Ohh gnoes, not 3000 dead.

What a bunch of sissy boys. Back in the day 3000 was the casualty rate per battle. Man up you liberal kool aid drinkers.

Isn't this douche paid to report the news, not to interpret it.

/Shields up captain!

If there were a rational reason for Iraq, not a sinkhole of money lives and credibility, perhaps it'd be worth it.

By the way, active service members were polled. Only 35 percent approve of Bush's handling of the war. 42 percent disapprove.

The US has now been in Iraq longer than we were in WWII. For what?

A clandestine video of the hanging showed Saddam was taunted by some present at the execution with chants of ”Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada” in the last moments of his life.

The chants were a reference to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who runs one of the deadliest religious militias in Iraq and is a major power behind the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had pushed for Saddam to be hanged before the year was out.

Isn't this douche paid to report the news, not to interpret it.

You mean like, say...Bill O'Reilly?

If 3000 isn't a big enough number for you, consider that for every American serviceman killed, another 15 Iraqis are killed.

You do the math -- that enough death for ya?

They are the enemy after all. I am not one for killing civilians children or any one. I am all for killing insurgents and terrorists though. Is being politically correct and a paltry 3000 lives out of billions on earth really worth more then the safety our your family and nation?

You seem to be confusing Iraq with al Qaeda.
A common ailment on your side of the aisle, it seems.

a paltry 3000 lives out of billions on earth

If I'm not mistaken, it was the death of 3000 "paltry lives" that started all of this, no?

Who is the Kool Aid drinker? Saddam had nothing to do with 911. Iraq is breeding insurgents and making the world less safe.

Transcript of Olbermann's Commentary

BTW - Iraq has cost nearly a half trillion dollars.

Worst. President. Ever.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Oh good, this is going to be one of those kinds of threads. [Calling Quantum Mushroom]

3,000 paltry lives, hmm yes - imagine lining up everyone in a small town in America (including your family) - placing them in a gymnasium and filling it with Sarin gas. We'll put you on the other side of a glass window so you can be a witness to this trifle, this insignificant little blip on the radar of the world. Would you like a crossword puzzle to do while you wait?

There's nothing paltry about causing the violent death of one human being - let alone 3,000.

archchef's a victim of Republican authoritarianism -- they're specifically trained not to question authority, and no amount of logical arguments are going to dent his obedience.

What's disturbing is the black and white ("them") thinking.. politics, international relations, realpolitik is all shades of gray. Not the "with us or against us" of dubya's cowboy persona. Being ignorant and arrogant is a good way to make enemies.

archchef, you don't seem to understand the nature of this conflict. This isn't world war 2 where the other enemy is clearly wearing a different uniform. The resistance now is blending in with civilians, using guerrilla tactics. US forces are not just fighting terrorists, they are fighting ordinary people who see this as a violation of their land. The addition of actual terrorists makes this even worse.

This is exactly the replay of events when the UK attacked Egypt over the Suez Canal, only that was resolved in days rather then years, by now this is the longest US engagement since World War 2. The resistance is the same faced by US forces in Vietnam, home forces fighting for their land, politicians at the time saw that as a part of the cold war when in reality it was a civil war.

The only way to win was through diplomacy and cooperation, instead now we are simply radicalizing an entire region against the US. Many question why Iran is so hostile, well of course they would be after the CIA implanted a Shah of Iran when Iran wanted to nationalize it's oil supply, which lead to the Islamic revolution. The CIA itself stated that the way events played out in Iran there will be considerable "blow-back" against the US. Cuba, as Castro said 'flushed it's toilets' on the US after the Bay of Pigs.

No administration thinks about the implications of their actions down the line, only thinking of objectives that are short term like 4 years. This has to change. But clearly modern history is not an important subject these days.

On a more VS-specific note, different tags on this, having something to do with Olbermann, Countdown, and/or his special comments, would probably help make it more searchable.

Don't forget how we got into this mess ("Bring 'em on"). The very definition of a modern major chickenhawk.

Yes, sending more troops is probably the only sane policy. I'll get back to the probably a little later.

Why? Because the Middle East is the most strategic region in the world today; in other words it's not South East Asia. We have so many vested interests and long standing allies in the region, that even if the entire United States rallied around the idea of ending US involvement in the Middle East, it would still be several decades before our interests could be disentangled. The point is that if Iraq completely flys apart we will still have to deal with the consequences of a failed state; it is not as if we can just pull out and forget about the disaster that is Iraq. What happens there will continue to affect us even after we leave.

What could be potential consequences of a withdrawal? The Iraqi National Government has basically no authority outside of the green zone of Baghdad. What authority it has there is very tenuous. The reason the government hasn't completely collapsed is because of the support of two groups: the Americans, and the Shiite militias. American support of the government is able to keep the influence of the Shiite militias to a controlled level (although the Saddam execution video would suggest that we are increasingly no longer able to keep such influence controlled). If we withdraw all support of the government however, so that "the Iraqi's can do what they ought to be doing for themselves", we will leave behind a power vacuum that will almost certainly be filled by organizations like Moqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. If the Shiite Militias are able to get control of the government we can almost be assured of "ethnic cleansing" of the minority Sunni, and possibly Kurd, population by the majority Shiites. Even if we are so anxious to end involvement in Iraq that we are willing to accept such a humanitarian disaster as an outcome, we have to consider the repercussions of leaving what will likely amount to genocide in our wake. Namely, Iraq's Sunni neighbors (like Egypt) will unlikely be willing to watch fellow Sunnis be slaughtered. An intervention by Sunni states will almost certainly provoke a response by Shiite Iran to protect Shiite interests in Iraq. As you can probably see, a regional war is a very distinct possible outcome of Iraq completely coming apart. That would cause a huge humanitarian crisis in the region and would provoke economic disruption around the world (given that the global economy needs Middle Eastern oil to run). Such a war would serve no one's interests, and it is in fact in everyone's interest to try to prevent it.

Why isn't what we're doing now working? The strategy applied up until now, the light footprint approach, clearly has not worked. The idea behind such an approach was that we limit our presence so as to minimize the appearance of an occupation, and therefore limit violence against the occupying forces. Simultaneously we train up Iraqi security forces and build up an Iraqi government so that they can take over control of the country and we can stand down. Meanwhile reconstruction money is funneled in to rebuild the economy. The problem with that strategy is that we were never able to establish a baseline of security to allow political and economic developments to occur. With out a relatively stable political authority, newly trained security forces will not serve the Iraqi state but will instead serve their sectarian interests, which is exactly what has happened. Without economic development, angry young men have no jobs and the only opportunity they have is to fight. As violence escalates, retaliations occur and a feedback loop of increasing violence and political disintegration occurs. If we allow this feedback loop to operate much longer the situation will spin completely out of anyone's control and even worse disaster will be the only result.

Are their any potential alternatives? The only sane policy that I can see is an escalation of American forces on the order of 100,000-150,000. If we do so we can finally have enough soldiers on the ground to establish security in the key neighborhoods of Baghdad and other important cities. If their is a rifle squad patrolling the same few block of the same neighborhood everyday, you can bet that insurgent and sectarian activity in those few blocks will decrease markedly. It is only once we establish that level of security that any sort of political or economic development can occur, and only political and economic development will stabilize Iraq and the region. To arrest the feedback loop of violence and political disintegration, we need to establish security, and we can only establish security with a major increase in the troop level in country. In other words, we need a classic counterinsurgency policy.

Such a drastic raise in troop levels sparks the question as to how we will sustain such levels for the 18 months to 2 years that would be necessary. Obviously we will need to expand the size of the military and to do so we will need to raise taxes and cut social spending. In other words we need to start acting as if we are at war and make the necessary sacrifices. Sacrifices suck, but not only are the consequences of Iraq disintegrating worth stopping, it is also the honorable thing to do because we are after all the cause for this current mess.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that this is probably the only sane policy. I say probably because it is based off the assumption that there are still enough people in Iraq who want a stable Iraqi state. If however the man on the street can only think of killing the people that killed his brother, then we have probably crossed the point of no return and it's best to just cut our losses, get out and then hope for the best with the shitstorm that will result. If my assumption is correct then I think we can still make this work, if in fact the Iraqi people have reached a point where revenge is their only motivation than we are too late.

"realpolitik is all shades of gray. "

Not really. Unless you mean that morality plays very little role but that doesn't seem to be what your suggesting. Realpolitik is the notion that states have interests and it is the job of statesmen to advance the interests of the state however possible. States that oppose your state's interests are an adversary, those that help to further your interests are an ally. Thus, realpolitik is very much a black and white affair.

No One Reads Comments This Far Down...

Yes, they do (you did) :-)

i do too!

Interesting points raised by scottishmartialarts however as of mid-November 2006, there were already approximately 152,000 US troops deployed to Iraq. So the large force presence you mention is already there. <ahref="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat.htm">Global Security source.

I would agree on most of what you raise had it not been the current administration that carried out the tasks. One of the biggest reasons for escalation of insurgent forces and destabilization factors was the disbanding of the entire Iraq army, giving extremist groups unemployed soldiers. It has proven time and time again that it doesn't know how to deal with the problem.

Every week the war costs the tax payer 2 billion dollars and more lives lost. American strategic influence in the Middle East is already assured through the military presence in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Strategic objectives at further cost to the debt ridden US economy? Low political support from the population?

The same reasoning you raised scottishmartialarts was raised during Vietnam, because the administration kept seeing it as part of the Cold War and not the civil war that it was. I remember reading the same arguments 'American strategic presence in South East Asia is important to keeping the communist menace at bay'.

A person who thinks 3000 people dead is nothing much, is not only a complete idiot, he's also a bad human being and person.
Even 1 person dead is bad enough. Unfortunately people like you are the reason people actually get killed.
And I for once would like to think that human life is more valued today than when a battle a day would kill the same number of people as a war during several years.
But then again, I'm sure you don't like to think that, because people like you put money and political agendas (and even religious one) over other peoples well-being.

I meant an additional 100-150 thousand soldiers on top of what is already there for a total of 250-300 thousand. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

As for your second point, the same argumentation may have been used erroneously during the Vietnam War but of course we were dealing with very different circumstances. That nothing much bad happened as a result of South Vietnam falling to communism does not mean that nothing particularly bad will happen if Iraq becomes a failed state. Again, at the very, very least we will have a enormous humanitarian crisis, disruption of the global energy market, a PR victory for organizations like Al-Qaeda and a huge loss of face (which is vital for the conduct of international affairs). An escalation of the sectarian strife to all out genocide is highly likely. A regional war that could destabilize the regimes of our allies is also a serious possibility. The list goes on. I understand your point that in the past people have feared horrible consequences that never came to pass, but that does not mean however we can assume that our fears won't come to pass with regards to Iraq. In fact I would characterize that assumption as highly wishful thinking.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like nothing more than to be able to end involvement with this debacle. The invasion was clearly the biggest strategic blunder in American foreign policy in the last 100 years, if not the in our entire history. I'd even go so far as to say this was a completely pointless exercise in hubris. That said, we need to be thinking about how to minimize our losses and I am not convinced that withdrawal while there is still an opportunity to create a stable (although probably not free) state is the best way to cut our losses. On the contrary I think the costs of the consequences of such a withdrawal will far out weigh the price that would be paid now to finally provide a baseline of security in Baghdad.

"Even 1 person dead is bad enough. Unfortunately people like you are the reason people actually get killed."

You're making an assumption that peace is the natural state of affairs among men. Such an assumption could only be born if having been raised in the affluence and security of the West. A cursory look at the natural world shows how far wrong that assumption is. Scarce resources has lead to conflict among and within animal species since the beginning of life on Earth. Obviously as human beings we are capable of rising above the state of nature, but that is not the point. The point is that conflict is the natural state of the world and it's only through tremendous effort that we are able to rise above such conflict and create peace. A study of history shows how frequently we are unable to keep that peace together.

One of the prime functions of civil society is to provide security, in other words peace. The maintenance of peace requires that decisions be made. Those decisions however are not always between right and wrong. Most often they are between wrong and wrong, and it is the job of a society's rulers to try to pick the least wrong decision. Often times war, and the sacrifices it entails is the only realistic option to maintain peace in the long term. This takes nothing away from the wrongness of war or the tragedy of the loss of human life (however a study of ancient Greek literature would suggest that it is human life itself that is tragedy, not the loss of it), however sometimes a tragic, wrong decision is the only one that will make a better tomorrow.

Let's admit that both conflicts suffer from a distinct lack of understanding of the situation on the ground. Being South East Asia and Iraq. Bush Snr. knew this back in 1991, and halted at the border of Kuwait. Overthrowing Saddam then would have been easier but would still lead to the Sunni, Shiite and Kurd problems we see today in Iraq.

Actively sending more troops into the region would only make the arab population think that this is a larger scale invasion force. It doesn't help that mentions of going after Syria and Iran were at least alluded to by the administration to the press. This would only make Sunni, Shiite, terrorist resistance join together against the foreign invader that is the US. Iran could step in and again we have a worse situation then before.

Furthermore blanket force increases would not translate to a increased security baseline as you mention, this is a different war then the US army has been training for. It would only become even more entrenched and we'd have the equivalent of what the Russians faces against the Chechen rebels. The larger force presence would just mean the population would feel even more like its American imperialism. The Vietnam war could have been won by the US by further drafts and increases in forces, but it would have cost America alot of credibility internationally as a gung-ho state.

I think the disadvantages of sending more troops are just as bad as the disadvantages of pulling out. There needs to be a radical change in the way the administration deals with it, concessions will have to be made internationally. If it becomes a humanitarian crisis then it's easier to drag the rest of the UN in, with the US. Disruption of oil markets? I don't think so considering the supply has been stable since the war has began, the price movements being only speculative on possible supply shortages.

It's clear that going at it alone would only make the US suffer more.

And Empire, wake up to the real world from your Disney world reality. We can all make normative statements that this good and that is bad but clearly that is not what drives real world events, ++ for Scotishmartialart's comment.

great comments from both scottishmartialarts and farhad.

How about the partitioning of Iraq as a stopgap?

I wasn't too warm to this idea a few years ago, but it strikes me as a more attractive approach to more effectively use the troops already deployed. Bush no longer has the political capital to push through a heavy footprint, and Rumsfeld's work has severely kneecapped the military in this regard.

here's Pelosi's take

*waronterror

Adding video to channels (Waronterror) - requested by MarineGunrock.