Is it true that a few thousand more US troops in Iraq have turned the tide and led to "success" in Iraq, as McCain says?

Fact is--the reduction in violence has been due to:

1. The "ethnic cleansing" of "mixed" areas, leading to some 4,000,000 Iraqi refugees---there are few Iraqis of the "wrong sect" in mixed areas left for other sects to kill.

2. We have bribed (well before the surge) Sunni warlords and tribes and armed them to the teeth in return for their killing of any foreign jihadi stragglers--a long term disaster for Iraq as they have NO affinity for the central Iraq government and are now well armed for battle against the Shiites.

3. Mooki al Sadr told his militias to lay low for now so Maliki wouldn't be pressured to actually do anything about them.

4. The Kurdish leaders have managed to convince their people to put their independence fight on hold for a bit.

So, have Iraqi sectarian problems solved as a result of more US troops? Hell no.

Will we hear such straight talk from Grandpa? Hell no. Just more of his usual doubletalk.

The big question---will the media let him get away with it, or will they inform Americans of the above facts?

More importantly, the surge had 18 specific goals, of which 3 were met. To hear the cons talk, it was some nebulous postmodern military strategy, wherein success is whatever success means to you. But back in the real world, it failed according to the agreed upon standards.

Excellent points. After years of killing--including millions of Christians murdered or pushed out of the country altogether--it makes sense that Iraq would be peaceful for all Shiite Iraqis.

It's not really a mystery why McCain doesn't support withdrawing from the country; all this talk about the surge being so successful is a smokescreen.

No,no,no,no...NO!

We sent in extra soldiers and they found the bad guys that the 120,000 previous soldiers couldn't find and killed them and won the peace!!!!!!!

Rush told me!

Gosh I hope you kids keep running on the "troops are a bunch of losers" platform. That should get your man the heartland vote (LOL)...

Translation: We Pugs are just gonna ignore the facts, as always, and pretend this has something to do with dissing the troops. After, all, that's just what we Pugs do. We're one-trick liars. Vote Pug!

HST-libertarian:

Gosh I hope you kids keep running on the "troops are a bunch of losers" platform. That should get your man the heartland vote (LOL)...

Does THIS look to you like PRAISING the troops:

Re: Hmm....no "straight talk" from McCain about "the surge"...
by Reptilicus
07/23/2008, 4:38 PM

No,no,no,no...NO!

We sent in extra soldiers and they found the bad guys that the 120,000 previous soldiers couldn't find and killed them and won the peace!!!!!!!

Rush told me!

punk!!

Of course not. But your typical Pug lie here is that this is about dissing the troops. To the contrary, the point here is that the extra troops had little or nothing to do with the events I just outlined.

Pay attention.

HST-libertarian:

Does THIS look to you like PRAISING the troops:

Re: Hmm....no "straight talk" from McCain about "the surge"...
by Reptilicus
07/23/2008, 4:38 PM

No,no,no,no...NO!

We sent in extra soldiers and they found the bad guys that the 120,000 previous soldiers couldn't find and killed them and won the peace!!!!!!!

Rush told me!

HST, how does simply re-stating the essential argument that guys like you make "diss the troops"?

You want to use your logic?....fine

YOU are dissing them, because you are saying that the ones that were already there were "losers" and it took another 20,000 troops to help the poor dopes.

I thought you used to have more than rightwing talking points, but apparently either things have changed or I'm remembering wrong.

...that you'll continue to run the "lie about everything" platform and hope that IT wins for you?

...will you be continuing to run the 'drop my pants for the Republican Noise Machine' program that you've been running the last few months? :)

..."the troops are a bunch of losers," as you falsely claimed in YOUR post, punk.

He used to be more or less a Libertarian and Independent, but once you drop trou for the Republicans, you're in it for the long haul, apparently.

There also seems to be some resultant brain-damage involved...