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Well. When they ratified their constitution in November of 2005, that was a huge step towards that. While it still recognized Islam as a "source of legistlation", it did not establish an Islamic state, much less one "controlled by fanatical Islam".



Yes, we are. The only remaining stumbling block is resolving the faction fighting that is going on. Faction fighting that has *increased* after folks like Murtha started calling for withdrawals of US troops. At the time, violence in Iraq was lessening every single day. Had he waited say a year to call for withdrawals, it might have been the right time. By calling for them before the violence had been quelled, he (and everyone who's joined him) has made the situation in Iraq worse and moved us farther from our target goal.


One would almost think that the Democrats don't want us to succeed in Iraq. Because the timing of the pushes for early withdrawal could not have been worse.




When the major "failure" right now is a direct result of the Democrat party's actions, then yeah, I'm going to place blame where it belongs. Don't you find it even a tiny bit strange that Murtha began his calls for withdrawal in the same month that the Iraqi Constitution was ratified? Right when we're on the brink of success, that's when he tosses a wrench into the works...

I don't. It was deliberate. They knew that a success would make the Republicans unbeatable in 2006. By calling for withdrawal early, they could force the situation to get worse, allowing them to call Bush's actions a failure, and give them a chance to win back the house and senate in 2006. Basically, they were willing to thow a war in order to gain political power. The scariest thing is that it worked.

Makes you wonder what they'll do next?

You mean the constitution being used by the inept, powerless government that'd collapse in thirty minutes if the US military wasn't there to prop it up and shows no signs of becoming a lasting power of its own? That one? That's where we were two years ago, Chuckles. I said "closer to". There's also the afore mentioned government, lack of oil profit divisions, the fumbling Iraqi military which hemmorages both soldiers and equipment and couldn't take a McDonald's without major US support and that fact that many of the doctors, educators, engineers, scientists, etc have gotten the fuck out of Dodge but I imagine most of those issues would clear up if everyone magically stopped trying to kill each other. Really?

Iraqi casualties have followed the same basic pattern since the beginning. Graphed, it's a pretty constant rate. Let's blame the Democrats, though!You honestly thought that the presence of an Iraqi constitution was going to somehow change things? Really? You're not just foolin' me? And you're going to blame the subsequent failures in Iraq now on the Democrats? Heh. I guess if you say it enough times...Work at finding the best path towards getting us the hell out, I'd hope.

Strage. You say that, then argue that calls for whithdrawal of US troops isn't what's feeding the recent increase in violence? Funny that...




C'mon Joph. I know you're smarter then that. Tell you what. Take that same graph. Put in into Excell. Plot a trend line (with more then just two points which is what it looks like they did). You'll see something interesting. You'll see the trend going up for the first couple years, then going *down* during 2005, then coming back up in 2006. Heck! Just look at the stupid second graph on that page. Ignore their line, since it's obviously BS (it's a straight line, which means they just drew the line they wanted you to see intead of actually computing it). Look at the high points in 2004. Look at the highs in 2005. Compare the lows. Be objective Joph.

You can see a spike in violence starting around march of 2004 and rising steadily through that year and into 2005. Then in the last half of 2005 and going into early 2006, the violence decreases. Then it picks up again.

Hell. The first clue their trend line is wrong is to look at the amount of white below the trendline in 2005 versus 2004 and 2006. Then look at the amount of grey. It's clear that there *should* be a noticable upward bulge in that line between mar and dec of 2004, followed by a significant valley between jan 2005 and mar 2006, then a big upsweep from there.


Um. Also, I said violence. Your numbers are US casuality rates. Those aren't always exactly going to correspond. I was talking about violence instigated by insurgents against US and Iraqi "government" forces. A significant amount of losses in 2005 were from operations by US and Iraqi forces to take out insurgent groups, not the other way around. Contrasted to the violence we've seen over the last year to a year and a half, which has been increasingly attacks on US forces, and even more attacks by Iraqi's against other Iraqis.

How about you find a chart with the Iraqi citizen death tolls? Wanna see a spike occuring within a few months of Murtha's statement? It's *really* obvious. That's when the factionalized Iraqi on Iraqi fighting started Joph. It's lunacy to argue otherwise.

Huh. I used to think the same about you.How about you do it since you're trying to pass the line that Iraq was on the verge of peace?

Edit: In other news, as I was wandering ye olde intertubes, I learned that Iraq has solved their loss of doctors problem. So I guess I was wrong there, huh?

Edited, May 10th 2007 11:03pm by Jophiel

Since no one bothers to count Iraqi deaths, they just estimate, it would be hard to find a graph.

This site will help in your debate though.

http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

Also in 2005 majority of Iraqis were wishing us to leave. It was also the same year of the Haditha massacre so that might have pissed em off too.

Edited, May 11th 2007 7:08am by Lefian

Edited, May 11th 2007 7:13am by Lefian

Oh come on, I give the warring factions a little more credit than that. If what you say is true, wouldn't they be better served to cease operations until we're satisfied peace has been obtained, resulting in our withdrawal, and then get down to carving out their piece of the pie? I don't doubt that things will get worse for a time if/when we pull out, but we'd sooner have a resolution that way, instead of the slow death by a thousand cuts scenario currently playing out, which will end with us either withdrawing too soon or staying forever. Frankly this is the trouble with changing regimes; there's always going to be a subsequent power grab, all we do by remaining there is delay the inevitable at the cost of our soldiers.

Yes. Of course they would! But that would require knowing that US forces were going to stay until that process was completed.

You're speaking as though all those fighting are one group. They aren't. They represent a number of different factions within Iraq. So, you're sitting in Parliment with your handful of faction buddies, and you see faction B over there building up a militia and bidding it's time until the US forces leave. Now, if you know that the US forces will stay until everyone's adopted the whole diplomatic solution thing and that this militia will never be used against you for that reason, you're fine. But if you start hearing that the US forces will pull out regardless of whether that process is completed, you'll start building your militia in preparation of that day.

And at some point, you might just take a potshot at one of the other factions militias in order to weaken them for when that day occurs. Or maybe fake some intelligence to make them look like insurgents and hand it to the US. Or any of a dozen other methods you might use to try to build up your military strength in preparataion for the day US soldiers leave.


It's a truism in politics that cooperation only works as long as each side believes that they'll get more through cooperation and negotiation then they'll get through violence. The second someone thinks his "side" will do better using a group of armed men to enforce his political ideas, he'll do it. The trick is to convince all the sides that they'll get more by working through a peaceful political process. We were *really* close to that, then Murtha (and others) started opening their mouths and demanding US soldiers withdraw. That seriously undermines the whole process because anyone who hadn't yet bought into the whole "peaceful cooperation" idea is going to be positioned well when US forces leave (cause they've got armed militias and the peaceful guys don't). Once that happens, everyone starts scrambling to build their own militias and we see the kind of problems we've seen for the last year or so.





Only if we leave. If we convince every single faction that we're going to stay as long as needed to finish this, they'll realize that supporting and maintaining a militia wont result in them getting what they want. It'll just get a lot of people killed and might just result in them losing power. Thus, they'll come back to the table (over time) resume talking and dealing with the other factions instead of fighting them on the streets by proxy, and eventually the militias will disolve and we'll be left with exactly the form of government that gives the Iraqi's the best shot at lasting peace and stability.


There's no guarantees of course, but by declaring an intent to withdraw *before* we get all the sides to agree to adopt political solutions instead of violence, we do guarantee failure. Absolutely.

Conversely, by your logic, it makes sense then for the militarily weaker factions to continue attacks on the other groups because that will keep us in Iraq longer, squashing any all-out war with our presence, and allowing them to build their forces till we leave. I'd argue that, but it would be ridiculous, just like it's ridiculous to suggest that the situation is as simplistic as waiting till they tucker themselves out and decide to come to the table.

Whenever we leave, there will be what anyone will agree is a civil war, by any definition. We are not saving any lives, Iraqi or otherwise, by remaining caught in the quagmire, at best we are simply trying to ensure a government is finally installed which is pallatable to us.

If that didn't prove causation, I don't know what does.

Get it through your head -- the government of Iraq is powerless. Inept. A sham government being held together solely by the US presence. "Oh, but then we must stay!" Well, the problem is that they show absolutely no intention of getting their shit together for as long as we're there holding them up. Their military is a joke. Not merely in equipment or training but the simple faction that people come and go from it, it has a massive defection rate and it is funneling arms to the insurgents (except for the insurgents actually in the Iraqi armed forces, taking our training). Without American support, it can't do shit. It sure as hell can't hold the territories turned over to it as has been proven time and again by insurgent attacks upon towns, looted military bases and general unrest. The government is beholden to the very militia and insurgent groups we're trying to stop from killing us. Oh, and let's not forget that we need to try to talk the fledging government of a nation gripped in a civil war out of taking a two month vacation this summer. A two month fucking government vacation in the middle of trying to hold the country together with our blood.

And we respond how? By turning down benchmarks and schedules? By utterly worthless lip service that "our committment is not without end" when Bush has no intention of putting any pressure on the Iraqi government because, if they don't pass muster, he might actually have to pull something away and admit that he fucked up? Even now while the administration claims its open to benchmarks, it stays away from actually, you know, enforcing them with something besides more money to Iraq. Our grand plan right now is to try to hold and maintain a semblance of peace in one single city. Certainly if Baghdad falls, the nation is screwed but holding Baghdad doesn't amount to controlling Iraq any more than holding Kabul has brought Afghanistan under control. And we can't actually leave Baghdad in force if we're to maintain this dream of bringing Iraq under control because then it'll start right back over again where we can afford it least.

Where does it end? Do we just keep quoting "long war" over and over and over for the next five years? Ten years? Just long enough for the next guy to take office so the Republicans can blame him for the occupation and nation building experiment that Bush so completely fucked up? But, yeah, this all must be Murtha's fault! Everything would be roses if it wasn't for Murtha saying we should withdraw!

Christ, you're a tool.

Edited, May 11th 2007 9:09pm by Jophiel

Again. This only makes sense if we assume that the US forces will leave prior to the government of Iraq (and all factions involved) adopting a peaceful and constitutional process for resolving their differences. Because then each faction knows that at some point, their ability to excersize power within the government will be related to the relative size and positioning of their respective militias.

If we assume that US forces *will* stay there until that peaceful and democratic process takes hold, then the weaker factions have no reason to build up militias at all. The stronger ones *might*, but over time lose strength and power as a result (they'll face increasing political pressure to abandon them). That's what we *should* have been doing. That's what we were going to do, until the Dems came along and threw a monkey wrench into the system.



No. This was never a guaranteed situation. It does, however, become more and more likely the longer we continue this process of telling the Iraqi's that "well be leaving someday soon, whether you've stopped this silliness or not!".


My tin-foil hat tells me that this was exactly the result that the Dems wanted and that they choose to make those demands exactly so that the Iraqi government process would fall apart. And in this case, the tin-foil hat doesn't lie! ;)

A good example of Iraq's governemnt being an impotent sham is how easily it was toppled by the words of John Murtha.

How suseptible to that kind of thing was our government when it was going through its various constitutional conventions and still settling all the issues and problems? There were several states that took a long time signing up. The wrong person saying the wrong thing at the wrong time could very easily have resulted in 13 different independant (and potentially warring) states rather then a single "United States" of America.


Again. Maybe if we'd given it a bit of a chance first it might just have worked. Murtha timed his statements specifically to make sure it could not succeed. How can you argue that it would not have succeeded when your golden boy never gave it a chance? Again, we can chart the rate of Iraqi-on-Iraqi attacks directly with the rise of calls by Dems in congress for US troop withdrawal. You can argue that that is a coincidence, but I really don't think so. The logical connection between them is too strong for that to be the case.


I'll ask again: If it's not because of a belief that the US will withdraw their troops then *why* have we seen an increase in this type of violence? What other factor could explain it? There's no other that I can see. If it was a lack of belief in the process entirely, we'd have seen that type of violence increasing *before* the constitution was ratified (heck, it never would have been in the first place). We didn't. We only saw that type of violence really spike up after Murtha made his demands, and we've seen it continue to rise in direct relation to the increase in those calls for withdrawal within our own government.


It's a pretty obvious cause and effect relationship. When will you guys realize that the Dems deliberately did this in order to create a failure that they could blame on Republicans and therefore regain power? It's a despicable tactic IMO.

Edited, May 11th 2007 7:47pm by gbaji