Iraqis take control of once bloody Anbar province

"transformed and reclaimed by iraq people(suuni tribes)." does u.s. keep paying huge bribes to keep lid on iraq powder keg?

"turned over" in name only because we dont see any US troops coming home......the Iraqi security forces have been notorious to run away and abandon their posts at the first sign of trouble so Im guessing Bush wont put too much stock in this hand over which was done purely for political reasons,the US troops will still be there and will still be doing the job......But hey McCain can use this 'hand over' as a talking point in his next speech, cant he, and that's why it was done anyways.

BUSH DESTROYED THE REAGAN REPUBLICAN PARTY AND HE WILL TAKE ALL REPUBLICANS DOWN WITH HIM IN 2008!

General Speaks Out on Iraq
http://tinyurl.com/29d7r8

Mr. President, you did not listen, General Batiste says in new television advertisements being broadcast in Republican Congressional districts as part of a $500,000 campaign financed by http://www.votevets.org You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our great Army and Marine Corps. I left the Army in protest in order to speak out. Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril. Our only hope is that Congress will act now to protect our fighting men and women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/us/13genera...

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Why Iraq Was a Mistake
By Lt. General GREGORY NEWBOLD, Retired
http://tinyurl.com/p4j93 Apr. 09, 2006
From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war.

Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable.

But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda.

I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9...

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General Eaton's Letter to President Bush on Veto
May 1, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2umrln

Dear Mr. President,
Today, in your veto message regarding the bipartisan legislation just passed on Operation Iraqi Freedom, you asserted that you so decided because you listen to your commanders on the ground.
Respectfully, as your former commander on the ground, your administration did not listen to our best advice. In fact, a number of my fellow Generals were forced out of their jobs, because they did not tell you what you wanted to hear -- most notably General Eric Shinseki, whose foresight regarding troop levels was advice you rejected, at our troops' peril. http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/11973

America's Angriest General John Batiste
http://tinyurl.com/2jjohc May 10, 2007

Retired two-star Army Gen. John Batiste is lashing out at the Bush war in Iraq in ads targeting key Republicans up for re-election in 2008. His offensive may change the rules regarding civilian-military relations.

"Mr. President, you did not listen," he says. "You continue to pursue a failed strategy that is breaking our Army and Marine Corps."
The ad is scheduled to air from May 10 to 18, targeting Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), John Sununu (New Hampshire), John Warner (Virginia) and Norm Coleman (Minnesota), and 10 GOP House members, including Mary Bono, Phil English, Randy Kuhl, Jim Walsh and Heather Wilson.
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week...

General Zinni They Screwed Up
http://tinyurl.com/yr2bq May 21, 2004

(CBS) Retired General Anthony Zinni is one of the most respected and outspoken military leaders of the past two decades.

From 1997 to 2000, he was commander-in-chief of the United States Central Command, in charge of all American troops in the Middle East. That was the same job held by Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf before him, and Gen. Tommy Franks after.

But Zinni broke ranks with the administration over the war in Iraq, and now, in his harshest criticism yet, he says senior officials at the Pentagon are guilty of dereliction of duty -- and that the time has come for heads to roll.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60m...

General Anthony Zinni, USMC,(Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004 http://tinyurl.com/8ldmo

I think the first mistake that was made was misjudging the success of containment. I heard the president say, not too long ago, I believe it was with the interview with Tim Russert that ... I'm not sure ... but at some point I heard him say that "containment did not work." That's not true.

So to say containment didn't work, I think is not only wrong from the experiences we had then, but the proof is in the pudding, in what kind of military our troops faced when we went in there.

The third mistake, I think was one we repeated from Vietnam, we had to create a false rationale for going in to get public support. The books were cooked, in my mind. The intelligence was not there. I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee one month before the war, and Senator Lugar asked me: "General Zinni, do you feel the threat from Saddam Hussein is imminent?" I said: "No, not at all. It was not an imminent threat. Not even close. Not grave, gathering, imminent, serious, severe, mildly upsetting, none of those."
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm...

Brigadier Nigel R.F. Aylwin-Foster, British Army
U.S. Army Transformation needs to focus less on warfighting and more on developing a genuinely adaptive workforce. Dec. 2005 - Jan. 2006
http://tinyurl.com/ab5c5
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/CAC/milrev...

Bush Invaded The Wrong Country Iraq:
Bush Took His Eyes Off Al Qaeda :
Army War College
Bounding Global War Dec/ 2003
http://tinyurl.com/8m88a
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil...

BUSH LOST TWO WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WITH THE BEST MILITARY ON EARTH
Army War College
American Strategy After 9/11/01
http://tinyurl.com/dnrgd
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil...

2nd Retired British General Slams US
September 2, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2bjqwk
Then-deputy British General Tim Cross, right, seen with Retired U.S. Lt. General Jay Garner in 2003, slammed the U.S. on Iraq a day after criticism made by the general who led the British army during the invasion.

LONDON - A second retired British general slammed the United States over its Iraq policy, saying in a newspaper interview published Sunday that it had been "fatally flawed."

Maj. Gen. Tim Cross, the most senior British officer involved in the postwar planning, said he had raised serious concerns about the possibility of Iraq falling into chaos but said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the warnings.

"Right from the very beginning we were all very concerned about the lack of detail that had gone into the postwar plan and there is no doubt that Rumsfeld was at the heart of that process," Cross said in the Sunday Mirror newspaper.

The comments come a day after the release of critical comments made by the general who led the British army during the Iraq invasion.

Retired Gen. Sir Mike Jackson also singled out Rumsfeld for criticism, saying his approach to the invasion was "intellectually bankrupt," according to quotes excerpted from his autobiography and published by The Daily Telegraph Saturday.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20555490/

Ret. U.K. Army Head Slams U.S. Iraq Policy
Calls Invasion Planners "Intellectually Bankrupt," Says Washington Relies Too Heavily On Military / LONDON, Sept. 1, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/28wslj
(CBS/AP) The head of the British army during the Iraq invasion described former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approach as "intellectually bankrupt," according to comments published Saturday.
Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, who retired in August 2006 as chief of the general staff, said Rumsfeld was "one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq," in excerpts from an autobiography, "Soldier," that were published by The Daily Telegraph.
He writes that Rumsfeld refused to deploy enough troops following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime to maintain law and order, and rejected the State Department's plans for post-invasion administration of the country. Jackson is also critical of President Bush for handing control of post-invasion Iraq to the Pentagon. "All the planning carried out by the State Department went to waste," he writes.
For Rumsfeld and his supporters "it was an ideological article of faith that the coalition soldiers would be accepted as a liberating army," Jackson wrote.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/01/wor...

Iraq war cost years of progress in Afghanistan - UK brigadier
Commander echoes criticism of Blair's foreign policy by head of army
http://tinyurl.com/y5r6m3 October 18, 2006
The invasion of Iraq prevented British forces from helping to secure Afghanistan much sooner and has left a dangerous vacuum in the country for four years, the commander who has led the attack against the Taliban made clear yesterday.
Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of 3 Para battlegroup just returned from southern Afghanistan, said the delay in deploying Nato troops after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002 meant British soldiers faced a much tougher task now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0...
==========
Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns General David Richards
Nato commander's view in stark contrast to ministers'
Forces short of equipment and 'running out of time'
http://tinyurl.com/eg43g July 22, 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0...

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Afghanistan opium at record high
27 August 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2qj5yy
The UN says opium production in Afghanistan has soared to record levels, with an increase on last year of more than a third.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says the amount of opium produced there has doubled in the last two years.
It says Helmand province is now the biggest single drug-producing area in the world, surpassing whole countries such as Colombia.
Afghanistan now accounts for more than 93% of the world's opiates.
Despite billions of dollars of aid and tens of thousands of international troops, the report says 193,000 hectares of opium poppies are being grown in Afghanistan.
'Insurgency link'
"The results are very bad, terrifyingly bad, because cultivation has increased by 17% to an historic level," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Office on Drugs and Crime. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6965115...

President Bush is right to be happy about our brave US troops’ great achievements in Iraq.
Turning over Anbar to the Iraqi forces proves that US troops with the Iraqi troops were able to defeat the Islamic terrorist suicide bomber of al Qaida that are armed and supported by the oil-rich Saudi Arabia with the windfall of US dollars.
It means that US forces will start coming home soon victoriously and prepare for new challenges in the new world that is getting more dangerous every day.
Nevertheless, it is time for US to extend oil drilling off shore and become energy independent by using natural gas as fuel for cars because purchasing oil from the Middle East means that US is financing Islamic terrorists’ attacks on US troops.

It's a little too late isn't now "W"?? You're no hero, you never was!! You've wasted us, "the american middle class"...and, you've wasted away our military as a whole!! Go back into your closet, as you have been occupying since Jan. 2001!! you are too much like "The shadow" on Feb. 2nd, "Bushhogs" day!!

DDT 207 wrote:

It's a little too late isn't now "W"?? You're no hero, you never was!! You've wasted us, "the american middle class"...and, you've wasted away our military as a whole!! Go back into your closet, as you have been occupying since Jan. 2001!! you are too much like "The shadow" on Feb. 2nd, "Bushhogs" day!!

...You never "Were", not "Was"...Sorry!...

..."Mission Accomplished"...(part 2)....LOL!!

Iraq, 1917
http://tinyurl.com/ychyps

They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain's 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books...
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles403.htm

The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq
http://tinyurl.com/287t4u / January 28, 2007

Despite such scare mongering, it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. There, the organization had the protection of an entrenched, friendly government, which it will not have in Iraq. Al Qaeda also had a much larger force in Afghanistan -- an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php...

==========

James Baker: Don't go it alone with Iraq
http://tinyurl.com/9xxb8 /August 26, 2002
CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN)-- Former Secretary of State James Baker Sunday warned President Bush not to "go it alone" against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/08/2...

Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterrorism efforts
BY GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT
August 15, 2002 / http://tinyurl.com/44u2d
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/featu...

==========
The Iraq Study Group Report
James A. Baker, III, and Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairs
Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Edwin Meese III,
Sandra Day O’Connor, Leon E. Panetta, William J. Perry, Charles S. Robb,
Alan K. Simpson
http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_repo...

At the moment UN investigation team declared no WMD found in Iraq, I realzied we have lost the war. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. Instead, it keeps going on and on. More waste of lives - both sides - American and Iraqis because of one Stubborn guy so called "Mr. Mission Accomplished".

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

The situation is getting better because we have actually been paying insurgents by American tax Dollars to keep them off from streets. How long are we going to continue paying them and what happens if we ever stop paying?

Most importantly, if we are there to HELP Iraqi people then why they keep asking us... to leave???

DDT 207 wrote:

It's a little too late isn't now "W"?? You're no hero, you never was!! You've wasted us, "the american middle class"...and, you've wasted away our military as a whole!! Go back into your closet, as you have been occupying since Jan. 2001!! you are too much like "The shadow" on Feb. 2nd, "Bushhogs" day!!

Good point. It is never too late to become a left wing liberal defeatist loser like Harry Reid that lied t his teeth saying:“We already lost the war” more than a year ago.
You may want to be a pacifist loser like grandma Pelosi that went to see her best 'buddy' the radical Islamic tyrant Assad in Syria and became the cover girl of Hezbollah Islamic terrorists' magazine...

Jones wrote:

<quoted text>Good point. It is never too late to become a left wing liberal defeatist loser like Harry Reid that lied t his teeth saying:“We already lost the war” more than a year ago.
You may want to be a pacifist loser like grandma Pelosi that went to see her best 'buddy' the radical Islamic tyrant Assad in Syria and became the cover girl of Hezbollah Islamic terrorists' magazine...

hey jones,

I am in total agreement with you.

Pelosi and Reid are losers because they are corporate hack liars and not liberals.

If they were "Real Liberals" they would not pay off their members to get voted into positions of power.

Don't you know how Washington DC works???

Politics 101: Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are real Conservatives and real Liberal and have absolutely ZERO power in Congress.

With All Due Respect,
K-Street & Wall Street

good points for McCAIN campaign program. IRAQ project must look good until election time.

Let's see what happens the first time the Iraqi Government doesn't pay bribes to the Sunnis in lieu of past American payments.

Jane wrote:

At the moment UN investigation team declared no WMD found in Iraq, I realzied we have lost the war. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there. Instead, it keeps going on and on. More waste of lives - both sides - American and Iraqis because of one Stubborn guy so called "Mr. Mission Accomplished".
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
The situation is getting better because we have actually been paying insurgents by American tax Dollars to keep them off from streets. How long are we going to continue paying them and what happens if we ever stop paying?
Most importantly, if we are there to HELP Iraqi people then why they keep asking us... to leave???

Come on now, you're really that traitor Harry Reid, right? Or that other loser Pelosi? We lost the war? You mean to say, you want us to lose the war. You really think our military isn't capable of winning a war and that to have any chance, we have to bribe the enemy. You leftie jokers made us lose the Vietnam war but it's not going to work this time. Our soldiers have sacraficed too much to let you put them down and cause them to run home is disgrace like you want them to. They are winning and are going to win despite all your efforts. Go crawl back into your liberal hole and pull the dirt over yourself.

A piece of writing that mirrors my thinking 125% for all the right reasons.

Especially justice for the American people.

‘
'REPORTS that support for the two US presidential candidates has narrowed to a barely definable gap is not encouraging.
While I'm a confirmed realist regarding Barack Obama's capabilities, declared policies, and his capacity to effect any real change, I firmly believe the Republican Party needs to be punished for their transgressions under current President George Bush's disastrously disreputable tenure; and the only way to inflict this punishment is to confine them to a spell on the sidelines.

Illegal acts such as extraordinary rendition, the continuing affront to human rights that is Guantanamo Bay, and the grossly misguided Iraq "adventure" have no place in any society with pretensions towards civilised behaviour.

Other examples of Bush's behaviour which should be remembered are his administration's reckless and profligate overspending; his inefficient response when Hurricane Katrina destroyed a large portion of New Orleans; failure in Afghanistan; total inaction in the face of climate change; and the couldn't-care-less attitude displayed by him and his moronic sidekicks like Cheney and Rumsfeld to international disapproval.

When one considers these offences, and the clearly tangible problems facing ordinary Americans on a daily basis, such as an economy in recession alongside spiralling oil prices, it's absolutely extraordinary that they could even consider the option of a continuation of the status quo which a McCain presidency would offer.

All the more inexplicable in the light of Bush's recent unprecedented low approval rating among Americans.'

DAVID MARLBOROUGH

KENILWORTH PARK, DUBLIN 6W

"Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons.... Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them. Not once, but repeatedly.... I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.

Bill Clinton, December 16, 1998