Bush's surge success.

medicineman · #1 07-13-2007, 05:19 PM

Is this the success in Iraq that Bush talks about? ERMELI, Iraq (AFP) - The darkness of grief gripped the Iraqi village of Ermeli on Sunday as black mourning banners, armbands, bloodstains and soot bore grim testament to a truck bomb attack that left 140 dead.

The rural community was the latest victim of a week of intense violence and political intrigue in an Iraq mired in bloody civil conflict, and one day after the attack the population was divided between shock and bitter anger.

Policemen guarding the entrance to the town wore black armbands and stony expressions, determined to face down the extremists behind the attack, in which a truck packed with four tonnes of explosives detonated in a crowded market.

"I lost my uncle and his son in the explosion," policeman Imad Abdul Hussein told an AFP reporter, adding that the village was without running water after the suicide bomb destroyed pipes and brought down electricity cables.

"I am at work today to retaliate against the criminals, and to send them a message that we are alive and we are on our homeland and we will fight Al-Qaeda until the last drop of our blood," he said.

"We will either kill them or they will annihilate us," he added, before launching into a slogan that underlined how the violence of Al-Qaeda's Sunni extremists has driven a wedge between Iraq's rival communities.

"Triumph to Ali's Shiites!" he shouted, referring to the first revered imam of the Shiite Muslim tradition and the hero of Iraq's majority community.

The mayor of nearby Tuz Khurmato said Al-Qaeda had struck because Ermeli had been a peaceful village of Sunnis and Shiites from Iraq's Turkman minority surrounded by smaller hamlets of Sunni Arabs.

"Al-Qaeda hit Emerli because it is a safe and stable town. They target safe places to paralyse and confuse the government," said Mayor Mohammed Rashed, saying the truck was a 10-tonne Hino which came from the Sunni west.

"They want to send a message to the world that they are capable of targeting anything, to show by their explosions that the police are failing," he said.

"But they contribute, by these explosions, to build our awareness and unity in fighting the terrorists," he insisted.

Police chief Lieutenant Colonel Khalfa al-Bayati, rattled off a litany of destruction. "Almost every household in Emerli has lost a loved one," he said.

"We have around 1,200 mud-brick houses in the town. Fifty houses are totally demolished, 20 houses are partially demolished and 45 shops and more than 35 cars were wrecked," he said.

"We have registered a total number of 140 killed but there are also 20 missing and 270 injured," he added, accusing Al-Qaeda of carrying out the attack in revenge for recent successes against the group by his men.

The Emerli bomb blast came after a bloody and dangerous week even by the standards of Iraq's four-year descent into civil war.

Over the course of the week, US military confirmed the deaths of 22 soldiers and marines, and the British army in Basra lost two troops during what was described as one of its biggest operations of the war so far.

Shiite militias clashed with Iraqi security forces in the southern town of Diwaniyah, and suspected Sunni insurgents detonated bombs in Baghdad: six more civilians were killed in a double car bombing on Sunday.

Against this backdrop, political support for US President George W. Bush and his Iraqi ally and counterpart Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was slipping.

Bush saw two more US senators from his Republican Party speaking out against the open-ended use of American forces to prop up Maliki's government, despite calls from US commanders for more time to build on recent successes.

Maliki, meanwhile, engaged in a war of words with his former supporters in Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement, calling on it to lay down its weapons after its Mahdi Army militia clashed with police and US-led troops.

Sadr's aides in turn accused Maliki of pandering to the US "occupier" and warned that he might not last much longer in office, amid reports that some Sunni and Shiite MPs might unite to force a confidence vote in parliament.

In Emerli, however, the mourners had no stomach to think of politics. Many refused to even greet a government delegation sent to inspect the rescue

Gymshoes · #2 07-13-2007, 07:49 PM

Quote:

They target safe places to paralyse and confuse the government," said Mayor Mohammed Rashed, saying the truck...came from the Sunni west.

"They want to send a message...that they are capable of targeting anything...that the police are failing," he said.

"But they contribute...to build our awareness and unity in fighting the terrorists."

OK, what did this obscene attack on innocent civilians accomplish?
about 150 random murders all at once. Hundreds wounded. Are we
gonna leave any sooner? No. So what's the use anymore?

J - Dog · #3 07-13-2007, 10:16 PM

Bottom Line:
WWII lasted around 4 years..

Yet the War in Iraq can't be won with superior technology in a state about the size of Texas after 4 years of Billions of dollars and thousands of lives ?

No.
Bush wants another terrorist attack to re-new his unpopular war and perhaps declare martial law..
What a S.O.B.!!

Gygax1974 · #4 07-13-2007, 10:34 PM

WWII lasted longer than 4 years for most of the countries involved and we didn't have to be so gentle back then...you know carpet bombing large civilian areas was normal back then. Don't get me wrong I'm not sticking up for Bush, I dispise the ass clown.

hempie · #5 07-13-2007, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by J - Dog

Bottom Line:
WWII lasted around 4 years..

Yet the War in Iraq can't be won with superior technology in a state about the size of Texas after 4 years of Billions of dollars and thousands of lives ?

No.
Bush wants another terrorist attack to re-new his unpopular war and perhaps declare martial law..
What a S.O.B.!!

we arent allowed to carpet bomb anymore. and we have to wait for our troops to be attacked before we can fire back and then the troops need permission just to do that. there are 11 steps to the ROE and most are politically motivated.. if our military isnt allowed to fight a war properly due to politics how do you expect them to win anything? bush shoulders some of the blame but for the rest you need to look at yourself and those you voted into office as well as the international community..

medicineman · #6 07-13-2007, 11:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hempie

we arent allowed to carpet bomb anymore. and we have to wait for our troops to be attacked before we can fire back and then the troops need permission just to do that. there are 11 steps to the ROE and most are politically motivated.. if our military isnt allowed to fight a war properly due to politics how do you expect them to win anything? bush shoulders some of the blame but for the rest you need to look at yourself and those you voted into office as well as the international community..

Hogwash, totally imbecilic. Hempie, go back to sleep.

Gygax1974 · #7 07-13-2007, 11:41 PM

I'm might have been spaeking out of context, what I was trying to say is that war was different back then. No matter who was president is irrelevant, I wasn't making any points about the present war just saying war is totally different now. I was just commenting on the WWII comment that's all.

ozstone · #8 07-14-2007, 08:23 AM

If I may be so bold as to enter this discussion, here is an excerpt of a column I came across when I Google searched "Good News in Iraq",

A Baghdad plea: U.S. should stay and fight

By MOHAMMED FADHIL
Thursday, May 10th 2007, 4:00 AM

I wasn't surprised when I saw Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, appear on Al Jazeera to announce America's defeat last week, not long after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did. Zawahiri claims Al Qaeda has won, and Reid claims America has lost.

In the midst of such a fierce war, sending more wrong messages could only further complicate an already complicated situation. It would only create more of a mess inside Iraq - a mess that would then be exploited by Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia for their own purposes: more iron-fisted control of the peoples and treasures of the region, more pushing the Middle East to crises and confrontations, and more spreading of their dark, backward ideologies.
It is up to us to show tyrants and murderers like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Syria's Bashar Assad, and their would-be imitators who seek to control Iraq's people and wealth that we, the people, are not their possessions. They can't take out our humanity and they can't force us to back down.
The world should ask them to leave our land before asking the soldiers of freedom to do so.The cost of liberating Europe in the last century was enormous in blood and treasure.
In fact, it took half a century of American military presence thereafter to protect those nations from subsequent threats. If that made sense during a Cold War, and it did, then I don't understand why anyone would demand a pullout from Iraq (and maybe later, the entire Middle East) when the enemies are using every evil technique, from booby trapped dead animals to hijacked civilian aircrafts, to kill innocents.
And so, my friends, I will call for fighting this war just as powerfully as the bad guys do - because I must show them that I'm stronger than they are. The people of America need to understand this: the enemies of a stable Iraq are America's enemies, and they simply do not understand the language of civilization and reason.
They understand only power. It is with power they took over their countries and held their peoples hostage. Everything they accomplished was through absolute control over the assets of their nations through murder, torture, repression and intimidation.

Those who prefer to bury their heads in the dirt today, and withdraw from this difficult fight, will be cursed forever for abandoning their duty when they were most capable. I don't understand why someone who has all the tools for victory would refuse to fight an enemy that reminds us every day that it is evil - with all the daily beheadings, torture and violations of all humane laws and values.
With America's help - and only with its help - the decent people of Iraq can still prevail.
Fadhil, a dentist in Baghdad, writes regularly at IRAQ THE MODEL. He adapted this from a recent post.

medicineman · #9 07-14-2007, 11:21 AM

Those who prefer to bury their heads in the dirt today, and withdraw from this difficult fight, will be cursed forever for abandoning their duty when they were most capable. I don't understand why someone who has all the tools for victory would refuse to fight an enemy that reminds us every day that it is evil - with all the daily beheadings, torture and violations of all humane laws and values.
With America's help - and only with its help - the decent people of Iraq can still prevail.
Fadhil, a dentist in Baghdad, writes regularly at IRAQ THE MODEL. He adapted this from a recent post. A dentist in Bagdad wants more Americans to die so his country can be free. Go fuck yourself Mr. dentist. If you want more freedom then get your countrymen to stand up and fight your own battles. We have given 3600+++ lives and 750 billion bucks for your "freedom" (actually for your oil reserves) so stand up and get some, quit sniveling and grab an AK.

ozstone · #10 07-14-2007, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by medicineman

Those who prefer to bury their heads in the dirt today, and withdraw from this difficult fight, will be cursed forever for abandoning their duty when they were most capable. I don't understand why someone who has all the tools for victory would refuse to fight an enemy that reminds us every day that it is evil - with all the daily beheadings, torture and violations of all humane laws and values.
With America's help - and only with its help - the decent people of Iraq can still prevail.
Fadhil, a dentist in Baghdad, writes regularly at IRAQ THE MODEL. He adapted this from a recent post. A dentist in Bagdad wants more Americans to die so his country can be free. Go fuck yourself Mr. dentist. If you want more freedom then get your countrymen to stand up and fight your own battles. We have given 3600+++ lives and 750 billion bucks for your "freedom" (actually for your oil reserves) so stand up and get some, quit sniveling and grab an AK.

But then they would be whinging there are no dentists lol