Report finds Iraq prospects bleak

[trancepriest]

The Pentagon admits the insurgency in Iraq is growing in both size and sophistication, and as a result, the number of U.S. war dead -- now over 1,025 -- is climbing at a faster rate than any time since major combat ended.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/17/us....tel/index.html

[V. Barbarino]

not good at all, i wonder if they realize letting alsadr and others go was a smart move... time to get the politics out of war, and let the generals mop up these insurgents.

[web_norah]

whatever happened to all this dough spent on intelligence?

[endymion]

Originally Posted by The

... time to get the politics out of war, and let the generals mop up these insurgents.

Killing them is not the hard part. Finding them is the hard part. Since they control entire cities, how would you like the generals to 'mop them up'?

Gee this sure does look more and more like Vietnam every day doesn't it? Or Palestine.

[web_norah]

Vietnam to me.

[pod]

Well, they made the classic blunder, which is to never start a land war in Asia.

[endymion]

Originally Posted by pod

Well, they made the classic blunder, which is to never start a [s]land[/s] war [s]in Asia[/s].

I simplified your post for you Dan.

[mursa]

M E S S !!!!!!

The iraqi security forces are on the defensive and being killed left & right ....How is Iraq going to be safe & stable like this ??!!!?

[pod]

Originally Posted by techjunkie

I simplified your post for you Dan.

It is an obscure movie reference ;D Guess the film and I'll get you a drink.

[endymion]

What's going to happen is the Sunni areas will not be secure enough to hold elections, so any stable and democratic government in the near future will be a Shiite-dominated Iran-style government. That will create friction with the Kurds as the US-backed Shiites continue to kill people in the Sunni areas. That's what I would call an open civil war.

Bush doesn't seem to want people to realize that we will be fighting an Afghanistan-style civil war by proxy, except that this time we'll be supporting the Taliban-style Shiite theocracy instead of fighting it. The only alternative to this scenario would be controlling the Sunni insurgent areas and that just isn't happening. So then how are those Sunnis going to vote in January? They won't and then we will be telling them (with big guns) that they are now pinnned between the Iranians, the Shiites in the South, and the Kurds, and that the Shiites are in control of their government. "Enjoy your democracy!" That's an inherently unstable situation and that's our current best hope that we're pushing so hard for. It's sad.

Before the war Iraq was at least stable and secular and radical Islamists kept their deads low. It will soon be a radical Islamist theocracy with a huge swath of terrorist breeding ground that is not under the control of any government.

So basically what we have is a confirmation of al Zawahiri's video tape from last week. His key points were that the US does not control Afghanistan or Iraq and that we are trapped in a conflict where Americans are killed on a daily basis, and that we are losing over the long term just like the Soviets did in Afghanistan against the Mujahedeen.

Wise leaders choose their battles carefully. It appears to me that the wise leaders in the War On Terror are on the wrong side.