Mosul and so on

[Haruo]

Do you ever get the feeling that maybe "Baghdad" is Arabic for "Saigon"?

http://www.smh.com.au/world/islamist-mi ... zs4ko.html

[Dave Roberts]

Something about this scenario does sound familiar, doesn't it?

[Sandy]

Iraq was a mess created by British imperialism post World War 1. If you think that Americans can go in there, bring democracy, and resolve the problems, you are sadly misinformed, and at least a touch delusional. Unfortunately, the mess that is happening now can no longer be blamed solely on the British. The instability of the current Iraqi government is due to the misguided, unwarranted US invasion, the overthrow of the government, and the weakness of the individuals who have been propped up with American support. Bush was warned about intervening the second time, without provocation or legitimate reason, but he wanted to keep his promise to enrich his oil buddies (and himself) with Iraqi oil. This is his mess.

As for John McCain's comments that the president needs to get a security team that knows how to succeed, well, we tried this and this is what we now have. I've concluded that, with his comments about releasing the Taliban five in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, which he suggested in February and criticized the President for not doing it, and now is criticizing the president for doing what he suggested, he is demonstrating a highly advanced form of Alzheimer's disease. Phoenix is a nice place to retire, and McCain needs to take advantage of it, go home, put on his golf shorts, shirt, and sunglasses, and sit on the back porch and sip tea with a bit of bourbon in it.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2 ... -to-serve/

From Forbes magazine. From McCain's recent activity, I'd vote for "unfit to serve." Of course, there was a time, in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, that McCain actually stated he believed that once the invasion of Iraq was complete, we would have a huge stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, and the Iraqi people would welcome the US as liberators, neither of which materialized.

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but he wasn't a security risk to the United States, or to its interests. The second Iraq war was the biggest mistake ever made by a President of the US. It gave a bunch of disconnected, Islamic militants unity and a cause, and has contributed to massive instability in the region, the results of which we are now seeing. This can't be blamed on current US security policy. It's not our job to prop up a puppet government.

[KeithE]

I don’t often praise Obama’s actions (words are better), but three cheers for his stance today



I just hope and pray he sticks to his words.

[Sandy]

Knowing history is quite important, and Americans are woefully ignorant when it comes to the Middle East. These problems go back to Byzantium, the Caliphates, the Crusades and they've been aggravated over time by European economic interests related to trade, rivalries between monarchies, the expansionist imperialism of the British, Germans and Russians, and in modern times, oil. The lines on the ground that are borders in the area now were pretty much drawn in by the British when they became the dominant power in the region after World War I. They represent the best way to protect British interests. Then there is the added difficulty posed by the insertion of a Jewish state after WW2, which the British resisted mightily because it would interfere with their interests, and which, pushed by the US, changed the economic dominance of the area. Some of US policy has been affected by the influences of dispensational premillenialism as it relates to Israel, though the Israeli state doesn't meet the prophetic descriptions.

The inequities of wealth, the competing interests within the Muslim faith, ancient racial hatred, all contribute to a mess that will never be solved by US intervention, or military might. The Iraqi government, contrary to John McCain's opinon, has always been a puppet, and has cowered inside the secure Green zone in Baghdad because outside of areas controlled and secured by the US Military, they have no credibility or authority. Bush's policy and actions were a monumental failure, and what we have now is the wake of his inept incompetence.

[KeithE]