Bad News in Iraq Pushing U.S. to More Active Political Role

Obviously democracy in the middle east kick starts like a fourty year old rusted lawn mower. No matter how much oil you throw into it, it will only stay started for a minute or two.

~snip~

The new violence comes as several key coalition partners are scaling down their deployments, further complicating Iraqi efforts to achieve stability.

A move by Australia to buck the trend drew praise Monday from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

"The issue before the world's democracies is no longer whether one supported military action against Saddam Hussein. Rather, it is about helping the Iraqi people establish their own country, in a new era of stability and democracy," McCain said.

Australia has about 300 troops in Iraq and began deploying an additional 450 this month to protect Japanese soldiers conducting humanitarian work in southern Iraq

This has been a No Win war like Vietnam and someday we are going to wake up to 10,000 casualties!!!

but was somehow suppressed from the media. :eyes:

Suddenly, on cue, the news is allowed out as the US prepares to take a more active political role. Who dreams up this stuff anyway?

Sheesh, how gullible do they think we are? Nevermind - most Merikans still believe Saddam flew one of the damn planes....

Bush is once again stepping into dogshit and calling it diplomacy.

Aren't 53% already saying the cost has been too dear?

...good point, Rose, but that's a slim margin, isn't it?

It leaves millions and millions of Americans who do tolerate slaughter, and will for as long as it does not reach its bloody hands into their lives in the form of a draft.

Here's the problem: the Democratic Party is a co-sponsor of this fucking war. And judging from the easy time most Kerry voters appeared to have swallowing his pro-war platform, it's pretty clear that toleration of casualties isn't a partisan problem.

With as much invested in empire as Republicans, the Democratic Party isn't able to lead opposition to the war, and in fact shortcut it with the nomination of Kerry and all the silencing of dissent that the pathetic ABB movement clamored for. Thank the DLC, who are co-authors of each US casualty and the thousands more Iraqi dead.

Remember, 51% is a MANDATE, so that would make 53%...Jeez, that's gotta qualify as a Popular Uprising on the Bush** scale of things!!

/sarcasm

....In reality, however, you're so right. On every count. x( :cry:

"I think Americans' tolerance for casualties might ultimately waver if there is no visible sign of progress in Iraq," he said.

From his mouth to God's ears . . .

as they struggled to put together our democracy here in Colonial America.

Oh, how I thrilled to read how George Washington pocketed all that money building water and electrical plants that didn't work; of how Tom Jefferson dodged booby traps everyday; of the troubles Mr. Franklin endured when large numbers of his police forces were butchered and the survivors quietly blended away; of how some Colonies never quite became States because the level of violence prohibited most people from venturing out doors; and of the joy the Continental Congress felt each morning to awake and find yet another foreign slob ready to tell them just what to do.

Ah, democracy!

Perhaps Iraq will one day have a Whitmanesque poet to extols its virtues there in the bowels of Mess-O-Potamia. Hopefully he doesn't blown up trying to find his next meal. . .

We will exert more control. We will take away their dessert!!

....and stole all their damn money. How much more political can we get? Oh yeah, we kill the people that don't go along, and three times as many civilians in the process.

to democracy and that wonderful election? What a surprise!

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/11489379.htm

Rising casualties, well-coordinated rebel attacks and the failure of Iraqi politicians to form a new government are pushing U.S. leaders toward a more active role in Iraqi politics. The recent surge in violence suggests a hands-off approach might not be enough and democracy in Iraq is still an open question.

The inability of rival factions to name a new transitional government has extended a leadership vacuum, played into the hands of an emboldened Iraqi insurgency and slowed momentum created by the Jan. 30 elections.

What the future holds for Iraq “is a remarkably open question,” said Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s particularly open when you remember that the administration went to war thinking that this whole period of stability operations and nation-building would last about three months.”

The stalemate has clearly frustrated President Bush’s national security team, despite the president’s repeated assertions that democracy didn’t come overnight to the United States and can’t be expected to flower quickly in Iraq.