The "surge" is a success?

[Ramo]

You have yet to say anything requiring a responce. Are the majority of these tens of thousands of militiamen combing the streets killing everyone they see or sitting in their own neighborhoods guarding their shops and homes. I know this will be hard for you to admit, but almost all of them are doing the latter.

That's a strawman. Yes, there aren't tens of thousands of serial killers on the loose. But these aren't nice people who help grannies cross streets. To pretend otherwise is naive in the extreme. They're a severely malignant influence in Iraq, as the articles above can attest. The South of Iraq is basically controlled by a bunch of religious fanatic mafias. Who really like ethnic cleansing. Again from ICG:

Basra’s political arena remains in the hands of actors engaged in bloody competition for resources, undermining what is left of governorate institutions and coercively enforcing their rule. The local population has no choice but to seek protection from one of the dominant camps. Periods of stability do not reflect greater governing authority so much as they do a momentary – and fragile – balance of interests or of terror between rival militias. Inevitably, conflicts re-emerge and even apparently minor incidents can set off a cycle of retaliatory violence. A political process designed to pacify competition and ensure the non-violent allocation of goods and power has become a source of intense and often brutal struggle.

[Ramo]

I like how you use articles from May when the surge didn't reach full strength until June.

Of course your articles show no progress if you continually use old ones from the same month.

You realize that my post had absolutely nothing to do with the surge, right? I was making a point about the nature of the Iraqi Army. Christ Patty, reading comprehension is important.

And actually, both articles in that post were from August....

[Patroklos]

You realize that the only reason your talking about Basra is because in your desperate flailing to find a less than rosy picture than the decidedly not overly optimistic OP you had to go to a non US surge affected province not even turned over to the Iraqis yet (for a reason).

Not that Basra is all that bad relative. Wow, some violence against a withdrawing occupier, how unexpected and unheard of . Where are the roving death squads? No one to keep them at bay yet they just aren't there. The Mahdi Army is still sitting on their laurels even though nobody is holding them back. Why are they not breaking the seventh seal of the apocalypse like you describe? Why are all the oil lines operating unmolested even though they have nothing to guard them but the corrupt and infiltrated Iraqi army? Odd.

And again, why do you ignore the four other provinces the Brits turned over existing in relative normalcy? Shouldn't the Shia there be burning the place down?

The sad thing here is that at best the only thing anyone here has claimed is limited progress, but you are so ingrained with the edgy pessimist line of though you can't even admit that when it smacks you in the face.

[Ramo]

No, again with the reading comprehension problems.

The only reason I was talking about Basra was because of your irrelevant map. Your point was that the political progress was irrelevant because national reconciliation would occur somehow through the development of the Iraqi military, and your evidence that there was progress in this matter was that the Iraqi security forces have taken control of the security situation in Kurdistan and Basra. I pointed out that all that happened was that we merely handed over power to sectarian militias. This is not evidence of a nascent nationalism, but exactly the opposite.

Seriously, how can you have misinterpreted what I said so badly? This is pretty sad...

To recap, the Basra issue was a totally different argument, that had little to do with the first one that I made...

Where are the roving death squads?

Jeebus. You understand that ethnic cleansing doesn't quite work in a homogeneous population, right?

Why are all the oil lines operating unmolested even though they have nothing to guard them but the corrupt and infiltrated Iraqi army? Odd.

You really think that the militias don't get a huge cut of the oil revenue?

Shouldn't the Shia there be burning the place down?

What the hell does that mean? I never implied that there was or is going to be self-destruction in Basra. All I pointed out was, again, this:

Basra’s political arena remains in the hands of actors engaged in bloody competition for resources, undermining what is left of governorate institutions and coercively enforcing their rule. The local population has no choice but to seek protection from one of the dominant camps. Periods of stability do not reflect greater governing authority so much as they do a momentary – and fragile – balance of interests or of terror between rival militias. Inevitably, conflicts re-emerge and even apparently minor incidents can set off a cycle of retaliatory violence. A political process designed to pacify competition and ensure the non-violent allocation of goods and power has become a source of intense and often brutal struggle.

[PLATO]

Okay...Hold on just a second. Ramo keeps quoting the International Crisis Group as if it were some end all authority.

Let's take a quick look at their executive committee:

Executive Committee
Morton Abramowitz
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Ambassador to Turkey

Cheryl Carolus
Former South African High Commissioner to the UK and Secretary General of the ANC

Maria Livanos Cattaui*
Member of the Board of Directors, Petroplus Holding AG, Switzerland; former Secretary-General, International Chamber of Commerce

Yoichi Funabashi
Chief Diplomatic Correspondent & Columnist, The Asahi Shimbun, Japan

Frank Giustra
Chairman, Endeavour Financial, Canada

Stephen Solarz
Former U.S. Congressman

George Soros
Chairman, Open Society Institute

Pär Stenbäck
Former Foreign Minister of Finland
*Vice Chair

uh-huh. Right.

Carry On Ms. Pelosi,,,uh...I mean Ramo

[Ramo]

It's a fairly well respected ngo. And the Independent and the BBC are well respected news organizations. If you disagree with them and think that Basra is a wonderful place that isn't run by militias, despite my three articles to the contrary, you might want to show some, you know, evidence to that effect.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Ramo
It's a fairly well respected ngo. And the Independent and the BBC are well respected news organizations. If you disagree with them and think that Basra is a wonderful place that isn't run by militias, despite my three articles to the contrary, you might want to show some, you know, evidence to that effect.

Respected by who?

Yes, I am sure that all liberals respect them!

Just take Solarz for instance. You realize that he also sits on National Institute for Democratic affairs which is loosely associated with the Democratic Party and maintains ties with the Liberal International, Socialist International, and the Center Democrats International.

Or would you rather talk about the respect that George Soros garners outside of the liberal nut-job arena?

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Ramo
It's a fairly well respected ngo. And the Independent and the BBC are well respected news organizations. If you disagree with them and think that Basra is a wonderful place that isn't run by militias, despite my three articles to the contrary, you might want to show some, you know, evidence to that effect.

Respected by who?

Yes, I am sure that all liberals respect them!

Just take Solarz for instance. You realize that he also sits on National Institute for Democratic affairs which is loosely associated with the Democratic Party and maintains ties with the Liberal International, Socialist International, and the Center Democrats International.

Or would you rather talk about the respect that George Soros garners outside of the liberal nut-job arena?

[Ramo]

Soros is fairly respected as far as promoting democracies around the world goes. Just because Fox News doesn't like someone doesn't diminish their credibility. Quite the opposite....

I don't know who Solarz is.

And as an institution, the ICG is generally respected.

In any case, if you want to argue against my point, put forth some evidence instead of dealing exclusively with ad hominems...

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Ramo
Soros is fairly respected as far as promoting democracies around the world goes. Just because Fox News doesn't like them doesn't diminish one's credibility. Quite the opposite....

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one! I couldn't care less what Fox News has to say, but George Soros is also well known for his anti Republican ideals and also the lengths he will go to to destroy people. That's not credibility.

Originally posted by Ramo

I don't know who Solarz is.

Maybe you should. He is the Vice Chairman of the organization you keep quoting. But, I'll help a little. He is a Democrat (shock! suprise!).

[Ramo]

I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one! I couldn't care less what Fox News has to say, but George Soros is also well known for his anti Republican ideals and also the lengths he will go to to destroy people. That's not credibility.

Soros has a huge democracy building ngo. It's fairly well respected, however much he's badmouthed in the right-wing media.

Maybe you should. He is the Vice Chairman of the organization you keep quoting. But, I'll help a little. He is a Democrat (shock! suprise!).

Which means he's a liar of course.

As I wrote in my edit, if you want to argue against my point, put forth some evidence instead of dealing exclusively with ad hominems... This six degrees of Kevin Bacon nonsense is getting old...

[GePap]

I don't get why you even try Ramo. You could burry PLATO and Pati in a mountain of papers written by every expert in the middle east, and they would demand that you brought them God to tell them before, maybe, they would reconsider their positions, which have led to mistaken assumptions about Iraq form the beginning.

So what is the point anymore? It doesn;t matter how many times you tell them what is accurate, since it does not fit into their world view, they will never see it. Its a common liberal assumption that people can be educate upwards, that knowledge is what solves ignorance. But most ignorance is self-imposed. PLATO and Pati have no whish to end their self-imposed one when it comes to Iraq.

[Ramo]

For ****s and giggles, the Wiki article on Solarz:

Stephen Joshua Solarz is a former United States Congressional Representative from New York. Solarz was both an outspoken critic of President Ronald Reagan's deployment of Marines to Lebanon in 1982 and a cosponsor of the 1991 Gulf War Authorization Act during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush.

Born in New York City, September 12, 1940, Solarz attended public schools in New York City and later received a B.A. from Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. in 1962 and an M.A. in public law and government from Columbia University in 1967. Solarz taught political science at Brooklyn (N.Y.) College, 1967–1968. He served in the New York State assembly from 1969 to 1974. He served as a delegate to the Democratic National Mid-term Convention in 1974.

Solarz was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat to the 94th and to the eight succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1975–January 3, 1993). On July 18, 1980, he became the first American public official to visit North Korea since the end of the Korean War, and the first to meet with Kim Il-sung.[1] In 1992 he was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination to the One Hundred Third Congress. Thereafter he was appointed by President Bill Clinton as chairman of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund and served from 1993 to 1998.

Since then he has remained active with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. He is also a member of the Intellibridge Expert Network and vice-chairman of International Crisis Group. Solarz is also co-chairman of the American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus, along with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Alexander Haig.

What a crazy, dangerous radical.

[Ramo]

I don't know GePap. I though Dan actually wanted a real argument, but of course he never does. But I am glad to get wonderful insights like the idea that George Soros is unfairly trying to make Muqtada al-Sadr look like a thug. I guess it's because Sadr is Republican...

[PLATO]

Okay...first of all I never argued about who is running Basra. My argument has been that for the last six to eight months that there has been extensive vetting of people coming into the Iraqi armed forces...particularly the officer corp. The only thing I say in any of your articles is a mention of sectarian problems in the police force. Two different organiztions.

Secondl, every article you have quoted is from a liberal to very liberal source. Yet you claim to be well read and get your information from many sources. It does you no good if they are all liberal. Perhaps this is, in and of itself, good evidence that their might just be some disagreement on the pure gloom picture you paint about all aspects of Iraq.

Thirdly, if you don't recognize an agenda by people like Soros when he has made no secret of it, then I am afraid that any amount of evidence would do little to change your entrenched opinion. And, I dare say, that your opinion is entrenched.

Lastly, If you will note, I have been quite frank in saying that all the sucess of the surge may be for naught if the Iraqis cannot find a political solution (maybe "solution" is to strong...perhaps a political accomadation). Far from being disassociated from the militias, the political equities in Iraq go hand in hand with them. Some militias (and the accompanying political power) are, or can be, forces for stabilization. Others cannot. Part of the tactics of the surge are to use militias that can work within a political framework of a government to help eliminate, or render powerless, those that cannot.