The Surge is working-------------NOT!!!!!

[Islam Rocks!]

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 20 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Al-Qaida militants commandeered Iraqi army vehicles and then attacked U.S.-backed Sunni fighters in south Baghdad during a fierce gunbattle that left 18 people dead Thursday, police and local Sunnis said.

Later Thursday, mortars or rockets slammed into the U.S.-protected Green Zone — dramatizing warnings by senior American commanders that extremists still pose a threat to Iraq's fragile security despite the downturn in violence.

The gunbattle began before dawn when al-Qaida militants killed three Iraqi soldiers and seized two Humvees in the rural area of Hawr Rijab on the southern rim of the capital, according to a police report.

Militants then drove the Humvees to the nearby headquarters of the local "awakening council" — Sunnis who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq. The assailants opened fire on the headquarters with rifles and machine guns from the Humvees, the report said.

U.S. Kiowa Warrior helicopters joined the fight, blasting a van which was transporting a machine gun and mortar tube, the American military said. An F-16 jet dropped a 500-pound bomb and destroyed the vehicle as al-Qaida broke off the attack, the U.S. said, adding that two insurgents were killed.

The dead included eight members of the U.S.-backed group and seven al-Qaida suspects in addition to the three Iraqi soldiers, according to police and local Sunni leaders.

AP Television News footage showed Iraqi police and soldiers forming a protective cordon around wailing women and children as they loaded wooden coffins onto the cars for funeral processions of those killed.

Shortly before sunset, a series of rockets or mortars crashed into the Green Zone, sending up plumes of smoke into the sky as the sounds of the detonations reverberated through the center of the city.

The attack, the biggest against the Green Zone in weeks, occurred as many Americans were marking the Thanksgiving holiday. Loudspeakers in the Green Zone warned people to "duck and cover" and to stay away from windows.

Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. spokesman, said there were no fatalities but some people were wounded. He refused to give numbers or nationalities.

Northeast of the capital, Iraqi security forces killed 19 al-Qaida in Iraq fighters during a gunfight in a mixed Shiite-Sunni village outside Baqouba, police said. They said two civilians were killed and two others were wounded in the crossfire.

A spokesman for the Iraqi military, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, downplayed the latest violence, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces were gaining the upper hand and "citizens should be patient for a while to achieve positive results."

American officials say attacks have dropped 55 percent nationwide since June. But American military commanders have repeatedly warned that Iraq is by no means stable, even though the violence is declining.

[disrupter]

I say we declare the surge a success & leave immediately,
before it inevitably explodes, . . . . . again.

I don't like to see the Iraqis suffer through civil war,
but i like even the less of having both US forces AND the Iraqi people suffer through the inevitable.

At 3800+ US deaths, 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths, 1.6 Trillion dollars, i think the eventual(?), ever elusive 'success' a bit too rich for my blood.
take the temporary surge 'success' to retrieve our last remnants of sanity & exit quickly & swiftly.

I think one might agree unless one is one of the blood money profiteers or the murder happy psychos who love being an instigating part of any war.

Do you love ex-patriot Halliburton or the USA?

[Frankg]

By SAMEER N. YACOUB, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 20 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Al-Qaida militants commandeered Iraqi army vehicles and then attacked U.S.-backed Sunni fighters in south Baghdad during a fierce gunbattle that left 18 people dead Thursday, police and local Sunnis said.

Later Thursday, mortars or rockets slammed into the U.S.-protected Green Zone — dramatizing warnings by senior American commanders that extremists still pose a threat to Iraq's fragile security despite the downturn in violence.

The gunbattle began before dawn when al-Qaida militants killed three Iraqi soldiers and seized two Humvees in the rural area of Hawr Rijab on the southern rim of the capital, according to a police report.

Militants then drove the Humvees to the nearby headquarters of the local "awakening council" — Sunnis who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq. The assailants opened fire on the headquarters with rifles and machine guns from the Humvees, the report said.

U.S. Kiowa Warrior helicopters joined the fight, blasting a van which was transporting a machine gun and mortar tube, the American military said. An F-16 jet dropped a 500-pound bomb and destroyed the vehicle as al-Qaida broke off the attack, the U.S. said, adding that two insurgents were killed.

The dead included eight members of the U.S.-backed group and seven al-Qaida suspects in addition to the three Iraqi soldiers, according to police and local Sunni leaders.

AP Television News footage showed Iraqi police and soldiers forming a protective cordon around wailing women and children as they loaded wooden coffins onto the cars for funeral processions of those killed.

Shortly before sunset, a series of rockets or mortars crashed into the Green Zone, sending up plumes of smoke into the sky as the sounds of the detonations reverberated through the center of the city.

The attack, the biggest against the Green Zone in weeks, occurred as many Americans were marking the Thanksgiving holiday. Loudspeakers in the Green Zone warned people to "duck and cover" and to stay away from windows.

Maj. Brad Leighton, a U.S. spokesman, said there were no fatalities but some people were wounded. He refused to give numbers or nationalities.

Northeast of the capital, Iraqi security forces killed 19 al-Qaida in Iraq fighters during a gunfight in a mixed Shiite-Sunni village outside Baqouba, police said. They said two civilians were killed and two others were wounded in the crossfire.

A spokesman for the Iraqi military, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, downplayed the latest violence, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces were gaining the upper hand and "citizens should be patient for a while to achieve positive results."

American officials say attacks have dropped 55 percent nationwide since June. But American military commanders have repeatedly warned that Iraq is by no means stable, even though the violence is declining.

gotta link ?

[Islam Rocks!]

gotta link ?It was on Yahoo news page when I logged in earlier.

Also it was on the news on TV.

[Frankg]

It was on Yahoo news page when I logged in earlier.

Also it was on the news on TV.
So just post the link so I can check it out , how hard is that ?

[radioguy]

1 million deaths? Try between 100 and 200 thousand.

Your point was well taken, but there is no need to exagerate the numbers disrupter.

[LadyMod at scam.com]

gotta link ?


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq

[LadyMod at scam.com]

1 million deaths? Try between 100 and 200 thousand.

Your point was well taken, but there is no need to exagerate the numbers disrupter.


Casualties in Iraq

Americans: http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/


Iraqi civilians: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/


He did exaggerate the numbers.

Lady Mod

[Yirmeyahu]

1 million deaths? Try between 100 and 200 thousand.

1 million is not a completely unreasonable estimate. There have only been two scientific surveys investigating the number of deaths resulting from the US invasion.

The first estimated that from March 2003 to September 2004, 100,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the war.

The second estimated that 665,000 Iraqis had been killed from March 2003 to June 2006. There was a low level of confidence that the figure could be as low as 393,000. On the other hand, it could be as high as 943,000.

A year and a half have passed since then, and people have continued to die at a horrible rate.

Your figure of 100 to 200 thousand is certainly far too low.

Casualties in Iraq

Americans: http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/


Iraqi civilians: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/


He did exaggerate the numbers.

The first link is to American military casualties, which is not what was being discussed.

Iraq Body Count keeps track of deaths reported in multiple (three or more, I believe) media accounts. Obviously, not every death is reported by multiple reputable news organizations, if deaths are even reported at all.

The IBC figure is an extremely conservative estimate as a result, an absolute bare minimum figure that is most certainly much too low.

[disrupter]

A scientific sampling that is identical to labor bureau statistical methods was used a year or two ago that had the count at 655,000. [range 450,000 to 900,000]

Not the pentagon, congress's or the Whitehouse's apologetic propaganda.

Cold hard statistical science, not mythology or superstition.

You would think after years [decades?] of government lies American people would get a clue.

you might take a look at my signature.
gullibility anyone?

[Moby]

So just post the link so I can check it out , how hard is that ?
We do post links when quoting others here.

Frank, I'm shocked that you didn't read this. It was on many news agencies and I assumed that you made an effort to stay informed on these issues.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq

[hdmarketing]

But wait, there's more!!!!!

Returnees Find a Capital Transformed

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 23, 2007; A01


BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 -- Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings.

Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq.

Many find a Baghdad they no longer recognize, a city altered by blast walls and sectarian rifts. Under the improved security, Iraqis are gingerly testing how far their new liberties allow them to go. But they are also facing many barriers, geographical and psychological, hardened by violence and mistrust.

Days after she returned from Syria, 23-year-old Melal al-Zubaidi and a friend went to the market on a pleasant night to eat ice cream. It was a short walk, yet unthinkable only a month ago for a woman in the capital. Still, her parents were nervous, and Zubaidi wore a head scarf and an ankle-length skirt to avoid angering Islamic extremists.

The Zubaidis, a Shiite Muslim family, have yet to pass another boundary. When they fled Iraq five months ago, a Sunni family took over their large house in Dora, a sprawling neighborhood in southern Baghdad. When the Zubaidis returned this month, they were too scared to ask the new occupants to leave. So they rented a small apartment in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite district.

"Security is better," said Melal al-Zubaidi, who has a degree in engineering. "But we still have fear inside ourselves."

Over the past two months, the level of nearly every type of violence -- car bombings, assassinations, suicide attacks -- has dropped from earlier this year. The downturn is a result of a confluence of factors: This year, 30,000 U.S. military reinforcements were funneled into Baghdad and other areas. Sunni tribes and insurgents turned against the al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgent group and partnered with U.S. forces to patrol neighborhoods and towns. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, seeking to improve his movement's image, ordered his Mahdi Army militia to freeze operations.

U.N. refugee officials estimate that 45,000 Iraqis returned from Syria last month, while Iraqi officials say 1,000 are arriving each day.

The returnees find a capital that offers greater freedom of movement. Shops are open later in many neighborhoods, and curfews have been reduced.

But those freedoms still come with constraints. Weddings, accompanied by honking cars and lively bands, are reappearing on the streets, but they still end before darkness falls. Visits to relatives and friends across Baghdad are more possible but still hinge on which group or sect controls each neighborhood. Some stores are selling alcohol, but fundamentalists watch for those who breach their codes.

Luay Hashimi, 31, returned to his house in Dora with his wife and three young children last month after fleeing to Syria nine months ago. Since then, 11 other relatives who also had left for Syria -- Sunnis like him -- have come back, too.

Hashimi no longer sees bodies in the street when he opens his front door. Sunni extremists no longer man checkpoints to search his vehicle for alcohol or signs of collaboration with the government or the Americans. Roads are being paved, and municipal workers are sprucing up parks and traffic circles. His patch of Dora is now a fortress, surrounded by tall blast walls that separate entire blocks.

"It's totally secured," said Hashimi, who was an intelligence officer during the government of Saddam Hussein. But a few days ago, he drove across the main highway to another section of Dora. He felt a familiar fear. "You're lost there. You don't know who controls the area, Sunni or Shia, American soldiers or Iraqi security forces. It's still chaotic."

He never drives on side streets, afraid of the unknown. On a recent day, he wanted to visit a Shiite friend in Amil, a district controlled by the Mahdi Army, whom he had not seen in a year. But his friend advised him not to come. Hashimi felt relief. "I'm afraid to go to Shiite areas," he said.

Before Hashimi left Iraq, he used to pick up a friend every day from the mixed enclave of Bayaa and take him to the security firm where they both worked. But during his time in Syria, Shiite militias cleansed Bayaa of Sunnis. "It's impossible for me to go there now," he said.

So he spends most of his days in his once-mixed neighborhood, now a mostly Sunni area. A nearby tea shop is open until 10 p.m., but all other shops close by 7 p.m. Under Hussein, they used to be open past midnight. The walled-off streets have squeezed the pool of customers. Electricity, Hashimi said, is still scarce.

Kareem Sadi Haadi, a civil engineer, did not want to return to Baghdad. Nor did most of the Iraqis he knew in Syria. He and his family had escaped there five months after the U.S. invasion. But he ran out of money after two failed attempts to smuggle his family to Europe. Two weeks ago, they returned to Karrada, the mostly Shiite district where the family once lived.

Today, they live in a rented apartment with furniture given to them by relatives. Haadi said he is shocked by Baghdad's metamorphosis -- the checkpoints, road closings, traffic jams, razor wire on buildings, and the blast walls.

"Baghdad feels like a military base," said Haadi, 48, a Sunni. "Safety without these barriers is real safety."

Although he has been back in the capital for two weeks, he has not yet seen his sister who lives in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Alam, controlled by the Mahdi Army. She warned him that any stranger would be killed.

"Security is when I can get in my car at 10 p.m. and drive to see my sister," Haadi said.

Four days ago, gunmen kidnapped a man outside the house of Haadi's in-laws, also in Karrada.

"We don't go outside Karrada," said his wife, Anwar Mahdi, 43. "Now I am afraid to go to my parents."

As soon as they can save enough money, Haadi said, they hope to go back to Damascus. That could prove difficult. Syria now allows only Iraqis with special visas to enter.

Melal al-Zubaidi is optimistic. When she fled to Syria, she was terrified to drive through Anbar province, where Sunni militants were pulling Shiites from buses and killing them. This time, the bus drove throughout the night.

"That comforted me," Zubaidi said. "I expect that security will improve day by day. People are tired of conflict."

Still, she has lines that she is not yet willing to cross. She has not visited her old university, fearing car bombs or kidnappings. In a nation where neighbors are often as close as relatives, Zubaidi is wary of trusting people in her community. "We're still afraid to meet new people," she said. "This district is still strange for me. . . . I don't want to take risks."

She wonders when, or if, her family will return to Dora. Their old neighbors, all Sunnis, had phoned her parents, urging them to return. But they also told them that they were scared to ask the Sunni family to vacate their house.

"People are saying Dora is better, but we're still afraid to go," Zubaidi said. "We don't know that family's background."

Her mother, who once ran a preschool in Dora, is worried over one of their former neighbors there. He encouraged them to leave their house because they were Shiites. And now he says he has a friend who wants to rent her preschool, now shuttered. He insists the area is too dangerous for the family to return.

"He is always terrifying us. He told us there's always a storm after the calm," said Um Melal, which means mother of Melal, who said she feared having her name published. "We are suspicious. We can't go back, although other Sunnis are telling us to come back, and saying, 'We'll protect you.' "

She said the improved security was not the only reason for returning to Iraq. She wanted to pick up her pension payments as well as winter clothes the family had stored away. Their Syrian residency permit has not expired.

"The situation is much better, but it still feels soft, unsteady," Um Melal said. "Until now, we have not made a final decision to go back or stay. We're waiting to see what happens.

"I expect Baghdad will come back sooner or later," she continued. "But that needs time. If you want to build a wall, it takes you 10 days. But if you want to demolish the wall, it takes you 10 minutes."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201568_pf.html

It's not over, but i sure is better now than it was:p

[disrupter]

better can be a VERY temporary condition.

I am quite sure this is quite temporary unless you are going to hoc all of the USA for generations to come with more irresponsible deficit spending.

What kind of legacy is it to rob your children & grandchildren to maybe improve conditions in Iraq?

How much more will the wicked Washington criminal elite rob you of with emotionally igniting words?

I say enough is enough.

If the surge has worked that means we can leave,

immediately.

[Yirmeyahu]

What kind of legacy is it to rob your children & grandchildren to maybe improve conditions in Iraq?

What kind of legacy is it to have created the conditions in Iraq that require improving to begin with?

[disrupter]

Well it wasn't nirvana to begin with, but at least it was ordered.

I agree the invasion was a mistake.

I unlike many don't have a guilt complex that would hold me there.
Iraq is up to Iraqis.
The fact that they have not taken whatever advantage we may [or may not] have provided to reconcile their society is their possible missed opportunity.

The USA has no obligation to make up for centuries long & old ethnic divisions.
this is a problem that is recurrent around the globe.
I unlike others do not expect godhood from the US.

We say, oops, omg, fuck, did we make a mistake, now we are leaving,
do you have any last requests before we go?
If Iraqis en masse suddenly realize this is their last best hope of avoiding bitter civil war & want to construct a working society/government or divide the nation along ethnic divisions/borders i would at least listen to their suggestions, but if it isn't getting anywhere, & currently it isn't, the USA is packing bags & heading back home.

Sorry i am mostly guilt immune.
The universe has no 'moral' or ethical paradigm.
I am rational, i will listen, but i won't listen to irrational nonsense.
Give a rational proposition & one can rationally consider it.
Play the guilt card & i laugh wickedly & gleefully while i burn you alive.

[Yirmeyahu]

The U.S. should withdraw immediately and promise to pay reparations once the Iraqi people have worked together to create a new Iraqi government representative of the diverse interests of the Iraqi people. That's not to put a condition upon reparations, merely a guarantee that reparations payments will not be squandered or used for means which serve to create more division and violence.

[disrupter]

Iraq is an oil rich nation.
the US is NOT responsible for its lack of innate ability to get itself organized into some kind of civil, workable, government(s).

screw reparations.

the whole problem is the US is trying to live the Iraqis lives [government] for them. We need to get the hell out of the way & let them work/hash it out for themselves.

the US didn't create centuries of ethnic divisions & by god we aren't paying for it either.

We are leaving, if they have some rational proposals prior to that to suggest we will listen.
and guilt is not rational.
pedal that bullshit to the gullible.

[Yirmeyahu]

Iraq is an oil rich nation.
the US is NOT responsible for its lack of innate ability to get itself organized into some kind of civil, workable, government(s).

screw reparations.

The US is responsible for its own actions, which include instituting draconian sanctions for 12 years resulting in massive malnutrition and disease amongst Iraqis, and the deaths of half a million children, while strengthening the Hussein regime, bombing Iraq and destroying its civilian infrastructure, and waging a war of aggression resulting in not only widespread desruction of infrastructure but also resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the spread of chaos and violence and terrorism.

Reparations are the bare minimum required by even the most fundamental sense of moral and legal principles.

[disrupter]

If the US were the sole source of those detriments then it would be something to consider.

But these are all multi-point source problems & the US ALONE footing the bill for complex world situations is obscenely unfair, immoral & undermines the legal system.

I have no absurd notions about morality or guilt.

Ethical honest, rational dealings matter, divorced of the spin, tweak & vendetta of 'morality'.

Granted some of the infrastructure was destroyed by US actions,
but much of it was done by divisive Iraqi factions themselves.
If you can get a reasonably accurate listing of the particular destruction by US actions or at least a verifiable fraction that we likely caused it is probably actionable. Keep in mind that Saddam let much of the infrastructure degrade in favor of palaces, prior to any US actions.

The US unleashed the chaos that resulted in the deaths of million, but the US was only directly responsible in a very small fractions of those deaths. Most of those were again caused by Internal strife of Iraqis against other Iraqis, for political, criminal & other reasons.

Saddam, the leader that Iraqis let lead them, for whatever reason, chose to spend billions on palaces rather than feeding his own people.
That is not the US's responsibility or fault.

If Iraqis can not be held accountable to one another, then certainly no one else should be expected to.

How much do you blame Iraqis for allowing things to happen?
How is it that the US is 'responsible' & Iraqis are 'blameless'?

Your sense of vengeful 'victimhood' is showing.

In the end it is up to Iraqis to make or break Iraq or whatever potential political organization it has.
If they won't do it then everything in the Universe can not do it for them.
If they can do it they have a great deal of natural oil wealth to utilize.

Vindictive, ownerous reparations for WWI were a large part of what pushed Germany into the hands of the NAZIs.
Before we get excessively vindictive we should keep that in mind.

If you want to get back at the ones who profited from this war i suggest you file suit against Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater & the other profiteers.

With that i have no problem, i in fact would encourage it & cheer it on.
Too many corporations getting away with murder across the globe.

The US people got nothing good from this reckless fiasco.

George Bush is a war criminal for authorizing torture, file suit against him, Cheney, Rumsfeld, & Gonzales.

[Yirmeyahu]

disrupter,

The US is responsible for its own actions and owes reparations to the Iraqi people on account of what they have suffered as a result of US actions.

I've never said the US owes Iraqis for anything other than what the US is responsible for, reparations for damages caused by the US.

Again, that is the bare minimum required by even the most fundamental moral and legal principles.

Granted some of the infrastructure was destroyed by US actions,
but much of it was done by divisive Iraqi factions themselves.

The infrastructure of Iraq was virtually destroyed by the US between the Gulf War and the present one.

The US unleashed the chaos that resulted in the deaths of million, but the US was only directly responsible in a very small fractions of those deaths.

When you unleash chaos that results in the deaths of so many, then you are directly responsible for those deaths.

[Yirmeyahu]

We should stop spending billions in order to create more chaos, violence, and destruction and spend those billions making reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage we've done to their country.