Pat Dollard | Young Americans

The scumbags masquerading as journalists at the Washington Post posit a flat-out lie early in the story: “The lack of political progress calls into question the core rationale behind the troop buildup President Bush announced in January.”

It’s entirely untrue and an embarrasingly absurd, intellectually empty statement on the part of what is supposed to be a thinking man’s paper. The lack of political progress does not call into question the core rationale of the surge - any political progress was not going to happen in a void of security. The core rationale for the surge was that it would bring about the security necessary to allow for political progress. The rationale in fact has been proven true, because it has indeed brought about the necessary security. The surge was never expected to create political progress, but the environment in which that progress could happen. It has succeeded.

Now the progress must happen. It was always going to come after security was established, not during - that would have simply been impossible. A bottom up process, which this was declared to be from the beginning, means that the top, ie the Government, will be fixed last. The politicians are both slow and resistant to change, because the status quo of inertia, corruption, and all manner of self-centeredness, are what they have been on thriving on. Well, bottom up means that the people get their shit together first, and then force their government to do the same. And then U.S. military will join them. Before you get all purple about the WAPO’s slant, think for a minute, “Why is a large group of the top officers in Iraq, including Odierno, all taking the Iraqi government to task in one article with one U.S. paper? Have they all gone renegade?” Of course not. This is a coordinated military effort. The Army very intentionally is using the Washigton Post to get a message to Maliki and company that they better get their shit together, and fast. And the Iraqi press and people will see this story as well. The Army is willing to endure what ever Lefty dribble the Post will drop on the pages to achieve the larger goal.

Here’s the Iraq media’s post on the WAPO story. That story is linked in this one.

Baghdad, Nov 15, (VOI) – U.S. military commanders believe Iraqi officials have failed to capitalize on the decline in violence in the country to achieve political progress, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday.

“Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias,” read the report.

“In more than a dozen interviews, U.S. military officials expressed growing concern over the Iraqi government’s failure to capitalize on sharp declines in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. A window of opportunity has opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, but “it is unclear how long that window is going to remain open.”
On what it described as the lack of progress in the Iraqi political process, the report quoted Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, as complaining that Iraqi politicians are detached from the suffering of everyday citizens. “The ministers, they don’t get out,” he said. “They don’t know what the hell is going on on the ground,” the report quoted Campbell as saying.

“Campbell noted approvingly that Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the top Iraqi commander in the Baghdad security offensive, has lately begun to escort cabinet officials involved in health, housing, oil, and other issues out of the Green Zone to show them, as Campbell put it, “Hey, I got the security, bring in the [expletive] essential services,” said the report.

“‘It is painful, very painful,’ dealing with the obstructionism of Iraqi officials, said Army Lt. Col. Mark Fetter. As for the Sunni fighters who for years bombed and shot U.S. soldiers and now want to join the police, Fetter shrugged. ‘They have got to eat,’ he said over lunch in the 1st Cavalry Division’s mess hall here. ‘There are so many we’ve detained and interrogated, they did what they did for money.’”