http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/...ain/index.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two senators are asking congressional investigators to look at Iraq's oil revenues and see if the war-ravaged nation can pay for its own reconstruction, an effort that has been bankrolled to this point mostly by U.S. taxpayers.

Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and John Warner, R-Virginia, said in their Friday letter to the Government Accountability Office that Iraq has "tremendous resources" in banks worldwide but is doing little to improve security and reconstruction efforts.

Iraqi officials did not immediately respond to the senators' allegations.

"We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks," wrote the senators, who are their party's top members on the Armed Services Committee.

The senators cited testimony of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who told a House subcommittee in March 2003 that the U.S. would not foot the entire bill for rebuilding Iraq. Wolfowitz predicted then that Iraq's oil revenues could reach between $50 billion and $100 billion in the next two or three years.

"We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," Wolfowitz said in 2003.

Senators want answers
The senators want investigators to find out:
• Iraqi oil revenues for 2003-2007
• What the U.S. and Iraq spent in that time on security, reconstruction, governance and economic development
• Iraq's projected oil revenue for 2008
• How much money the Iraqi government has earned from oil but not spent
• How much the Iraqi government has deposited in banks, and in which countries
• Why Iraq hasn't spent more on services for its people

Using numbers from the U.S. State Department and Iraqi Oil Ministry, the senators said Iraq hopes to produce 2.2 million barrels of oil a day this year. Weekly averages suggest that the number has climbed as high as 2.51 million barrels a day.

That kind of oil production could earn Iraq a projected $56.4 billion this year, an estimate the senators say is low given the rising cost of crude.

"In essence, we believe that Iraq will accrue at least $100.0 billion in oil revenues in 2007 and 2008," the letter said.

It added, "Our conversations with both Iraqis and Americans during our frequent visits to Iraq, as well as official government and unofficial media reports, have convinced us that the Iraqi government is not doing nearly enough to provide essential services and improve the quality of life of its citizens."

Iraq's ability to spend its $10.1 billion capital projects budget in 2007 was one of the 18 benchmarks used to assess U.S. progress in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq, according to the GAO.

The United States has spent more than $47 billion on Iraqi reconstruction efforts since 2003, according to the 2008 quarterly audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

In other developments:

• A car bomb exploded Sunday near an army patrol in the northern city of Mosul, missing its apparent target -- soldiers -- and instead killing two civilians, police said. Five people were wounded when the blast erupted from a parked car.

• Iraqi President Jalal Talabani returned to Iraq Saturday after a two-day trip to Turkey, where he called for a high-level Iraqi-Turkish political committee to "promote and strength the relations between the two countries," his office said Sunday.
advertisement

• A mass grave holding an estimated 100 bodies was found Saturday in an orchard near Khalis in Iraq's Diyala province, officials said. It appears the bodies had been at the site "for a long time," military spokesman Maj. Brad Leighton said in a statement.

• Thousands of people in the southern city of Basra marched on police headquarters Saturday demanding better security for their crime-ridden city. Kidnappings, murders and thefts have risen in Iraq's second largest city since British troops handed over responsibility for the province to Iraqi authorities. Shiite groups have been fighting for control of the oil-rich area.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23551693/

Studies: Iraq war will cost $12 billion a month
Economists project a much higher ‘burn rate’ than government estimates


updated 9:26 p.m. CT, Sun., March. 9, 2008

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show.

In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.
Story continues below ↓advertisement

Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done its own projections and comes in lower, forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs.

Variations in such estimates stem from the sliding scales of assumptions, scenarios and budget items that are counted. But whatever the estimate, the cost will be huge, the auditors of the Government Accountability Office say.

In a Jan. 30 report to Congress, the GAO observed that the U.S. will be committing "significant" future resources to the wars, "requiring decision makers to consider difficult trade-offs as the nation faces an increasing long-range fiscal challenge."

These numbers don't include the war's cost to the rest of the world. In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion _ with its devastating air bombardments — and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy.

Untold economic damage
No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq, said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country.

In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Stiglitz, of Columbia University, and Bilmes, of Harvard, report the two wars will have cost the U.S. budget $845 billion in 2007 dollars by next Sept. 30, end of fiscal year 2008, assuming Congress fully funds Bush administration requests. That counts not just military operations, but embassy costs, reconstruction and other war-related expenses.

That total far surpasses the $670 billion in 2007 dollars the Congressional Research Service says was the U.S. price tag for the 12-year Vietnam War.

Although American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 percent higher than 2004's, the CBO reports.

Surge in spending
The reasons are numerous: the "surge" of additional U.S. units into Iraq; rising fuel costs; fattened bonuses to attract re-enlistments; and particularly the need to "reset," that is, repair or replace worn-out, destroyed or damaged military equipment. Almost $17 billion is appropriated this year for advanced armored vehicles to protect troops against roadside bombs.

Looking ahead, both the CBO and Stiglitz-Bilmes construct two scenarios, one in which U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan drop sharply and early — to 30,000 by late 2009 for the CBO, and to 55,000 by 2012 for Stiglitz-Bilmes — and a second in which the drawdown is more gradual.

Significantly, the two studies view different time frames, the CBO calculating possible costs met in the next 10 years, while Stiglitz and Bilmes also include costs incurred during that period but paid for later, such as equipment replaced in post-2017 budgets.

Official projections too short-sighted?
This factor figures most in the category of veterans' medical care and disability payments, where the CBO foresees $9 billion to $13 billion in costs by 2017. Stiglitz and Bilmes, meanwhile, project $422 billion to $717 billion in costs over the lifetime of soldiers who by 2017 are wounded or otherwise mentally or physically disabled by the wars.

"The CBO is only looking 10 years out on everything," Bilmes noted in an interview.

For its part, a CBO critique suggested that Bilmes and Stiglitz might be overstating the expense of treating veterans' brain injuries, a costly category.

The two economists say their calculations are conservative, because they don't encompass many "hidden" items in the U.S. budget. Their basic projections also exclude the potentially huge debt-service cost — on which CBO approximately agrees — and the cost to the U.S. economy of global oil prices that have quadrupled since 2003, an increase analysts blame partly on the Iraq upheaval.

Critics: Leaving has costs, too
Estimating all economic and social costs might push the U.S. war bill up toward $5 trillion by 2017, they say.

Their book already figures in the stay-or-leave debate over Iraq.

When Stiglitz testified on Feb. 28 before the congressional Joint Economic Committee, the ranking Republican, Rep. Jim Saxton, complained that such projections are too imprecise to help determine relative costs and benefits of the Iraq war.

Saxton said a rapid U.S. pullout could lead to full-scale civil war and Iranian domination of Iraq, "enormous costs" that he said should be weighed in any calculation

Hey, Marc, you don't have $5 trillion on you, do you?

Why aren't Barack Obama, Howard Dean et al, blowing the cover off all this "Al Qaida in Iraq" business?

While any group can call itself anything it likes, it would be more accurate to refer to "Al Qaida in Iraq" as the "Sunni Liberation Army," which would describe its mission far more succinctly (and admittedly, like most "liberation armies," it engages in tactics that fall under the general heading of "terrorism"). Their cause is to avoid being ruled over - and/or, quite possibly, liquidated by - their millennium-plus-old Shiite enemies. They are ethnic separatists, akin to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers or Spain's Basque ETA - not Islamic extremists.

Remember the ethnic Albanian Muslim SS unit during World War II, which spent most of its time marauding through Kosovo, murdering any Christian Serbs they could find? Well the unit, officially known as the 21st Waffen Mountain Division, was named after Skanderbeg - Albania's legendary Christian hero, who successfully fended off the Turks in the 15th Century!

Advocating the partitioning of Iraq is a winning strategy - both for the United States in general, and for the Democratic Party in this upcoming election in particular.

But will the Dumb-a-crats catch on before it's too late?

Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II

... Advocating the partitioning of Iraq is a winning strategy - both for the United States in general, and for the Democratic Party in this upcoming election in particular.

But will the Dumb-a-crats catch on before it's too late?

Biden tried that and didn't even get a hearing. I expect the new strategy will be to tell the Iraqi government that they have X months to get their act together or we'll be leaving them to their own dithering. Iraq isn't the US. We can't run the place as a democracy and we suck at imperialism. Add to that, this isn't a Korean situation, where hostilities with an external threat are merely in abeyance.

We screwed-up getting in, and did even worse in trying to run things in the early phases, but it' been long enough since then for the Iraqis to step-up. We need to say so in no-compromise terms.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Biden tried that and didn't even get a hearing. I expect the new strategy will be to tell the Iraqi government that they have X months to get their act together or we'll be leaving them to their own dithering. Iraq isn't the US. We can't run the place as a democracy and we suck at imperialism. Add to that, this isn't a Korean situation, where hostilities with an external threat are merely in abeyance.

We screwed-up getting in, and did even worse in trying to run things in the early phases, but it' been long enough since then for the Iraqis to step-up. We need to say so in no-compromise terms.

No, Biden didn't try that; his proposal fell far short of outright sovereignty, instead envisioning something on the order of what was forced on Bosnia.

But I think I now know why the neocons are so dead-set against partition: They actually want to keep a wedge driven between the Shiites and Sunnis, in the hope that this will prevent them from cooperating effectively in the ongoing jihad against the U.S. and Israel. Partitioning Iraq would bring genuine peace, allowing the Shiite-Sunni split - which the necons no doubt equate with the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War - to heal, after, in all likelihood, one last round of violence arising out of the population exchange that would almost certainly accompany partition (except for the Kurds, who would be largely unaffected).

In any event, the U.S. can't just get out of Iraq without there being some sort of political solution - and if there's anything else out there besides partition, I for one don't have a clue as to what it might be.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...303793_pf.html

Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress'

By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 14, 2008; A10

BAGHDAD, March 13 -- Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday.

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

The general's comments appeared to be his sternest to date on Iraqis' failure to achieve political reconciliation. In February, following the passage of laws on the budget, provincial elections and an amnesty for certain detainees, Petraeus was more encouraging. "The passage of the three laws today showed that the Iraqi leaders are now taking advantage of the opportunity that coalition and Iraqi troopers fought so hard to provide," he said at the time.

Petraeus came back to Iraq a year ago to implement a counterinsurgency strategy, backed up by a temporary increase of about 30,000 U.S. troops, intended to reduce violence so Iraqi leaders could pass laws and take other measures to ease the sectarian and political differences that threaten to break the country apart.

The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has won passage of some legislation that aids the cause of reconciliation, drawing praise from President Bush and his supporters. But the Iraqi government also has deferred action on some of its most important legislative goals, including laws governing the exploitation of Iraq's oil resources, that the Bush administration had identified as necessary benchmarks of progress toward reconciliation.

Many Iraqi parliament members and other officials acknowledge that the country's political system is often paralyzed by sectarian divisions, but they also say that American expectations are driven by considerations in Washington and do not reflect the complexity of Iraq's problems.

In what appeared to be a foreshadowing of his congressional testimony, which his aides said he would not discuss explicitly, Petraeus insisted that Iraqi leaders still have an opportunity to act. "We're going to fight like the dickens" to maintain the gains in security and "where we can to try and build on it," he said.

While violence has declined dramatically since late 2006, when thousands of Iraqis were being killed each month, U.S. military data show that attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians have leveled off or risen slightly in the early part of 2008. "I don't see an enormous uptick projected right now," Petraeus said, speaking in his windowless office in the U.S. Embassy, which is housed in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace. "What you have seen is some sensational attacks, there's no question about that."

Petraeus said several factors may account for the recent violence, including increased U.S. and Iraqi operations against insurgents in the northern city of Mosul -- which has lately become one of Iraq's most dangerous -- and insurgent efforts to reestablish some of their havens in Baghdad. And Petraeus said U.S. commanders could not discount the possibility that insurgents "know the April testimony is coming up."

The additional forces sent to Iraq last year have begun to depart and will be gone by midsummer, leaving in place a baseline U.S. presence of about 130,000 troops. Petraeus said it would increasingly fall to Iraqi security forces and neighborhood patrols funded by the United States to help keep violence down.

Petraeus also said the United States would temporarily freeze further reductions in its troop presence to allow for a "period of consolidation and evaluation after reducing our ground combat forces by over a quarter." He said he would discuss the length and timing of what the military terms an "operational pause" during his testimony.

Petraeus credited both the mainly Sunni neighborhood patrols known as the Awakening and a cease-fire called by Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr with helping to bring down violence. The Awakening fighters include former insurgents who say they have turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a largely homegrown Sunni group that Petraeus said is in communication with al-Qaeda leaders abroad. The United States is now paying 88,000 members of the Awakening $300 a month to take part in the neighborhood patrols.

Sadr issued his cease-fire in August 2007 and renewed it last month in an attempt to increase his control over his Mahdi Army militia and expel renegade fighters. U.S. military commanders who once saw Sadr and his forces as enemies now speak deferentially of the cleric, who has maintained his insistence that the U.S. occupation must end.

In the interview, Petraeus conceded that some elements of both the Awakening movement and the Mahdi Army may be standing down in order to prepare for the day when the U.S. presence is diminished. "Some of them may be keeping their powder dry," Petraeus said of Mahdi Army members. "Obviously you would expect some of that to happen.

"The issue is, again," he continued, "how to sort of prolong what has been achieved, in just a host of different neighborhoods, villages, towns and cities, so that the Iraqi structures can continue to gather strength."

Sunni fighters in the western province of Anbar who have joined the Awakening "are waiting for the next opportunity," not the next war, Petraeus asserted. "What they want to do is get more closely linked with Baghdad so they can continue to benefit from the enormous oil revenue wealth which is pouring into this country."

Petraeus said he and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker had "repeatedly noted that it's crucial that the Iraqis exploit the opportunities that we and our Iraqi counterparts have fought so hard to provide them."

Correspondents Sudarsan Raghavan and Joshua Partlow in Baghdad and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.

Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II

No, Biden didn't try that; his proposal fell far short of outright sovereignty, instead envisioning something on the order of what was forced on Bosnia.

Semantics. There is little difference between factions separated into enclaves and factions as discrete nations ... except Baghdad. It's the Jerusalem issue all over again. Who gets the prize if the factions split permanently?

Originally Posted by Anthony '58

... But I think I now know why the neocons are so dead-set against partition: They actually want to keep a wedge driven between the Shiites and Sunnis, in the hope that this will prevent them from cooperating effectively in the ongoing jihad against the U.S. and Israel. Partitioning Iraq would bring genuine peace, allowing the Shiite-Sunni split - which the neocons no doubt equate with the Sino-Soviet split during the Cold War - to heal, after, in all likelihood, one last round of violence arising out of the population exchange that would almost certainly accompany partition (except for the Kurds, who would be largely unaffected).

War is good for the GOP. They don't care all that much what the result is as long as it isn't peace. If peace breaks-out, they move into the minority status of bit players. they want power, so they keep the war rolling.

Originally Posted by Anthony '58

... In any event, the U.S. can't just get out of Iraq without there being some sort of political solution - and if there's anything else out there besides partition, I for one don't have a clue as to what it might be.

Sadly, Colin Powell will be the most prescient of the BushCo cabal. He called the Pottery Barn Rule before the bullets started flying, and, so far, he's the only one that's been right.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I expect the new strategy will be to tell the Iraqi government that they have X months to get their act together or we'll be leaving them to their own dithering.

This is kinda like Michelle Obama demanding America had better elect a black guy (liberal Democrat only) as president or she won't be proud of them anymore, huh?

Originally Posted by zilch

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

... I expect the new strategy will be to tell the Iraqi government that they have X months to get their act together or we'll be leaving them to their own dithering...

This is kinda like Michelle Obama demanding America had better elect a black guy (liberal Democrat only) as president or she won't be proud of them anymore, huh?

That's pretty obtuse even for you. Packing up our toys and going home is a real activity, in case you in the image industry have lost touch with the meaning of 'real'.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

That's pretty obtuse even for you. Packing up our toys and going home is a real activity, in case you in the image industry have lost touch with the meaning of 'real'.

I've listened closely to the Obama's spiritual leader. I think her lack of pride is quite real enough, thanks.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...halfway16.html


U.S. may be just at midpoint in Iraq

By BRIAN MURPHY

The Associated Press

WEST POINT, N.Y. — An American father agonizes as his son prepares for a second tour in Iraq. Baghdad morgue workers wash bodies for burial after a suicide attack. Army cadets study the shifting tactics of Iraqi insurgents for a battle they will inherit.

Snapshots from a war at its fifth year. Each distinct yet all linked by a single question: How much longer?

Most likely, the war will go on for years, many commanders and military analysts said. It's possible to consider this just the midpoint. The U.S. combat role in Iraq could have another half-decade ahead, or maybe more, depending on theresilience of the insurgency and the U.S. political will to maintain the fight.

"Four years, optimistically" before the Pentagon can begin a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq, said Eric Rosenbach, executive director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, "and more like seven or eight years" until Iraqi forces can handle the bulk of their own security.

What that means depends largely on your vantage point.

For the Pentagon, it means trying to build up a credible Iraqi security force while struggling to support its own troop levels in a military strained by nonstop warfare since 2001.

For many Americans, it's about a rising toll — nearly 4,000 U.S. military deaths and more than 60,000 wounded — with no end in sight. Iraqis count their dead and injured in much higher figures — hundreds of thousands at least — and see neighborhoods changed by the millions who have fled for safer havens.

For others, it's about a mounting loss of goodwill overseas: "We've squandered our good name," said Ryan Meehan, 29, sitting in a St. Louis coffee shop.

"War fatigue is real"

The war can also be framed in terms of the cost to the U.S. Treasury: $12 billion a month by some estimates, $500 billion all together, and the prospect of hundreds of billions more.

There are other measures of the war on its fifth anniversary, which is March 19 in the United States and March 20 in Iraq.

These are more difficult to weigh and are found in places such as Jim Durham's home in Evansville, Ind. He tries to fight a sense of dread as he watches his 29-year-old son prepare for his second tour in Iraq with the Indiana National Guard.

advertising

Durham, 59, struggled to describe the emotions. He decided: "It's like watching somebody with a disease. Perhaps they can live, perhaps they can't. ... And there's nothing you can do about it."

Echoes of the same lament resounded at a Shiite funeral procession in Baghdad, where mourners gathered their dead from the morgue — the bodies washed for burial according to Muslim custom — after bombings ravaged two pet markets last month.

"We are helpless. Only God can help us," cried a group of women behind the shrouded corpses of several children.

"How much can Iraq endure? How much stamina do Americans have for a war with no end in sight?" said Ehsan Ahrari, a professor of international security at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "These questions were relevant years ago. They only grow more critical as the years go by."

Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign-policy scholar at the Brookings Institution, said, "War fatigue is real, first and foremost because of casualties. But Americans also know the stakes."

Some people remain determined. Ahrari recalled seeing a couple at the Gulfport, Miss., airport saying goodbye to their son, clad in desert camouflage and heading for Iraq. He can't forget the mother's face: grim but stoic.

"She did not seem sure that her son was going to the right place to serve America, but that it was still a right thing to do," Ahrari said.

There was also a group of women on a bridge in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., holding "No to War" placards and being alternately cheered and jeered.

Fragmented fighting

The war has lasted longer than the U.S. fight in World War II and Korea. If many experts are to be believed, the Iraq war will follow roughly a 10-year arc, ending after a new crop of soldiers — some now barely into their teens — is on the battlefield.

The halfway scenario is based on historical templates. Many military strategists cite a nine- to 10-year average for insurgencies, with expected drop-offs in recruitment and core strength after a decade.

But the models — analyzing battles from the British in Malaysia in the 1950s to the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s — also show that each fight is unique. Kurdish rebels have been fighting in Turkey more than 20 years, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas have been active in Colombia since the 1960s.

The fragmented nature of the Iraq fighting — what has been called a "mosaic war" — also may add years to U.S. involvement. The different tactics needed for various regions create difficulties in training Iraqi forces and making decisive strikes against insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq.

At West Point, professor Brian Fishman is an expert in al-Qaida. He tells his cadets that the Iraq war is fundamentally "a collection of local wars" to preserve key local alliances with Iraqi groups and keep pressure on insurgents from regaining footholds.

"Iraq is a fight that, no doubt, is evolving," said Fishman after teaching his class for the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy. "But when you talk about some kind of end for American troops, it's certainly in terms of years."

His cadets were in high school when the war started, and they could be well into their military careers before it's over.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the former No. 2 commander in Iraq, said in January that U.S. aircraft could be used to support Iraqi combat operations for "five to 10 years" along with "an appropriate number of ground forces."

That same month, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the former Fort Lewis commander who now heads the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq, told the House Armed Services Committee that Iraqi officials estimate they can't assume responsibility for internal security until as late as 2012 and won't be able to defend Iraq's borders until 2018.

Internal violence

The insurgency, however, may not be the most worrisome problem in coming years. Some people think the worst struggle will be keeping friction between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites from ballooning into civil war.

"I don't know anyone who pays serious attention to Iraq who thinks that we are over the hump in terms of internal violence," said Jon Alterman, the Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There are a lot of unsettled scores and no ongoing political process that seems likely to address them."

If the Democrats win in November, these type of assessments will clash with their calls for a rapid and comprehensive withdrawal.

By that time, U.S. troop strength is expected to shrink with the pullout of many of the 30,000 forces that poured into central Iraq last year as part of President Bush's buildup. Pentagon officials expect to be at 140,000 soldiers by July, 8,000 more than the total before the buildup.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has predicted the insurgency will "go on for years and years and years." But, eventually, the Iraqi forces will have to fight alone. It's the often-touted South Korean scenario: local forces someday on the front lines with a U.S. military presence in a supporting role, possibly for decades.

"A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years," McCain said in New Hampshire in January. "It depends on the arrangement we have with the Iraqi government."

It depends, too, on whether the Iraqis and their government can hold on. To a lesser extent, the war's length also hinges on world sentiment. The U.N. Security Council mandate for the U.S.-led force in Iraq is set to expire at the end of the year, which could increase international pressure for withdrawal.

But more than anything else, it depends on whether Americans are willing.

Mary Shuldt is losing patience. Living at Fort Campbell in the Kentucky lowlands, she wonders how many more times her husband and the 101st Airborne Division will be called to Iraq. "Our families are being ripped apart," she said. "When is enough enough?"

Associated Press writers contributing to this report: Carley Petesch in New York, Chelsea Carter in San Diego, Ryan Lenz in Evansville, Ind., Betsy Taylor in St. Louis, Bradley Brooks in Baghdad.

After the war.

Usual disclaimers apply.

After the War
by Pat Buchanan

“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.” So wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor in 1961.

All the 20th century empires forgot the lesson and all perished of wounds suffered in Great Wars: the Ottoman, Russian Austro-Hungarian and German empires in World War I, the Japanese in World War II, the French and British the morning after.

Comes now the turn of the Americans. Guided through the Cold War by conservative statesmen like Eisenhower and Reagan, America rejected Churchillian romanticism and, even in the face of horrors like the butchery in Budapest in 1956, refused to risk the Great War. But now a triumphalist America has begun to behave like all the rest.

If Providence does not intrude, we will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the “On-to-Berlin!” bravado with which French poilus and British Tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict. More likely, it will be the “bloody mess” of which Tony Cordesman warns.

Yet America will not be defeated by an Arab pariah state with an obsolete air force, a dozen 400-mile missiles, a population a tenth of ours, an economy 1% of ours, and neither satellites nor smart bombs.

Indeed, all 22 Arab nations have a total GDP smaller than Spain’s. None can defeat us and any that resorts to a weapon of mass destruction invites annihilation. And before any hostile Arab or Islamic regime can acquire an atomic weapon, the War Party wants to exploit this window of opportunity to smash them all.

But what comes after the celebratory gunfire when wicked Saddam is dead? Initially, the President and War Party will be seen as vindicated by victory and exhilarated by their new opportunity. For Iraq is key to the Middle East. With Iraq occupied, Syria will be hemmed in by Israeli, American, and Turkish power. Assad will have to pull his army out of Lebanon, so Sharon can go back in and settle scores with Hezbollah. Iran will be surrounded by U.S. power in Turkey, Iraq, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Arabian Sea.

This is the vision that intoxicates the neoconservatives who pine for a “World War IV” – a cakewalk conquest of Iraq followed by short sharp wars on Syria and Iran. Already Israel is tugging at our sleeve, reminding us not to forget Libya.

What is wrong with this vision? Only this. Just as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon ignited a guerrilla war that drove her bloodied army out after 18 years, a U.S. army in Baghdad will ignite calls for jihad from Morocco to Malaysia.

Pro-American regimes will be seen as impotent to prevent U.S. hegemony over the Islamic world. And just as monarchs who collaborated with Europe’s colonial powers were dethroned by nationalists in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Addis Ababa, pro-American autocrats will be targeted by assassins.

A burst of gunfire could convert Jordan, Afghanistan or nuclear-armed Pakistan into an enemy overnight. And with Israelis generals blabbing about pre-positioned U.S. weapons and Bibi Netanyahu listing for Congressional committees all the Arab nations we must attack, Al Jazeera does not need shoe-leather reporting to let Islam know on whose behalf America has come to crush their armies and occupy their capitals.

Once in Baghdad, how do we get out? If the Kurds rebel to create a nation, will U.S. troops help Turks crush them? If the House of Saud falls, will it be succeeded by social democrats, or Bin Laden’s fanatics?

To destroy Saddam’s weapons, to democratize, defend and hold Iraq together, U.S. troops will be tied down for decades. Yet, terrorist attacks in liberated Iraq seem as certain as in liberated Afghanistan. For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world.

With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavor at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon.

Twelve years ago, this writer predicted that George Bush’s Gulf War would be “the first Arab-American War.” The coming war will not be the last. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.

It's been over five years now and counting.
For the record, I did the bolding where used was used.

Kipling said it. "The tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and the kings depart...."

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Semantics. There is little difference between factions separated into enclaves and factions as discrete nations ... except Baghdad. It's the Jerusalem issue all over again. Who gets the prize if the factions split permanently?

Ask the people who live in the Republika Srpska in Bosnia if it's "semantics."

War is good for the GOP. They don't care all that much what the result is as long as it isn't peace. If peace breaks-out, they move into the minority status of bit players. they want power, so they keep the war rolling.

And why is war good for the GOP now, when it wasn't in the first half of the 20th Century?

Sadly, Colin Powell will be the most prescient of the BushCo cabal. He called the Pottery Barn Rule before the bullets started flying, and, so far, he's the only one that's been right.

Must admit that I did have to laugh when someone raised the issue of when the Iraqis were going to start repaying the loans we made to them to help rebuild their infrastructure!

Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II

And why is war good for the GOP now, when it wasn't in the first half of the 20th Century?

A bungled war, so long as it does not result in utter defeat and the confiscation of the armaments plants, is good for the profits of the arms traffickers. With the high profits, the arms traffickers can make heavy contributions to Republican campaign funds even if the war is bad for America. (See also Big Oil). A political elite can in theory entrench itself even as it ravages the economy so long as the "right people" make the profits. Kleptocracies work on such "principle".

Must admit that I did have to laugh when someone raised the issue of when the Iraqis were going to start repaying the loans we made to them to help rebuild their infrastructure!

That would have happened had the war not been so badly bungled. But a swift and definitive victory wouldn't have been so great for the armaments industry. would it?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

A bungled war, so long as it does not result in utter defeat and the confiscation of the armaments plants, is good for the profits of the arms traffickers. With the high profits, the arms traffickers can make heavy contributions to Republican campaign funds even if the war is bad for America. (See also Big Oil). A political elite can in theory entrench itself even as it ravages the economy so long as the "right people" make the profits. Kleptocracies work on such "principle".

My explanation is a little different; namely, that the left were the "warmongers" back then, and the right were the isolationists. Then, too, the Young Communist League's slogan was "Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism" (and Communist groups even went so far as to host 4th of July parades when groups like the DAR, etc. could not!) - at the same time their distant cousins in the New Deal Democratic Party were beating the Republicans like rented mules in every election.

If the liberals ever recapture G-d and Country from the conservatives, the latter are finished (although they'll have to come up with something a bit better than religious figures like Jeremiah Wright).

That would have happened had the war not been so badly bungled. But a swift and definitive victory wouldn't have been so great for the armaments industry. would it?

A swift and decisive (U.S.) victory would entail Kirkuk and Basra also being the capitals of sovereign nations, in addition to Baghdad being one.

But the neocons of course don't see it that way.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187098/

How Did I Get Iraq Wrong?I seriously misjudged Bush's sense of morality.
By Andrew Sullivan
Posted Friday, March 21, 2008, at 12:16 PM ET

Editor's Note: To mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Slate has asked a number of writers who originally supported the war to answer the question, "Why did we get it wrong?" We have invited contributions from the best-known "liberal hawks"—and others—many of whom participated in two previous Slate debates about the war, the first before it began in fall of 2002, the second in early 2004. We will be publishing their responses through the week. Read the rest of the contributions.

I think I committed four cardinal sins.

Historical Narcissism
I was distracted by the internal American debate to the occlusion of the reality of Iraq. For most of my adult lifetime, I had heard those on the left decry American military power, constantly warn of quagmires, excuse what I regarded as inexcusable tyrannies, and fail to grasp that the nature of certain regimes makes their removal a moral objective. As a child of the Cold War and a proud Reaganite and Thatcherite, I regarded 1989 as almost eternal proof of the notion that the walls of tyranny could fall if we had the will to bring them down and the gumption to use military power when we could. I had also been marinated in neoconservative thought for much of the 1990s and seen the moral power of Western intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. All this primed me for an ideological battle that was, in retrospect, largely irrelevant to the much more complex post-Cold War realities we were about to confront.

When I heard the usual complaints from the left about how we had no right to intervene, how Bush was the real terrorist, how war was always wrong, my trained ears heard the same cries that I had heard in the 1980s. So, I saw the opposition to the war as another example of a faulty Vietnam Syndrome, associated it entirely with the far left—or boomer nostalgia—and was revolted by the anti-war marches I saw in Washington. I wasn't wrong about some of this. Some of those reflexes were at work (which is why I find Obama's far more pragmatic opposition so striking in retrospect). I became much too concerned with fighting that old internal ideological battle and failed to think freshly or realistically about what the consequences of intervention could be. I allowed myself to be distracted by an ideological battle when what was required was clear-eyed prudence.

Narrow Moralism
I recall very clearly one night before the war began. I made myself write down the reasons for and against the war and realized that if there were question marks on both sides (the one point in favor I did not put a question mark over was the existence of stockpiles of WMD!), the deciding factor for me in the end was that I could never be ashamed of removing someone as evil as Saddam from power. I became enamored of my own morality and the righteousness of this single moral act. And he was a monster, as we discovered. But what I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster, and unless one weighs all the possibly evil consequences of an abstractly moral act, one hasn't really engaged in a truly serious moral argument. I saw war's unknowable consequences far too glibly.

Unconservatism
I heard and read about ancient Sunni and Shiite divisions, knew of the awful time the British had in running Iraq, but I had never properly absorbed the lesson. I bought the argument put forward by many neoconservatives that Iraq was one of the more secular and modern of Arab societies; that these divisions were not so deep; that all those pictures of men in suits and mustaches and women in Western clothing were the deeper truth about this rare, modern Arab society. I believed that it could, if we worked at it and threw enough money at it, be a model for the rest of the Arab Muslim world. I should add that I don't believe these ancient divides were necessarily as deep as they subsequently became in the unnecessary chaos that the Rumsfeld invasion unleashed. But I greatly underestimated them—and as someone who liked to think of myself as a conservative, I pathetically failed to appreciate how those divides never truly go away and certainly cannot be abolished by a Western magic wand. In that sense, I was not conservative enough. I let my hope—the hope that had been vindicated by the fall of the Soviet Union—get the better of my skepticism. There are times when that is a good thing. The Iraq war wasn't one of them.

Misreading Bush
Yes, the incompetence and arrogance were beyond anything I imagined. In 2000, my support for Bush was not deep. I thought he was an OK, unifying, moderate Republican who would be fine for a time of peace and prosperity. I was concerned—ha!—that Gore would spend too much. I was reassured by the experience and intelligence and pedigree of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell. Two of them had already fought and won a war in the Gulf. The bitter election battle hardened my loyalty. And once 9/11 happened, my support intensified as I hoped for the best. Bush's early speeches were magnificent. The Afghanistan invasion was defter than I expected. I got lulled. I wanted him to succeed—too much, in retrospect.

But my biggest misreading was not about competence. Wars are often marked by incompetence. It was a fatal misjudgment of Bush's sense of morality. I had no idea he was so complacent—even glib—about the evil that good intentions can enable. I truly did not believe that Bush would use 9/11 to tear up the Geneva Conventions. When I first heard of abuses at Gitmo, I dismissed them as enemy propaganda. I certainly never believed that a conservative would embrace torture as the central thrust of an anti-terror strategy and lie about it, and scapegoat underlings for it, and give us the indelible stain of Bagram and Camp Cropper and Abu Ghraib and all the other secret torture and interrogation sites that Bush and Cheney created and oversaw. I certainly never believed that a war I supported for the sake of freedom would actually use as its central weapon the deepest antithesis of freedom—the destruction of human autonomy and dignity and will that is torture. To distort this by shredding the English language, by engaging in newspeak that I had long associated with totalitarian regimes, was a further insult. And for me, it was yet another epiphany about what American conservatism had come to mean.

I know our enemy is much worse. I have never doubted that. I still have no qualms whatever in waging war to defeat it. But I never believed that America would do what America has done. Never. My misjudgment at the deepest moral level of what Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld were capable of—a misjudgment that violated the moral core of the enterprise—was my worst mistake. What the war has done to what is left of Iraq—the lives lost, the families destroyed, the bodies tortured, the civilization trashed—was bad enough. But what was done to America—and the meaning of America—was unforgivable. And for that I will not and should not forgive myself.

Lots More:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186757/

Originally Posted by Anthony '58 II

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Semantics. There is little difference between factions separated into enclaves and factions as discrete nations ... except Baghdad. It's the Jerusalem issue all over again. Who gets the prize if the factions split permanently?

Ask the people who live in the Republika Srpska in Bosnia if it's "semantics."

I notice that you totally ignored Bahgdad, which is the main point of the issue. If you chop things apart, who gets the biggest prize (HINT: It's the one that can get it.)

Originally Posted by Anthony '58

Originally Posted by M&L

... War is good for the GOP. They don't care all that much what the result is as long as it isn't peace. If peace breaks-out, they move into the minority status of bit players. they want power, so they keep the war rolling.

And why is war good for the GOP now, when it wasn't in the first half of the 20th Century?

Then, they were isolationists, mostly interested in using the military for commercial purposes. It wasn't until the Red Scare(TM) that they got the militarist banner.

Originally Posted by Anthony '58

Originally Posted by M&L

... Sadly, Colin Powell will be the most prescient of the BushCo cabal. He called the Pottery Barn Rule before the bullets started flying, and, so far, he's the only one that's been right.

Must admit that I did have to laugh when someone raised the issue of when the Iraqis were going to start repaying the loans we made to them to help rebuild their infrastructure!

The longer we stay without going fully on a war footing, the more likely that we destroy our miltary, make it impossible to repair it and bankrupt the country in general. In all that, where is the advantage to the US?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The longer we stay without going fully on a war footing, the more likely that we destroy our miltary, make it impossible to repair it and bankrupt the country in general. In all that, where is the advantage to the US?

How do you propose we move to a full war footing with liberal Democrats playing the social guilt card, condemning soldiers and threatening pull outs? The question, do we stay or do we go, is still unanswered.

Originally Posted by K-I-A 67

How do you propose we move to a full war footing with liberal Democrats playing the social guilt card, condemning soldiers and threatening pull outs? The question, do we stay or do we go, is still unanswered.

I have to call BS on that. Bush had the perfect opportunity to put us on a war footing, and elected to cut taxes and tell everyone to shop - a more inverse response I can't conceive. The GOP had the reigns for 4 years with no opposition, yet those are the four years when things went the most haywire. Don't even think about blaming anyone other than those that made the mess in the first place.

So in answer to your question: we either crank-up Federal taxes and refocus the economy or we're leaving pretty soon - like it or not. The Economic mess we're in at the moment is nothing compared to what will happen if we let this run another 2 or 3 years - to say nothing about John McCain's 100-year horizon. If you want to stay, then step-up to the responsibility of staying: raise taxes, raise them soon and raise them a lot.

Originally Posted by K-I-A 67

How do you propose we move to a full war footing with liberal Democrats playing the social guilt card, condemning soldiers and threatening pull outs? The question, do we stay or do we go, is still unanswered.

Well. FDR did a pretty good job. You can anticipate that "liberals" in a time of crisis will not shy away from doing what is needed for the nation's interest........as opposed to serving the corporate interest.

The neocons had full control and did as they pleased......all of which was ineffective, ass backwards and self serving.

In all likelyhood, a Democratic approach will be:

1. more in line with our global partners and more likely to gain support in key areas (say Europe for instance?)

2. more human.....in that torture and wide ranging human rights abuses will not be considered playable cards. This can only be good for the American image.

3. more measured to the task.

4. more in line with a sound domestic agenda. The neocons didnt have a domestic agenda so that should be easy enough.

The difference is this. Liberals wage wars that serve higher goals while conservatives generally seek to serve the goals of higher ups.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I have to call BS on that. Bush had the perfect opportunity to put us on a war footing, and elected to cut taxes and tell everyone to shop - a more inverse response I can't conceive.

Well, he didn't really have that option. If he had asked the average American to sacrifice at all, the justification for going to war would have been examined much more thoroughly and found to be utterly worthless. (Remember, even with all the media cheerleading, on the eve of the invasion less than 50% of the public supported Bush's war.) So he had to pretend it wouldn't cost anything.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

So in answer to your question: we either crank-up Federal taxes and refocus the economy or we're leaving pretty soon - like it or not.

Wrong. We're going to do... both. Even doubling taxes won't be enough to bail out Wall Street and pay for the occupation.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The Economic mess we're in at the moment is nothing compared to what will happen if we let this run another 2 or 3 years - to say nothing about John McCain's 100-year horizon.

We don't have any say in whether we "let this run" -- the FCBs and SWFs that fund our deficit get to decide that. And currently they're mighty pissed how we've trashed their investment in the dollar.

Originally Posted by Skabungus

Well. FDR did a pretty good job. You can anticipate that "liberals" in a time of crisis will not shy away from doing what is needed for the nation's interest........as opposed to serving the corporate interest.

The neocons had full control and did as they pleased......all of which was ineffective, ass backwards and self serving.

In all likelyhood, a Democratic approach will be:

1. more in line with our global partners and more likely to gain support in key areas (say Europe for instance?)

2. more human.....in that torture and wide ranging human rights abuses will not be considered playable cards. This can only be good for the American image.

3. more measured to the task.

4. more in line with a sound domestic agenda. The neocons didnt have a domestic agenda so that should be easy enough.

The difference is this. Liberals wage wars that serve higher goals while conservatives generally seek to serve the goals of higher ups.

Dude, FDR wasn't a liberal Democrat. The majority of Americans don't need a liberal Democrat domestic agenda. The cost of such an agenda is to high and the rewards are to few. The majority of America expect their government to act and think like Americans and do what is necessary to secure and protect our immediate and future interests.