Quote :

"through this period, to the eventual goal of a freer and more democratic, and safer, Iraq"

How about, without echoing the republican administrations plan,

a plan I'll remind you which nearly 70% of the country, the ISG, former generals on the ground, and even GOP members disagree with

do you think Iraq is going to go from the shit hole it is in now, one far far far worse than the last decade Saddam was in power, to this beacon of prosperous, democratic light you think will happen over some time frame (100 years, 1000 years)?

Also, I'm curious why you think it's clever to take everything I have posted about your incompetence and echo it back at me. That some Mickey Mouse grade school shit. It is additional proof you are incapable of original thought.

[Edited on January 23, 2007 at 3:29 PM. Reason : a]

1/23/2007 3:25:53 PM

Quote :

"That some Mickey Mouse grade school shit. It is additional proof you are incapable of original thought. "

this is the whole pot kettle thing..GG

1/23/2007 3:36:04 PM

Get out of the thread troll. Go fuck your herpes laden whore.

1/23/2007 3:36:51 PM

i dont' have a whore...and if i did she wouldn't have herpes. plus this is my thread bitch...i will post here whenever i please.

1/23/2007 3:41:31 PM

Seriously kid, get the fuck out. You don't belong here. This is not The Garage

1/23/2007 3:42:49 PM

kid? haha...seriously...go to chit chat...thats where your type of posting belongs.

again...pot kettle

1/23/2007 3:43:56 PM

Don't you have some more of your uncles money to spend or something? If you don't have a comment pertinent to this thread, then

GET

THE FUCK

OUT

1/23/2007 3:44:44 PM

look here typeass...pot kettle.

1/23/2007 3:45:30 PM

So you also agree that Iraq was better of with Saddam in power?

1/23/2007 3:47:17 PM

welcome to 5 pages ago

1/23/2007 3:52:02 PM

So you don't have anything else to add to this thread other than some bush league trolling?

1/23/2007 3:56:02 PM

Saddam was the kind of man needed for the job.

/thread

1/23/2007 3:58:02 PM

Better off in what terms?

---

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: Will absolutely never happen, as I've explained many times in many threads."

Never say never.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/22/america/NA-GEN-US-Iraq-The-Long-View.php

Quote :

"'Bleak,' 'civil war,' 'breakup': Historians offer dismal forecast for Iraq NEW YORK: To historians and others pondering Iraq, forecasting a final outcome for that sad land is like finding your way through one of its "shamal" sandstorms. You may not know where you're headed, but you know it's going to be dark. Middle East historian David Fromkin sees a breakup of the jerry-built nation. Phebe Marr, doyenne of Iraq scholars, sees "distrust and suspicion" too deep to overcome. "Bleak," concludes Baghdad University's Saad al-Hadithi. "At the moment," said British historian Niall Ferguson, "a happy ending has a 1-in-100 look about it." In interviews with The Associated Press, few experts see much chance that President George W. Bush's new plan to add 21,500 troops to the U.S. force in Baghdad and western Iraq will suppress either the anti-U.S. insurgency or the bloody underground warfare between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or induce a political settlement among the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions. The U.S. Senate this week is expected to begin action on a nonbinding resolution repudiating the Bush troop buildup, a Democratic-majority resolution that was attracting some Republican support. Mohamed el-Sayed Said, of Cairo's al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said he expects that the swelling U.S. political tide against the war will lead at some point to a redeployment of American troops to northern Iraq's Kurdistan and to elsewhere in the Gulf region. After that, said this Arab scholar, "events will take their own course, which is basically generalized civil war." Harvard University's Ferguson, a leading analyst of modern wars, said history suggests "a kind of critical mass of violence can be reached in a multi-ethnic society after which it's really hard to stop." That seems the case in Iraq, he said. "The only way this kind of thing ends is that one side wins," he said. "It's increasingly hard to imagine a happy power-sharing agreement among Shia, Sunni and Kurds. This one is going to run and run." That winning side is likely to be the Sunnis, according to Said, who believes that minority's background of military and political leadership in Iraq better equips them for a fight. They can "easily triumph," he said, "unless there's extensive Iranian intervention," that is, on behalf of Iran's fellow Shiites in Iraq. That kind of regional "spillover" has worried Mideast analyst W. Andrew Terrill, of the U.S. Army War College, since the conflict took on a sectarian look. "Saudi Arabia, for example" — a Sunni kingdom — "would be hard-pressed to do nothing if the Shias in the Iraqi government were waging a war of conquest against the Sunni areas," he said. If not Saudi troops, "they would at least provide money, arms and other support." Ferguson sees turmoil possibly spreading through the Middle East as religious and ethnic groups finally sort themselves out, almost a century after Turkey's vast Ottoman Empire broke apart at World War I's end and the British and French rearranged the pieces to suit their interests. In his classic study of those times, "A Peace to End All Peace," Boston University's Fromkin quoted an American missionary who warned the British in Baghdad against tying Arab and Kurdish provinces, Sunni and Shiite provinces together: "You are flying in the face of four millenniums of history if you try to draw a line around Iraq and call it a political entity!" Nonetheless, Fromkin said, Iraq once looked as though it might hold together, under the late President Saddam Hussein's iron fist. But today, "if I had to bet, I would bet on disintegration" into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish entities. Marr, of the U.S. Institute of Peace, has seen a lot of Iraqi history, having first gone there in the 1950s. She knows what has been lost since the U.S. invasion of 2003: "We've destroyed more than we intended — the army, the bureaucracy, the middle class is in bad shape and many are leaving, and now we're getting ethnic cleansing. These are hard things to put back. These are very fundamental changes. "I have problems myself seeing where it's going to end," she said. But "Iraq could tend to break up." A better scenario — "but I'm not telling you it's the most likely" — would be a "muddling through" in which the current level of violence continues for years and factions "finally get tired of it and they begin to make agreements," Marr said. Al-Hadithi, the Baghdad political analyst, sees only one chance, and it doesn't lie in new U.S. military strategies. "What is needed," he said, "is drastic political changes and international involvement under the mandate of the United Nations. Otherwise the country is heading toward the bottom — civil war and partition.""

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: The second we do that, Turkey has made it quite clear that they will straight-up invade Kurdistan."

The second we delay the inevitable partitioning of the country?

Also, what would be the problem with Turkey invading Kurdistan? I'd fully expect Iran to invade afterwards, too.

Quote :

"Meanwhile, the fact that the populations are not distributed in anything approaching a clear-cut fashion (the line's fuzzy even by normal demographic standards) means that at best you're looking at a partition on par with India and Pakistan's, which means the same amount of violence under what barely qualifies as a different set of circumstances. These things would happen immediately. If anything, partition would speed up the inevitable, and throw in a few perfectly evitable things as well."

I'm not calling partitioning as a matter of policy a great idea. I'm flat out calling it the only way this mess is going to end.

1/23/2007 4:05:40 PM

^that's a good read

1/23/2007 4:15:43 PM

Quote :

"I'm not calling partitioning as a matter of policy a great idea. I'm flat out calling it the only way this mess is going to end."

time and effort are whats going to end this mess...partitioning or not...its going to take time and effort...plus all 3 groups want baghdad...how are you going to split that up?

1/23/2007 4:27:01 PM

All 3 groups want the oil-rich North, I don't see why you're worried about Baghdad. Since you brought it up though...



Just a suggestion.

1/23/2007 4:41:18 PM

Well for one thing, that map you just posted is "only" separating 2 groups of people, correct? Unlike 3 in Iraq, which would inherently make it a little more difficult...(and yes I see there are more than 2 or 3 separations in Jerusalem..but counterpoint, the divisions havent worked to perfection or anything as is evident by violence based on segregation/population to this day

But regardless of resources in the North, dont you think every group would want (a part of) Baghdad? And if you separated Baghdad into three parts somehow, wouldnt at least one of those parts kind of be an island in the middle of at least one other group's land? I mean in Saddam's Iraq, Baghdad was inhabited by all 3 groups...are you just going to tell at least one of them that they no longer have any claim to their capitol city?

1/23/2007 4:44:16 PM

WE aren't going to tell them anything

read that article he posted

1/23/2007 4:46:15 PM

i did read it, and i didnt literally mean 'we' as in the united states is going to tell them what to do (although i mightve come across that way)

but still...are you gonna split up the tri-state and tell a bunch of people that they can no longer go to NYC? "Here, have New Jersey"

1/23/2007 4:47:58 PM

Quote :

"And if you separated Baghdad into three parts somehow, wouldnt at least one of those parts kind of be an island in the middle of at least one other group's land?"

What the hell are you talking about.

Quote :

"are you just going to tell at least one of them that they no longer have any claim to their capitol city?"

What the hell are you talking about.


You need to put the weed down, it seriously fucks up your ability to arrange a cognizant thought.

1/23/2007 4:59:16 PM

Quote :

"The second we delay the inevitable partitioning of the country? "

I'm confused, because it sounds like you're offering partition as a way to delay partitioning...please clarify.

Quote :

"Also, what would be the problem with Turkey invading Kurdistan? I'd fully expect Iran to invade afterwards, too."

Because a shitstorm confined to one country is better than a shitstorm that extends to everyone in the region. Yes, I know, the whole region is already involved, but you know that's not what I mean.

Quote :

"I'm flat out calling it the only way this mess is going to end."

In the long-term that's almost certainly true, but it has always been true. One way or the other, it was almost a given that Iraq was going to blow up and split up.

1/23/2007 4:59:22 PM

Quote :

"And if you separated Baghdad into three parts somehow, wouldnt at least one of those parts kind of be an island in the middle of at least one other group's land? What the hell are you talking about."

Well only an idiot like yourself would have trouble noticing something as simple as Sunnis having to cross through Shia lands in order to reach their capitol city for example, if this were the partitioned Iraq...and this is all REGARDLESS of if Baghdad gets divided or not:

Quote :

"are you just going to tell at least one of them that they no longer have any claim to their capitol city? What the hell are you talking about. You need to put the weed down, it seriously fucks up your ability to arrange a cognizant thought."

See that same picture? You see how the Sunni Kurds are concentrated in the north? You see how Baghdad is in the region labelled as "Shia Arab/Sunni Arab"? You see how the Kurds ("at least one of them") wouldnt have claim to their capitol city? Its funny you try to call me stupid since you have nothing better to say, yet the end result is you looking like a much bigger dumbass

1/23/2007 5:25:45 PM

It's mostly because you don't articulate yourself very well. I thought you meant an island within the city, not the country.

And why would Kurds in Baghdad not move to Kurdistan?

1/23/2007 5:44:18 PM

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: I'm confused, because it sounds like you're offering partition as a way to delay partitioning...please clarify."

No. I said that the best that the presence of our military, surge included, is going to do is delay what will inevitably be a partitioning of Iraq by the three factions currently at war there.

Quote :

"GrumpyGOP: Because a shitstorm confined to one country is better than a shitstorm that extends to everyone in the region. Yes, I know, the whole region is already involved, but you know that's not what I mean."

But that's fully the point. There's no way you can convince me or any halfwit that this is going to end in a fashion confined to one country. Turkey will be a major player in the final outcome, as will Iran (which is why I think we're sabre rattling at them).

[Edited on January 23, 2007 at 6:05 PM. Reason : ...]

1/23/2007 5:58:02 PM

Quote :

"Suicide car bomber hits Shiite area of Baghdad Blast comes after two rockets hit capital, al-Maliki vows militia crackdown • Rockets blast Baghdad Jan 25: Smoke rises over Baghdad after two rockets explode in the heavily fortified Green Zone. MSNBC.com's Dara Brown reports. MSNBC.com NBC World Blog BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber struck a mostly Shiite neighborhood Thursday in central Baghdad, killing 26 people, hours after the prime minister promised the coming U.S.-Iraq security sweep in the capital would pursue militants wherever they were hiding. The blast occurred shortly after two rockets slammed into the heavily fortified Green Zone. Two hours later, a second huge explosion rocked the area. Police said they had blown up a second car bomb that had been disabled before its second suicide bomber could detonate it."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16803740/

1/25/2007 12:55:16 PM

Quote :

"I said that the best that the presence of our military, surge included, is going to do is delay what will inevitably be a partitioning of Iraq by the three factions currently at war there."

Ah, OK. I normally understand "partition" as a willful government act, you mean it more in a much more organic sense.

I'm still not so sure that it's going to happen. To some extent Iraq has developed a common history, and in part as a result of this I haven't heard much talk from any group within the country saying they want to break away from it. There's also the fact that all groups involved would like to control certain areas, which partially necessitates that each faction -- or at least the Sunni and Shia ones -- shoot to take over the whole country, and not just a part of it. Left to their own devices, eventually one of them will. Their grasp will be tenuous and they'll probably be constantly fighting an insurgency or two, but just like the Taliban eventually managed to "take over" Afghanistan, one of these factions will "take over" Iraq.

Quote :

"There's no way you can convince me or any halfwit that this is going to end in a fashion confined to one country. Turkey will be a major player in the final outcome, as will Iran (which is why I think we're sabre rattling at them)."

Certainly the conflict isn't entirely self-contained, and the nations you mentioned are involved. That's why I said, "the whole region is already involved." But I don't really count the pseudo-covert actions of Iran and Turkey at the moment as putting their countries in the "shitstorm," and certainly not to the same extent as a shooting war would.

1/25/2007 1:03:34 PM

Bomb in box rips through Baghdad pet market, kills 15
POSTED: 4:51 a.m. EST, January 26, 2007
Story Highlights
• NEW: U.S. Marine killed while fighting in volatile Anbar province
• Washington Post: Bush authorizes troops to target Iranian agents in Iraq
• Bombings follow prime minister's appeal for unity on security plan
• U.S. Republican tries to counter criticism of planned troop increase

1/26/2007 8:19:33 AM

Does anyone have a guess of how many US Troops were killed in Iraq during the 2006 calendar year (1/1/2006 - 12/31/2006)? See how many you would guess without looking it up, just wondering

1/26/2007 1:22:31 PM

800

1/26/2007 1:27:11 PM

if i get a few more guesses i will post the answer

1/26/2007 1:28:19 PM

816

1/26/2007 1:29:29 PM

i meant from other people

1/26/2007 1:31:23 PM

821

[Edited on January 26, 2007 at 1:32 PM. Reason : i win]

1/26/2007 1:32:07 PM

really? i thought it must be a few thousand at least based on what i've seen on tv and here in TSB

1/26/2007 1:33:25 PM

or you're just dumb.

1/26/2007 1:34:19 PM

it seems everyday there is a thread talking about 100 new deaths...i dont know why i would assume those are american deaths...hmm

1/26/2007 1:37:07 PM

THE SECRET IS OUT!!! SHHHHHHHHHHH!! DON"T TELL ANYONE!!!

1/26/2007 1:38:19 PM

well thank you for clearing that up...if that trend had continued, who knows? maybe one person might have assumed there are a lot more US deaths than there actually are!

1/26/2007 1:39:52 PM

THAT DAMN LIBERAL MEDIA!!!!! I CAN"T THINK FOR MYSELF!!!1 I JUST ASSUME EVERYTHING!! IT MUST BE A CONSPIRACY!!!

[Edited on January 26, 2007 at 1:41 PM. Reason : d]

1/26/2007 1:40:54 PM

3,320 - Total Coalition Deaths
3,067 - Total US Deaths

870 - 2006 Coalition Deaths
821 - 2006 US Deaths

22,728 - Total US Wounded in Combat
47,657 - Total US Non-Mortal Casualties (combat, non-hostile, & disease)

http://icasualties.org/oif/

1/26/2007 1:41:14 PM

^are those two first numbers US/coalition deaths since the war began in 03 I guess?

1/26/2007 1:42:10 PM

yes

1/26/2007 1:44:57 PM

3,067 US Deaths out of...~150,000 troops give or take?

1/26/2007 1:45:57 PM

I CANT WAIT TO SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING!!

1/26/2007 1:47:13 PM

you're so smart up on your high horse, why dont you take a guess?

1/26/2007 1:48:37 PM

I DONT WANT TO RUIN THE SURPRISE!!!

1/26/2007 1:49:53 PM

unlike the guessing part a few posts ago where you did want to ruin the surprise?

1/26/2007 1:53:30 PM

Quote :

"3,067 US Deaths out of...~150,000 troops give or take?"

yeah, and anywhere between 60,000 and 600,000 civilian deaths out of a total population of 28,000,000.
and ~15,000 deaths in Baghdad alone in 2006, a city of 7,000,000.

what's your point.

1/26/2007 3:32:55 PM

obviously not enough people have died to be outraged yet

1/26/2007 3:50:12 PM

not to make light of the numbers but ~3,000 deaths out of ~150,000 deaths over 3 years during a WAR is not that bad...again not to downplay the deaths of US soldiers, but ~3,000 out of ~150,000 is not a huge number

Quote :

"anywhere between 60,000 and 600,000 civilian deaths "

that sucks but its not like it was US troops that killed all of them

1/26/2007 3:54:11 PM