Iraq Through the Looking Glass(es)

[silverbear]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/2008062...lookingglasses

By MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON
Wed Jun 25, 2:30 AM ET



The state of the Iraq war, as it lurches into its sixth hot summer, is in the eye of the beholder. That much is clear from the release, this week, of a pair of U.S. government reports that offer dueling assessments of the situation in Iraq - a glass half-empty version from the Government Accountability Office, and a glass half-full account from - surprise! - the Pentagon.

Surprise, indeed-- any time any of our military leaders expresses any issues with the way we're waging the Iraq war, he finds himself kicked out of his job... of course the Pentagon is gonna stick strictly to the Dubya party line...

But the Pentagon study cites a slew of indicators suggesting that things are moving in the right direction. The GAO counters by saying, in effect, that the Pentagon's assessment is little more than a house of cards built upon the shifting sands of Iraq's internal political conflicts. Even a house of cards, the GAO implies, can appear stable in a snapshot.

Which is, once again, what I've been arguing right from the start of the "surge"-- that in any guerilla war, you'll see lulls in the fighting like the one that we recently saw, but which is clearly history now...

[quote]The current lull in violence, the GAO contends, is like a stool that rests on three legs: the U.S. troop surge, a creaky ceasefire declared by Shi'ite militias loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, and a U.S.-led effort to hire former insurgents to guard their neighborhoods - hardly a platform for sustainable political and social reform. Indeed, the GAO accuses the Pentagon of cherry-picking the information from Iraq that substantiates the claim of progress, and ignoring more unpalatable indicators.[/quote]

I guess if you guys won't believe common sense coming from me, you won't believe it when it's coming from the Government Accountability Office either...

"The number of trained Iraqi security forces may overstate the number of troops present for duty," the GAO noted. "According to DOD, the number of trained troops includes personnel who are deceased or absent without leave."

ROTFLMAO... only Dubya's boys would have the chutzpah to cite DEAD soldiers, or AWOL soldiers...

[jwhardin]

Like I said I listen to what the troops on the ground say.

[iceberg]

Originally Posted by jwhardin

Like I said I listen to what the troops on the ground say.

they're the ones we should be listening to. unfortunately we've got agenda-boy with the bash-bush superpower running around here in his footie underroos.

[bbgun]

Hmm. That's two "Mark Thompson" columns he's posted in less than 24 hours. Why you'd almost think this Thompson fellow has an agenda or something.

[peplaw06]

Well, at least it's timely.

[silverbear]

Originally Posted by bbgun

Hmm. That's two "Mark Thompson" columns he's posted in less than 24 hours. Why you'd almost think this Thompson fellow has an agenda or something.

Maybe you should do some research on the guy, and point out exactly what the agenda is, instead of this lame speculation... here's a starting point for you, Wikipedia's "bio" of him (which he apparently wrote)...

Among other things, you'll learn he earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1985, for an investigative report in the FWST about design flaws in the military's Huey and Cobra helicopters, design flaws that had already killed 250 of our troops in crashes... he also played a major role in getting the Air Force to scrap their T3 trainers, which also had a nasty problem with crashing... but wait, there's more-- he also wrote a cover piece for Time on the Marine Corps' V-22 Osprey, a plane that even Dick Cheney wanted to scrap... that one killed 30 men before it ever saw a combat operation...

In doing so, he has helped to save the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of our troops...

You'll learn that he was on the ground in Kosovo, was part of the Pentagon's reporter's pool during Desert Storm-- so he's seen some combat duty, and might just know what he's talking about... he has been out front with articles about this administration's failures regarding the proper treatment of our wounded soldiers...

So if he's got an agenda, it's one I find quite admirable-- he ferrets out defective equipment used by our military, he stands up for veterans' rights and the proper treatment of our wounded...

So, now that you know a little something about the man you're trying to dismiss, maybe you ought to address the points he raises, try to rebut them-- if you can...

Oh wait, I forgot, you don't do rebuttal... all you do is attack anybody who says anything you dislike...

For the record, the articles I post, I find in the Yahoo news pages... they tend to be sources like AP, not sources like the Daily Koz or the Huffington Post...

[iceberg]

Originally Posted by silverbear

Maybe you should do some research on the guy, and point out exactly what the agenda is, instead of this lame speculation...

Then, maybe you ought to address the points he raises, try to rebut them-- if you can...

For the record, the articles I post, I find in the Yahoo news pages... they tend to be sources like AP, not sources like the Daily Koz or the Huffington Post...

for someone who can't get the year right, you're sure full of yourself.