The surge is working?

[flamin lib]

I keep hearing that the “surge” is succeeding. Really? There are still 600 attacks from insurgents every month. Those attacks kill 1000 Iraqis and 70 US soldiers every month.

This must be a definition of success with which I am not familiar.

In the Texas Democratic Primary debate Sen. Obama told a story related to him by an active duty Captain in Afghanistan. The Captain told Sen. Obama that on his first tour in Afghanistan his rifle platoon, usually 39 strong, was reduced to 24 because the others were deployed to Iraq. He further said that things were so bad his troops resorted to using weapons captured from the Taliban because supplies were not forthcoming. The Captain said that during one inspection by high command they took the functioning Russian machine gun off it’s mounts and replaced it with the non-functioning gun issued by the Army so as not to upset the General. The Pentagon immediately denied the story. The captain, now a Major, confirmed to CNN news sources that the story was in all real respects true. Now Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey, testifying before the Senate confirms that “there is no reason to doubt” the story.

One of the signature issues for Sen. Joe Biden has been the upgrading of military hardware for our troops put in harms way in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He has repeatedly voted to fund both conflicts on the grounds that our soldiers needed it to provide, among other things, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAPS). The marines requested the new vehicles in 2005 and have yet to receive any of them. I’ve heard two excuses from the Pentagon: the expense of the new vehicles was such that it would interfere with other weapons projects and that although the vehicles were available immediately from other countries the Military Brass wanted to wait for one developed in the United States. The civilian scientist (an ex Marine officer) assigned to research the delay has asked for whistle blower protection and the study has been canceled by the Marines. Not, however, before the Marines requested the DoD Inspector General investigate the boondoggle. Meanwhile, 700 Marines have died in IED attacks that the MRAP would have withstood.

The United States spends more on our military than the rest of the world combined. Half of all discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon. Yet our soldiers are under armored, have difficulty getting replacement parts for weapons in the field and with 140,000 soldiers deployed to Iraq the Army is stretched so thin that there are serious concerns over how much longer the Iraq and Afghanistan efforts can be maintained.

There is something seriously wrong here. Military contractors like Blackwater get paid $75,000 a year to carry guns and protect military brass while the soldier standing next to them makes $23,000 a year to do the same thing and can’t count on the Veteran’s Administration to take care of him. We are paying to develop two next generation fighter planes but can’t provide armor plated MRAPS to protect our soldiers today. Ten Billion dollars a year is spent on missile defense which can be defeated with inflatable warhead dummies but soldiers in the field can’t keep their weapons functioning.

President Truman had a name for it. War Profiteering. Dick Cheney’s Halliburton stock value went from under $100,000 to over $ 2 million between 2003 and today. Companies like General Electric, Boeing, Blackwater and a host of other contractors soak up half a trillion dollars in defense spending every year and we can’t win a war in a country that doesn’t have an army.




http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/27/army-general-no-reason-to-doubt-obamas-story/ Obama story true

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-02-26-marines_N.htm Marines halt MRAP study--whistleblower

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52835 MRAP request investigation

[ThomWV]

1. And the term is wrong, this wasn't a 'surge', it was a 'flood'. Surges recede.

[Breeze54]

3. No, it was an 'escalation' and no, it's RW BS to say it's working.

:grr:

Thank You, OP!

[OwnedByFerrets]

2. If a lie is repeated often enough, the sheeple will believe it...nt

[Jeffersons Ghost]

4. K&R n/t

[Disturbed]

5. The Calm Before the Conflagration

The Calm Before the Conflagration
by Chris Hedges

The United States is funding and in many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq-the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs. These factions rule over partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military. Iraq is Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a caldron of weapons, lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode. And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat, means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to scurry like rats for cover.

The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen. John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence. The decline in attacks began only when we bought off the Sunni Arabs. U.S. commanders in the bleak fall of 2006 had little choice. It was that or defeat. The steady rise in U.S. casualties, the massive car bombs that tore apart city squares in Baghdad and left hundreds dead, the brutal ethnic cleansing that was creating independent ethnic enclaves beyond our control throughout Iraq, the death squads that carried out mass executions and a central government that was as corrupt as it was impotent signaled catastrophic failure.

The United States cut a deal with its Sunni Arab enemies. It would pay the former insurgents. It would allow them to arm and form military units and give them control of their ethnic enclaves. The Sunni Arabs, in exchange, would halt attacks on U.S. troops. The Sunnis Arabs agreed.

More here : http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/25/7271/

[Jeffersons Ghost]

8. that would make a good opening post, Disturbed

[annabanana]

6. Until we stop shovelling $ at Muqtada la Sadr, some outlying sunnis

and assorted other warlords...

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

7. also working: tax cuts for oil execs, FISA, no habeus corpus, and your pension fund

It really all depends on what you mean by "working."