And for a good reason. Violence over the past two days has led to at least deaths from insurgent attacks:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Suicide bombers targeted Shiite pilgrims in the south and police recruits in central Iraq, and a roadside bomb killed five U.S. soldiers, bringing Thursday’s death toll to at least 130 people in a series of attacks as politicians tried to form a coalition government.
The two-day toll from insurgent attacks rose to 183, reflecting a dramatic upsurge in bloodshed following the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. Some leading Sunni politicians accuse the Shiite-led government of condoning fraud in the voting.
* * *
A suicide blast near the Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, killed 63 people and wounded 120, Karbala police spokesman Rahman Meshawi said.
In the attack’s aftermath, a woman and an infant girl in a bright red jumpsuit lay in a pool of blood, their faces covered by a sheet. Television images showed men ferrying the wounded in pushcarts.
* * *
In Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad, a U.S. spokesman said dozens were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a line of about 1,000 police recruits. Marine Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool initially put the death toll at about 30, but Mohammed al-Ani, a doctor at Ramadi General Hospital, later said 56 people were killed and 60 injured.
The attack took place at a police screening center. Pool said recruits later got back in line to continue the screening process.
Well election is over. Bring on the new election!
Meanwhile back in the USA, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama was revealed to have sent Rumsfeld a letter back in 2003 urging troop withdrawals ASAP:
(More on the flip)
MOBILE, Ala. – U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, in a September 2003 letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, called for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq “as quickly as possible,” the Mobile Register reported Thursday.
* * *
Sessions’ three-page letter, which the Mobile Register obtained under a Freedom Of Information Act request, was dated Sept. 5, 2003, shortly after Sessions returned from a fact-finding trip, including two days in Iraq.
“As strongly as I support our actions in Iraq, I think it’s very important that we start drawing down the number of our troops,” Sessions said in the letter, which urged the Pentagon to concentrate on beefing up Iraqi forces. “I would try every way possible to reduce our presence as quickly as possible and to spend money on local police, civil defense and military.”
“There is no way an American soldier who does not speak the language can be an effective law enforcement officer,” Sessions, a former federal prosecutor, wrote.
He also called for an expansion of the Iraqi army, which would allow for a U.S. troop drawdown and provide Iraqis with steady jobs and “a stake in a new Iraq.”
Guess they really paid attention to ya, didn’t they Jeff. Of course, now he says that you shouldn’t compare what he said then in private correspondence to the Secretary of Defense with Jack Murtha’s call for troop withdrawals recently. And what are his views today about the situation in Iraq? Oh yes, that “[S]uccess in driving down the insurgency may be worth some delay in reducing the numbers.”
Dear Senator, please see the story immediately preceding yours re: that success against the insurgency. If that’s success I’d hate to see what you call failure.
Of course, on that note, and as Booman already told us Bush is reaching out for help on Iraq from outside Cheney’s bunker in the White House. Or is he?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush reached on Thursday beyond his tight circle of trusted aides to solicit views on Iraq of former secretaries of state and defense, including some who have publicly criticized his policy.
* * *
Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state for Bush’s father, said when talking to the president there is a tendency to be restrained in expressing opposing views.
“There was some criticism, but it was basically ‘you haven’t talked to the American people enough,’ and it was very mild,” he said to reporters after the meeting. “We’re all has-bins anyway,” he said, smoking a cigarette in front of the television cameras on the White House driveway.
Pardon me, but the problem isn’t that Bush hasn’t spoken to the American people enough. I’ve heard enough speeches on Iraq from him to make a root canal seem painless. The problem is that he never has anything new to say, and that he appears to be unwilling to change the course that was set for him back in early 2002.
I mean if they weren’t listening to conservative Senators like Jeff Sessions back in 2003, what makes anyone believe that Bush is honestly seeking out differing viewpoints on Iraq now? All this was just a dog and poiny show with a bunch of old dogs and broken down nags as a backdrop for the same old spiel:
“The main thrust of our success will be when the Iraqis are able to take the fight to the enemy that wants to stop their democracy and we’re making darn good progress along those lines,” Bush said.
Sorry, I’m sick of hearing this tripe from you Mr. Bush. Damn sick.
I think once the newly elected representatives get their new logos, offices set up, organized and start legislating and executing…laws… we will see a big turn around. The insurgents will lay down their arms and join with their Iraqi brothers and America will be able to leave having made Iraq into a free democratic society allied with Iran that believes in a thoecratic democracy ruled by one God, Almighty and that God is Allah. Y la la, la y la ha Mohamed Resholah.
George Bush is on the right track. He’s our president. He wouldn’t be if he didn’t know what he was doing.
Now that sounds just like my 75 year old father. Almost word for word.
Sad when parody simply mirrors reality.
Is an elegant, concise distillation of my feelings about the offal in the Oval.
Come on now Steve…you are smarter than this. I know you are well aware that these are just the “last throes” of that nasty Saddamistszarkauwiinsusrgency people.
As much of a sham this whole meeting seems to be, I think it is indicative of a new dynamic beginning to gain traction.
Mind you, I have no direct info, but I suspect that the battle between the “Neocons” and the former “Masters of the Universe”, (i.e. the foreign policy wonks and profiteers of the Carlyle Group, and many big international business groups); the battle between these two groups for control of the White House, control of the empty space between the ears of Bush, is moving into a new phase, and this meeting, ridiculous as it may seem on it’s face, is indicative of how the so-called “pragmatists”, (a la Carlyle, etc.), are gaining influence at the expense of the irrationally aggressive neocons.
I don’t want to read too much into this thing. After all, it seems Bush/Cheney/Rice only spent about 10 minutes with this meeting before dumping their guests off on Hadley so that those who wanted to discuss things further could do so with a “second-stringer”. But, the simple fact that Frank Carlucci and James Baker were in this group signals to me that the Carlyle types are ramping up their countermoves in an attempt to wrest control of US policy from the Cheney gang.
Iraq moves down into ever greater bloodletting — above all now visited by Iraqis and foreigners leading other Iraqis — it is alluring to portray all this aggression as “tedious,” a shudder of ridiculous negative response of all spiritual and ethical principles. As the renewed violence come closer freely elected government in half a century facing calls for the going away of US troops who occupies the country in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.
Yet, wretchedly, there is a rather comprehensible underlying principle behind these hideous events and their cold-blooded perpetrators. And even though, providentially, smaller amount of Americans are on its last legs these days, there can be no uncertainty that Washington itself is the solitary focus of the crusade, despite the consequences of how many Iraqis breathe their last breath.
The bolder the extent of the US master plan — quite frankly portrayed by top US policymakers as a proposal to “redesign the facade of the Middle East” — the harsher the rejoinder from the radicals. It makes no disparity to them whether innocent Iraqi civilians pay the eventual price for associating with the United States.
Miserably, this intact underlying principle and state of mind may now be taking root transversely the region. If this happens, the radicals will have won a truly major victory. In their calculus, the price paid by a few thousand sad victims might be relatively modest if the long-range result is to crimp any future American plans for invasion and occupation of Muslim lands anywhere. What bigger victory could the radicals hope for? How many in the West, especially in the United States, will be eager for a reprise of the Iraq experience?
The whole point is to make sure that the United States learns that such interventionist projects are flights of dangerous folly. Radicals seek to drive home the point that Americans should never survey visually or mentally for even a moment the ambition of visiting American military force against the Muslim world ever again. If Iraq has to twist in the wind in tortured chaos, so be it if that is what it takes to ensure that the United States will be permanently traumatized by messing with Islam.