Via Gawker, Bush’s neo-con shithead mouthpiece can’t even remember the year his maladministration launched its ill-begotten, ruinous, bloody quagmire:
Fuck you, you fucking fuck. And so help me dog, if anyone ever speaks favorably of a military “surge” in my presence, I will neck-punch the motherfucker.
In fact, it’s a good thing Coca-Cola discontinued that vile “Surge” soda product it used to sell because the sight of that word on a can at the supermarket might incite me to go on a can-smashing rampage.
c u n d gulag
“Regardless of what anyone thinks of going into Iraq in 2002, it’s a tragedy that the successes of the 2007 surge have been lost & abandoned.”
Regardless?
REGARDLESS!!!!!!!!!
Sh*t, you MFer, I’m NO expert on the Middle East, and I KNEW ENOUGH BACK THEN TO KNOW GOING INTO IRAQ WAS A REALLY BAD F*CKIN’ IDEA!
And so did millions of other people – in the USA, and the world.
But you psychopathic douche-canoe @$$holes wanted your bloody NeoCLOWN Middle East wet-dream of a war!
I wish there really was a Hell, so I could comfort myself that somewhere, sometime, somehow, you miserable, arrogant, and greedy MFers, would get eternal punishment!
But sadly, there is no Hell – unless you count our world as one, as I do.
Your miserable corpses will remain whole.
Not even f*cking worms and insects would want to touch your corrupted corpses.
D58826
I think it’s time for everyone to agree to two basic ground rules when discussing Iraq:
1. The US does not own Iraq
2. For anyone with a plan on what to do in Iraq reread rule number 1
FlipYrWhig
Permanent surge, then? Is he one of these people who wonders why basketball teams don’t play full-court press _all_ the time?
dmsilev
“Regardless”, huh? Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?
BGinCHI
Did Fleischer stop watching Game of Thrones after Joffrey Baratheon was poisoned because he’d lost his favorite character?
inkadu
David Brooks was just on the NPR saying, “There’s plenty of blame to go around. Iraq was making measuring political and military progress and that all started to go downhill in 2011 when Obama pulled out. So, there’s plenty of blame to go around among Bush, Obama and Maliki.”
Good news is that despite the talking head goobery, the public knows it doesn’t want to go back. Even fucking conservatives don’t want to go back. I’ve heard a few interviews where they bitch about the dangers and gripe about obama pulling out and then say they wouldn’t support anything more than air strikes.
inkadu
@FlipYrWhig: And if black boxes survive plane crashes, why don’t they just make the whole plane out of the same stuff?
Chris T.
I think the people who pushed for and hence are responsible for that mess (Wolfowitz etc) should be air-dropped into it now. Anyone who wants to go back into it now can be included as well…
Amir Khalid
Coke had a drink called Surge? Never made it out here, as far as I can recall. Was it any good?
BGinCHI
Fuck David Fucking Asshole Brooks.
You know where the blame needs to go? The fucking op-ed page, you brainless twat.
Corner Stone
The SURGE worked. This can not be denied.
D58826
Obama didn’t ‘pull out’. The Iraqi’s politely showed us the door and suggested it not hit us on the way out
raven
@FlipYrWhig: Some do.
Patrick
Good grief?!!? How the hell can anyone insinuate that the 2007 surge was successful when it requires permanent occupation of Iraq?
Chickamin Slam
I hated Ari Fleischer then and I still hate him years after he left Bush and Co to go head up a think tank and wank off in private. War is one of the few things these people get off on. That and taking away the public safety nets. Fuck them.
gulag cund says he knew the Iraq war was a bad idea. I did too. Of course I was scoffed at for not being patriotic as they sent soldiers overseas to fight the good war only to come back shell shocked or worse, in a body bag. “The price of freedom.” Or some bullshit phrase the neo-cons would pull out of their ass to justify their endless war.
The real tragedy is that Ari and so many of his ilk still walk among us and share their pearls of wisdom on Sunday talk shows.
Suffern ACE
@inkadu: if Obama wasn’t so aloof, Malakwi would have begged for a status of forces agreement and out of love, Obama would have agreed, and both would be popular with their countrymen.
David Koch
Maddow did an incredible job last night smacking down all the neo-cons
http://on.msnbc.com/1nzGPsn
schrodinger's cat
Mission Not Accomplished.
White Trash Liberal
Regardless… As if it’s even remotely fucking possible to separate this outcome from the fact that we illegally invaded and occupied a sovereign nation based on lies… With an ever mounting body count and list of global consequences not the least of which was the collapse of prestige the United States built on the ash of WWII…
Why do these fuckers keep talking? Why? Just so they can rekindle those nightmares that years of therapy have kept at bay? So they can send more of my brothers and sisters out there to kill and be killed and return husks to only be denied treatment by the underfunded system they ignore until it’s politically advantageous?
I want to wake up in a world where these assholes are considered evil and called evil and live with the screams of all the families they have destroyed echoing in their ears even after they die…
I hate them. I hate them
japa21
Still don’t understand the blame Obama rhetoric. I mean, I understand the why of the blame Obama rhetoric, but not the logic.
Obama was dealing with an agreement reached by the Bush administration to pull all troops out. Maliki was quite clear that, unless US troops were subject to Iraq law, he wanted them all gone. Plus, it appears Iran was putting a lot of pressure on him to get rid of all the US troops.
I think Obama would probably have been okay with a 10,000 residual force, but only under certain terms, which he wasn’t getting (and probably was glad Maliki wouldn’t agree).
So, keeping forces there would have required us to ignore the sovereignty of Iraq, basically going to war with the existing Iraqi government.
SatanicPanic
@c u n d gulag: “Regardless” in this situation is “with notably rare exceptions”-level glib.
@dmsilev: beat me to it
schrodinger's cat
Has anyone interviewed Petraues yet? That particular David Brooks piece was really rage inducing.
Patrick
@inkadu:
That is outright fricking BS!! With Obama in charge in 2003, we wouldn’t even have entered this disastrous and costly war. Bush/Cheney/the media and the 66% of all Americans who supported the disaster share the blame. And hell, should shoulder the entire the cost instead of selfishly asking the rest of us pay for THEIR mistake.
Corner Stone
Something I haven’t put together yet. If Saddam secretly shipped all his WMD to Syria ahead of our GWB invasion, then why hasn’t Assad sent them back to Iraq for use against ISIS?
srv
How can Obama win in Iraq if he’s surrendering our own borders? Well, he’ll learn.
We need to get the band back together. Fleischer, Bush, Cheney, Patraeus… they just need a good tune.
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: I thought it was terrible. It was basically water, high fructose corn syrup and citric acid. Bleh! Y’all didn’t miss a thing.
Belafon
I see lots of comparisons to Vietnam. Wouldn’t the fact that Obama got everyone out before these events mean that we explicitly avoided a Vietnam style collapse?
aimai
@japa21: Because yielding to reality is the same as capitulating to the terrorists, obviously. Like when you crash into a wall and need medical treatment? That is also capitulating to terrorism.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: No.
Chris T.
@SatanicPanic: With notably rare exceptions, no one ever dies on any day during their life. Why, my grandfather lived for every single one of his 25,000+ plus days, except for that one!
Betty Cracker
@White Trash Liberal: Word.
Baud
I don’t understand why Ari is so negative about the situation in Iraq. Regardless of what happens now, our invasion:
1) ended Iran’s WMD program and
2) punished Saddam for his role in 9-11.
I mean, that’s why we went in, right?
Patrick
@japa21:
You don’t really think the neons/media and most war supporters really cared one bit about the sovereignty of Iraq, do you? The “liberate Iraq” BS always assumed that their puppet would do whatever Bush told him to do.
jl
People have been down on Ari for apparently getting the year wrong.
But he is a PR hack, and the marketing campaign was rolled out in 2002. In the Fall, when big firms who know what they are doing roll out marketing campaigns.
So, if you people do not understand the simplest things about ginning up a war of choice, I don’t see how you have the right to say anything about it at all. Just like gun control.
/snark tag, in case that is needed here.
japa21
@Corner Stone: I deny it.
Trollhattan
Lord. So, if we’d stayed and surged the son of the uncle of the granddaughter of the second-cousin of the surge, instead of leaving as we actually did, then today we’d have a completely happy, rebuilt Iraq at the cost of zero dollars and zero combat deaths and injuries.
Got it.
Corner Stone
@japa21: You can’t. It’s undeniable.
Don’t make me call El Cid to stop by and forcefully explain to you exactly how undeniable it is.
japa21
@Patrick: Of course “they” didn’t. But they made such a big deal about it that the American people cared about it. And I can guarrantee you that if Obama had said we were staying or whatever, all of a sudden “they” would have cared about it.
Trollhattan
@Baud:
Let’s not forget #3: cementing Iran’s status as the premiere regional power.
Sloegin
Oh noes, our magic surge* fixed everything in Iraq until Obummer wrecked it.
*Never mind all that *2003* to 2007 stuff.
*Except we couldn’t never ever leave ever. Not much of a fix if you can’t walk away from it.
Are we blaming Gerald Ford now for the loss of Vietnam?
SatanicPanic
“Regardless of what anyone thinks of putting shit in a sandwich, it’s a tragedy that the success of my grilling and preparation have been lost and abandoned”
japa21
@Corner Stone: Okay, I’ll undeny it, just to avoid El Cid if nothing else.
inkadu
@Suffern ACE: I hear Michelle Obama told Mrs. Maliki to use less oil in her falafel and that began rift in the US-Iraq relationship that never healed.
David Koch
This tweet is actually very revealing.
They must really being feeling the heat to tacitly concede going to war in the first place was fucked. I can’t recall that happening before.
Violet
@Sloegin:
Of course not. Ford was a Republican. Only Democrats can be blamed for losing wars.
SRW1
Ari Fleischer: We waz stabbed in the back by the November 6 traitor.
kindness
It’s a dream world for all bush43’s cronies.
It’s as if they think they can wipe their Wikipedia page and it will stay that way. This will work on Fox but no place in the ‘real’ world.
Patrick
@Trollhattan:
The idea of this war was beyond stupid, which is why I guess it is not surprising that most Americans fell for it.
Hell, it wasn’t that difficult to figure out that if you destabilize Iraq, then Iran would become much powerful.
schrodinger's cat
I actually missed watching the Mission Accomplished romp live, because I was in the lab. Only me a a South African guy in the lab hadn’t brought into the BS BushCo were peddling. It almost seemed like the entire country was engulfed by a feverish dream.
Betty Cracker
@inkadu: Tee hee.
Trollhattan
@Violet:
Well, Democrats and Walter Cronkite (oops, I forgot the “liberal media” thing).
gogol's wife
@SatanicPanic:
Perfect! Nothing more needs to be said on this topic.
PurpleGirl
@c u n d gulag:
Why don’t you tell us how you REALLY feel?
Excellent rant, as usual.
Tommy
@Patrick: Said perfectly. I have said here and will continue to say I have not served myself. But the military is pretty much my family business. If you get my uncles and cousins behind closed doors, cause they would not say this in public, they are just fucking tried. I recall my cousin deployed for the fourth time about a year ago. He looked me in the eye and said he didn’t want to go. I’d never thought he’d say that. But he did.
schrodinger's cat
What I would like to know is how many of these neo-cons or their progeny actually served in Iraq?
srv
@Belafon: Wait for the videos of helicopters over the Green Zone.
It’s coming.
D58826
@schrodinger’s cat: A paper in Europe has photo shopped the mission accomplished photo by taking Bush out and putting the leader of ISIS in. One image says it all
Iowa Old Lady
I live in a pretty conservative area and no one, NO ONE, thinks Iraq was a good idea. They wish it had been and enjoy saying it’s all Obama’s fault, but they sure wouldn’t spend more money or American lives there.
Also, John McCain always says the same thing. That doesn’t suggest much analysis of a particular situation. Why does anyone treat him seriously?
David Koch
You know how a Jet Fighter desperately tries to elude a heat seeking missile by dropping decoys, hoping the missile’s guidance system will switch it’s focus onto one of the dummies. That’s what the word “surge” is. The missile is coming straight for the bushies and in a last ditch effort they drop the word “surge” hoping to divert the incoming rounds.
SRW1
@Corner Stone:
Because Assad conspired with the Kenyan to have the evidence distroyed as ‘Syrian’ WMD. You didn’t think that red line stuff was serious, did you?
D58826
In searching for one more way to blame Obama, Pravda, I mean Faux news, claimed the Malik was put in power by Obama.
Cacti
The surge was a failure.
Say it loud and say it proud. The surge failed utterly. History will regard everything the Bush administration did in Iraq as a failure.
His place in the James Buchanan wing of the US Presidential pantheon is secured for all time.
Belafon
@D58826: Maybe Cheney conspired with ISIS members to weaken Iraq so that it could be united with Syria.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: They have not. And they don’t understand the toll. My cousin got divorced cause of “war.” What appeared to be a happy marriage, well when you are away for months at a time, shit happens. Just another cost that the “pro war” folks don’t consider. And of course they don’t have to consider it cause they don’t serve.
SatanicPanic
@D58826: err, he’s been in office since 2006. How is FOX claiming that happened?
Botsplainer
So, Betty, honey, we really have to discuss the level of repression of your thoughts and feelings that you engage in. You have to open up and let people know what you really feel sometimes.
inkadu
@Belafon: As my girl, Rachel, pointed out last night, the US had officially left Vietnam in 1973 before the fall of Saigon in 1975. The people hopping onto the helicopters were embassy staff, friendly Vietnamese, and a very small military force.
If ISIS marched into Baghdad today, we’d probably be seeing the same images of panicked evacuation.
Belafon
@D58826: Of course he was. The skin color of the Iraqi people is way too dark for them to have held a proper vote.
FlipYrWhig
@Iowa Old Lady: NewsPeople take John McCain seriously because (1) he told them dirty jokes on the campaign bus in 1999, thereby becoming famous for “straight talk”; (2) did you know he was a POW?
D58826
@SatanicPanic: In foxostan facts are irrelevant.
Cacti
@Belafon:
I see lots of comparisons to Vietnam. Wouldn’t the fact that Obama got everyone out before these events mean that we explicitly avoided a Vietnam style collapse?
I think the most apt comparison is that the Iraqi Army is turning out to be this generation’s ARVN. No matter how much money, equipment, and training you throw at them, you can’t make someone willing to die for a puppet government.
feebog
Gee Ari, if by success you mean more troops dying, then I guess the 2007 surge was a success. We lost 814 men and women in 2006. In 2007 we lost 833. And Corner Stone, you can go blow yourself. The “surge” was nothing more than a massive bribe to the Sunnis. You know, the same guys who are “surging” right now.
Belafon
@inkadu: Thanks for the dates.
Tommy
@Cacti: I watched Democracy Now today. Had video of the Iraqi troops leaving their uniforms in the street. Not only didn’t they fight, they took off their uniforms and left them in the street. This may sound rough but if you won’t fight for your nation don’t ask me to.
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: Newspeople take McCain seriously because he is as unserious as they are. Plus don’t you know that he was POW.
Mike in NC
Poor John McCain was putting the finishing touches on his brilliant plan to invade the Crimean peninsula to drive out the Russians, but now he has to table that in order to craft an even more brilliant plan to re-invade Iraq and seize Baghdad from ISIS. It’s tough being a military genius.
Corner Stone
@feebog:
Your contention is that Gen Petraeus and the SURGE did not effectively tamp down sectarian strife? That the SURGE was a limited, yet highly successful tactic as part of the larger overall strategy to give the US time to train up the Iraqi Army?
Because if it is, then you just sound silly. The SURGE worked.
Cacti
@Tommy:
I watched Democracy Now today. Had video of the Iraqi troops leaving their uniforms in the street. Not only didn’t they fight, they took off their uniforms and left them in the street. This may sound rough but if you won’t fight for your nation don’t ask me to.
More or less.
The neocons are demanding that the US armed forces act as a praetorian guard for a regime that no Iraqi seems too keen on defending.
Suffern ACE
Well I think we can all agree that the Iraqis are very ungrateful.
Patrick
@Corner Stone:
I can only assume you are joking. I guess you have different criteria for success than I do.
BTW – It is funny; people are upset that Obama negotiated with the Taliban, but have no qualms whatsoever that Bush negotiated with the Sunnis.
D58826
IIRC the surge was intended to open a political space for the reintegration of the Sunni’s into the Iraqi government. That of course required compromise on the part of the Shia, which never happened. The right argued that the surge was a success because the level of violence dropped off after the additional American troops arrived. While there might be a small grain of truth to that, there were other more important factors that lead to the decline. Such as the ethnic cleansing of Bagdad left few if any Sunni’s for the Shia death squads to kill. A rather sad marker for ‘success’.
schrodinger's cat
@Suffern ACE: That’s because they don’t value FreeDumb!
Tommy
@Cacti: @Suffern ACE: Or maybe the government the people want is not what we want. Funny thing there.
Grung_e_Gene
“So?” Dick Cheney
Better watch out because the Conservative Media is eager to have Iraq become Obama’s fault just as they’ve turned every George W(orst President Ever) Bush’s fuck-ups into That One’s fault.
Cacti
@D58826:
The surge was tactical success, not a strategic one. Tactics win battles, strategy wins wars.
The surge was a “success” in much the same sense that Robert E. Lee was a “successful” general. He had some rousing victories in individual engagements…in a war that ended with his total surrender.
Trollhattan
@inkadu:
Brings up a question I’ve had for awhile: how many contractors–mercinary types and others–are we continuing to bankroll there? I presume there are thousands at the cost of billions, but don’t actually know.
LookingForACanadian
Completely off topic, but are any Juicers in the Dublin area? I’m here on the last leg of an adventure..
scav
Let us not forget that other John McCain and Mike Pence moment of delayed glory: we probably now should wear flak jackets in Indiana Farmers’ markets just as they did in the Baghdad souk. MIssion Accomplished!
? Martin
Fair to say that the Iraqi army greeted ISIS as liberators?
skyweaver
Stop being an echo chamber for these fuckers. That’s on you, not on them.
schrodinger's cat
@? Martin: Good one!
Corner Stone
@Patrick: Don’t you fucking joke about the SURGE.
Kay
This is my favorite piece about him. It reads like it could be in The Onion.
Corner Stone
@Suffern ACE: Not even a simple “thank you” to GWB. That’s all he wanted.
Disgraceful, if you ask me.
D58826
@Cacti: And even in that context The Son’s of Iraq movement has started 6 months before Bush announced the surge. But the GOP has to give that pig a face lift and that is all they have.:
Eric U.
I doubt I was alone amongst the American public in ignoring the Iraq situation. There may have to be some beat-downs of republicans blaming democrats for this disaster.
Mike in NC
The “Surge” was mainly throwing massive wads of cash at Iraqi tribal leaders until they agreed their guys would stop shooting at our guys.
Corner Stone
@Eric U.:
I can only assume you mean the ongoing medium speed trainwreck that’s currently unfolding?
Violet
@Trollhattan: No one knows how many contractors we’re bankrolling or have bankrolled. It’s part of the lack of accountability strategy of Bush & Co. Rather than send troops that have to be paid and (supposedly) taken care of when they return, send contractors. No one knows how many are there and how much they cost. Win!
raven
Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
Corner Stone
@Trollhattan:
I skimmed through a few reports over the last couple days and it seems that if my finger counting is close, we have about 2500 US people in Iraq between contractors, diplos and 250 +/- troops.
Or, I should say “we did”. They’ve been flying out a big chunk of that number.
SpotWeld
Can anyone show me on the linked chart where that “sucess” is occuring?
http://usiraq.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000671#avgdaily
Ruckus
@japa21:
I see your problem.
Logic.
Making the assumption that conservatives have use of any logical arguments. Nothing they argue for has any basis that could be logically construed. It’s more like someone with raging rabies. They are afflicted with the lack of logic. Among many other other negative things.
Betty Cracker
@skyweaver: Oh bullshit. Wrapping a stupid fuck’s stupid fucking statement in derision and obscenity and holding it up for ridicule is not creating a echo chamber; it’s engaging in criticism of a stupid fucking statement. An echo chamber is an uncritical amplification of a stupid fucking statement. That’s the Washington Post’s job, not mine.
Arclite
Whoa, Betty. Have you been at the Gaffer’s home brew again?
Corner Stone
@SpotWeld: Not a problem. The SURGE worked in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.
Trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Thanks and yeah, I’d guess it’s bug-out time for all but a scant few.
Cris (without an H)
@Corner Stone: Ah, the classics.
raven
@Trollhattan: unass that motherfucker
? Martin
@SpotWeld:
It’s not on that chart. It’s in Dick Cheney’s pants.
Betty Cracker
@Arclite: Not yet, but it’s just about time to go there. I should disable blog access (for myself) until tomorrow. Ta, comrades!
Violet
@SpotWeld: The problem is your chart. It doesn’t include John McCain’s tire swing, nor various Republican phalli typically attended to by the US media. That’s where you’ll find success occurring.
raven
Tet was an overwhelming American Victory.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: Thats about what was reported by Richard Engel the other day. Most being embassy security (which he suggested was so fucking big that it was almost impossible to defend even with those numbers).
Sourmash
@Corner Stone: kidding, right? The surge was merely a beneficiary of fortuitous timing, the ethnic cleansing was more or less complete by the time our guys showed up in force. Look it up.
agorabum
@Corner Stone: Per Petreaus, the Surge was designed to give stability and breathing space in order to allow the various Iraqi factions to reconcile and form a unified state.
They did not. The tactics of the surge succeeded, but the strategy failed. And in the end, all that effort was a failure – but it had the secondary effect of a decrease in violence in Sunni areas (where we, the US, went from fighting Sunni tribes to bribing them, and putting people who had been paid by Al-Queda and rebel groups to kill Americans on our own payroll instead).
So we paid American killers (that is the lost, lamented strategy that Republicans so pine for) to keep things quiet in our own sector. But the goal, the political reconciliation and incorporation of the Sunnis into the Iraqi state, failed (because of other Iraqis and Iranians).
Bribing those same tribes in 2003/2004 would have been far better than bribing them in 2007…
Since the only success of the surge was bribed Sunnis who would not attack Americans, it is far easier to replicate that success by leaving – despite all the chaos in Iraq at the moment, there are zero attacks on US troops there. So we’re still accomplishing the one success of the surge…
liberal
@raven:
My impression is that it was nominally a military victory for the US. It was a political defeat, though, because it so contradicted the view of the war that the US government had been putting out. (It might have also smashed whatever “infrastructure” the US/SVN had with strategic hamlets etc, but I’m not sure about that.)
Villago Delenda Est
Fleisher needs to be shipped to Den Haag and tried as a war criminal accessory.
srv
@? Martin: Looks like a big party to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXIqzL7Kqoo
They even made a parade for them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx62wyur6uo
ellie
I am not feeling charitable today. I hate all of these Bush motherfuckers with the red hot intensity of a thousand suns. They need to shut the fuck up already. I think they have done enough damage to last several lifetimes.
Corner Stone
@Sourmash: I, for one, do not fucking kid about the SURGE.
Fortuitous timing? Give me a fucking break. Gen Petraeus grabbed those small time local fuckers by the throat, and shoved his SURGE right into their sweet spot.
Stop trying to deny what can simply not be denied. The SURGE worked.
reality-based
@Corner Stone:
The “Surge” consisted of the US Military having the brains to bribe the Sunni Chieftains _ the Sons of Iraq, the awakening, etc – not to blow us up.
Since Bust stated that the goal of his “surge” was the formation of a multi-ethnic coalition governement in IRaq, where the rights of all citizens were respcted – -WHICH NEVER HAPPENED- the “surge” accomplished absolutely nothing. .
well. it lowered the body count for a while, so all you fantasists could avoid looking at the reality of what you did in Iraq. It did that. But it did absolutely nothing to create a stable Iraq.
This Civil war was inevitable from the start of Dick and Georges Excellent Adventure. They own this part, too. And so do you, for being so divorced from reality.
liberal
@Cacti:
ARVN was military colossus compared to the ISF. ARVN lost to NVA–1 of the all-time great armies. These guys are getting beat by a bunch of nuts running around in Toyota pickup trucks.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
He was there right from the start:
Corner Stone
@agorabum:
Jesus and the baby Allah. Why do you sorry fuckers give such short shrift to Muqtada al-Sadr?
Not only did the SURGE pacify a restive Sunni population, it also demonstrated to a certain Mahdi Army of Shia that our victory would not be denied.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: AFAIK Allah was never a baby.
JR in WV
@Betty Cracker:
Betty, I really admire anyone who can make a perfectly valid paragraph out of the language’s single most versatile word!
It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s an adverb: “Fuck you, you fuckin fuck!” And so accurate, too!!!
Thanks for Shari?????? whoa, where did that come from…
Corner Stone
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s what they want you to think. You know. They. Them.
reality-based
@SatanicPanic:
you win the internets for the day, my friend
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: You means the ones over there or over here?
The Watcher
No, Ari is right. The WAR started in 2002. The invasion happened in 2003. I noted the war declaration in 2002:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/03/27_iraq.html
Birthmarker
@Mike in NC: IIRC there was one particular Cleric that we “convinced” to stand his people down. It’s actually too painful to google.
@Corner Stone: We built multiple bases in Iraq and a huge embassy. I’ve often wondered if the Embassy was currently occupied by us. I guess it is. The bases I guess are collateral damage to the US taxpayer.
liberal
@JR in WV:
You like that? Check this out, beyotch.
reality-based
@Corner Stone:
Ok, Numbnuts. Here is – direct quotes – what Bush said the “surge” was designed to accomplish.
Care to tell me how much of that pleasant little fantasy actually happened.
Really- those divorced from realit tend not do do well here at BJ –
Suffern ACE
@liberal: yeah. It makes me wonder if this army was too expensive for the Iraqis to maintain. It’s also possible that Maliki didn’t trust an army, in the way that most budding despots don’t trust things that they don’t control. The army is behaving like one where the troops haven’t been paid.
liberal
@The Watcher:
Well…the AUMF wasn’t a proper declaration of war. In Wall Street speak, it was an option that Bush could exercise.
muddy
@Kay:
One of my doctors went to undergrad with Ari and he said he was exactly the same back then, only with hair. He said it was really horrifying in a young person.
SpotWeld
@Corner Stone: Let’s build an analogy. Let’s say you’re playing with lit firecrackers, and you dropped one into a open septic tank. Well, that bungle has caused a huge wave of sewage to start flooding out. You get your family and friends out to start shovling your muck. It’s a losing situation since you’ve apparently knocked out an especially big turd that was keeping the rest of the crap in check.
So, as everyone you know and care about are getting the worst of it you suggest a clever idea. Just drop a well timed fistful of firecrackers into the midst of it. That blast will hold back the tide and you can put a lid on things once and for all.
You dropped your charge, it goes off and the turds stoped flowing for a short instant. Well done the plan worked!
But, darn it, you never checked to see if you had a lid ready to put into place. So as soon as you’ve exhausted your resources the now steaming hot filth is flowing once again. But your plan did work, you keep telling everyone around you.
So, now, as the clean up crew is backing off hoping to get the dregs of the mess off themsevles (and this stink sticks) there’s a big bubble and *blorp* the crap just slpashes all over again and equilibrium in the tank is working itself out.
So.. that big churn at the end there… it’s the fault of the people on the way out for just not being good enough to stem the tide..? or maybe it’s the fault the person who dropped that first firecracker.. maybe it’s the guy who never pulled together a lid?
Dunno. Maybe you should just stop screaming *SURGE*. I’m just going to be over here keeping the matches out of your reach.
Long Tooth
Thad Cochran “joked” about his youthful flirtation with bestiality earlier this afternoon. I’m serious.
Staff Aide: “Jeezuz, you can’t publicly call your opponent a pig fucker”.
Lyndon Johnson: “No, and I don’t have to. I just have to make him deny it”. That’s a paraphrase.
Cochran yesterday or today also claimed ignorance of Cantor’s upset on Tuesday. He claimed he wasn’t kidding.
He’s either suffering a dementia and is seriously ill, or he’s been paid to take a dive.
Jasmine Bleach
@Corner Stone:
It depends how you define “the Surge”. Sure, we increased levels of troops. But at the same time, the US government was effectively paying the militants not to fight anymore, so they backed off.
But regardless whether or not “the Surge” worked, the entire thing failed miserably. Thousands of our people dead for no reason. Tens of thousands of our people injured for no reason. Millions of Iraqis either killed, wounded, or displaced for no reason. Trillions of US dollars wasted for no reason (while our country fell into the Great Recession).
So, how did it “work” again? It didn’t change any of the above, which is a colossal failure.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@SpotWeld: @Jasmine Bleach: It’s Corner Stone; you are being trolled.
Ruckus
@D58826:
What would ever make you think that conservatives wouldn’t think that an ethnic cleansing is a good thing? Getting rid of any group they don’t like would never be considered bad. Why should they consider someone doing exactly what they’d do if they had the chance, to be wrong?
The Pale Scot
@Corner Stone:
Bullshit, What worked was shipping in more pallets of billions of dollars to replace the 8 billion they lost, just lost, as in “where the fuck did it go? And bribing the the various Sunni militias and mullahs with it to act all peaceful like so the conditions in Iraq wouldn’t fuck up the GOP’s 2008 election prospects.
As for the surge of troops, 20,000 troops spread over the contested area comes out to one squad (8 effectives) per sq. mile on a 24 hour basis. Because they’re not shock troops, they are acting as garrison troops. Except that 20,000 includes their logistical tail, motor repair, armorers etc. So make that 6 effectives psm. How many traffic intersections are there in a sq. mi in Bagdad? If you’re going to control an urban area, you need to watch and supervise traffic intersections. So your magnificent surge amounts to 2 effectives on some of the street corners in Bagdad, which if all they need to is call in artillery on the intersections might work, but that isn’t what COIN is about.
Bloody idiot, go back to the Xbox chicken hawk.
Corner Stone
@The Pale Scot: Your sad math is just that – sad.
I don’t have to do anything but point back at the results of the SURGE and they are obvious. Sectarian violence essentially vanished, schools were painted, roads were rebuilt IED free, and the political forces of a self-governing Iraq made significant headway. If Obama had had the internal fortitude of a GWB, or a sunny optimism of a Reagan, we coulkd have had a decent shot at extending the SOFA and keeping this shit bottled while we convinced them to cut out all the bullshit. Sadly, a lack of leadership was evident here.
The simple, elegant truth that the SURGE worked can not be denied. It just can’t.
D58826
Ok, we will give McCain and break and agree with him that the war was won. That all of the objectives Bush listed up-thread had been accomplished. Then why would we need to keep some sizable US military presence in a country after the war is won? Esp. since the Iraqi’s really didn’t want us hanging around after the final victory had been achieved..
note rhetorical question.
Corner Stone
@Jasmine Bleach:
That is the very definition of the SURGE. And clearly, it worked.
The increase of troop levels gave the struggling local pols a chance to take a breather and cut some deals on the rising sectarian violence.
This isn’t hard. We got the Sunni and the Shia together into a room and got them to cut out all the bullshit.
The SURGE worked. Undeniable.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@The Pale Scot:
Aside from the fact that no one deploys troops on a per square mile basis thus rendering your math exercise a non sequitur, you are completely correct that it was the cash that caused the quiet.
Corner Stone
@SpotWeld: You’ve got a lot of feces there, friend. And I guess that’s working for you. Somehow.
But what worked for Iraq? The SURGE. That fucking worked. No way to deny.
D58826
Can we get the money back that went into training these guys.?
ira-NY
Cornerstone:
The surge did not work. The proof is in today’s pudding.
A surge by definition can only be for a limited period of time. It cannot be a permanent condition.
The surge was given more than an adequate period of time to work. When it ended, things quickly reverted to where they were when the surge began and then quickly grew worse. As such, it failed.
The Pale Scot
Ok Corner Stone, after reading the thread it’s obvious that you’re just bullshitting,
But shouldn’t you be on a subreddit bragging about your BMW and all the hot young twinks you’ve fucked?
D58826
@Corner Stone:
The only part of this that was a success is that they did not kill each other in that room. That came later
Corner Stone
@The Pale Scot:
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that you were unable to get that all caps SURGE was the biggest tell since Liberace’s sparkly jackets, or the suggestion that I could not, in fact, fuck all the hot young twinks I cared to.
Corner Stone
@D58826:
President McCain could have got them to cut out all the bullshit. Fournier was proved fucking right!
White Trash Liberal
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/call/docs/09-27/09-27.pdf
Money As A Weapon System, BitcheZ!!
Tasty tasty stuff
The Pale Scot
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Oh sure, my point is there was nothing to attack, it was hold and control, that would have required, according to Gen. Shinseki 250,000 troops, still about 120,000 short to what the “surge” had.
Nobody ever tried to deal with an urban insurgency that didn’t start with rounding up all the capable males in the population and sticking them in a concentration camp. Malaysia, Kenya etc. The USA decided they were going to pacify an urban population by fighting only the “bad guys”, by definition, that means looking for or waiting around ’til the bad guys show up, which means saturation coverage.
The Pale Scot
@Corner Stone: touché
But really dude, there are other places to yank people’s chains, after putting up with morons at work all day, many of us come here hoping to turn our idiot filters off.
The Pale Scot
@Corner Stone: And PS. Many neocons and their baboon followers do type “surge” in all caps, I guess you don’t have nutty relatives, lucky you.
Jasmine Bleach
@Corner Stone:
Wait. So you say the Surge is increasing troop levels, but then turn around two sentences later and say we got the opposing forces in a room and told them to cut it out (essentially, the paying them off part) and that’s what did it?
Make up your mind!
Corner Stone
@Jasmine Bleach: No, I’m saying the SURGE was a troop increase while we used the tactical space to inform the various sectarian forces they needed to cut out all the bullshit. Or else we would use the SURGE to grind them down.
Corner Stone
@The Pale Scot: One of us is clearly in the wrong place.
Corner Stone
@ira-NY:
The SURGE worked. Obama lost Iraq.
West of the Rockies
Come on, repeat in a nasal GWB voice, “We need to stay the course…” (Cuz that worked so well).
mark
I need to move back to my home state of Florida and marry Betty Cracker just for this post alone.
You are SO awesome!
Zifnab25
Someone let Charlie Sheen know he may be in copywrite infringement over his use of the term “Winning!” Fletcher and the Bush, Co boys clearly have prior claim.
Suffern ACE
@mark: “Florida Man seeks Polyandrous Poster”
The Watcher
@liberal: True. But the AUMF was indeed merely a technicality, a fig leaf to cover for Bush’s determination to perform an act of naked aggression. The War on Iraq was a fait accompli by March 2002.
The Watcher
@The Pale Scot: Nice. Did you have a news letter? I’d like to hear more of your ideas….
The Watcher
@Corner Stone: The Game is Up. Cornerstone is DougJ. He gave up himself when he went to ‘the schools have been painted’ schtick.
tybee
you crack me up.
pseudonymous in nc
No, Ari, not regardless.
That is all.
Corner Stone
@The Watcher:
Well, honestly, I gave up a fuckton ago.
But I think you actually meant, “he gave himself up”.
Which is a totes diff thingie.
Corner Stone
@Suffern ACE: I’ve been waiting for her to auction off the cement profile she accidentally created a bit ago.
…what?
Birthmarker
@Corner Stone: Busted…
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/140242-military-surge-iraq-working-weapons-regime-2.html#ixzz34ZvIMYsG
Corner Stone
@Birthmarker: Heck. You got me.
Long Tooth
Technically speaking, Fleischer spoke the truth. The infamous propaganda campaign to stampede the nation into unleashing hell on humanity began with intent in August, 2002.
Corner Stone
@Cris (without an H): Man, life only affords us so many opportunities. Sometimes, we just have to celebrate the man’s whole catalog.
IOW, Heck.
skyweaver
@Betty Cracker: My point is that half the time the stupider stuff I read that the wingnuts say I read on progressive blogs. It’s hearing some batty-ass shit that some neanderthal in a suit says for the conservative side and someone working for sanity pull out a big spotlight and shines it right on it and holler about how stupid it is. Is there a place for mockery? Sure. But sometimes it just feels like adding oxygen to the fire. I just read your post after a day full of this.