Petraeus: "Surge" has 25% chance of success.

[Drake Tungsten]

Bush has already told Congress that he wouldn't sign a bill that contained a deadline for troop withdrawal. If they go ahead and send a bill with a deadline to him anyway, they better have enough votes to override the veto or the lack of troop funding is on their heads...

[Apocalypse]

What is the date they are setting anyway?

[Drake Tungsten]

March of 2008, IIRC.

edit: Senate says March 31st, 2008. House says September 1st, 2008. Don't know if there's a unified bill yet or what its deadline will be...

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/27/us.iraq.ap/index.html

edit 2:

The House-passed bill requires the withdrawal of combat troops by Sept. 1, 2008. The Senate measure is weaker, requiring the beginning of a withdrawal within 120 days, and setting a nonbinding goal of March 2008 for completion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6568774,00.html

[Apocalypse]

Wow, that's fairly soon.

[Drake Tungsten]

Yep. Would effectively end the surge.

[MOBIUS]

The damp squib?

[MOBIUS]

Return of the Shia Death Squads - Surge back to Square One!

"You are the Weakest Link, Goodbye..."

Baghdad death squads end truce to seek revenge
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 20 April 2007

Death squads are returning to the streets of Baghdad despite the security plan for the capital launched with great fanfare by the US two months ago.

As Iraqis bury the 230 people killed or found dead on Wednesday, ominous signs are appearing that the Shia militias have resumed their ***-for-tat killings. There is a sharp increase in the number of dead bodies found bearing signs of torture, with 67 corpses discovered dumped in Baghdad in the first three days of the week.

People in Baghdad, both Shia and Sunni, do not dare move bodies left lying in the rubbish outside their doors though they sometimes cover them with a blanket. One corpse was left lying for days in the centre of a main commercial street in the Sunni bastion of al-Adhamiyah in east Baghdad. He was believed to be a victim of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has been killing Sunni who belong to other guerrilla groups or are associated with the government. Local people say that US and Iraqi forces stationed in a newly renovated police station in al-Adhamiyah as part of the security plan seem unaware of what is happening around them.

Shia militiamen are likely to seek revenge for recent horrific bombings since most victims were Shia. The bomb used in the most deadly attack, which killed 127 people and wounded 148 in Sadriyah, was meticulously planned to explode just as minibuses were collecting workers who had finished work at 4pm.

As wakes for the dead were held in huge mourning tents in nearby alleys in Sadriyah, Akram Abdullah, owner of a clothing shop, said: "It's a tragedy - devastation covers the whole area. It's as if a volcano erupted here. Charred bodies are still inside the twisted cars, some cars are still covered with ashes."

The attacks are likely to speed the return of the Mehdi Army in Shia areas to provide protection. It was stood down by its leader, the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as the US-Iraqi security crackdown began on 14 February. When Iraqi army soldiers and a US patrol entered Sadriyah after the bombing they were met with jeers and stones.

The truce by the Mehdi Army militia, though never total, may now be ending because it was met with an escalation in violence by the Sunni insurgents. In a gruesome video posted on the internet a group linked to al-Qa'ida showed a masked gunman shooting 20 kidnap victims, all police or soldiers, in the back of the head. The group had demanded the freeing of all female prisoners by the government.

There was a further suicide bomb in Baghdad yesterday which killed a dozen people in the mainly Shia Karradah district 500 yards from the heavily guarded home of President Jalal Talabani. Hours later the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, arrived on an unannounced visit saying he would tell Iraqi leaders that America's commitment was not open-ended.

The US security plan has never had the political as well as the military components essential to success. It should have encouraged more Iraqi groups to enter the political process and eschew violence. In fact it has done the opposite. The US has been pushing the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to break with Mr Sadr, who has a very large following among the Shia majority.

Mr Sadr withdrew his six ministers from the government this week saying that Mr Maliki had failed to set a deadline for a US troop withdrawal. But the Sadrists are also angry that US and Iraqi government troops have arrested 800 of their men, including Sheikh Qais Khazali, one of their leaders. Mr Sadr reportedly believes the Prime Minister reneged on an agreement not to purse the Mehdi Army if it did not fight.

The soaring number of people being executed by the government since the death penalty was reintroduced in 2004 is condemned in a new report by Amnesty International. It says that 270 people are under sentence of death and more than 100 have been executed, almost all of them since the start of 2006. The report says many of them only confessed under torture.

Nice also to see that the Iraqi govt has neatly slipped into the torture vacuum left by Saddam. Truly, we appear to have replaced one brutal regime with another - as well as destroying the infrastructure of an entire country and being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians...

The only difference now is that the Iraqi people get to vote for those that torture and kill them!

Way to go Blair and Bush!

[Ned]

Mobius, even if Blair and Bush are to blame for this mess, do you have a solution? What would you do if you were now PM or president?

[MichaeltheGreat]

If he was consistent with his troll in the Virginia Tech shootings that the victims and their parents are to blame for not changing US gun laws to conform to his views, then he should accept the blame for the British government's policy choice to join the war.

He should go to Baghdad, seek out every insurgent group he can find, and apologize and beg forgiveness for his role in the invasion of Iraq.

[DinoDoc]

I'm sure we'd donate money for the ticket.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Bush has already told Congress that he wouldn't sign a bill that contained a deadline for troop withdrawal. If they go ahead and send a bill with a deadline to him anyway, they better have enough votes to override the veto or the lack of troop funding is on their heads...

I disagree. Congress is expressing the will of the American people (the latest poll shows 64% of Americans want a withdrawal deadline). The President is the one attempting to block the will of the people and play partisan politics with our troops funding. If he vetos it then he is the one who is blocking funds and putting our troops in danger. Bush needs to recognize reality and accept responsibility for his actions.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
What is the date they are setting anyway?

Slightly before the 2008 Presidential election. In other words the withdrawal date even the Republicans have already defacto agreed to. The deadline is just to end major combat operations where as noncombat forces can stay to assist in nation building.

[Ned]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
If he was consistent with his troll in the Virginia Tech shootings that the victims and their parents are to blame for not changing US gun laws to conform to his views, then he should accept the blame for the British government's policy choice to join the war.

He should go to Baghdad, seek out every insurgent group he can find, and apologize and beg forgiveness for his role in the invasion of Iraq.

That would be a start.

Perhaps he would continue by pulling his troops out and offering to pay reparations to all such groups, and to al Qa'ida, for all the damage he caused by fighting them.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Oerdin


I disagree. Congress is expressing the will of the American people (the latest poll shows 64% of Americans want a withdrawal deadline). The President is the one attempting to block the will of the people and play partisan politics with our troops funding. If he vetos it then he is the one who is blocking funds and putting our troops in danger. Bush needs to recognize reality and accept responsibility for his actions.

I see some of the more radical Dems are already calling for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney so that the real president of the US can take charge.

[Dinner]

One person equals plural? I agree that they've committed crimes worthy of impeachment but even the Democratic leadership has said there is no chance for impeachment. It isn't going to happen.

Ehst makes your claims even more laughable is that the one person who has called for impeachment is running for President and is so far behind he's obviously just grand standing to get noticed. There is no way even 1% of the Democratic members of Congress would support this guy's bill.