Six years, $600 billion and the "surge" equals two lost wars

[ProSense]

Bush has reshaped America into a country Americans no longer recognize and the world no longer respects.

The U.S. army is "out of balance," stretched thin trying to fight two wars, and the wars are not going well at all.

NATO is struggling in Afghanistan, which is turning its back on human rights.

Afghanistan: 15 Prisoners Executed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 9, 2007

Ending a three-year moratorium on the death penalty, Afghanistan executed 15 prisoners in Kabul by gunfire for crimes including murder, kidnapping and armed robbery. Officials said no fighters for the Taliban or Al Qaeda were among them. The deaths could complicate relationships between the government and some NATO countries with military forces that hand captured militants over to the Afghan government, raising the question of whether countries that do not use the death penalty might stop surrendering prisoners. The Dutch Foreign Ministry expressed distress, saying, “Abolition of the death penalty is one of our priorities in terms of international human rights policy.”

Afghanistan is lost, and Bush is fighting to save Baghdad, not Iraq, Baghdad.

Petraeus and his co-authors discussed this strategy at great length in the Army's counterinsurgency field manual. One point they made is that it requires a lot of manpower—at minimum, 20 combat troops for every 1,000 people in the area's population. Baghdad has about 6 million people; so clearing, holding, and building it will require about 120,000 combat troops.

Right now, the United States has about 70,000 combat troops in all of Iraq (another 60,000 or so are support troops or headquarters personnel). Even an extra 20,000 would leave the force well short of the minimum required—and that's with every soldier and Marine in Iraq moved to Baghdad. Iraqi security forces would have to make up the deficit.

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Basra is now firmly under Iranian influence:

U.S. military officers in Iraq often wonder about the possible presence of Iranian operatives in cities south of Baghdad like Karbala and Najaf, two key strongholds for Shi'ite militias thought to have links to Tehran. Many soldiers believe those two cities, home to more than 1.5 million people altogether, are where Shi'ite militants gather, train and arm themselves with help from Iran for attacks against U.S. forces farther north. Some intelligence even suggests that Iran's elite military force, the Revolutionary Guard, has opened training camps in the area for Iraqi guerrillas. But getting a clear picture of the happenings there and in other cities in that region is hard for one simple reason: U.S. troops don't go there anymore.

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After years of asking Americans for patience, months of propaganda about the surge, Bush is back to asking for patience. He's getting none from the coalition of the handful of countries that appear ready to abandon him in Iraq. Also, don't expect that shaky U.S.-Sunni alliance to amount to anything.

The news out of Iraq is failure, failure and more failure.


Set a deadline, get out of Iraq!

[ProSense]

1. Kick! n/t

[babylonsister]

2. Thank you, Pro Sense, for your awe-inspiring post, as usual!

:thumbsup: So much info, not enough time, I guess.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. K&R!

[ProSense]

4. Kick! n/t

[JeffR]

5. Thanks, ProSense

K & R.

[ProSense]

6. The U.S. to coalition death toll in Iraq:

12.7 to 1

Only 19 other countries have suffered losses:

Top half (9) of coalition countries death toll: 283
Bottom half (10) of coalition countries death toll: 18

U.S. death toll: 3,820

[ProSense]

7. Second deadly attack on Camp Victory in less a month

Attack at US base in Iraq kills 2

By KIM CURTIS, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - A series of rockets or mortar rounds struck Camp Victory, killing two members of the U.S.-led coalition and wounding 40 other people on the sprawling headquarters for U.S. forces in Iraq, the military said Thursday.

Most troops stationed at the base are American but there are small contingents from other countries.

The military said those wounded in Wednesday's attack included two "third-country nationals," meaning they were not Americans or Iraqis. More details on the attack were not immediately released.

U.S. bases in Iraq frequently face so-called "indirect fire," the military's term for a rocket or mortar attack, but Camp Victory is well-entrenched on the capital's western outskirts and such heavy casualties are rare.

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1 killed, 11 wounded in attack on major U.S. base in Baghdad

[ProSense]

8. The "phony" Marine Corp.

US Marines propose moving force from Iraq to Afghanistan: report

53 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Marine Corps wants to withdraw its entire force from Iraq to focus its combat efforts on Afghanistan, the New York Times reported Thursday, citing senior military and Pentagon officials.

The proposal made last week to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would sharply change the structure of US forces in Afghanistan while leaving the US-led fight in Iraq in the hands of the army, the paper reported.

The move would entail removing all 25,000 marines from the 160,000-strong US force currently in Iraq, and transferring them to Afghanistan, where there are currently no marines among the 26,000 US troops.

The plan "would make marines the dominant American force in Afghanistan," the Times said.

But the most important counter-terror mission in Afghanistan, including the search for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, would remain in the hands of the joint special operations task force currently in place.

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