And you believe you can take out the leadership of the Baath without destroying the central government in Iraq, right. One reason I talk things over with you Steve, is because I know your position doesn’t make sense. The more you describe your position to me, the more I understand why it doesn’t make sense.

This gives context to when you, steve, said “bingo” to Neo about taking out Sadr. You wanted to take out Sadr in a way that never existed back at the time and never would exist because of Arab politics. Neo wanted Sadr gone, through any means necessary or appropriate. Difference.

Not only Bush is the one who likes to get other people to do their dirty work, but you also agree with him whether you know it or not. Bush wants to get the Iraqis to handle the terroists for him. You want the Iraqis to handle eye sores like Sadr for you. Interesting how Bush’s policy failed, but you seem to think yours will succede.

You have no idea what you are going to do with these troops, because you give almost zero time to talking about it.

Your quote interestingly goes from Pace to some anonymous source. As if they were both the same. Interesting.

All it really proves is that things change in war, but the position of the more troops squad never has. Consistency is an interesting phenomenon in war, because in most cases it is lethal.

There’s a good argument to be made for more troops now because the politicians and military generals have allowed things to go into melt down mode, made from blackfive. But all I hear is some refrain of troops, troops, more troops. Unpersuasive.

Well, then I guess we should do whatever we can to placate them, right? And not just them, but the Sunnis too. Why not try to keep the Iranians from “turning on us” too (any more than they already have)? Maybe we should hand over Israel to them — do you think that would that keep them from “turning on us”?

Yeah, I thought so.

For everyone else, this is an illustration of how terror works — it creates the creeping and finally paralyzing fear that if we do or don’t do this, that or the other, if we fail in any of countless ways to placate “them”, then millions upon tens of millions will “turn on us”, and then there’s “no hope”. In fact, for people so paralyzed, there’s already no hope — apart, if they’re lucky, from conversion. Such people simply wallow in a confused morass of fear, anxiety and resentment (the resentment being at those who won’t simply join them in their stampede).

Furthermore:

1. The lives of Iranians don’t matter more than the lives of Iraqis, Israelis and Americans — reasonable people will support the steps necessary to end Iranian support for the killers in Iraq, and to end Iranian threats against Israel and America.

2. I’m quite serious about talking to Iran and Syria while we’re bombing them — which we should keep up until they give credible evidence that they have ceased to support bombings in Iraq, and ceased to threaten ourselves and our allies. If they can talk while bombing, so can we.

3. “They might even do something”?? OMG!! But I thought Europe, especially, was a hotbed of the “No blood for oil!” crowd!? In any case, if they want to “do something” that would, among a good many other things, assure long term stability of their oil supplies, let them join us in finally coming down with real force on the Iranian regime that is busy fostering terrorists and threatening its neighbors.

4. You’ve got both your facts and your morality wrong — we’re not indiscriminately killing Iraqis, but we have an absolute right to kill those who are killing us, either directly or through proxies.

Faced with that situation in al-Anbar, and the desperate need to control Iraq’s capital, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace is considering turning al-Anbar over to Iraqi security forces and moving U.S. troops from there into Baghdad.

“If we are not going to do a better job doing what we are doing out [in al-Anbar], what’s the point of having them out there?” said a senior military official.

Exactly.

BTW, the article also mentions reinforcing Iraq with “as many” as _18 K_ additional troops for no more than six months. So: we are down to our last 18 K troops for no more than six months. We do not have enough troops.

So you were one of those who wanted to talk about the Fallujah guys and the Sadr guys, right, back in 2005?

Syria and Iran were involved in Fallujah? Tell me all about it.

Sadr should have been taken out in 2004, by the Iraqi police and army that we never should have disbanded. We destroyed the central goverment in Iraq. We never should have done that.

We can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. We should stop with the stupid patrols that are getting our young men and women killed, redeploy to strategic locations within Iraq, and let them fight it out. It ain’t our fight anymore.

Now, we might be able to control Iraq with half a million troops, as General Shinseki said in 2003, but we don’t have that many available. We are already stretched paper-thin just accomplishing what little order maintenance we have.

Bombing Iran — beyond any other considerations — will certainly make Iraq uncontrollable for the US.

Might we get around this by increasing our armed forces (ground forces) by a factor of 2 or 3, as I have long advocated? Yes, and that’s why I am for it. Precisely for cases such as this.

Furthermore:

1. Yes, the American people will not support the bombing you forecast. I doubt you or people on your side will be able to persuade the American people to endorse such bombing by saying that the lives of the perhaps hundreds of K Iranians who will die “don’t matter”. But give it your best shot.

2. Well, if you aren’t serious about talking to the Iranians and Syrians, then why bother saying so. Why don’t you just bomb them until you get tired. Let me know what kind of metrics you are following when you finally decide to stop.

3. Iran is a major source of oil to Europe, and to Southeast and East Asia. I would imagine that Europe, India, and China would all have something to say about our bombing of Iran. They might even do something. Maybe at that point we will have to threaten to bomb them, too. I mean why not.

4. “And bombing those who are bombing us IS what’s right.” No one is bombing us. Right now, Iraqis are killing each other, and killing Americans when we get in the way. We have the right to go after people in Iraq who are trying to kill us, sure. We do not have the right to indiscriminately kill Iraqis, and we do not have the right to bomb third countries.

You seem to have forgotten that this was an elective war. We invaded another country because we were afraid that the tyrant (Saddam) would enable WMD distribution. Okay, we toppled Saddam, and we defused the non-existent WMD threat. When you invade another country you have certain obligations and responsbilities. That is why we are still there. But we can’t take it out on the Iraqis if they don’t want us there. It would take hubris to the nth degree to expect a people to want to be occupied.

This why all of the Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan analogies break down. Those countries were defeated and occupied because they were waging aggressive war on their neighbors, and had occupied them. They in turn were defeated and occupied to prevent them from ever waging offensive war again. That is NOT why we are in Iraq. Our occupation of Iraq was incidental to the Saddam/WMD threat.

Again, we held the Japanese and German people collectively responsible for the aggressive wars of their leaders. That is why we were able to bomb their cities. We can’t

This magical movie phenomenon… interesting to say the least.

So you were one of those who wanted to talk about the Fallujah guys and the Sadr guys, right, back in 2005?