Iraq's security 'remarkably better'

Bongulator said:

I don't think we should pat ourselves on the back too hard. It's more of a shared victory. Without the Sunni Awakening, the violence would still be as widespread as it ever was. It's the combination of the Awakening and our troops that have provided the stability we've seen lately. Which had more effect? I'd tend to think the Awakening, since there are far more Sunnis than there are US troops *and* they're Iraqis so they blend in, and probably find out more than we ever could alone.

But yay, I'm glad things are going great in Iraq! Because we need those troops to fight in Afghanistan. And hopefully some of our soldiers will get some well-deserved rest before they all go nuts from PTSD.

Click to expand...

Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

And as our troops took the fight to the enemy, Senator Obama tried to cut off funding for them. He was one of only 14 senators to vote against the emergency funding in May 2007 that supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would choose to lose in Iraq in hopes of winning in Afghanistan. But had his position been adopted, we would have lost both wars.

Three weeks after Senator Obama voted to deny funding for our troops in the field, General Ray Odierno launched the first major combat operations of the surge. Senator Obama declared defeat one month later: "My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now." His assessment was popular at the time. But it couldn't have been more wrong. - John McCain

Click to expand...

ccodiane said:

Without the surge there would have been no Sunni awakening......but that, the surge, shouldn't have happened, remember?

Click to expand...

tipsgnob said:

we will not if the surge worked until we go back to pre-surge levels...

Click to expand...

Bongulator said:

We can't lose. It's impossible for us to lose no matter what we do or don't do. Why? Because nobody has defined what 'victory' means. That means we can't ever win either, of course, but at least we can't lose. We could pull every troop out tomorrow, Iraq could explode into chaos and violence, and we still wouldn't have lost, because nobody knows what 'losing' and 'winning' even means. Our Commander in Chief hasn't told anyone what victory means (which is one of the most important aspects of his job), so until he does, we're stuck in limbo while our soldiers die and our capital evaporates.

Click to expand...

Bongulator said:

I'd love black and white. Victory means this. Defeat means that. Unfortunately, Bush does indeed like his shades of grey, so he keeps us in limbo. Didn't know he was a liberal though. Neat!

Click to expand...

Bongulator said:

I'd love black and white. Victory means this. Defeat means that. Unfortunately, Bush does indeed like his shades of grey, so he keeps us in limbo. Didn't know he was a liberal though. Neat!

Click to expand...

Johnnyorganic said:

George W. Bush is a liberal.

He's a free-spending, big government liberal who never saw an earmark he didn't like.

Click to expand...