need to improve on the ones I used to offer from the sidelines. I’ve learned that acquiring good judgment in politics starts with knowing when to admit your mistakes.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true. Politicians live by ideas just as much as professional thinkers do, but they can’t afford the luxury of entertaining ideas that are merely interesting. They have to work with the small number of ideas that happen to be true and the even smaller number that happen to be applicable to real life. In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.

I’ve learned that good judgment in politics looks different from good judgment in intellectual life. Among intellectuals, judgment is about generalizing and interpreting particular facts as instances of some big idea. In politics, everything is what it is and not another thing. Specifics matter more than generalities. Theory gets in the way.

The attribute that underpins good judgment in politicians is a sense of reality. “What is called wisdom in statesmen,” Berlin wrote, referring to figures like Roosevelt and Churchill, “is understanding rather than knowledge — some kind of acquaintance with relevant facts of such a kind that it enables those who have it to tell what fits with what; what can be done in given circumstances and what cannot, what means will work in what situations and how far, without necessarily being able to explain how they know this or even what they know.” Politicians cannot afford to cocoon themselves in the inner world of their own imaginings. They must not confuse the world as it is with the world as they wish it to be. They must see Iraq — or anywhere else — as it is.

As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t. Yet even lengthy experience can fail us in life and in politics. Experience can imprison decision-makers in worn-out solutions while blinding them to the untried remedy that does the trick.

Having taught political science myself, I have to say the discipline promises more than it can deliver. In practical politics, there is no science of decision-making. The vital judgments a politician makes every day are about people: whom to trust, whom to believe and whom to avoid. The question of loyalty arises daily: Who will betray and who will stay true? Having good judgment in these matters, having a sound sense of reality, requires trusting some very unscientific intuitions about people.

A sense of reality is not just a sense of the world as it is, but as it might be. Like great artists, great politicians see possibilities others cannot and then seek to turn them into realities. To bring the new into being, a politician needs a sense of timing, of when to leap and when to remain still. Bismarck famously remarked that political judgment was the ability to hear, before anyone else, the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history

for the complete article

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

[bluestatesrule]

We already know that General Petreus is going to say in september...it is the same crap we have been hearing all along: Don't bother General...here I will write it for you.

"We admit there have been some challanges....but the surge is working (and hey don't forget about those soccerfields)...but the surge is working....we just need more time."

Just another stall tactic to keep this disaster going. Just what are they goning to next spring when many of the extended enlistments are up?

[red states rule]

We already know that General Petreus is going to say in september...it is the same crap we have been hearing all along: Don't bother General...here I will write it for you.

"We admit there have been some challanges....but the surge is working (and hey don't forget about those soccerfields)...but the surge is working....we just need more time."

Just another stall tactic to keep this disaster going. Just what are they goning to next spring when many of the extended enlistments are up?

There is progress being made in Iraq - which worries libs

The last thing libs want is for any good news or progress to be made. Dems have invested their political future in the US failing in Iraq

Dems have put their party ahead of their country

[actsnoblemartin]

HI, welcome to the board. With All due respect newbie :), Isnt the surge a new tactic, and i thought democrats were complaining about not enough troops, and not that we have more, why are they still complaining.

Its one thing to have legitimate grimes, but when efforts are made to correct them, give them a chance to work atleast.


We already know that General Petreus is going to say in september...it is the same crap we have been hearing all along: Don't bother General...here I will write it for you.

"We admit there have been some challanges....but the surge is working (and hey don't forget about those soccerfields)...but the surge is working....we just need more time."

Just another stall tactic to keep this disaster going. Just what are they goning to next spring when many of the extended enlistments are up?

[red states rule]

HI, welcome to the board. With All due respect newbie :), Isnt the surge a new tactic, and i thought democrats were complaining about not enough troops, and not that we have more, why are they still complaining.

Its one thing to have legitimate grimes, but when efforts are made to correct them, give them a chance to work atleast.

Dems were all for the surge for years. Dems were still supporting a surge, right up to the moment Pres Bush supported it - then Dems were opposed to it

[Gaffer]

so in other words.....they have reached their conclusions on the September report....in August.......

They reached their conclusion last May.

[red states rule]

They reached their conclusion last May.

They reached that conclusion before the war even started


They reached their conclusion last May.

The liberal medai is getting worried about the good news coming from Iraq


NBC's Matt Lauer Signals New Line on Petraeus Report on Iraq: 'It Doesn't Matter'
By Tim Graham | August 9, 2007 - 22:19 ET
The tide may be turning now with glimmers of good news emerging out of Iraq. On Thursday’s Today, Matt Lauer’s questions to John McCain signaled that success in Iraq won’t be an impediment to Democrats sticking with the doom line and demanding rapid "redeployment." Suddenly, the once-crucial Petraeus report in September is now developing into a so-what moment:

LAUER: "You, you've been in Congress a long time, in the Senate for an awfully long time. You now which way the wind is blowing. There are some people who say, Senator, that the momentum, right now, in Congress is so strong to pull the troops out of Iraq that it doesn't matter what's in that report, in the middle of September from General Petraeus, or even in reports that follow that. Even if we start to change momentum in Iraq and start to see more success, the momentum in Congress is already so strong that it's unstoppable. How do you feel about that?"

McCAIN: "We are, we are winning there. The strategy is succeeding. It's only been in place for a short time. The previous strategy, which I bitterly opposed and, and proposed this strategy caused Americans to be very frustrated and angry and sad at the sacrifice that's been made. This strategy is winning --"

LAUER: "But is it going to matter? Is it going to matter? Is Congress going to wait for it to take hold and, until we see true success?"


McCain said victory is essential, but it’s clearly not essential for Russert’s pundit stable. Lauer asked weird questions all over, not just these. He asked McCain to run down Mitt Romney’s sons for not serving in the military, asked if Barry Bonds had a tainted home run record, if Don Imus should be allowed back on the radio, and if McCain would steal glimpses at his teenage daughter’s diary or Facebook page. It almost made YouTube snowmen look like better interviewers.

On his national radio show Thursday night, Mark Levin was highlighting an interview on CNN’s American Morning with Senators Dick Durbin and Bobby Casey early on Wednesday. The senators acknowledged military success on the ground – and then shifted into saying the only thing that mattered was political and parliamentary progress. MRC’s Matthew Balan showed me this transcript, and it's worth noting that CNN anchor John Roberts draws out the point that the Dems are acknowledging military success:

ROBERTS: "Certainly, no one is questioning the dedication of the troops. What they are questioning is whether or not the troops are making any progress. Senator Durbin, Brookings Institution scholars Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack were over there recently, wrote an editorial in ‘The New York Times,’ in which they said, yes, there is progress, and the progress is significant enough that U.S. troops should stay on the ground at least until the beginning of 2008. Did you see any of the progress that they were talking about?"

DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: "There were two important parts of this story, the military part as Senator Casey said, where men and women were doing their best and making real progress. We found that today as we went to a forward base, in an area that for, in the fifth year of the war, it's the first time that we're putting troops on the ground to intercept al Qaeda. But I have to tell you there's another side to this story that the Brookings Institution shouldn't miss. As we are seeing military progress, the political scene is very discouraging. We have seen this al Maliki government, which was once branded a government of national unity, coming apart. We see Shias leaving, Sunnis walking out. It’s not the kind of promise that we want, in terms of bringing stability to this country."

ROBERTS: "But hold on. Let me back you up there. You said you did see military progress?"

DURBIN: "Well, what we find is that the surge has troops going into areas, where for four and a half years, we have not seen our military in action. And naturally, they are routing out the al Qaeda in those areas. That's a good thing. But there is no evidence of the government of Iraq in these areas. There are no Iraqi policemen, no Iraqi soldiers. These are Americans."

ROBERTS: "I understand all of that. But Senator Durbin, everybody in the Democratic Party is saying that the surge has failed. Senator Casey, do you agree with your colleague that there are some signs of military progress here?"

BOB CASEY, JR. (D): "Sure, there are, John. And we have said from the beginning that our troops are doing their job. The problem here is that the President of the United States continues to insist on stay the course policy, no change in direction, no sense that the American people can determine that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. That's why I think there's a bipartisan agreement right now to change the course. I think the president should listen to the will of the American people."


Levin said a lot of what the Democrats said was hooey, especially Casey Junior’s insistence that the Democrats have said from the beginning that the troops are doing their job. Their job is to win the peace, and Democrats have never acknowledged that they are doing that.

But the CNN interview was fascinating, because the Democrats admitted military success, and then changed the subject. The media/Democrat complex used to smirk and say President Bush stubbornly ignored the facts on the ground and was not a member of the "reality-based community." Who’s looking stubbornly against facts now as the facts on the ground improve?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2007/08/09/nbcs-matt-lauer-signals-new-line-petraeus-report-iraq-it-doesnt-matter

Strategic patience
Austin Bay
August 10, 2007

According to major media, America's "surge in Iraq" is suddenly working.

In a July 30 op-ed article in the New York Times, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the left-leaning Brookings Institution called Iraq "a war we just might win." A week later, Robert Burns, who covers military issues for the Associated Press, wrote: "The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working. In two weeks of observing the U.S. military on the ground... it's apparent that the war has entered a new phase in its fifth year."

Anthony Cordesman, in an essay titled "The tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq," remains circumspect, warning, "It is important to note in this regard that while Americans are still concerned with finding ways to define 'victory' in Iraq, virtually the entire world already perceives the U.S. as having decisively lost." Perhaps the "rest of the world" relies on U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. Months ago, Mr. Reid declared Iraq a defeat. For the rest of his political career, Mr. Reid will have to live with his declaration.

Is the surge working? Militarily, the surge represents a change in operational emphasis and in tactical employment of U.S. and coalition troops. The United States has increased the "level of presence" in Iraqi neighborhoods. Statistics suggest attacks have declined since April, but short-term statistics are subject to debate.

An observation in Robert Burns' report may be more telling than the numbers: "Commanders [in Iraq] are encouraged by signs that more Iraqis are growing fed up with violence." A sign of war fatigue? Possibly — but murder fatigue is more apt.

In Iraq, al Qaeda and Saddam's remnant supporters spent the last four years murdering Muslims en masse. (As has the Taliban in Afghanistan.) For all the strategic and operational mistakes Washington has made, our tyrant and terrorist enemies' mistakes have been worse. StrategyPage.com, among others, noted in 2004 that while the "murder en masse" strategy seeded fear in Iraq and grabbed international headlines, al Qaeda was paying a huge political price in the Muslim world. In late 2006, several key Sunni tribes in Iraq's Anbar Province began turning on al Qaeda: Its war on America had proved a bigger threat to them.

Mr. Cordesman notes that a number of tribes still align with al Qaeda. Still, there is a trend-line with roots three years deep — and that trend-line has finally become a headline.

According to President Bush's speech in January, development and reconstruction would be key elements of "the surge," with new emphasis placed on provincial reconstruction and improving local and municipal governments.

for the complete artilce

http://washingtontimes.com/article/20070810/COMMENTARY/108100028/1012/COMMENTARY

Now, there is talk about the troops coming home.

The surge is working and the libs will be sulking


Petraeus to suggest cuts
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 16, 2007


BAGHDAD — The top American commander in Iraq said yesterday he is preparing recommendations on troop cuts for an upcoming report to Congress, while Iraqis dug out hundreds of bodies from the worst terrorist massacre since the war began.

Gen. David Petraeus, who returns to Washington next month to deliver the report, predicted U.S. forces would have a smaller presence by next summer.

"We know that the surge has to come to an end. There's no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now," Gen. Petraeus told reporters in Baghdad.

As he spoke, rescuers in northern Iraq used bare hands and shovels yesterday to claw through clay houses shattered by an onslaught of suicide bombings a day earlier that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect. It was the deadliest attack of the Iraq war.

Gen. Petraeus said Tuesday's "horrific and indiscriminate attacks" in the previously peaceful town of Qahataniya near the Syrian border were the work of al Qaeda in Iraq fighters.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070816/FOREIGN/108160079/1001

[actsnoblemartin]

I cant believe the democrats, they should welcome good news, not sabotage, by trying to make a standard they dont believe we can meet.


With all the good news coming out of Iraq, Dems are now backed into a corner. Now they say they need monumental progress in Iraq to give up their surrender plan

[red states rule]

Why would you not believe it? Dems have put their political future in the US losing in Iraq

The last thing they want is for any success or any good news to come out

It makes them look bad and shows how wrong they were about the war