This is the real info from Iraq. Americans mostly go on outdated info and preconceptions about Iraq and the rest of the world. I hope your messages will cause Americans to think.

It's sad that we HAVE to go online to get the news. I wonder how many Americans don't yet quite get how much news they're not getting. This is good....finer points than we get, usually, without going to Juan Cole's site. Thanks!

It was thought to be a pretty good idea at the time to arm and pay Muslim fundamentalists to attack Russian garrisons in Afghanistan.

Not much changes.

Just maybe some of the SOIs were terrorists in the employ of AQI. Today they are our terrorists. Isn't there a salonista slogan that someones terrorist is anothers freedom fighter?

$300/month/SOI times 12 months/year times 80,000 SOIs = 288 million dollars a year.

You know what? If that's what it takes to sort of stabilize Iraq, it would be a real bargain. If that relative stability brought the price of oil down by even five bucks a barrel, the savings to the U.S. economy (using 20 million barrels a day) would pay the annual cost in just under three days.

I suggest the U.S. write a bunch of post dated cheques and consider itself exceedingly lucky to get off so cheap.

This sounds like something our corrupt Administration would do! After all that's about all they understand is armed violence. And armed thugs who have been boughten with taxpayers hard earned money. It looks like we are creating a society that is as corrupt as our President. I'm waiting for it to explode in their faces and the civil war to start all over again. These armed thugs roaming the streets doing what they feel like with no oversight. Not owing allegiance to anyone but their pocketbook! It sounds like Bush's typical fiasco! A disaster waiting to happen.

Another great article.

There's a great piece in the Times today about the Iraqi army.

Whether or not to withdraw and when is a more complex argument than the campaigns (especially the McCain campaign) make it out to be. I'm glad somebody's keeping the debate broad.

Oh, there's a really well thought-out plan! But, Heaven forbid we should institute a DRAFT to insure enough manpower for our little colonization exercise!! Then Mr. & Mrs. Six-Pack would KNOW there was a WAR on! Worse yet, with a fairly administered draft, even a trust-fund baby gets called up now and then. Tch, tch.

What a Bush typical mess. It's the kind of thing that when or if it blows up into a surge of attacks and fighting will be played in whatever context best serves to look good for Bush. It could be "see what happens when we back off" or "this is democrats fault for being soft on war" or "see we're not done here yet".

Bush has land mined this whole arena so as to make a no win situation for a new administration, for his it would be used to incorrectly prove points. The common sense and care that will need to be taken with the situations left to be handled can be made to make a new president look like the new admin is making a mess out of things that were left a mess. This whole matter of tens of thousands of footloose soldiers was created when the lack of an original occupation plan cut half a million trained and armed troops loose instead of immediately putting them to work securing and maintaining peace.

Bush and Cheney need to be impeached so the madness can be headed off before more damage is done. This administration has been initiating ludicrous policies such as building permanent bases and paying terrorists to keep unstable temporary lulls in fighting and will undoubtedly initiate more actions that will create problems for the next administration.

In an investigation of the time line on the four biggest permanent bases there is no way Bush got legal senate approvals for either the go ahead to build them or the funding necessary at over a billion each. They were started as unilateral decisions that disregarded the oversight needed for billion dollar projects. It is not legal for Bush to initiate projects of this scale without senate support.

G.W. Bush sets your whole neighborhood afire by pouring gasoline on all the houses, and then flicking his Bic. After that, he drives around in a firetruck, squirting water where he pleases, sort of keeping the fires under control.

Then he says, with a straight face, in his awful accent, "If I drive my firetruck away, the whole place will burn down. You need me."

I would kick him hard on his soft butt, chase him away, and see what I could do myself about his fires.

We have a great article today discussing the real complexity of restoring stability in Iraq, and there are only a handful of posts?

I think this is more properly called "THE SURGE!" And what a "successful" stategy it has been, has it not? Another example of American hubris! And the instigators, Cheney/Bush will not even be around when the shit hits the fan! It will be up to President Obama to deal with the mess they made!

And it's clusterf#(&. It was apparent form some of the early reports I read that this was the road the surge was heading for, and no doubt, it's gonna be blamed on the next president when it does explode.

The thing is, like one poster already mentioned, it would be easier to keep paying these guys until the inevitable American withdrawal. I don't see any signs the US has the diplomatic skills to defuse the situation, the least that the government should do is make sure they've pulled out by the time it explodes.

Good article. Too bad more people are busy reading the latest fluff opinion piece from Walsh or Shapiro.

God this country just doesn't fucking learn its lesson does it, I don't want to believe that were doing this all over again and expecting it NOT to blow up in our faces (or into our tall buildings) again.