Despite all the pr machine trying to tell everyone that things are looking up in Iraq, Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation begs to differ - as he so graphically details:
"Iraq is not stable. The "surge" didn't work. The US-Iraq "Status of Forces Agreement" is only a piece of paper. The country is plagued with violence. Key political actors in Iraq are bolstered by paramilitary armies, including the Badr Brigade, the Mahdi Army, and the Sons of Iraq ("Awakening") movement. Vast numbers of Iraqis are unemployed. Industry has collapsed, and basic services -- electricity, water, gas, sanitation -- are intermittent or nonexistent. The army and police are corrupt and infiltrated by militias, and the army's loyalty is suspect. Most of Iraq's political movements are backed by or have ties to one or more of Iraq's neighbors. Baghdad is a warren of blast walls and walled-off enclaves, reeling from years of ethnic cleansing, and Iraq's provincial capitals are rife with intrigue, with many of them -- Kirkuk, Mosul, Baquba, Basra, for instance -- perched at the bring of outright civil war.
That's the Iraq that Obama is inheriting from the decider".
Continue reading here. Meanwhile, whilst it is reported that president-elect is destined to commit up to 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, in a piece also in The Nation "Escalation without a Plan", Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes:
"Does this sound familiar?
"We have no strategic plan. We never had one."
That's how a senior US military commander described the war in Afghanistan to Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung in her must-read front-page story Tuesday.
Another Pentagon official "only half-jokingly" referred to General David Petraeus' "shadow government" of 200 military and civilian experts tasked with coming up with a comprehensive plan.
But instead of tough questioning of our Escalation Without a Plan in Afghanistan, we are on course to double our presence there by adding 20,000 to 30,000 more US troops. DeYoung writes that this strategy is designed to buy the Obama Administration time so it can devise our purpose for being there and what we hope to accomplish."
"Iraq is not stable. The "surge" didn't work. The US-Iraq "Status of Forces Agreement" is only a piece of paper. The country is plagued with violence. Key political actors in Iraq are bolstered by paramilitary armies, including the Badr Brigade, the Mahdi Army, and the Sons of Iraq ("Awakening") movement. Vast numbers of Iraqis are unemployed. Industry has collapsed, and basic services -- electricity, water, gas, sanitation -- are intermittent or nonexistent. The army and police are corrupt and infiltrated by militias, and the army's loyalty is suspect. Most of Iraq's political movements are backed by or have ties to one or more of Iraq's neighbors. Baghdad is a warren of blast walls and walled-off enclaves, reeling from years of ethnic cleansing, and Iraq's provincial capitals are rife with intrigue, with many of them -- Kirkuk, Mosul, Baquba, Basra, for instance -- perched at the bring of outright civil war.
That's the Iraq that Obama is inheriting from the decider".
Continue reading here. Meanwhile, whilst it is reported that president-elect is destined to commit up to 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, in a piece also in The Nation "Escalation without a Plan", Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes:
"Does this sound familiar?
"We have no strategic plan. We never had one."
That's how a senior US military commander described the war in Afghanistan to Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung in her must-read front-page story Tuesday.
Another Pentagon official "only half-jokingly" referred to General David Petraeus' "shadow government" of 200 military and civilian experts tasked with coming up with a comprehensive plan.
But instead of tough questioning of our Escalation Without a Plan in Afghanistan, we are on course to double our presence there by adding 20,000 to 30,000 more US troops. DeYoung writes that this strategy is designed to buy the Obama Administration time so it can devise our purpose for being there and what we hope to accomplish."
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