Positive SIgns in Iraq

[Jason]

Jul 16, 2008 14:56:12 GMT -4 @dmundt said:

You are living proof that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Mr. Pot, Mr. Kettle is on line two.

[dmundt]

On the subject of the war in Iraq, you've never taken me within slingshot distance of water. For that matter, you haven't done that on the subjects of Christianity or climate change, either.

[Jason]

Jul 16, 2008 17:20:08 GMT -4 @dmundt said:

On the subject of the war in Iraq, you've never taken me within slingshot distance of water. For that matter, you haven't done that on the subjects of Christianity or climate change, either.

So in other words you're saying that you're far more stubborn and uncompromising than I am, since you won't let yourself even begin to entertain the possibility that any of my ideas may have some merit (you won't let yourself be lead anywhere near water, let alone close enough to drink from it).

I can't say I disagree with you there.

[dmundt]

No, I didn't say anything about me. I said you had never provided worthwhile arguments on those subjects.

[Jason]

Jul 16, 2008 17:32:09 GMT -4 @dmundt said:

No, I didn't say anything about me. I said you had never provided worthwhile arguments on those subjects.

But strangely enough you took your time to argue them with me anyway.

No, I think my first impression fits much better. The quality of my arguments aside, you are simply too emotionally invested in your own opinion to ever give any ground at all, or acknowledge any merit in an opponent.

[dmundt]

So you say, "AHA! Yellow cake in Iraq! We were right all along!" And then I show you that it wasn't weapons grade yellow cake, I show you that we knew about it since at least 1993 -- and yet you still cling to it as a reason to go to war -- mostly because every other reason you've used has been shown to be completely without merit.

Yes, I'm the one being emotional. How could I have missed that?

[Jason]

Jul 16, 2008 17:47:32 GMT -4 @dmundt said:

So you say, "AHA! Yellow cake in Iraq! We were right all along!"

I didn't say that. My basic point was along the lines of "people tend to forget that Saddam really did have a nuclear weapons program at one time."

And then I show you that it wasn't weapons grade yellow cake,

I already knew that.

I show you that we knew about it since at least 1993

You sort of showed that, yes. I still can't read the report linked to.

-- and yet you still cling to it as a reason to go to war --

I never said the presence of yellow cake was a valid reason to go to war either, at least not by itself.

mostly because every other reason you've used has been shown to be completely without merit.

I don't recall anyone showing any such thing.

Iraq is a complex subject. There is room for disagreement on whether it was resonable to invade and what the proper action is now, and reasonable people can and do disagree on it.
You seem to think that it's not complicated at all and that people who ever supported an invasion are idiots who were manipulated by liars.
Emotional investment.

[Ginnie]

Well, finally things are getting back to normal around here. I missed the sparring. ;D

I'm too confused at this point about Iraq - whether the U.S. should pull out, now, next month, in a year....Either way it seems there will be quite a mess left behind - much bigger in my opinion that the mess that was there in 2002.

[stutefish]

Jul 16, 2008 18:40:37 GMT -4 Ginnie said:

much bigger in my opinion that the mess that was there in 2002.

I think that when it comes to messes, Quality is a much more important factor than Quantity--the nature of the mess is more significant than the size of the mess.

The mess of caused when remodeling a house may be greater than the mess caused by allowing a house to fall into disrepair, but it's a much better, more hopeful, and ultimately more desireable mess despite its greater magnitude.

Or if you think an analogy that doesn't involve human suffering and the loss of human life unacceptably trivializes the situation, perhaps you will forgive me a mild Godwinism:

The mess caused by total industrial war in Europe is arguably greater than the mess that would have been caused by simply acquiesing to the Nazi hegemony program. Indeed, many European leaders attempted to avoid the greater mess by exactly such an acquiescence. And yet most of us today would agree that the greater mess had a desireable quality that more than outweighed its undesdireable quantity.

[Jason]

Here's another positive sign in Iraq - apparently some U.S. soldiers in Iraq are so bored that they wish they were in Afghanistan instead.

That soldiers are looking elsewhere for a battle is a testament to how much Iraq has changed from a year ago, when violence was at its height. Now it's the lowest in four years, thanks to the U.S. troop surge, the turn by former Sunni insurgents against al-Qaida in Iraq, and Iraqi government crackdowns on Shiite militias...
...Instead of facing gunfire and roadside bombs, the soldiers' armored Humvees are chased by waving children as they weave through streets crowded with pedestrians out to shop or just to stroll.

[stutefish]

I can always tell when things are going well in Iraq, because the news is full of stories about how things are going badly in Afghanistan.

[Ginnie]

Jason, have you ever seen this site?
translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=ar&u=http://www.mawtani.com/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.mawtani.com/ar/%26num%3D50%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

It is your very own US Government's site - I think run by the Department of Defense.

[Jason]

Ginnie, try playing around with the "url" tags a little. Use the quote feature on a post that has a link in it and you can see how it's done.

The translation is a little hard to follow, as most machine translations are.

[Jason]

This story ran in the London Times a couple weeks ago. Very little has appeared about this offensive in the Associated Press or Reuters, presumably because it's good news.

From the story:

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror...
...American and Iraqi leaders believe that while it would be premature to write off Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni group has lost control of its last urban base in Mosul and its remnants have been largely driven into the countryside to the south...
...Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism.
“They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it,” Maliki said. “But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them."

[dmundt]

Oh, good. Since we are the ones who let al Qaeda into Iraq in the first place, it's good to see that we might be able to get them back out.