Iraqi, and our, interests are not being advanced as W and his stooges mouth Rove's propaganda that only our dimmest red staters believe!

::::::::

What has been the result of all of our lost youths' lives and all of the money we've "expletive deleted" pissed away in Iraq? US' interests are hurt by the end result in "Operation Iraqi Freedom"-even though we were told it was "Mission Accomplished"! Think this out and the conclusion is Iraqi, and our interests, are not being advanced by "Operation Iraqi Freedom"! Remember the northern and southern "no fly zones" in Iraq? Isn't some state approximating that what this mess seems to be devolving into? The big "Mission Accomplished" area in Iraq is the Sunnis revolting against al-queda in Iraq. The article "Sunni Forces Losing Patience With U.S.-Citing Lack of Support, Frustrated Iraqi Volunteers Are Abandoning Posts" at click here was summarized by the Slate Magazine article "Virtual fence delayed for at least three years; Bernanke hints at more cuts in interest rates." at http://www.slate.com/id/2185353/ which describes that "the increasing frustration of the predominantly Sunni forces in Iraq is leading many of them to abandon their posts. They endured accidental killing of several members of the Awakening forces by U.S. soldiers, late payments, and low salaries. They aren't getting their fair share of resources. When they complain their words are wasted even though they're continually facing more threats. If their frustrations continue to increase, many are concerned the fighters will once again join the insurgency, which could easily dismantle all the progress that has been made in recent months." The article "Sunni Forces Losing Patience With U.S." states "U.S.-backed Sunni volunteer forces, which have played a vital role in reducing violence in Iraq, are increasingly frustrated with the American military and the Iraqi government over what they see as a lack of recognition of their growing political clout and insufficient U.S. support. Since Feb. 8, thousands of fighters in restive Diyala province have left their posts in order to pressure the government and its American backers to replace the province's Shiite police chief. On Wednesday, their leaders warned that they would disband completely if their demands were not met. In Babil province, south of Baghdad, fighters have refused to man their checkpoints after U.S. soldiers killed several comrades in mid-February in circumstances that remain in dispute. Some force leaders and ground commanders also reject a U.S.-initiated plan that they say offers too few Sunni fighters the opportunity to join Iraq's army and police, and warn that low salaries and late payments are pushing experienced members to quit." In the past two months, he said, 20 of his fighters have quit. Many felt their monthly salary was no longer worth the risk of fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq. His men also have not received their salaries in two months, he said. "We'll all be patient for another two months. If nothing changes, then we'll suspend and quit," Rafah Kassim, 37, an Awakening leader said. "Then we'll go back to fighting the Americans." Basic Marxist economic determinism meets big bro 43's warped reality and the common old struggle for a buck wins. These terrorists-otherwise known as Sunni Awakening forces, who are now being paid to kill other terrorists will go back to killing US infidels if the US occupiers don't pay them enough. They have wives and children, who are being shown how Daddy makes a living by killing people, but no one would ever accept a job offer until he sees who pays the most. "The predominantly Sunni Awakening forces, referred to by the U.S. military as the Sons of Iraq or Concerned Local Citizens, are made up mostly of former insurgents who have turned against extremists because of their harsh tactics and interpretation of Islam. The U.S. military pays many fighters roughly $10 a day to guard and patrol their areas. Thousands more unpaid volunteers have joined out of tribal and regional fealties. U.S. efforts to manage this fast-growing movement of about 80,000 armed men are still largely effective, but in some key areas the control is fraying. The tensions are the most serious since the Awakening was launched in Anbar province in late 2006, according to Iraqi officials, U.S. commanders and 20 Awakening leaders across Iraq. Some U.S. military officials say they are growing concerned that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has infiltrated Awakening forces in some areas. "Now, there is no cooperation with the Americans," said Haider Mustafa al-Kaisy, an Awakening commander in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, an insurgent stronghold that U.S. and Iraqi forces are still struggling to control. "We have stopped fighting al-Qaeda." Think about "al-Qaeda in Iraq has infiltrated Awakening forces in some areas". It is just like how Mahdi "Death Squad" members infiltrated Shiite security forces. 43 realized this was "a dangerous country in a dangerous part of the world". Why did he have to get us stuck there? He brought al-Qaeda in Iraq to Iraq as they never were there before "Operation Iraqi Freedom"! US forces have inadvertently killed members of the Sunni Awakening forces, and are not giving them weapons they need-so is that any way to treat an ally? U.S. military officials and commanders say they are seeking to defuse the rising tensions before hard-won U.S. gains are jeopardized. "Despite some of the frustrations, the frictions and the attacks on the Sons of Iraq, they are continuing to volunteer. As an interim solution, it seems to be working well," said Col. Bill Buckner, a senior U.S. military spokesman. "It's clear Iraq remains a fragile security environment. We want to address many of their concerns as best as we can, so that they continue to be part of the solution to the security situation in Iraq." Who are we fighting? Who is fighting us? Lt. Col. Ricardo Love, commander of the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment said "AQI and JAM will take advantage of the situation," using military abbreviations for al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, the country's largest Shiite militia, which is loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr." You are damned if let them in or not as "Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said recruiting too many Awakening fighters would allow al-Qaeda in Iraq to infiltrate the security forces, in much the same way Shiite militias have. But Sunni leaders warn that without the Awakening's help in securing the country, Iraq's future will be grim. "You need these people," said Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni. "What sort of risk are you going to take if this 100 percent is stripped to 20? We cannot afford to lose all this success, which is paid by the blood of the people." Remember the benchmarks? Having elections was part of those, but that isn't going to happen. The article "Iraqi Leaders Veto Law on Elections" at click here describes that "Iraqi government leaders on Wednesday rejected a law requiring nationwide elections by the fall, sidetracking a measure that U.S. officials consider a key benchmark for political reconciliation in Iraq. Parliament passed the legislation two weeks ago. The veto by Iraq's presidency council was an unexpected setback. Lawmakers will now have to reconsider the measure, which they agreed to only as part of a three-law package reached after weeks of political wrangling. The dispute became so divisive that some called for the dissolution of parliament.... The legislation was vetoed because of the opposition of Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite vice president who sits on the three-member presidency council, according to his aides and other lawmakers. The council must approve all laws unanimously. Abdul Mahdi's aides said he believed the law was unconstitutional and would put too much control in the hands of the central government instead of the provinces. "We need a law that will dismantle the centralization and make Iraq a federal government with power to the governors and provincial councils," said Hamid al-Saedi, a lawmaker who, like Abdul Mahdi, belongs to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the largest Shiite party in parliament. Passage of the law, which delineated the scope of provincial powers, was considered a crucial step not just because it fleshed out the constitution's definition of Iraq as a federal state, but because it would have required provincial elections to be held by Oct. 1. The last nationwide elections took place in 2005." Every sect is afraid that the other sect would gain and that the most vicious Iraqis of all would gain the most. "The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, for example, now controls much of the local government in southern Iraq. But if elections were held, it might lose many of those positions to the movement of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which did not take part in the last provincial contests. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the powerful Sunni party led by Hashimi, might lose power to new Sunni politicians affiliated with the U.S.-backed Awakening movement that began in the western province of Anbar. "Everyone says that they are all for provincial elections, but there is a lot of foot-dragging going on here," said one Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to damage relationships with his Iraqi counterparts. "I think a lot of these politicians would be happy if elections never took place." Big bro 43's stooges were parroting his remarks about bottom-up successes in Iraq-such as local elections! It isn't going to happen! The 20% non-Arabic Kurds are making oil deals without Baghdad's consent and are feared and loathed by the remaining 80% of Arabic Iraq. Sadr has recently renewed a cease fire, but that can always be revoked. Recently Sunni al-queda in Iraq massacred upwards of 40 Shiites in a religious gathering, which will hasten Sadr's "Death Squads" reappearance. The article "In Mosul, a Hopeful Partnership-U.S. Is Betting Iraqi Forces Can Take Lead Against Insurgents" at click here depicts all of the false hopes that big bro 43 surrounded himself with. The US forces deferred the actual urban guerrilla warfare to the Iraqis as "But instead of storming the buildings themselves, standard procedure for them over the past five years, the American soldiers deferred on this night to their partners. Dozens of Iraqi soldiers jumped down to the pavement and searched 22 buildings as the Americans watched from their vehicles. No weapons were found, and the soldiers drove back unharmed. "It cuts down on the danger to American forces," said Sgt. Christopher Sherman. "It's nice to have some people helping us kick in doors." With just 2,000 American soldiers to patrol a city of 1.8 million people-the Iraqi Sunni insurgency's most formidable urban stronghold-the U.S. military strategy in Mosul relies to an unprecedented degree on the Iraqi security forces. U.S. military officials here say there will be nothing like the "surge" of thousands of American troops that helped ease the fighting in Baghdad and no major effort to search for insurgents block by block. Instead, they are betting that 18,200 Iraqi soldiers and police can shoulder the load against the kaleidoscope of insurgent groups fighting in the city." The Iraqi force has fears as "But some Iraqi soldiers say they have neither the manpower nor the equipment to defeat the insurgency in Mosul, where violence has increased over the past six months. As of mid-February, there were 80 attacks a week, a quarter of which killed or wounded people." Also, this Kurdish dominant force doesn't sit well with the Sunnis in Mosul. It is like having a force of Hatfields protecting the McCoys multiplied by 1000 percent as these sects in Iraq have been practicing genocide against each other for centuries. "Mosul's ethnic composition poses unique challenges for the Iraqi security forces. Sunni Arabs constitute four-fifths of the population, and there is little of the sectarian violence that has caused so much bloodshed elsewhere in the country. But many residents are openly hostile to the Iraqi army forces, whose leadership in Mosul is predominantly Kurdish, viewing them as a force for Kurdish encroachment. The insurgent violence here is focused almost entirely on Iraqi and U.S. security forces. Since the new American regiment arrived in Mosul in November, its troops have encountered hundreds of roadside bombs, according to U.S. military officials." Elsewhere in the war ravaged land the violence is reserved for the area's residents. Here they want to kill the Kurdish forces and the hated infidel occupiers from the US. Thanks big bro 43! "Iraqi army battalion commander Col. Dildar Jamil Dosky lives with his soldiers at a new outpost on the western bank of the Tigris River. His men have occupied the abandoned, bullet-scarred hulk of the Mosul Hotel, where shattered glass is scattered across the lobby and machine guns are mounted on the roof. American soldiers call this side of the city the "wild west," and Dosky's men endure regular sniper fire and rocket-propelled grenade, mortar and roadside bomb attacks. Dosky's 520 men have just 18 armored vehicles, and 11 of them are broken; some lie in a field below the hotel, half-cannibalized for spare parts." People whose country is undergoing an occupation by foreign forces usually hate foreign forces. It is no different here and the Kurds get that and worse as "The eight casualties the Iraqi battalion has suffered in its first 50 days in Mosul are more than it suffered in the whole of a seven-month tour in southwestern Baghdad last year. During that time, the soldiers, most of whom are Kurds, felt like impartial arbiters in the war between Sunnis and Shiites. In Baghdad last October, Dosky helped negotiate a pioneering neighborhood reconciliation pact between rival factions. His unit's welcome in Mosul has been much colder. "Now they hate us more than the Americans," Dosky said. "They think we are American agents . . . that we are not officially army, that we are not serving our country, just Kurdistan." The distrust among local residents limits the Iraqi soldiers' ability to collect intelligence about the insurgents they are fighting. The thousands of armed Sunnis who aligned with American soldiers and provided so much information about the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in other parts of the country have failed to materialize in Mosul. Dosky said taking control of the city would require at least two new Iraqi army divisions." Everything that big bro 43 touches impacts it with the reverse "Midas touch". What he touches dies rather than turning into gold. "The partnership between the two armies can also pose problems for the Iraqi soldiers, who are being pushed into dangerous missions without the firepower the U.S. military has at its disposal. On one treacherous stretch of road, known as Route Porsche, insurgents plant roadside bombs nearly every night, so the Iraqi soldiers have begun to maintain a checkpoint there. A pattern of violence has become apparent at the checkpoint: The Iraqis come under attack about 15 minutes after the U.S. soldiers come by to check on them. On Feb. 16, insurgents fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the exposed soldiers after the U.S. patrol left.... "They don't like it when we come here," Lt. John Parlee, 23, a platoon leader, said of the Iraqi soldiers. "What happens is, when the bad guys see our trucks here, afterwards they attack the Iraqis." But the checkpoint provides a needed service for the American soldiers. "Until we set this TCP in here, they'd lay IEDs here every night," said Lt. Sion Edwards, another platoon leader, using the military abbreviations for traffic control point and improvised explosive device. "You couldn't really travel on this road." The American commanders in Mosul said their approach takes into account the lessons of previous U.S. offensives, in which soldiers flooded a violent area only to find that their targets had fled or were indistinguishable from other civilians. The Americans are relying on the Iraqi army to develop intelligence that will lead to specific raids to capture individual insurgents. "You can't just bring in the whole United States Army and go room to room of the entire city and then leave," said Maj. Thomas Feltey, the executive officer of a U.S. squadron in Mosul. "The bad guys will wait. We don't know who they are." In Mosul the lessons learned while bringing the "Awakening" forces into the battle haven't worked. In Mosul the security forces are the hated Kurds who can't get good intelligence because the Sunnis there hate them. The military has had enough of big bro 43. The article "US generals 'will quit' if Bush orders Iran attack" at click here states "SOME of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack. "There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran," a source with close ties to British intelligence said. "There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible." The article "Maliki boasts of reconciliation 'success'" at click here shows the symbiotic relationship between big bro 43 and his Iraqi stooge. It states "PRIME Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Iraq has achieved success in national reconciliation and eliminated sectarian strife. "The terrorists wanted to tear apart Iraq... destroy its unity. They wanted sectarian strife and a civil war but with your hands you banished the spectre of civil war," Mr Maliki said overnight in a speech at a Shiite religious ceremony in the central shrine city of Karbala. "Through the awareness of the people we succeeded on the ground. Thank God, national reconciliation among Iraqis has succeeded. We have succeeded in eliminating sectarianism." Herr Karl must have written that for him! Big bro 43's "Turd Blossom" has put all of the words into W's mouth, including lies about the surge being another "Mission Accomplished"!. The fact is that, as the headline suggests "No, the surge is not a success." This article is at http://www.slate.com/id/2184890/ describes that a surge is supposed to be of limited duration and that in terms of reducing our number troops in Iraq that W has failed. The surge also hasn't provided for political reconciliation-another failure. "In fact, President Bush laid down the standard of success when he announced the surge more than a year ago: "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home." At the time, there were about 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Bush proposed to add up to 20,000 more troops. Although Bush never made any official promises about a timetable, the surge was generally described as lasting six to eight months. By last summer, the surge had actually added closer to 30,000 troops, making the total American troop count about 160,000. Today, there are still more than 150,000 American troops in Iraq. The official plan has been to get that number back down to 130,000 by July and then to keep going so that there would be about 100,000 American troops in Iraq by the time Bush leaves office. Lately, though, Gen. Petraeus has come up with another zenlike idea: He calls it a "pause." And the administration has signed on, meaning that the total number of American troops in Iraq will remain at 130,000 for an undetermined period." Gen. Petraeus defies his military supervisors and betrays us as W's stooge. Think about this – "The proper comparison isn't to the situation a year ago. It's to the situation before we got there. Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its "de-Baathification" campaign so that Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and "only" 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium. You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them." Iraqi, and our, interests are not being advanced as W and his stooges mouth Rove's propaganda that only our dimmest red staters believe!

Authors Bio:
Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.

Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"”it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.

I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.