“Important Political Progress Has Been Taking Place In Iraq”
Let’s tee this up with an underreported statement from Hillary Clinton, flatly declaring that the Surge is a failure: Trying to placate her Democratic critics, Clinton said on Wednesday, “The surge was designed to give the Iraqi government time to take steps to ensure a political solution. It has failed.”
From the article below: “The turn of the Sunni tribes away from al Qaeda and toward us is a crucial political development. If anyone had thought this was possible at the beginning of the year (it wasn’t even mentioned in the January 2007 NIE), it might have been included as a benchmark and considered the most important one. Are we really supposed to discount this political progress because it happened in a manner and on a timetable that no one would have predicted?”
From NRO:
David Bonior has a problem with the surge — it’s had some success. The campaign manager for John Edwards slammed Hillary Clinton for telling the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention that “we’ve begun to change our tactics in Iraq and in some areas, particularly in al Anbar province, it’s working.” Bonior called on Sen. Clinton to “reconsider her ill-advised statement and reaffirm her dedication to using Congress’ constitutional funding power to end this war.” Bonior himself, however, notes “our military’s hard-won progress in al-Anbar province.”
Bonior’s position appears to be that admitting that the surge is working should be avoided as much as possible, lest it increase political support for the war. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s difficult to say positive things in this environment and not have some snarky apologist for the White House turn it into clipped phraseology that looks like support for the president’s policies.” Better, then, to ignore all progress?
The fact is that the surge is President Bush’s policy, and one that he implemented over the vociferous opposition of Democrats who thought the best strategy against al Qaeda in Iraq was to begin to leave. Now the surge has helped turn Sunni tribes against al Qaeda, advancing the goal that nearly everyone in the U.S. notionally shares of routing the terror group from Iraq. Democrats try to chalk up this progress generically to the courage and the adeptness of our troops. Our troops were just as courageous and adept a year ago but they were burdened, unfortunately, by a flawed strategy of prematurely pulling back to let Iraqi forces take the lead — exactly the strategy Democrats have favored ever since President Bush announced the surge.
Full Article
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I can’t even stand looking at this ugly bitch’s face.
August 25th, 2007 at 5:09 amso thats how they will probably spin it, come sept…ignore the truth about the good that is obviously happening, but instead concentrate on the fact that the “new” govt. is still standing on shakey ground and thats not acceptable..stupid bastards
August 25th, 2007 at 5:25 amisn’t she just loverly????????
August 25th, 2007 at 8:10 amIt’s pretty hard to imagine the voters not listening to all this and hearing a loud chorus of double-squeak! And the harder the Surge squeezes, the louder they’ll squeak. And squirm. And squirt liquified diahrretic BS. All leading to the big SQUASH in ‘08.
Ain’t it just squiffy?
August 26th, 2007 at 12:35 am