I don't hate Dave Patraeus..Follow

but Christ he's terrible at question and answer. I wish McCain would just run over and fellate him to make watching this worthwhile.

I knew you were gay. Sorry you fell asleep before we could watch Dancing With The Stars last night.

Nexa

Maine Public Radio is streaming this live.

No need to watch. Listen.

I think it's be funny as hell to listen to one guy trying to interview another guy who was servicing him at the time.

**** needs more comedy in general.

I think he was insinuating that Dancing with the Stars was the cause of the sleep effect, erego he is not gay.

But I'm skeptical.

*whoosh even

haha, she's pretty awful, but female republicans confuse us.

Nexa

My rule: If anything I say could be construed as sarcasm, or otherwise facetious, it has a 98.6% chance of being so.

Nexa

My tone-of-voice analysis; it sounds like Petraeus is more deferential to Hilary than he was with others (he sounded downright condescending when answering Scary Sue's questions).

I know most of you want us out of Iraq fairly quickly. I wouldn't mind seeing it myself if it was done correctly. But do you guys think we would be out by now if Bush wouldn't have screwed the pooch and let the generals run the war, not the politicians. (Think after the fact, not that we shouldn't be there in the first place, but how it's been run since we have been there).

I've always been against the war, but I don't think that "getting out failry quickly" is really an option. The Iraqi government has 0 chance on surviving without American back-up. If they fall, and if no one is there to back them up, the people who are gonna take power will probably make Saddam look like a reasonable guy in comparaison. An unstable Iraq would not only destabilise the Middle-east, it could easily turn some bits of Iraq into Afghanistan under the Talibans.

What I'm getting at is that until the Iraqi governement is stronger than the Shia militias, the disenfranchised sunnis and the AQ remnants together, "getting out quick" will only mean "getting back in just as quickly".

Hardly the so called Democracy we established, isn't it?




How is this our problem? Is their Gubbermint after all.

Edited, Apr 8th 2008 12:47pm by Kaelesh

I don't think Al-Sadr is actually that bad. I mean, relatively. If he somehow got in power, the biggest threat would be his potential alliance with Iran. Which, in itself would not necessarily be catastrophic, though it would change the balance of play considerably.

But the election results and democratic institutions in Iraq are only respected because of the US military backing of the governement. The Kurds are only quiet because they have their semi-indepedence, and are protected by the US. The Sunnis might be pissed off at AQ right now, but it doesn't mean they'll happily sit back while the shias dominate the political landscape for the rest of time.

I have no idea who/what would take power, but i don't think there's any doubt the minute the US leave, there will be a power struggle between the factions out of government and those inside it. That struggle is likely to be military, and will eventually involve Iraq's neighbours. Even if someone benign eventually takes power, it'll still cause a lot of instability.

Maybe I'm misunderestimating the respect Iraqis have for democracy, though.