'Progress' in Iraq" This is how I see it

[LuckyTheDog]

Set the expectations low enough and eventually, the Iraq occupation might come close to meeting them.

Yes, after years of stubbornly refusing to send enough troops, Bush gave the Pentagon PART of what it wanted. So, of course, the military situation is a bit less abysmal than it was.

But the standard should be a tad higher than that. If the flood waters are up to your ears, it's "progress" if you can stand on something, hence making the water level only neck-deep. But that's not really what I'd call success.

[kenny blankenship]

1. Iraq is falling apart.

there is no water in parts of Baghdad, electricity there is down to 2 hours a day if you're lucky. The country's provinces are one-by-one taking themselves off the national electrical transmission grid in attempt to limit their blackouts to only local causes. The Sadrist Shia faction has withdrawn from the Cabinet and now the largest Sunni faction has done so as well. The Kurdish President is trying to oust the Shia Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's government has no legitimacy to act anymore, not that it was in the habit of taking action. Attacks are up by any measure-in the lethally hot month of July 72 80 ¹ American soldiers were killed versus 43 KIAs last July. And on top of all that, we are now arming militia groups who are opposed to the government, and who recently were killing Americans, and may do so again.

This is not progress, this is Apocalypse.

1). Although the usual MSM suspects released a KIA figure of 74 on July 31, (misremembered by me as 72) an announcement accompanied by headlines like "U.S. Toll in Iraq Lowest in 8 Months" and ""U.S. Death Toll in Iraq in July Expected to Be Lowest in ’07" that count appears to have been an optimistically "massaged" number. The number of confirmed US DoD fatalities in Iraq for the month of July 2007, released by Iraq Coalition on Aug. 2 stands at 80. The number of US KIAs is therefore no lower in July than it was in March (81), or February (81), or January (83). Imagine that--Pro-War spin from the corporate media!

[PDJane]

3. There is no water in Iraq

by design. That was what the military worked towards; water and electrical facilities were among the first things bombed. That is a war against civilians, and a crime against humanity.

Moreover, the parts to fix the water situation aren't available, and the US is responsible for that, too. Jesus, people. Does anyone know what the military is doing over there???

:grr:

[Jackpine Radical]

4. There you go again.

You're forgetting all about the GOOD news. Parts of Baghdad DO have water. Sometimes there IS power. What about all the troops who DIDN'T get killed? Why are you trying to make things sound so bleak? Don't you love Jesus?

[stillcool]

2. Progress is...

getting the oil out of the ground and into the pipeline. What else could possibly matter?

[dkofos]

5. Can you tell me why the British controlled south (Basra), and the Kurd controlled

north are not seeing the same amount of violence and casualties
as the US occupied area??

[kenny blankenship]

6. the British don't control Basra. Shia militias control Basra and surrounding provinces

The 5,000 Brits are confined to base. They don't patrol--they move convoys from the airport to Basra Palace, but they don't move around in any way to show their "control" over the city or the province, not since early on this year. This spring, because of mortar attacks, they had to move their consulate from Basra Palace to the airport. The airport is where the only large British military base in Iraq is. The Basra Palace is one of Saddam's bachelor pads in downtown Basra--lush gardens and villa-style living protected by 800 British soldiers and a 30ft high blast wall. But that wasn't safe anymore. And indeed the convoy run of just 8 miles from the airport is now being called a "suicide mission" by the soldiers who have to carry it out. So now the consulate has been forced to the airport base it's like they're running Her Majesty's offices from the fire escape. Mortar attacks are almost nightly. Killings of British soldiers are on the increase. 7 were killed this July and 8 in August--versus 0 in July and 1 in August of last year. That's how secure they are down there. If Bush starts a war with Iran, those 5,000 British soldiers will probably be slaughtered, unless they are immediately airlifted out of the country.
As for the Kurdish areas, they couldn't care less about the religious quarrels of Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs to their south. They don't think of themselves as part of Iraq at all. Even when Saddam Hussein was still in power they had achieved a measure of autonomy thanks to the No-Fly Zones imposed by the Gulf-War coalition. They don't even allow the Iraqi flag to be flown--not even at parades of the Iraqi Army! Things are relatively quiet there, although the U.S. military occupies that region, because the mainspring of the conflict in the rest of the country just isn't present there. What you find in its place is an unambiguous, unquestionable hegemony of Kurdish militia, who are Sunni, and you find an Arab minority, which is also Sunni and which knows that the Kurds are in charge--so there's little to fight about. Quite a few Arabs have left these areas rather than become a target. Same thing in the Shia south, there is violence there-but the bulk of it now is violence between rival Shia militia-gangs. The numerical supremacy of the Shia is so overwhelming that there is little Shia militia v. Sunni militia violence. The Shia hegemony in Basra is absolute. I would be irresponsible to make it sound like sweetness and light: a main reason for the lack of ongoing Sunni-Shia conflict there is the successful ethnical cleansing of Basra by Shia militias. Basra Betrayed
By last year the Sunni population of Iraq's second city (Basra) had fallen from 40 per cent in 2003 to just under 14 per cent. Several hundred from the community, including the most prominent Sunni cleric in the south of the country, Imam Yusuf Yaqub al-Hassan, had been murdered and more than 700 families evicted.

A Sunni militia in Basra would have a life expectancy of a day or two. Much the same could be said about the British "occupation" of Basra: they are so outnumbered they don't dare show themselves and move about on the streets unless it is to resupply the isolated Basra Palace. If they get shot at less often than Americans, it is because there are only one thirtieth as many of them, they are not in the midst of hotspots of Sunni-Shia warfare like the Americans are, and their main mission is to stay in their defensive positions and not get shot. Still if you were to scale the British KIAs in Iraq from last month up proportionally to the size of the American force, it's as if 240 Brits were killed.

have a look at these:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2134086,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2114608,00.html
http://www.juancole.com/2007/02/blair-to-draw-down-british-troops-tony.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2303009.ece

[kenny blankenship]

7. correction--

where I wrote, "Killings of British soldiers are on the increase. 7 were killed this July and 8 in August--versus 0 in July and 1 in August of last year." that should have read 7 were killed in June and 8 in July--versus 0 in June and 1 in July of last year.

I just noticed this goof and had to slap a correction on it.