Article

2006-08-04 Iraq

44 killed in roadside bombing and clashes in Iraq

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Posted by Fred 2006-08-04 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11133 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Okay, I'm going to say it....

Put Saddam back in power! I am really now believing he was an asshole for a very good reason. Give the Kurds their own country, and let the rest of these farks squabble amongst themselves. They have shown me nothing except that they deserved a Saddam in the first place.

Posted by Thoth 2006-08-04 00:36|| 2006-08-04 00:36|| Front Page Top

#2 Actually, they should shoot Saddam as soon as possible. As long as he is processing oxygen and Doritos, the Baathist have hope that he can somehow survive to return to power. Eliminate Saddam, and the oath of loyalty of many of those insurgents dissolves.

Posted by crosspatch">crosspatch 2006-08-04 01:03|| http://crufty.blogspot.com]">[http://crufty.blogspot.com] 2006-08-04 01:03|| Front Page Top

#3 And do you think once he's dead they are all just going to drop their arms and quit? I don't think so. I think it will just be an excuse to ratchet shiat up a notch.

Posted by Thoth 2006-08-04 01:24|| 2006-08-04 01:24|| Front Page Top

#4 Re THOTH: "What he said!"

Posted by borgboy 2006-08-04 01:51|| 2006-08-04 01:51|| Front Page Top

#5 Thoth, I agree. On one hand, I don't think rape rooms, wood chippers, and gassing whole villages are necessary under any circumstances. But our experience in Iraq certainly has revealed why Islamic countries tend to be ruled by jack-booted dictators: they have to be, to keep the splodeydopes from destroying everything. You'd think Muslim rulers would start realizing that Islam is the problem -- the reason their countries are shitholes, the reason they lose wars, the source itself of Muslim "humiliation." As long as there is Islam, there will be brutal dictatorships.

Posted by ST 2006-08-04 02:14|| 2006-08-04 02:14|| Front Page Top

#6 The Saddam loyalists might. But what you have in Baghdad is basically the Iraqi equivalent of Hamas and Hezbollah (Sunni and Shiite armed groups) fighting each other for control. It isn't really so much a civil war where you have the people against the government so much as it is a Crips vs. Bloods gang war on a larger scale.

They aren't going to get anywhere until they decide to start shooting armed militia members on both sides. At some point the people are going to have enough of it and start shooting at the militias. That will be the end of the game.

Posted by crosspatch">crosspatch 2006-08-04 02:15|| http://crufty.blogspot.com]">[http://crufty.blogspot.com] 2006-08-04 02:15|| Front Page Top

#7 They aren't going to get anywhere until they decide to start shooting armed militia members on both sides.

Sorry, I don't see it. We have those rare instances now and then where some regular folk go and disarm a jihadi, but they are rare and far between. Let's not kid ourselves here. This is really pissing me off. These assholes want nothing but to kill each other and we're the jack asses cuaght in the middle of the mess. This was a monster created by the French and the British, and it should be their problem to fix, not ours.

Posted by Thoth 2006-08-04 02:34|| 2006-08-04 02:34|| Front Page Top

#8 #5 Thoth, I agree. On one hand, I don't think rape rooms, wood chippers, and gassing whole villages are necessary under any circumstances.

I used to think the same thing, but now I'm thinking it was the kind of crap that was necessary to keep animals in line.

And I will use that line again. The people that are pulling this crap day in and day out have lost the right to call themselves human beings in my opinion. They are animals,...no lower than animals...and deserve to be treated as such.

Posted by Thoth 2006-08-04 02:37|| 2006-08-04 02:37|| Front Page Top

#9 Happened today, actually. Some citizen decided to shoot some militia guy, I will see if I can find a link.

Posted by crosspatch">crosspatch 2006-08-04 02:46|| http://crufty.blogspot.com]">[http://crufty.blogspot.com] 2006-08-04 02:46|| Front Page Top

#10 "Elsewhere today, Iraqi soldiers arrested four terrorists involved in a drive-by shooting early this morning in northeastern Baghdad. The terrorists were arrested after exchanging small-arms fire with an Iraqi civilian in his home. One terrorist was seriously wounded."

Check yesterday's articles here.

Posted by crosspatch">crosspatch 2006-08-04 02:51|| http://crufty.blogspot.com]">[http://crufty.blogspot.com] 2006-08-04 02:51|| Front Page Top

#11 Bottom line is that the armed political militias need to be disarmed and disbanded. Either voluntarilly or by force. Nobody has the guts to do that at this point.

Posted by crosspatch">crosspatch 2006-08-04 02:59|| http://crufty.blogspot.com]">[http://crufty.blogspot.com] 2006-08-04 02:59|| Front Page Top

#12 Halting the sectarian murders is the responsibility of the Iraq government. The US-UK role should be supportive. If the Shiite dominated Parliament choses to do nothing about the Mahdi Army's ethnic cleansing by murder policies, then they can take the blame.

It is interesting that death tolls from deliberate religious murder that number 100 per day, do not shock the world while the Israeli Air Force's accidental killing of collaterals at Qana has been treated as the worst crime in history.

Posted by Snease Shaiting3550 2006-08-04 04:36|| 2006-08-04 04:36|| Front Page Top

#13 I think we're still on the same page, Thoth. What I meant was that Saddam's brutality went too far and cast too wide a net. Gassing Kurdish children and Uday's rape sprees served no tangible security interest.

But my main point was that keeping the jihadis under control does require a certain level of brutality. For example, I don't know precisely what happens to suspected jihadis in, say, Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi, or Pakistani prisons, but I bet ain't nice, and whatever it is, I betcha I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Posted by ST 2006-08-04 04:38|| 2006-08-04 04:38|| Front Page Top

#14 Those who are hoping for the US to fail in Iraq ought to be careful what they wish for. We've given nearly three thousand of our best people, dead, thousands more wounded, billions of dollars, immeasurable grief among service families.
We've facilitated elections under the worst circumstances.
If they can't make it go, it will demonstrate that Arab societies are violent, destructive, mindless, and primitive.
Which might make a difference on how the WOT is seen.
If it doesn't work, it will be harder to say, "They're just like us." Or, as the multi-cultis would say, "They're just like us, only 'way better."

Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey 2006-08-04 06:54|| 2006-08-04 06:54|| Front Page Top

#15 They wouldn't have jihadis if they didn't carefully rear and train them. They wouldn't have Sunni and Shiite armed militias if Saddam Hussein hadn't allowed and encouraged and suborned such things over the decades of his vicious rule. And they wouldn't be nearly as effective if Saddam's Baathist agents weren't running and financing things in counterpart with Al Qaeda, exactly as Saddam set it up just before the invasion in 2003.

Iraq, and the Arab world, are at a nexus point: either they choose the way of civilization and put down what was so carefully grown, or we will have to wipe the slate completely clean, perhaps planting our own 12 million illegal aliens as seed stock for the empty lands.

Those are our choices, Thoth. Putting Saddam Hussein back, or another strongman who will end up like him (or like Bashir al Assad if he is not as effectively vicious), starts the whole thing all over... only worse and faster, because Saddam's interim successes have been observed and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have progressed further down the path of evil in the meantime. Israel fought the Intifadas against not only the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all, but against the funding, training and arms of Iraq at a distance. Would you condemn her to fighting against that again, plus Iran's donations, with real WMD in the mix? Because that's exactly what will happen if we let them slither off to the old, comfortable ways. Not to mention what our boys and girls will come up against the next time they have to invade to clean out the rat's nest that threatens us all.

This is a test. Either Iraq and Afghanistan can become safe to allow amongst us, or they are proven an incalcitrant threat that must be completely erased, along with the rest of their fellow-thinkers. There is no in-between, because the in-between metastasizes, and the world is too small, and the weaponry and connections too destructive, to share the planet with.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-04 07:49|| 2006-08-04 07:49|| Front Page Top

#16 This is a test. Either Iraq and Afghanistan can become safe to allow amongst us, or they are proven an incalcitrant threat that must be completely erased, along with the rest of their fellow-thinkers. There is no in-between, because the in-between metastasizes, and the world is too small, and the weaponry and connections too destructive, to share the planet with.
Posted by: trailing wife 2006-08-04 07:49

Setting the applause machine on 10! Excellent assessment TW.

Posted by Besoeker 2006-08-04 08:06|| 2006-08-04 08:06|| Front Page Top

#17 Richard and TW - this is my thinking too.

What the US has been doing is fighting a "rich man's war", which I think was first coined by Wretchard or Steven Den Beste. The US can afford to drop $20,000 bombs on a house to kill just the people inside and limit collateral damage. There are even concrete bombs being dropped to further limit shrapnel damage - the idea of a $50 million jet dropping a lump of concrete just boggles the mind...

It's not just the weapons though. There have been elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, massively supported by the US, there is the rebuilding process going on as well, again at almost the exclusive expense of the US.

This won't go on forever, sooner or later the US is going to require these governments to be looking after themselves. The signs are not encouraging; Afghanistan bringing back the morality police, death squads roaming Iraq and some recent statements from Iraqi politicians haven't been that good either.

I'm just one guy who had the scales lifted on 9/11, so much so that when 7/7 happened, I was furious of course, but I knew that it was a matter of time before we got hit (we'll get hit again, I'm certain of that), and I know there are many many more people like me that are looking over at events in the Middle East and the Islamic world in general and wondering how much longer we keep spending vast amounts of money and having our people killed just for trying to drag them into the 21st century. Me? I'm fed up now, so how the US has managed to keep trying this long is beyond me.

TW's last para is the crux of the matter. This is a test. Iraqi's and Afghani's are dissimilar enough for us to discount ethnic ties, their political systems (such as they are) are different too. So what's the one thing that both these countries have in common?

The sands of time are running low and these morons are rattling the hourglass!

Posted by Tony (UK) 2006-08-04 08:36|| 2006-08-04 08:36|| Front Page Top

#18 Food for thought:

When you look at numbers raw you see only the barbarism. That's why I've taken to using the Orc images to describe the daily carnage.

When you look at concentrations, which is what the intel guys are looking at (or should be), you see a military campaign that's being carried out in three centers: Baghdad and environs, Mosul and Kirkuk, with a sideshow in Basra.

Looking at the picture, we're not seeing the symptoms of a society that's incapable of living in the civilized world. We're seeing Sammy's Baathists determined to make the country uninhabitable and Tater's idiots trying to either make the country an Iranian colony or to make it uninhabitable.

The carnage in the north is the Baathists and their Qaeda allies. The idiocy in Basra is Tater. Baghdad is where the two meet and try and outdo each other in brutality. Our losses in Anbar are incurred cutting supply lines.

The rest of the country is where the normal people live.

Posted by Fred 2006-08-04 09:29|| 2006-08-04 09:29|| Front Page Top

#19 Nice density plots Fred. Wish they represented down-wind drift however.

Posted by Besoeker 2006-08-04 09:35|| 2006-08-04 09:35|| Front Page Top

#20 Fred - may I link to that? That's an astoundingly good visual presentation.

Posted by eLarson 2006-08-04 09:41|| http://larsonian.blogspot.com]">[http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2006-08-04 09:41|| Front Page Top

#21 Fred:

Outstanding picture and analysis. Baghdad as the convergence point for the Barbarians! What irony, the most learned, cultural center in Islam history now reduced to this.

Posted by Lancasters Over Dresden 2006-08-04 10:22|| http://www.michaelcalderonscall.com/HomePage.asp]">[http://www.michaelcalderonscall.com/HomePage.asp] 2006-08-04 10:22|| Front Page Top

#22 It's a test they've failed. However, we were totally incorrect in our initial approach. We should have eliminated much more of their populace during initial advances. This idiot idea of a war with no casualties is completely incorrect. Massive suffering changes minds. Since we didn't do it, they're doing it themselves. Fine. What really sets me off is sending our troops back into the middle ? Why ? Many will get killed for no reason. We need to retreat completely to the perimeter and let the mayhem unfold. Send Al-Jizz right to the front so the whole world sees how Muzzies function when left to their own devices.

Posted by SOP35/Rat 2006-08-04 11:17|| 2006-08-04 11:17|| Front Page Top

#23 Excellent analysis, TW. However, many is this country will see a failure as just that - another failure, and reason to become uninvolved again. I fear we'll (well, not us Rantburgers, but the general populace) learn the wrong lesson - "we never should've gotten involved, and should pursue diplomatic methods via the UN."

John Kerry gets to say he told us so.

Posted by Bobby 2006-08-04 11:42|| 2006-08-04 11:42|| Front Page Top

#24 Oh, and Fred - GREAT map!

Posted by Bobby 2006-08-04 11:42|| 2006-08-04 11:42|| Front Page Top

#25 Thank you for your generous comments. A lot of my thinking is based on things I've read here over time, and especially on the analysis of our options by Rantburg's own Dave D., engineer extraordinaire.

Thoth, I'm sorry if I came on to strong -- you know I respect you enormously -- but I really don't see walking away as effectively different than surrendering; it might give us as much as half a decade before we follow France into the abyss, again because the path to get there is already well laid out. History iscontingent and mono-directional, and there is no reset button. Buwaya got back from Japan yesterday, and last night posted his observations on some of the threads -- well worth checking out -- but the key thing I took away was that people and countries are making sacrifices to fight this war, and if the US walks away now, they won't be there next time because the pressure won't be worth it.

Fred, a very, very helpful map. You do have a knack. ;-)

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-04 13:40|| 2006-08-04 13:40|| Front Page Top

#26 Thanks, but it's not my work. Somebody gave it to me. I should be keeping one each for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Posted by Fred 2006-08-04 13:55|| 2006-08-04 13:55|| Front Page Top

#27 I don't think you came on too strong. I just wish we could wall all the orcs pulling these stunts in, and let them kill each other off. Let everyone else be in peace.

I felt hopeful about Iraq after Saddams statue fell. I felt hopeful after those 1st elections, but to me it looks like it has went into a tailspin that it can't pull out of till theres a crash. I feel hopefull about Afghanistan, I don't with Iraq. I'll try to muster what little faith I have left with the Iraqis and keep my fingers crossed though.

Posted by Thoth 2006-08-04 14:08|| 2006-08-04 14:08|| Front Page Top

#28 I wish we could too, Thoth. But they actively export the insanity, and Saddam Hussein was a big player in that export. The Arab Strongman is proven to create and increase the danger, not be the cork in the bottle -- we're seeing that continue to play out in Pakistan, after all, where on the one hand Musharref drinks scotch with Western ambassadors, and on the other his ISI runs the Taliban as a wholly owned subsidiary, while he shelters A.Q.Khan from the consequences of exporting Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology (on government orders perhaps, but certainly with government connivance). This is one we are just going to have to fight to the finish -- either now or at a greater price later.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-04 14:18|| 2006-08-04 14:18|| Front Page Top

#29 I think the map gives false hope -- the attacks are "limited" to where the Shiites and Sunni are -- the non-conflict areas are mostly desert. The idea of bringing civilization to this region was a nice one, but not practical. Going forward, we need to support a free and productive Kurdistan and look at the rest of Iraq as our military base for operations against Iran.

Posted by regular joe 2006-08-04 15:32|| 2006-08-04 15:32|| Front Page Top

#30 I'm not ready to write Iraq off as a loss yet. Things would certainly be a lot better there if Iran were not constantly stirring up shit; and they would be better still if our own cut-and-run, "responsible redeployment" crowd weren't giving aid and comfort to the jihadis by conveying the impression, with every breath they take, that America is weak, impatient, and is on the verge of giving up and going home any minute now.

Get rid of the Mad Mullahs and our seditious Left, and this endeavor has a pretty good chance of succeeding.

Posted by Glavins Hupinetch1718 2006-08-04 15:51|| 2006-08-04 15:51|| Front Page Top

#31 Maybe France will be the first successful Muslim democracy.

Posted by Thoth 2006-08-04 17:02|| 2006-08-04 17:02|| Front Page Top

#32 Thoth, I wouldn't be prepared to place money on the statement that France is a successful French democracy. But I'm funny that way...

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-04 19:09|| 2006-08-04 19:09|| Front Page Top

#33 Whoops! re #25: it wasn't buwaya, but bombay that returned from Japan last night, overflowing with thoughts and jetlag. Sorry!

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-04 21:11|| 2006-08-04 21:11|| Front Page Top

#34 No worries, me too ... Jet lag this time back is the worst I have ever had. oh well.

Posted by bombay">bombay 2006-08-04 21:14|| 2006-08-04 21:14|| Front Page Top

#35 "the non-conflict areas are mostly desert."

Oh, goody. We have an "Iraq expert". Maybe you should team up with SOP35, since he is the military genius. You two would make quite a duo. We would have World War Three won in days.

Posted by Fordesque 2006-08-04 21:18|| 2006-08-04 21:18|| Front Page Top

23:19 Snease Shaiting3550
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