Another bloody day in Iraq

As the surge has, well, surged, the insurgents and nutheads are changing tactics.

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Tuesday in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims streaming toward the holy city of Karbala, killing 93 people in one of several attacks targeting the faithful ahead of a weekend holiday.

It seems the nutheads are leaving Baghdad, while stepping up attacks outside the city. Gee, who would have guessed the nutheads and insurgents would have passed on the chance to fight a decisive battle in Baghdad? Who would have guessed that they would lie low and then pop-up elsewhere to create havoc, misery and death?

Call it Operation Whack-a-Mole'.

Meanwhile, 9 US soldiers died yesterday from insurgent/nuthead bombs.

Other atrocities in the last 24 hours include:

A suicide car bomber shattered the capital's relative calm Monday, striking a famous book market in the city's oldest quarter and killing at least 38 shoppers.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed five Shi'ite pilgrims and wounded 10 others, police said. The explosion occurred when they were walking through the mainly Sunni Yarmouk district.

A total of 25 bodies were found shot dead on Monday in different districts of Baghdad, police said.

I would go on - there are at least a dozen others easily found on the net, but its too damned depressing. Iraq is a FUBAR wrapped in an enigma.

Iraq War - BushCo wants another $2bn

From AP:

The White House is ready to ask Congress for more money for President Bush's plan to send 21,500 more combat troops into Iraq.

The move would pay for support personnel and otherwise update last month's request for the Iraq war. [The request for additional war funds] probably will draw criticism from Democrats who say the Pentagon had lowballed estimates of the costs of Bush's plan for improving security in Baghdad and Anbar province.

Well, that's fine. Except,

Though the changes may be relatively modest, they nonetheless are embarrassing to the White House and the Pentagon, which earlier dismissed criticism from lawmakers that the original $5.6 billion estimate for the troop buildup was too low.

Just another example, albeit small, of the administration's incompetence, and inability to win the Iraq Civil War.

Ann Coulter

There is only one sensible thing to do with Ann Coulter - ignore her. File Ann under, 'don't let the bastards get you down.' Then toss the file in the trash.

Ann thrives on controversy and publicity. She is dead to me. Make he dead to you, too.

Sen. Smith: According to top general, US has a one in four chance of success

[Senator Gordon Smith (OR)] has strongly opposed President Bush's call for a "surge" of 20,000 troops in Iraq. Smith was one of 14 senators to vote last month against the nomination of Gen. George Casey as U.S. Army chief of staff.

"If you're really going to do a surge, you don't do it with 20,000, you do it with 250,000," he said, noting that Baghdad is a city of nearly 7 million people. But he said the United States cannot afford such a response; instead it has to come from the Iraqi Army.

Smith said he recently spoke with Gen. David Petraeus, the new top military commander in Iraq, who told him the troop surge has only a one in four chance of succeeding.

We're betting the house with those odds? This is the very definition of insanity*.


*Insanity defined - Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different response.

Latest poll results - Harriet Miers redux?

The latest NY Times/CBS poll was released, and the results are simply horrible for the Bush Administration. Total support dropped below 30%, (with 61% opposed) and the right track-wrong track numbers are 23% to 68%. BushCo's foreign policy support stands at 25% (to be discussed in the next post - coming soon).

The numbers on Iraq are equally dismal, support = 23%, opposed = 71%. I won't even get rolling on Iraq right now, there are other points I want to move on to cover today - like health care.

On health care, an outright majority of Americans puts, 'health insurance for all,' as the top domestic priority. 90%(!!!!) think the health care system in this country needs fundamental change or be completely rebuilt. Please read the survey results, there are a battery of questions on health care that bear review.

The poll also gives the dems a 3-1 advantage over the reeps as the party more likely to improve the health care system. (On top of this, the dems also have a 14 point general favorability advantage over the reeps.)

With all of this news, you would think the reeps would be circling the wagons, rallying around their president. Uhh, no.

Mr. Bush’s approval rating dropped 13 percentage points since last fall among Republicans, 65 percent of whom now say they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared with 78 percent last October.

Yes, its gloom and doom time for the reeps. Consider some of the commentary coming out of the big CPAC convention, as covered by that right wing blog, the Politico.

I’m disenchanted, I’m disenfranchised, I’m just dissed

--David Bossie, president of Citizens United

The war is a disaster and [Bush] flubbed the [immigration] issue

--Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum

Well, maybe this is all just animus against BushCo. After all, they have been the most imcompetent administration - perhaps of all time (though my Dad really has it in for Jimmy Carter, but that's another post for another day).

Here's what Phyllis had to say about the other reep POTUS candidates:

They’re all equally unacceptable

Ouch. There you have it, folks - the state of the reeps today ain't pretty.

Top 10 Winners in Iraq

Foriegn Policy magazine identifies the top 10 winners in Iraq, and its awfully depressing:

1. Iran
2. Moqtada al-Sadr
3. Al Qaeda
4. Samuel Huntington
5. China
6. Arab Dictators
7. The Price of Oil
8. The United Nations
9. Old Europe
10. Israel

US Advisors to General Petraeus - We Only Have One Friedman Left

Another expert prognosis has been offered that we have six months to win in Iraq, or things are going to bloody hell. From the Guardian:

An elite team of officers advising US commander General David Petraeus in Baghdad has concluded the US has six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

Hmmm, haven't we heard about that before. Tom Friedman, the famously liberal columnist for the New York Times who advocated in favor of the war in Iraq, has talked about a six month window of opportunity in Iraq for .... years.

FAIR quoted Friedman's various "six months" comments starting in November 2003 through May 2006. (See the bottom of the post for FAIR's complete summary.) Thus, any pronouncement of the time left to salvage something, anything positive in Iraq is expressed in units of "Friedmans" (with proper credit due to Atrios for coining the term).

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Tom Friedman's six-month window quotes (From FAIR):

"The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
(New York Times, 11/30/03)

"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of—I know a lot of these guys—reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
(NPR's Fresh Air, 6/3/04)

"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 10/3/04)

"Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile."
(New York Times, 11/28/04)

"I think we're in the end game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election—that's my own feeling— let alone the presidential one."
(NBC's Meet the Press, 9/25/05)

"Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time."
(New York Times, 9/28/05)

"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together."
(CBS's Face the Nation, 12/18/05)

"We're at the beginning of I think the decisive I would say six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election—you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it."
(PBS's Charlie Rose Show, 12/20/05)

"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it—and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."
(New York Times, 12/21/05)

"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand."
(Oprah Winfrey Show, 1/23/06)

"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out."
(CBS, 1/31/06)

"I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq."
(NBC's Today, 3/2/06)

"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us."
(CNN, 4/23/06)

"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months—probably sooner—whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
(MSNBC's Hardball, 5/11/06)