More Iraq "Talk"

60 Minutes aired a story about Iraq-war veterans that are against the war. However, as Mudville reports, at least one of the soldiers hasn't even been to Iraq.

Speaking of fumbles, the Washington Post reported today how Representative Jack Murtha has already "botched" his own Iraq plan. Yes, the same Murtha who was caught on tape in 1980, soliciting bribes from Arab Sheiks. (I hated to do it, but that last bit was from Ann Coulter)

OpEd News asks Why not state the plain facts about the genocide in Iraq? And boldly states:

Usually sub-contractors get paid for their work, but the ever shockingly stupid W has us paying in both the bloodshed of our US military and in our treasure for the gruesome task of slaughtering Iraqi Sunnis.

I suppose someone should come to the aid of the Sunnis, eh? After all, they only have al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, and 80% of the Arab world behind them.

The author calls Iraqi Shiites "mere stooges for the hated by all Iranians, to have power in Iraq."

I suppose someone should come to the aid of the Iranians, lord knows they've been victimized an awful lot lately.

The author also writes:

The US soldiers are also losers in this and know it as "Several U.S. soldiers, some of whom have grappled repeatedly with the question of Sadr during their second or third tours in Iraq, blamed politics for the failure to enter Sadr City full-force and said it had been a mistake not to move against Sadr previously.

Why not state the plain facts about the genocide in Iraq? The US is contributing to the genocide of the Sunnis in Iraq. The Islamic world knows it and consequentially sympathy and identification for the jihadists is increasing. W's stupid policies regarding GWOT are perpetuating GWOT.

Curiously, the author doesn't equivocally state that we should pull out of Iraq, although he calls it an "illegal war." He must be a good dancer.

Thankfully, at least one politician is calling a spade a spade. Joseph Lieberman (I) Connecticut, writes in his Opinion piece today in the Wall Street Journal:

Two months into the 110th Congress, Washington has never been more bitterly divided over our mission in Iraq. The Senate and House of Representatives are bracing for parliamentary trench warfare--trapped in an escalating dynamic of division and confrontation that will neither resolve the tough challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation against its terrorist enemies around the world.

What is remarkable about this state of affairs in Washington is just how removed it is from what is actually happening in Iraq. There, the battle of Baghdad is now under way. A new commander, Gen. David Petraeus, has taken command, having been confirmed by the Senate, 81-0, just a few weeks ago. And a new strategy is being put into action, with thousands of additional American soldiers streaming into the Iraqi capital.

If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts. For the first time in the Iraqi capital, the focus of the U.S. military is not just training indigenous forces or chasing down insurgents, but ensuring basic security--meaning an end, at last, to the large-scale sectarian slaughter and ethnic cleansing that has paralyzed Iraq for the past year.

But the fact is that we are in a different place in Iraq today from even just a month ago--with a new strategy, a new commander, and more troops on the ground. We are now in a stronger position to ensure basic security--and with that, we are in a stronger position to marginalize the extremists and strengthen the moderates; a stronger position to foster the economic activity that will drain the insurgency and militias of public support; and a stronger position to press the Iraqi government to make the tough decisions that everyone acknowledges are necessary for progress.

Unfortunately, for many congressional opponents of the war, none of this seems to matter. As the battle of Baghdad just gets underway, they have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq, declaring their intention to put an end to the mission before we have had the time to see whether our new plan will work.

There is of course a direct and straightforward way that Congress could end the war, consistent with its authority under the Constitution: by cutting off funds. Yet this option is not being proposed. Critics of the war instead are planning to constrain and squeeze the current strategy and troops by a thousand cuts and conditions. Among the specific ideas under consideration are to tangle up the deployment of requested reinforcements by imposing certain "readiness" standards, and to redraft the congressional authorization for the war, apparently in such a way that Congress will assume the role of commander in chief and dictate when, where and against whom U.S. troops can fight.

In fact, halting the current security operation at midpoint, as virtually all of the congressional proposals seek to do, would have devastating consequences. It would put thousands of American troops already deployed in the heart of Baghdad in even greater danger--forced to choose between trying to hold their position without the required reinforcements or, more likely, abandoning them outright. A precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake, which terrorists, insurgents, militias and Iran would rush to fill--probably resulting in a spiral of ethnic cleansing and slaughter on a scale as yet unseen in Iraq.

I appeal to my colleagues in Congress to step back and think carefully about what to do next. Instead of undermining Gen. Petraeus before he has been in Iraq for even a month, let us give him and his troops the time and support they need to succeed.

We are at a critical moment in Iraq--at the beginning of a key battle, in the midst of a war that is irretrievably bound up in an even bigger, global struggle against the totalitarian ideology of radical Islamism. However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America's cause--the cause of freedom--which we abandon at our peril.

That's one Senator with a pragmatic view. One Senator who held to his convictions amidst a devastating betrayal by his own party in the last election. One Senator with a positive outlook, one that will serve to inspire us, rather than play against are insecurity and fear.