Norm Coleman’s position on Iraq may not be what you think it is
January 19th, 2007 – 1:12 AM by Eric BlackGood Friday Morning Fellow Seekers of Wisdom and Truth,
If you’ve paid cursory attention to recent mainstream media coverage of Sen. Norm Coleman’s Iraq policy, you might have the impression that Coleman has abandoned President Bush and sidled over to the anti-war camp. If so, you would be wrong.
If, on the other you had read Coleman’s Jan. 11 Senate floor statement on the war, which included:
“…We are in Iraq as part of a global war on terror. There is no question that Iraq has become the key battleground of this war… With menacing regimes in Iran and Syria, we cannot dismiss the fact that a failed state in Iraq would lead to much more than chaos and collapse in that nation. It would destabilize a critical region of the world, and most alarmingly, would create a breeding ground for terrorists whose ambitions do not stop at Iraq’s borders. Americans, all Americans have a direct stake in winning this war.”
or the press release his office issued the previous day saying:
” The battle against al-Qaeda and extremism in Iraq is the battle of our time. Failure is not an option.”
in which Coleman rejected the leading Democratic idea of “phased withdrawal,” repudiated Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel’s characterization of the Iraq war as the “worst foreign policy blunder” since Vietnam, dismissed Sen. Ted Kennedy’s idea of using the congressional power of the purse to prevent Bush from going ahead with the increase in troops.
Or if you heard (it hasn’t been reported much) the rather surprising reason Coleman’s spokesters gave for the senator’s decision not to support a resolution expressing opposition to the troop increase:
which is that, while he opposes putting additional U.S. troops in Baghdad, he favors the possibility of “reinforcements” in Anbar Province.
You would have a much more detailed understanding of Coleman’s position.
You would still be free, of course, to interpret Coleman’s position as one of political convenience. He is, after all, up for reelection in 2008, and has until now been a steady supporter of Bush’s logic and policy on the war. By opposing the most prominent feature of Bush’s latest plan, he may be in a better position to convince war-weary Minnesotans next year that he is not deaf, dumb and blind to their doubts about the widsom of stay-until-victory-ism.
But you would be hard to pressed to prove it. After plowing through all the documents and tapes and interviewing Coleman at length Thursday to press him on the questions raised by his no-surge-in-Baghdad-but-no-retreat-from-Iraq position, I found that he had coherent answers to all the questions and spoke with conviction.
Here are the main points of Coleman’s position:
On his recent visit to Iraq, Coleman found the situations in Anbar and Baghdad to be highly dissimilar. In the Sunni stronghold of Anbar, he found the U.S. Marines to fighting effectively against a combination of insurgents and foreign fighters, some allegedly Al Qaida-linked.
In the mixed Sunni-Shiite areas in and around Baghdad, the fighting is essentially a sectarian civil war with U.S. troops caught in the middle and with the Shiite-dominated government more interested in helping the Shiite side than in resolving the conflict.
His perception is that the Shiites and Sunnis have not shed enough of one another’s blood to satisfy their mutual grudges. Coleman is also skeptical that the Maliki government is really ready to enact the political and economic changes necessary to buy down the concerns of Sunnis about their role in the future economy and power structure of Iraq.
Based largely on this skepticism about the Maliki government’s commitment to the direction Washington advocates, Coleman opposes putting 17,000 additional U.S. troops into harm’s way in Baghdad. Instead, he advocates laying out benchmarks for the Maliki government to achieve, giving them six months to do so, and to reassess at that point the best strategy for advancing U.S. interests.
If the Iraqis have made progress on sharing oil revenues, putting development money into Anbar Province, loosening the restrictions on former Baathists, holding regional elections in Sunni areas, abiding by new rules of engagement that amount to greater latitude for U.S. troops and greater even-handedness in attacking Shiite militias, then Coleman would consider supporting U.S. military measures to help resolve the sectarian conflict in Baghdad.
If not, he said, the U.S. needs to devise a new military strategy — possibly moving its troops to Iraq’s borders — to try to prevent the chaos from spreading into a region-wide conflict involving several neighboring states.
Although Coleman has embraced the “failure is not an option” language of the war’s most fervent supporters, when pressed he acknowledged that failure is a possibility.
That the U.S. commitment is “not unending at all, that “we do not have unending patience or an infinite supply of blood and treasure that we will spend.” And that “we may have to face the price of failure.”
Other than expressing his opposition to more U.S. troops in Baghdad, Coleman opposes Ted Kennedy’s proposal to use appropriations language to block the idea, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s idea of enacting a cap on the total troop level, and doesn’t plan to support the non-binding resolution expressing his opposition to the troop increase. He said he was working with some like-minded senators on a different resolution to express their opposition with differences in the wording, presumably to take care of his objection to banning more troops in Anbar.
Coleman is not expressing doubts or regrets about his support for going to war (he was not in the Senate in 2002 when the iraq War Resolution was adopted but said as a candidate that year that he supported it). He adopts a lot of Bush’s rhetoric about Iraq being the battle of our time and the central front in the war on terror and about the threat to America represented by failure in Iraq.
When I pressed him on the point that claims about pre-war connections between Saddam and Al Qaida have been proven false, he said that “there’s something there” but that Saddam was a terrorist and a supporter of terrorism.
I’m writing this late Thursday, from notes, but will post the audio for those interested in the full interview.
So, what do you think of Coleman’s position?
63 Responses to "Norm Coleman’s position on Iraq may not be what you think it is"
“Coleman opposes Ted Kennedy’s proposal to use appropriations language to block the idea”
Has liberal bufoon Ted Kennedy ever proposed anything that wasn’t completely insane?
Failure is not an option……But it is a possibility.
A possibility? Here’s the reality: According to the latest Newsweek, “A State Department poll last summer found nine out of 10 young Iraqis, Sunni and Shia, saw the United States as an occupying force.” They’re the next generation of jihadists so if failure, read quitting, is not an option we’re in for a very long campaign in Iraq (not to mention the coming war with Iran).
While Coleman is capable of being a politician and therefore essentially a highly reimbursed used car salesman, he does stand apart from others in that chamber in one sense: he does seem to have a grounding in common sense.
His concerns are similar to mine though I must confess that mine are not as detailed as EB has provided here for us. The war is just and necessary and I think will probably last another decade at least. Perhaps not in Iraq, but in that region. I don’t like hearing from a commander that we made some mistakes applying our resources so I guess we need more resources now. Instead, I’d like a bit more methodical approach, I don’t need the plan and neither does congress…I just want evidence of a methodology.
What we seem to be doing now is a politicians approach. Similar to congressional budgets, if we over spend we just go tax for more money. We should apply the same sort of resource management to warfare.
As for the war and the civil-war-aspects of it. Perhaps now is the time for shock and awe. When it comes to my country-men being killed, I’d rather have the locals seeing us as dominators instead of just occupiers.
It is unclear what the Senators goals are with his inconsistent positions. As I understand his goals, he wants to quell violence in Anbar province, which is generally caused by insurgents and foreign fighters. Ok. So far, so good. But the Senator does not want to quell the violence in Baghdad, which is Iraqi-on-Iraqi. It seems like the goal is to get the Maliki government to stabilize Baghdad - which they have so far failed to do on their own. And if they fail, we retreat entirely from the city to defend the borders, to prevent region-wide conflict. If I understand this correctly, he’s proposing that we basically let the Iraqis fight it out amongst themselves, that we play the role of the cage in an Iraqi cage match. I suppose that’s preferable to being stuck in the middle, but doesn’t seem to do a lot to achieve our objectives either. I suppose its another bad option amongst all the rest.
Whenever I think about Coleman and the war, I always think about the fact that he has a draft age son. I think about the microscopic percentage of politician’s children that are fighting this war. I think about the microscopic percentage of the children of the rich that are fighting this war. I think about the death toll and the cost. I remember the tax cuts to richest Americans that has occurred under Republican watch and how they oppose the hike in minimum wage. The poor and middle class are paying exponentially more for this war in both life and money while the rich get richer.
If the draft age sons and daughters of politicians and the ultra-rich benefiting from the tax cuts were forced to fight this war, we wouldn’t be in this war.
I agree with others. Coleman is a political opportunist that will shift to fit whatever way the political wind blows.
If “failure is not an option” and this is the “battle of our time”, then how can it be that our commitment is “not unending at all, that “we do not have unending patience or an infinite supply of blood and treasure that we will spend.”
The actions of the President and his supporters belie their rhetoric regarding the importance of mission in Iraq. If it’s really that important, then there should be no hesitation about calling for real sacrifice from the American people to carry out this war.
What’s very interesting is that in all there have been 11 bills introduced by members of both sides of the aisle in both houses of congress. Coleman may not support Kennedy’s bill but what about all the others?
LDavid says, “I think about the microscopic percentage of politician’s children that are fighting this war. I think about the microscopic percentage of the children of the rich that are fighting this war.
I remember the tax cuts to richest Americans that has occurred under Republican watch and how they oppose the hike in minimum wage. The poor and middle class are paying exponentially more for this war in both life and money while the rich get richer.”
These topics fall under what I like to call “Leftwing Truths”. Nothing based in fact but continuously passed around as fact.
There is another name for it,
“Social Constructionism”, The focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the creation of their perceived reality.
The only thing that I was disappointed in when I read your post was that you didn’t claim that it was just the poor black men that are in Iraq.
Coleman’s position on Iraq? What does it matter?
In a year and a half the Democrats with their eager and able assistants the Star Tribune will engage on the biggest charactor assignation campaign we have ever seen. It will be a full all out Blitzkreig on Norm Coleman.
It doesn’t matter what Norm’s position on any issue. I don’t know why he tries to appease the left. No matter what he says it won’t sway the local mainstream media.
Coleman is a political opportunist with a liberal heart. He was a hippie who protested the Vietnam War, his wife and kids live in LALA land and he lives in DC. Minnesota does not need Norm Coleman anymore. Calling the true Minnesota leaders (Republican and Democrat and Indpendent) to step up and sent Coleman to California in 2008.
Senator Norm knows that both the Prez and the war in Iraq are very unpopular and so he is doing his best to work boths sides for his benefit in his upcoming 2008 re-election bid. He appears to be against the war now so that Minnesotans will not have that excuse to vote against him while at the same time standing by the Prez so that his GOP base of support doesn’t abandon him in the GOP primary. It is definitely a tricky stance but he is slick enough to do it…as was the case that he shed the Democrat label to become a Republican when the GOP was in accendent. 2008 should be a mighty fun and bloody year to watch on the political front for candidates of all stripes. Cheers!
You think he has a position? HAH!!!! I really don’t care this conservative is voting for Al Frannkan in 08
“You think he has a position? HAH!!!! I really don’t care this conservative is voting for Al Frannkan in 08″
Please, no. There must be somebody else available.
Coleman is a Bush puppet — has anyone
noticed his increased NY accent since
his arrival in Washington? He is a
phony. Shame on all of you who voted
for this idiot - defeat Coleman in 2008
If Minnesota had any kind of back-bone we’d be dragging Coleman out of office kicking-and screaming like the two-faced baby he is. This guy will do anything for political gain.
Norm voted for this war and supported Bush 100% going into Iraq. He cannot distance himself from that position and it has been a complete backfire.
It will be us and our children that will pay for this war for decades, in both our taxes and our blood.
Down with this Rogue State that we have become. I want my democracy back.
I e-mailed Coleman’s office on this same subject and i received an answer that so political.I believe this…however.. you can’t have it both ways. Since this war our country has shown us to be so wishy-washy,soft believers-not willing to backup our beliefs. we went in half-heartily. Troops were ill prepared. not enough experience professional army. you cannot give anyone democracey it is earned. these people will die for what they believe are we willing to? I don’t think we get it? Yes, freedoms are earned-we just opened up a can of worms for people who have not changed their way of life for 2000 years. Men are still dominating,women are sub-servient(they don’t even know it) why would they want democracy? to correct you have to start with people who want freedom or separate them? like children but who are we to force our beliefs on other people. there system worked. You can’t change the heart.
I guess we are stuck with being police
-give it to the united nations what else do they do? what a joke. Our representatives got us in another mess. nothing changes. let’s change Washington-do not re-elect anyone who is there now.
I would like to say “Brian G” I have seen your point of view a couple of times in the past. I feel sorry for you and anyone else that attaches thier selfs so much to a policial party. This just makes you narrow minded and with tunnel vision. I also love how you have to re-write the other Blogger’s statement. Does this make you feel more enpowered. The only true and sad fact is the problems over there, and the increased hatred for Americans is totally due to this administations lies and attacking a country without just cause.
By the way, what have you or your family done to support this war? and what model car did you buy with that tax cut? And by your last smart remark, I already know what shade of color you are!
Minnesota Democrats - Say no to Al Franken. He is great as a comedian and radio host, but he will lose against Normit.
Let’s find a great candidate who is NOT from the Metro area. Find a person who has lived in Minnesota for at least the last 10 years. I think this should be a law.
My new law:
US Reps: Live in state for the last 5 years, (last 5 in the district)
US Senate: Live in state for the last 10 years
Gov: Born in state and live in state for the last 5 yrs
State Rep: Live in district past 3 years
State Senate: Live in district past 3 years.
********
Jessica, I agree with your goal, but have to point out that the gov requirment is a bit strong.
“Gov: Born in state and live in state for the last 5 yrs”
Shoot, Michigan has a Canadian governor, while California has an Austrian. While I do find it strange that they couldn’t find a local to do those jobs, it seems that both are doing passably well, enough that they’ve been reelected.
No one can fault Normie for his lack of political acumen. He is very smart and a quick student –and he has a good tutor in Cheney.
Cheney has done this before. He was a very smart, quick student. He learned a lot working for Tricky-Dick and Ford and Rumsfeld.
They define victory a little differently than the rest of us.
Victory for us is to get out of Iraq with enough dignity left that we can show our face in the world without getting spat on.
Victory to them means that no one from this administration goes to jail for war crimes and Halliburton still makes lots of money.
The best way for that to happen is to tap-dance for the next two years then high-tail it to Crawford or Wyoming and keep their mouths shut. That way they can retire as “elder statesmen” (i.e. Kissinger ) rather than bungling fool (i.e. Nixon).
It appears that the Coleman approach has more than a passing resemblence to the Krauthammer approach. Krauthammer, a notorious neo-con loon, proposes it as a fallback plan, or a ‘plan b,’ in the event that the surge does not work.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011801509.html?nav=hcmodule
“The Pentagon should be working on a sustainable Plan B whose major element would be not so much a drawdown of troops as a drawdown of risk to our troops. If we had zero American casualties a day, there would be as little need to withdraw from Iraq as there is to withdraw from the Balkans.
We need to find a redeployment strategy that maintains as much latent American strength as possible, but with minimal exposure. We say to Maliki: Let us down, and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad and let you fend for yourself; we keep the airport and certain strategic bases in the area; we redeploy most of our forces to Kurdistan; we maintain a significant presence in Anbar province, where we are having success in our one-front war against al-Qaeda and the Baathists. Then we watch. You can have your Baghdad civil war without us. We will be around to pick up the pieces as best we can.”
Most of us now in our fifty’s once were hippies who protested the Vietnam War. Norm’s wife and kids live, work, and go to school in the metro area. This is the first time I’ve known the Twin Cities to be referred to as LaLa Land. If your elected to represent Minnesotans. Yeah I guess you would have to live in Washington, DC part of the time. Minnesota leaders who have heard a calling to promote absolute truth would do well to step up and join Coleman in the political arena. We need more candidates from all parties with Norm Coleman’s integrity.
Norm is always pretty hard to parse. I give EB a lot of credit for this post - usually it takes a post-doc degree in semiotics to understand our esteemed Senator.
Norm will say anything to maintain his seat. He doesn’t really believe in anything. When it was fashionable to be a Dem he was. When it became fashionable to be a Rep, poof, he is a Rep. Same story on Iraq. If that kind of person is what Minn wants in the senate, re-elect him.
Amen to Dave. Norm will vote with the devil if it will benefit him in any way. I still get chills when I remember him coming out of his mansion after the Wellstone “accident” asking everyone to “hit your knees and pray”. Then 3 days later joining in with the Rove “warriors” crying that the memorial turned into a political rally. Hey Norm, it was a memorial honoring the dead and really didn’t need to be approved by you or anyone at the RNC.
Normie is a slimy linguist who’s adept at wriggling out of his own words. He’s one of the better politicians when it comes to speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Considering he defected to the Republican party when they were coming in to power, I’m half expecting him to come whimpering back to the Democrats now that they’re cleaning house.
I view Normie as the court fool who’s always looking to curry favor with the people in power.
Rick writes “I’m half expecting him to come whimpering back to the Democrats now that they’re cleaning house.”
Dateline Nov 8, 2006. Senator Norm Coleman reacts to the Democratic party’s retaking of control of Congress. “Well, it takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster, so I expect to be someone the Democratic Leadership will work with.” I paraphrase, but it sure didn’t take him long to put it out there. Which on the one hand, you have to say that yes, it does sometimes take bipartisanship to get the job done. But on the other hand, it sure took him a long time to bring the subject up. When his party was in control, he didn’t have much interest at all in ‘reaching across the aisle.’
Failure isn’t an option. It is a consequence of poor decision-making. Nobody carefully weighs the possibilities of success and failure, finally picking failure as the better choice. What happens, in fact, is that people make horrible and sometimes arrogant mistakes, and the results of those mistakes are described as failure.
So more than a half-million Iraqis have died in this war. Two million Iraqis are external refugees and about a million and a half are internal refugees. More than 3,000 Americans have died there. In direct costs, we have paid over $400 billion into a sinkhole. In indirect costs, we will end up paying between one and two trillion dollars. Thousands and thousands of patriotic Americans have returned from the war with physical and psychiatric injuries from which they will never fully recover.
90 percent of Iraqis hate us and think we should leave. 70 percent of American citizens think we should leave. 60 percent of the soldiers and marines in Iraq think we should leave.
The country is shattered. No clean water. No medicine. No security. No electricity. No reliable government or military.
South America hates us. Muslims hate us. Europe hates us. (The Africans are mostly too busy dying to hate us.) At this point, a lot of Americans even hate themselves.
I suppose most Americans would not have actually chosen such an outcome. But that is the reality that we actually have. Failure is not an option. Failure is merely the reality of Iraq.
Charley, this is the comment of the day, imo.
“Failure isn’t an option. It is a consequence of poor decision-making. Nobody carefully weighs the possibilities of success and failure, finally picking failure as the better choice.”
No one’s defending Norm?
Okay, I’ll have a crack at it. Just for practice.
If he isn’t really saying anything, then he can’t be accused of being in the wrong.
If he isn’t really taking a side, it’s impossible for him to be on the wrong side.
That’s it. (Well, I tried.)
As for “a lot of Americans hating themselves,” I don’t. I’m one of millions of Americans who told other Americans that GWB would be a rotten President. I’m proud of that; so are other Americans. It’s Coleman who should hate himself, he was GWB’s campaign chief in Minnesota; he was going around telling people to support a bunch of incompetents for national leadership.
The bloody mess in Iraq isn’t a failure of US arms, it’s a failure of leadership–”Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The way to salvage what we can in the Middle East is to promote a change in leadership; I’m not taking any politician seriously who doesn’t recognize that fact, publicly.
Retired Army says, “I would like to say “Brian G” I have seen your point of view a couple of times in the past. I feel sorry for you and anyone else that attaches thier selfs so much to a policial party.”
I repost part of a post so the rebuttal
makes sense. Otherwise your post from 2:10 is too far back to have anybody read, and they would knowwhat I am talking about (not that they do anyway?)
.Well you know retired, I have voted democrat a lot in the past. In fact I voted for Clinton his 2nd term and for Hatch in his last Atty Gen run.
However these past few years I have seen the democratic party, the party that my parents and all of my family always voted for, drift far to the left. They no longer represent much of what I want to see happen in America.
“By the way, what have you or your family done to support this war? and what model car did you buy with that tax cut? And by your last smart remark, I already know what shade of color you are!”
Well I was in VNam in ‘72, but I am not in this war, but I have friends whose sons are there. I have sent packages to servicemen, and I bought a new jet with my tax refund!! yea right, and since you know I am a Republican I MUST be white right? You know how black Republicans are treated.
He’s beginnning to sound like Michele Bachmann on Iraq trying to muddy his position, and saying different things to different audiences.
Eva,
Michele Bachmann and John Kline make more sense than any of the other politicians from Minnesota. Keith Hakim Ellison of course has by far the worst plan.
Worst plan? How about NO plan? Wht is the plan we are talking about? Why isnt it up in congress? Why isnt it discussed? What plan?
Susanne,
Keith Hakim Ellison (DFL) wants to immediately surrender in Iraq and turn control over to Muslim terrorists. That’s what his plan is.
birds of a feather, and we had nothing to be concerned about did we?
“I don’t. I’m one of millions of Americans who told other Americans that GWB would be a rotten President. I’m proud of that; so are other Americans”
Well Bill, why don’t you get in line for your medal? That is really something to have pride in. It seems to me that your opinion was jaded from the start? There is absolutely no way he could have ever become a good President in your eyes. What would have happened if you had to eat crow? Loss of pride in yourself is probably something you couldn’t handle very well.
What the hell, I voted for Jimmy Carter! It bothers me that I did, but I didn’t live to discredit him, I don’t now. even though he deserves it.That man is far and away the worst President and FORMER President this country ever had and possibly wil lever have again.
Jimmy Carter was by far the worst President we ever had, and he continues to be a pain in the ass with his anti-Semitic rants. Many members of his Presidential library board are resigning over this.
Jimmy won because he had such a cute little peanut campaign. Remember the dancing peanut with an Uncle Sam hat? So cute! OMG!
Kinda getting sick of his thick pink lips about now, though.
Nice to see that the right-wingers here are as out of touch with reality as ever. Jimmy Carter saved Israel when he brokered the Camp David talks, and his recent book taking the Likud Party to task for its treatment of the folks being slowly starved to death in Gaza is no harsher than is much (if not most) of the Israeli media.
As Chris Hedges notes in the article linked above, quoting from articles by Israeli journalists:
But it is in Gaza that conditions are currently reaching a full-blown humanitarian crisis. “Gaza is in its worst condition ever,” Gideon Levy wrote recently in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz. “The Israel Defense Forces have been rampaging through Gaza–there’s no other word to describe it–killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately…. How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about ‘the end of the occupation’ and ‘partitioning the land’ now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before…. This is disgraceful and shocking collective punishment.”
And as Gaza descends into civil war, with Hamas and Fatah factions carrying out gun battles in the streets, Ha’aretz reporter Amira Hass bitterly notes, “The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called ‘what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.’”
In fact, if there is a failing in Carter’s stance, it is that he is too kind to the Israelis, bending over backward to assert that he is only writing about the occupied territories. Israel itself, he says, is a democracy. This would come as a surprise to the 1.3 million Israeli Arabs who live as second-class citizens in the Jewish state. The poverty rate among Israeli Arabs is more than twice that of the Jewish population. Those Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank are not permitted to get Israeli residency for their spouses. And Israeli Arabs, who do not serve in the military or the country’s intelligence services and thus lack the important personal connections and job networks available to veterans, are systematically shut out of good jobs. Any Jew, who may speak no Hebrew or ever been to Israel, can step off a plane and become an Israeli citizen, while a Palestinian living abroad whose family’s roots in Palestine may go back generations is denied citizenship.
The Israel lobby in the United States does not serve Israel or the Jewish community–it serves the interests of the Israeli extreme right wing. Most Israelis have come to understand that peace will be possible only when their country complies with international law and permits Palestinians to build a viable and sustainable state based on the 1967 borders, including, in some configuration, East Jerusalem.
Here’s some more on whether the very vocal and GOP-connected right-wing Likud/Kadima supporters in the US really do represent all Israelis:
This stark demarcation between Israeli pragmatists and the extreme right wing was apparent when I was in the Middle East for the New York Times during Yitzhak Rabin’s 1992 campaign for prime minister. The majority of American Jewish organizations and neoconservative intellectuals made no pretense of neutrality. They had morphed into extensions of the right-wing Likud Party. These American groups, to Rabin’s dismay, had gone on to build, with Likud, an alliance with right-wing Christian groups filled with real anti-Semites whose cultural and historical ignorance of the Middle East was breathtaking. This collection of messianic Jews and Christians, leavened with rabid American imperialists, believed they had been handed a divine or moral mandate to rule the Middle East, whether the Arabs liked it or not.
When Rabin, who had come to despise what the occupation was doing to the citizenry of his own country, was sworn in as prime minister, the leaders of these American Jewish organizations, along with their buffoonish supporters on the Christian right, were conspicuous by their absence. On one of Rabin’s first visits to Washington after he assumed office, according to one of his aides, he was informed that a group of American Jewish leaders were available to meet him. The surly old general, whose gravelly cigarette voice seemed to rise up from below his feet, curtly refused. He told his entourage he did not have time to waste on “scumbags.”
Really? You claim Rabin refered to American Jews as “scumbags”?
(huh, girlfriend, you are kinda losing credibility, kinda? Besides linking to left wing weird blogs, any, like, news thingie?)
When did Rabin call American Jews “scumbags” ?
date? time? interview?
back your a$$ up please.
PWoman, your posts and references really do nothing for your arguments since you are so far ot the left. It is like consulting Charles Manson about family values.
Nothing but insults out of you lately Brian. Is that all you got left?
Right now, whether in Anbar or Baghdad, the people of Iraq think we are the foreign occupation. As more of Iraq people die, they are going to blame us instead of themselves. Only when we are gone, can the elected government that we put into place finally start dealing with problems. So really the choice is between being a foreign occupation in a country, where both the goverment and people (through surveys) want us to leave or letting the duly elected Iraq government and the Iraq people decide what happens. So foreign occupation or Iraq democracy, what is your choice? So who should be calling the shots for Iraq, the Iraq government and Iraq people or the US President Bush? How does that clear choice mesh with Coleman’s policy of one choice is ok in Anbar and a different choice in Baghdad?
If Iraq was trying to clean up our government and our elections, would we see a distinction between actions in Duluth or St Paul? So even considering that there could be a separate policy for Anbar and Baghdad, tells me how sucked in, this reporter became in the Republican Coleman storytelling. Coleman was my mayor, he has a history of blowing in the political wind like a kite. The kite string is held be whoever offers the most money and power to him.
Coleman is a political opportunist that will shift to fit whatever way the political wind blows.
Nothing but insults out of you lately Brian. Is that all you got left? ”
What can I say Dora? Read the posts from your side and see what they say. And I am the one that is insulting? I think I bite my tongue quite well.
“My side?” You don’t think PW posts do anything for her argument then point out where the argument fails. Personal insults do nothing to advance your argument.
Sure her links and posts reinforce her side of the argument. But if I were from the flat earth society I am sure I could provide data to back up my claims too. It is just that most of her data comes from the side of “social constructionism”
I read post after post of how the Pres is this or that, thinks this, thinks that, called this, called that. And anybody that agrees with any of the administrations goals and objectives are called their own set of names.
I don’t asgree 100% with the Pres. like you think I do. I do not like his amnesty policy, I don’t even like the way he is handling the war. They are a year too late in getting tough. They and Maliki are now attacking Sadr’s army. Should’ve been done a year ago. I remember you thought I was nuts when I mentioned it a month ago.
But as you say, “Personal insults do nothing to advance your argument.”
I agree.
Brian, you’re projecting again with your “social constructionism” claim. It was an aide in Bush’s WH that proudly proclaimed they were creating their own reality. Bush has said that he makes his decisions based on guts and instincts that’s why no matter what the facts say he ignores them and makes his own reality.
They aren’t exactly “attacking” Sadr’s army. Maliki is said to be stopping his protection of Sadr. We’ll see exactly how that plays out.
How many hundreds of the Sadr Army are now behind bars? Or dead?
Tell me Brian, how many?
The last count I heard was over 400.
http://www.sunjournal.com/story/195228-3/National/Mahdi_Army_is_acting_like_its_under_siege/
http://english.sabah.com.tr/E92B52E449E142B69BEA0CE121EC714D.html
Dora I sent you 3 links. 3 sources from newspapers that explain how many. My post is awaiting moderation.
Google sadr army under attack and you get the latest.
This blog seems to be dominated by misinformed liberal democrats. Keep up the good work Brian G.!
I see, Maliki says they captured 400 so I guess that’s it then. And “melting back into the population” is what they do. Not that they need to hype this for American consumption or anything. Nah. He’s got no vested interested in doing something like that.
That’s right, Brian is the only informed poster on this blog. Oh, that’s too funny…
current stories are claiming 600.
http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wn&q=sadr%20army
The question remains, will this strategy have the desired effect? Hopefully we’ll make progress rather than getting sucked into an urban guerilla war.
Do I detect a little jealousy Dora?
Just because Viking gave me a compliment don’t hang your head too low.
There are plenty of regulars on this blog that think you are TOPS!!
“The question remains, will this strategy have the desired effect? Hopefully we’ll make progress rather than getting sucked into an urban guerilla war”
Something had to be done with Sadr and his army. I mentioned it here long ago and was shot down by the left of course. I guess we shall see.
“Something had to be done with Sadr and his army. I mentioned it here long ago and was shot down by the left of course. I guess we shall see.”
I don’t think you were shot down. I think you were questioned about why you labelled Sadr as the primary problem. There’s a big difference.
Certainly Sadr is part of the problem. As has been discussed before, just ‘taking him out’ may have unforseen consequences. As someone else already noted, if it were that simple, we’d have done it already.
That’s funny Brian.
Maybe Bush will tell us tonight that he’s wiped out the Sadr milita. Just like he told us that US forces will be backing up the Iraqi forces who would be taking the lead. Except that in today’s WaPO it says Patareus plans for the 17,500 additional troops Bush said will go to Baghdad to fight regardless of whether Iraqi forces follow through.
Something should have been done long ago to prevent the Sadr militia from gaining so much influence. Putting the troops into the streets as a police force to control sectarian violence just isn’t what the troops are trained to do.
William Arkin has a blog entry today (at wash post) on the topic Dora mentions. He also had one the other day talking about how the first ’surge’ troops have arrived in Iraq already - to absolutely zero fanfare. One speculation is that the Pres will announce their arrival in the SOTU tonight.
b says, “I don’t think you were shot down. I think you were questioned about why you labelled Sadr as the primary problem. There’s a big difference.”
No I did not label him the primary problem. I think, and have always thought, the primary problem to be insurgents. Insurgents that are not loyal to any side. Their goal it been to get the shia and sunni fighting each other and it appears to have worked. I jsut pointed out that if Maliki wanted to really be the President, he cannot have a major army exist that is not under his control.
And then from Dora, “Something should have been done long ago to prevent the Sadr militia from gaining so much influence. Putting the troops into the streets as a police force to control sectarian violence just isn’t what the troops are trained to do.”
I agree 100%!! Our troops have been policemen for too long, and Sadr should never have become so strong.
PS. Dora? Remember when you were trying to convince us that there were only 9,000 or so troops available? I wonder where the extra ones came from?
That 9,000 refers to new troops. Some are coming from Afghanistan, some are having their tours extended and being moved from other areas, remember?
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