Iraqi PM: US aid needed to battle al-Qaida
WASHINGTON (AP) - A bloody resurgence of al-Qaida in Iraq is prompting Baghdad to ask the U.S. for more weapons, training and manpower, two years after pushing American troops out of the country.
The request will be discussed during a White House meeting Friday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Barack Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship that has been marked both by victories and frustrations for each side.
Al-Maliki will discuss Iraq’s plight in a public speech Thursday at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington.
“We know we have major challenges of our own capabilities being up to the standard. They currently are not,” Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “We need to gear up, to deal with that threat more seriously. We need support and we need help.” SOURCE
According to this source the United States military lost 4,486 troops in Iraq between 2003 and now.
That does not take into consideration those that were wounded, many of which were horribly mangled, dismembered and burned and will never fully recover from their experience in Iraq.
If you are a long time reader of this blog you already know how I feel about our war in Iraq, but just in case you’re not familiar; here’s MY opinion of Iraq, our war efforts there and everyone that calls Iraq home.
Iraq was a waste of fine young American lives, untold BILLIONS of our tax dollars and a total waste of time and effort if the original story can be seen as accurate and was the most unnecessary endeavor that we could have taken on, and for that I point a finger straight at former President George W. Bush.
Personally, I didn’t care how many of his own people Saddam killed. I didn’t care if he had these *WMDs* that were so much in the news, you see, those WMDs were NO THREAT to us, Saddam didn’t have a delivery system that was capable of striking America.
If some terror group or radical Muslim group wants to do harm to the USA, they won’t be bringing ricin or sarin into America, they will be manufacturing it right here IN America and delivering it directly into an air system or some other means of mass dispersal.
Further; long before the U.S. military pulled out of Iraq I made it clear, on this blog, that as soon as we were gone the forces of al-Qaida would immediately step up and restart their operations and that Iraq would fall to an assault by al-Qaida without U.S. help.
I also made the prediction that Iraq would be begging the USA for help, arms, munition, logistics and troops and that sometime in a very few years that we, the USA, would once again find ourselves involved in what is, in ALL truth and reality, nothing more than a civil war between warring religious factions.
Civil War n.
1. A war between factions or regions of the same country.2. A state of hostility or conflict between elements within an organization.
Those of you that know me already know this, I am NOT anti-war, not if I feel that we, as a nation, are threatened, but for the life of me, I can’t see how a power struggle between warring religious factions in Iraq presents any kind of clear and present danger to the United States.
In Iraq, Sunni attacks spark Shiite calls to arms
BAGHDAD (AP) - The wave of attacks by al-Qaida-led Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis this year, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense.
They generally insist they’ll do it legally, under the banner of the security forces. But Iraq’s young democracy is still struggling, nearly two years after U.S. troops withdrew, and the specter of armed Shiite and Sunni camps revives memories of the sectarian fighting that took the country to the brink of civil war in the mid-2000s. SOURCE
For ANYONE to call Iraq a *young democracy* is, to me, a clear sign that the writer has NO idea regarding Islam and democracy; think oil and water.
And once again I say this; IF we re-involve our troops in Iraq we will lose American lives, we WILL lose untold BILLIONS of our tax dollars, dollars that we just don’t have, and IF, at some point in the future we were dis-involve ourselves from Iraq, in a matter of a very short time the Iraqis will soon be screaming for help once again as they are over-run buy Islamic extremists.
Iraq kicked the United States OUT of their country, they made it very plain that they didn’t need nor want our help, so why should we go back to a nation that will undoubtedly once again bite the hand that feeds it as soon as they feel their position has improved?
I should have been one of those Intelligence analyst guys…
We screwed up with Iraq royally beginning with the end of Desert Storm. I’m not a diplomat but looking back upon history, what should have happened was to try and bring Saddam “into the fold”. He was defeated but allowed to remain in power. We should have diplomatically brought him along to a way of governing that was contusive to taking proper care of his nation. At the end of WWII, Patton used some former Nazi’s to help in rebuilding war torn Germany as they had the corporate knowledge. MacArthur allowed the Emperor of Japan to remain in power and treated him with respect. This won the Japanese people over and today they’re one of our best allies. We could have done similar with Saddam but instead we isolated him and his nation. I may be wrong but I believe things could have been different if handled differently after Desert Storm
I believe you’re right on the money…
General Schwarzkopf advised Bush Sr. to keep on going. He was reined-in.
Just like Patton in WWII.
Schwarzkopf was correct and Patton was correct.
With regard to Iraq — man, we didn’t see THAT coming, did we?
BZ
The difficult thing is how to manage a people who have embraced a religion that has no room for anyone outside its boundaries.
The easy solution would be to turn the Middle East into a ‘glass sea’, but Iraq now has a fairly large Christian population that chooses to live there, and ethnic cleansing is frowned upon by the world in general.
Another solution would be to ignore them and let them kill each other, but evil would certainly prevail and then we would have to deal with a terrorist group with far too much power at its finger tips (that is the concern many have of Iran acquiring Nuclear weapons).
We could interact at various levels including sending money, weapons, training and troops to assist “the good guys”, but then, as you have correctly observed, there would be unnecessary loss of lives.
If there were a way to contain them, I’d vote let them fight it out. Include Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Round up Al Qaeda in Somalia and North Africa, The Philippines and every other militant Muslim and dump ‘em in the mix.
If having an opinion of ‘when life begins’ is “above Obama’s pay grade”, then he will never be able to navigate through the Middle East issues… especially when it comes to killing his fellow Muslims.
Here goes more of our money and blood. Let this be a world solution, or at the very least leave it to the Saudi’s. We have been their Foreign Legion for way too long. Open up the pipeline and let them work it out.
Open up the KEYSTONE XL pipeline, you mean.
We HAVE the resources beneath our very FEET to become energy independent, YET the Leftists in the nation INSIST that we import CONFLICT OIL.
BZ
I totally agree. We need to develop our resources and become independent regarding energy. Open the Keystone XL, frack, and open up the federal lands to drilling. Of course, Obama opposes all of this as he wants this country to fail.
Give more….are you shitting me….we gave them over 4000 of our troops lives and billions of our dollars ….they run our ass out of town..they can go to hell…and the quicker the better….its a never ending black hole for our troops and money..let them figure it out..
There has been a steady pattern by the US and others, of removing by hook or by crook the strong arm men of the Middle East over the past decade whereby the Islamic fundamentalists (Al Queda or one of its affiliations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood) have then jumped into the spot made vacant by the strong man’s removal. Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya all come to mind here. Syria is now in the process of having its strong man removed with arms and munitions being supplied covertly by the CIA to the so called Syrian ‘rebels’.
Russia and China now support the dictator Assad, while the ‘free world’ supports the dictator’s overthrow. So when Assad is gone what comes next, and which Islamic state will have its dictator removed, and for what purpose is all this happening?
On Iraq; the ‘democracy’ experiment was always going to fail!
So what gives?
A joke, but probably sad and true…
A U.S. Navy Destroyer stops four Muslims in a row boat, rowing towards America.
The captain gets on the loud hailer and shouts, “Ahoy, small craft, where are you heading?”
One of the Muslims stands up and shouts, “We are invading the United States.”
The crew of the Destroyer all start laughing and when the captain finally stops laughing, he gets back on the loud hailer and says, “Just the four of you?”
The Muslim stands up again and shouts, “No, we’re the last four. The rest are already there!”