Yup, it’s official. Everyone stop everything….bring the troops home, tell the terrorists that they win because the Washington Post now declares Iraq is in a civil war, not only that, there is no longer any debate on this point because, well, because they say so:
The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops — and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.
The quagmire has become a civil war.
Sigh.
and tens of thousands have been killed from the fighting and criminal activity since the U.S. occupation began.
News flash dummy, hundreds of thousands were killed from the criminal activity inside the Saddam regime.
The violence in Iraq is situated in a few of the 17 provinces inside Iraq but we are to believe, because the WaPo tells us to, that Iraq is now in a civil war…..baloney.
Whats sad is that the liberals desperately want it to become a civil war so they can tell the world that Bush was wrong, they were right. 25 million people be damned. They get to be proved right.
What has been accomplished in Iraq in such a short time frame is nothing short of incredible. Three successful democratic votes have taken place, Iraqi troops are handling military situations on their own in many parts of the country, Saddam is about to pay for his crimes, and 25 million people are now free to decide their own fate.
In 3 years! With so few lives lost.
Yes, I know, close to 3000 American lives have been lost but when you compare that to the numbers killed in one battle during prior wars you will see that this has been a successful campaign to rid the world of a tyrant who threatened our country and its citizens, who supported terrorism and refused to obey a cease fire he signed with us.
And 25 million people are now free to run their lives as they see fit in a Democracy.
Ann Coulter describes what we have accomplished in her book, Godless, when speaking about Murtha’s call for a immediate withdrawal from Iraq:
At that point in the war, the U.S. military had deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. We had found evidence proving that Saddam Hussein was working with Al-Qaeda and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger. Saddam was on trial and his psychopath sons were dead. The American military had captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. The Iraqi people had voted in two free democratic elections already and were one month away from a third vote for a National Assembly. The long-suffering Kurds were free and no longer required 24/7 protection by U.S. fighter jets. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi had voluntarily dismantled his weapons of mass destruction, and Syria had withdrawn from Lebanon. Last but certainly not least, the Marsh Arabs’ wetlands ecosystem in central Iraq that Saddam drained was being restored, so even the Democrats’ war goals in Iraq were being met.
The American military had done all this with just over 2,000 deaths. These deaths are especially painful because they fall on our greatest Americans. Still, we were a lot farther along in the Iraq War then were after the first 2,000 deaths in any other war. There about 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, 400,000 deaths in World War II, and 60,000 deaths in Vietnam – before Walter Cronkite finally threw in the towel and declared victory for North Vietnam.
The Iraqi people will form a successful Democracy. Will it be pretty? No. Neither was ours.
Why is it that Americans need everything instantaneous? Three years after the Revolution our Democracy was not pretty, there were many speed bumps in the road. I am confident that the Iraqi people will figure this out and until then we need to stand behind them. Creating a Democratic state in the middle of dictators is too important a goal to just throw in the towel.
Just today the terrorists sniped at innocent Iraqi’s attending a religious procession:
A religious procession by hundreds of thousands of Shiites in Baghdad was marred Sunday by sniper attacks that killed 20 pilgrims, a tragic reminder of the deep sectarian divisions in a country that many fear is heading toward all-out civil war.
But wait a minute:
The U.S. military has received confirmed reports of five Iraqi civilians killed and is checking reports of about 20 killed, military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said.
And then:
“Iraqi forces reacted immediately to each reported incident, suppressing attacks and detaining several suspects,” he said.
Does that sound like a civil war? No. It sounded like a good military response to some terrorists trying to disrupt a religious ceremony. Guess what, it didn’t succeed:
Still, the main ceremonies at the golden-domed shrine to Imam Moussa Kadhim, one of 12 Shiite saints, continued peacefully.
The Iraqi leaders know that Iraq is not in a civil war:
But Iraq’s Industry Minister Fowzi Hariri refused to accept that a civil war was imminent.
“Sectarian wars happen in Rwanda. That’s not happening in Iraq. The vast majority of the people of Iraq are determined to end up in a national unity country and a government that is for the whole of Iraqis,” Hariri said on CNN’s Late Edition program.
He acknowledged that “certain elements” are trying to destabilize the country and taking advantage of some “gaps” in the security system. “But they will not win,” he asserted.
They must not win. No matter how much the terrorists and the left in this country wills it, they will not win.
Last point. This article was written by Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack. Pollack wrote a book called “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq” in Sept 2002 in which he lays out the reasons why he believes that only the invasion of Iraq is the solution to the problem.
Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack argues that to prevent Saddam from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States has little choice to topple the regime, eradicate its weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild the country as a prosperous and stable society.
Plus he laid out what would be needed to ensure success:
Additionally, Washington must be committed to the postwar reconstruction of Iraq and the establishment of a stable democracy, a task that will require a large occupation force for an extended period as well as a lot of money.
All of which we are doing.
My, how times have changed for this writer huh? The DummiesU mindmeld seems to have worked wonders on his hairdo.
UPDATE
Check out what the Iraqi military accomplished just yesterday:
Iraqi army forces conducted precision raids on three separate objectives in Baghdad on Aug. 18 capturing three death squad leaders, all of whom participated in a massacre of Iraqi families in Al Jihad in July.
As coalition advisers provided support, Iraqi forces captured all three of these individuals in the Al Rasheed district without incident.
The first individual is a senior level insurgent leader believed to be the overall leader and a participant in a July 9 ambush of Iraqi families at a checkpoint in the al Jihad area.
The second individual is another senior level insurgent leader whose cell allegedly established the checkpoint in al Jihad on July 9. He and his cell are also believed to be responsible for kidnappings and murders in two Baghdad districts; improvised explosive device, or IED attacks in the city; and burning and looting local businesses.
The final individual and his cell are alleged participants in the 9 July massacre. His cell is also believed to be responsible for: kidnapping and murdering Iraqi citizens and then attaching the bodies to cars and dragging them through the streets; and conducting IED attacks.
They are trained and now fighting the good fight.
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I’m back, Curt! 😛 I’m going to try this again. I’ve got two things for you. First, I’d like to ask what you guys may consider to be a stupid question. What, in your opinion would constitute a civil war? From what I can gather, the media bases this civil war claim on the fact that there are different groups of people in a particular country killing each other on a daily basis. Do any of you who insist that there is no civil war have any idea how many Iraqis are killed every day by other Iraqis? It just makes me wonder what it would take for you guys to call it a civil war. You sound like the police man from South Park, saying “Move along, nothing to see here!”
Beyond that, what would be the purpose of calling it a civil war? I know, I know. You guys think that the media is “invested in defeat” and that’s a great Limbaugh sound byte, but let’s use our heads here. Let’s not start with a false assumption that those who oppose your views are anti-American. We’ll never accomplish anything that way. I will submit to you that it is entirely possible that the very people that you think despise America are actually just as patriotic as you are, if not even more so, but they have a very different idea about how best to protect our interests and improve our way of life. If we can go forward with this new assumption, we can actually argue about our methods as opposed to pointing fingers and demonizing each other. We need to start with the assumption that we both want what’s best for our country.
With this new assumption in mind, let’s go back to my question at the beginning of the previous paragraph. The purpose of knowing when Iraq is in a civil war is that we wouldn’t belong there anymore if that were the case. This is simply a case of the media calling like they see it (hmmm… a country in which the people are killing each other), and real American patriots wanting to get our soldiers out of a war in which they don’t belong.
My second point is in regards to an interesting quote I found from one of President Bush’s recent press conferences. I know you guys think we had every reason to invade Iraq because Iraq had something to do with 9/11, Iraq had WMDs, and that your unauthenticated “Saddam documents” prove anything about either of these claims. I’ve even heard about how the reason the President hasn’t mentioned all of this wealth of “proof” that Saddam had WMDs is that the President doesn’t “dwell in the past”, or some variation of that lame answer. Well, in this quote, the President himself shot these claims down:
Now, here, the President is given the perfect opportunity to vindicate himself. He’s being specifically asked to. However, he doesn’t. It’s not just that he doesn’t vindicate himself, though. He doesn’t even just avoid the issue or spin it in another direction. He actually denies that Saddam had WMDs. Let me quote that again, just to be sure you get it:
The President doesn’t even believe in your conspiracy theories about how Saddam had WMDs!! He’s admitted that the intelligence was wrong. He’s admitted that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. He’s admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, in spite of all of the insinuating and fear-mongering that his administration engaged in prior to the war. He was given an opportunity to tell us why we invaded Iraq in the first place, and all he says is something about 9/11 teaching us to preempt every threat before it develops. This, by the way, I also find interesting. He admits to being wrong about the WMDs that were used as evidence for going to war. Then, he claims that 9/11 taught him that we should preempt all threats before they materialize. Apparently, he doesn’t realize that he just proved the very problem that exists within his theory of preemption — when you attack prematurely, you run the risk of being wrong about the supposed threat, and thereby attacking unnecessarily. And here we are.
You think Iraq had WMDs. The President doesn’t. Are you not then fighting a lost cause?
In this case, words, or terms, do matter. You are dead right that those who insist that Iraq is in a state of civil war do so because they want to demoralize the American people and thus force a withdrawal.
They do this because to most people, the term “civl war” conjures up the American Civil War, when you had two rival governments, each fielding a regular army.
Nothing of the sort is going on in Iraq. Now, the ethnic/sectarian violence is horrendous. We do stand a chance of losing the country to out-of-control warfare of the sort that occured in Yugoslavia. It is uncertain whether we will win the ongoing “battle for Baghdad”.
But it’s not a civil war no matter how hard the bloviators in the press huff and puff.
Here in Canada, the CTV network frequently reports, “Iraq on the brink of Civil War.” What’s so pathetic about this headline is that they have used it for three years!!! Three years of being on the brink? That’s not on the brink, you lame leftists in the MSM.
God bless the American and Iraqi troops doing the work the world refuses to do!