Chandos the Red
Fri, 13th May '05, 7:00am
It's not been a great kept secret that the war in Iraq has been going poorly. With each passing month it begins to resemble the war in Vietnam - a huge foreign black hole where American blood and treasure has disappeared with no end in sight. Plus, the endless suffering of those having to live in a country that is a dangerous and unsafe for them (understatement here).
There is no real reason to revisit the causes of the war. Or if whether America should be there or not. It would seem that the best course in the ongoing dialogue is to determine how fast we can make a safe exit from a situation that is only draining America of vital manpower and resources, and inflicting terrible suffering on Iraqis.
After two years, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the war in Iraq "was not worth it." And a little over 40 percent still clinging to the idea that all this will someday be worth it. If it shrinks to less than 40 percent that would put it among the hardcore Bush people who would take, and believe anything, their fearful leader tells them, like lemmings casting themselves into the outer darkness, rather than admit that America should have focused on Afghanistan instead - and the admission that the war in Iraq is a bloody, horrid mess.
But after two years the cracks are starting to appear: The media that was the big, mindless cheerleader for the Bush people is finally starting to take a long hard look at the grim reality that is the "new Iraq." And it ain't pretty:
The military and political future of Iraq remains so uncertain that the Pentagon in recent months has gone back to the Vietnam-era practice of citing bodycounts as measures of success. We’re told, for instance, that “as many as 100” insurgent fighters have been killed by the Matador forces. But of course that’s just a guesstimate, while the toll on the Americans and their Iraqi allies is all too concrete. Today alone, the insurgents managed to kill more than 60 would-be Iraqi military recruits and civilian bystanders in urban Iraq. The Americans are drawing lines in the sand, it would seem, while Tikrit and Baghdad are bathed in blood. Meanwhile, the total number of American dead in this war is now more than 1,600. And the Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. troops? Well, we’ll get back to that.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7818807/site/newsweek/
This is a great article and it is a companion piece to one which ran last week. As the media begins to zero in on the reality of Iraq, the cracks in the wall of support that the media has maintained for the Bush people over the last two years may cause the walls to come tumbling down.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7774784/site/newsweek/
Nothing is going the way it was supposed to. Almost as soon as the formation of a new Iraqi government was announced on April 28, suicide bombings began again. By the end of last week, the death toll since then had passed 270. "The elections were held up as a milestone," says Tom Donnelly, a military expert at the think tank most closely aligned with the administration, the American Enterprise Institute. "And politically they were. But as regards the insurgency, they're evidently not particularly relevant at all." Nevertheless, other analysts argue that the surge of attacks reflects a growing sense of desperation among the insurgents. Iraq's Sunni Arabs—even some hard-liners who until recently wanted nothing to do with the U.S.-backed government—have grown increasingly eager to join the political process.
[ May 14, 2005, 01:45: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]
There is no real reason to revisit the causes of the war. Or if whether America should be there or not. It would seem that the best course in the ongoing dialogue is to determine how fast we can make a safe exit from a situation that is only draining America of vital manpower and resources, and inflicting terrible suffering on Iraqis.
After two years, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the war in Iraq "was not worth it." And a little over 40 percent still clinging to the idea that all this will someday be worth it. If it shrinks to less than 40 percent that would put it among the hardcore Bush people who would take, and believe anything, their fearful leader tells them, like lemmings casting themselves into the outer darkness, rather than admit that America should have focused on Afghanistan instead - and the admission that the war in Iraq is a bloody, horrid mess.
But after two years the cracks are starting to appear: The media that was the big, mindless cheerleader for the Bush people is finally starting to take a long hard look at the grim reality that is the "new Iraq." And it ain't pretty:
The military and political future of Iraq remains so uncertain that the Pentagon in recent months has gone back to the Vietnam-era practice of citing bodycounts as measures of success. We’re told, for instance, that “as many as 100” insurgent fighters have been killed by the Matador forces. But of course that’s just a guesstimate, while the toll on the Americans and their Iraqi allies is all too concrete. Today alone, the insurgents managed to kill more than 60 would-be Iraqi military recruits and civilian bystanders in urban Iraq. The Americans are drawing lines in the sand, it would seem, while Tikrit and Baghdad are bathed in blood. Meanwhile, the total number of American dead in this war is now more than 1,600. And the Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. troops? Well, we’ll get back to that.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7818807/site/newsweek/
This is a great article and it is a companion piece to one which ran last week. As the media begins to zero in on the reality of Iraq, the cracks in the wall of support that the media has maintained for the Bush people over the last two years may cause the walls to come tumbling down.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7774784/site/newsweek/
Nothing is going the way it was supposed to. Almost as soon as the formation of a new Iraqi government was announced on April 28, suicide bombings began again. By the end of last week, the death toll since then had passed 270. "The elections were held up as a milestone," says Tom Donnelly, a military expert at the think tank most closely aligned with the administration, the American Enterprise Institute. "And politically they were. But as regards the insurgency, they're evidently not particularly relevant at all." Nevertheless, other analysts argue that the surge of attacks reflects a growing sense of desperation among the insurgents. Iraq's Sunni Arabs—even some hard-liners who until recently wanted nothing to do with the U.S.-backed government—have grown increasingly eager to join the political process.
[ May 14, 2005, 01:45: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]