A speck of optimism
 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle1530762.ece

Optimism:
Things still suck, but are better now than under Saddam:
We forgot to tell the Iraqis they are in civil war:
Surge will succeed, and then things will improve once foreign troops go:
Surge is succeeding, and in the complicated picture, the media only reports the bad stuff and so we are amazed by this poll:

Wretchard's take, the poll doesn't represent reality, but what Iraqis want and expect it to be:

I'm curious who took that pole and how. Iraqis? Foreigners? Door to door?
You have to admit it's a daunting task for outsiders.:confused:

The regrets of the man who brought down Saddam


Audrey Gillan
Monday March 19, 2007
The Guardian

His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.

The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him. Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."

The weightlifter had also been a mechanic and had felt the full weight of Saddam's regime when he was sent to Abu Ghraib prison by the Iraqi leader's son, Uday, after complaining that he had not been paid for fixing his motorcycle.

He explained: "There were lots of people from my tribe who were also put in prison or hanged. It became my dream ever since I saw them building that statue to one day topple it."

Yet he now says he would prefer to be living under Saddam than under US occupation. He said: "The devil you know [is] better than the devil you don't. We no longer know friend from foe. The situation is becoming more dangerous. It's not getting better at all. People are poor and the prices are going higher and higher."

Saddam, he says, "was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse".

According to an opinion poll of 5,000 Iraqis carried out over the past month, 49% say they are better off now than under Saddam, and 26% say life was better under Saddam. More than one in four said they had had a close relative murdered in the past three years.

· Regrets of the Statue Man, the first of three films by Guardian Films to mark the fourth anniversary of the invasion, will be broadcast on ITV news at 6.30pm and 10.30pm tonight

Poll taken by Opinion Research Business

The Graudian added the word "close". It doesn't appear in the poll or in any other story about the poll.

Iraqi families are extended families, not the nuclear families we are familiar with.

I think it's way to early to speak about optimism. Sooner or later US/UK troops will leave Iraq, probably until the end of 2008. Nobody knows what will happen then, one can only pray for the Iraqi's.

From Hope to Despair in Baghdad

We can't know, but I'd speculate than under Saddam the relentless repression gave little reason things would ever be better.
Even with the current chaos, at least there's hope, now. :neutral:

I hope the Iraqis can turn things around. I also hope a positive outcome doesn't green light an attack on Iran.

That hope dwindles with the years that the chaos continues. As the man said, with Saddam you know where you were at. Now, nobody knows. Hope, based on what? If you don't know what is going to happen, than what to hope for? Easy to say from our ez-chair.

Hopefully we can avoid that in '08.

Doesn't anyone do anything for themselves anymore?

Always hiring out the dirty work...what's the world come to?

A speck of optimism. Mohammad Fadhil in Baghdad:

http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/03/bagh...kpoint_and.php

Keep 'em coming. The news out of Iraq is so overwhelmingly negative, it's nice to hear at least one person there with a different point of view.

Baghdad security crackdown seriously curbs killings of US soldiers

MIL-IRAQ-US SOLDIERS
Baghdad security crackdown seriously curbs killings of US soldiers

BAGHDAD, March 14 (KUNA) -- The rate of killings of US troops in Iraq has been on the decline, down by 60 percent, since the launch of the new security measures in Baghdad, according to statistics revealed by the Multi-National Force -Iraq Combined Press Information Centre.

Only 17 members of the US military in Iraq have been killed since February 14 till March 13, compared to 42 from January 13 to February 13; the rate was on the decline during the first month of the security crackdown, compared to a month before.

Two of the 17 soldiers died at US Baghdad camps of non-combat causes.

The remarkable decrease in killings among the US troops came at a time when more of these troops were deployed in the Iraqi capital, especially in districts previously regarded as extremely hazardous for them such as Al-Sadr City, Al-Azamiyah, and Al-Doura.

Meanwhile, US attacks on insurgent strongholds north of Baghdad curbed attacks against helicopters. Before the new security plan, many such craft were downed leaving 20 soldiers dead.

The US army in Iraq had earlier said that sectarian fighting and violence in Baghdad had dropped sharply, by about 80 percent, since the launch of the plan.

The statistics excluded US troops killed in other governorates such as Al-Anbar, Diyala, and Salahiddin.

As to the latest human losses, the US army announced Wednesday that two American soldiers had been killed, one in southern Baghdad and the other northeast of the capital.(end) ahh.

msa
KUNA 141130 Mar 07NNNN

Which was also reported after Tet. Meanwhile that is exactly how insurgencies work. Need we return to Fajullah? The insurgency simply moved to other towns - leaving only enough in Fajullah to interest the Marines.

But then that is also what MacAurthur over 50 years ago and Sze Tze over 2500 years ago both noted. That is how Americans fought the Revolutionary War. Once we learn how smart commanders operate, well, those numbers only imply the insurgents are smart - or getting smarter. Welcome to Vietnam when these same 'body count' numbers proved America was winning the war.

Just a day in the life of Iraq; Tuesday March 20th: 143 Iraqis, 5 GIs Killed; 124 Iraqis Wounded.

In Baghdad, a car bomb near a mosque in the Ubaidi area killed one and injured three more. Three people were killed and seven injured during a car bomb attack near a Karrada area bridge. A separate car bomb near a police station killed seven and wounded 20 more. Four were injured when a bomb went of in a mini-bus traveling through eastern Baghdad. Mortars fell in the Abu Dsheer neighborhood where they killed seven and wounded 20 others. Another mortar wounded a man in Zaafaraniya. One person was killed and six others wounded during a bomb in the al-Mashan trade center. A suicide car bomber drove into a checkpoint in western Baghdad where he killed one soldier and wounded another. During a U.S-led raid in Hurriya, three gunmen were killed. Two police officers were injured during a drive-by shooting in the Mahdiya area. Captain Hussein Abdulilah was gunned down in the Mansour district. Also, 32 bodies were recovered mostly in western neighborhoods.

The body of a man was discovered in Fallujah.

A car bomb west of Fallujah in Halabsa left at least 10 dead and seven injured.

Just north of Baghdad on Monday, mortars injured five people while south of Baghdad mortars wounded four more.

A body was found in Kirkuk; the victim had been stabbed and tortured.

A policeman was gunned down on a main road near Kirkuk. Last night, nine civilians were injured during a car bomb blast near a girls school.

Also, the Iraqi army reported killing three gunmen in different locations.

Gunmen killed a man and wounded another in the town of al-Zab.

A woman and child were injured during a mortar attack in Iskandariya.

Two policemen were killed when a bomb exploded near their vehicle in Haditha.

In Mosul, clashes erupted between U.S. troops and gunmen.

A motorcycle bomb injured no one when it blew up in Madaen.

Ten civilians were injured during a drive-by shooting in Bani Saad.

During clashes in Tikrit, four gunmen and one civilian were killed, while four others were injured.

A previously unreported death occured during an attack in Samarra last night.

Several members of the the Shirqat police force were injured during a roadside bomb blast.

The bodies of two brothers were recovered in al-Touz.

Two truck drivers were kidnapped near Akreesh.


For the rest relatively quiet...

If that's a bad day, once again the Lancet numbers look ridiculous.

Nah, just a quiet day in the Baghdad park...

Not exactly. First some underlying facts. Maliki's government is (has been) a US puppet government. It cannot defend itself, does not have popular support, and would fall immediately if Americans left. Smart Americans are suggesting after 4 years, we should have left years ago. And so Maliki, et al have been doing something for the past few months that otherwise would never happen.

Maliki, et al has been negotiating with various insurgent leaders - secretly. Suddenly they realize that either they concede to reality or hang with Saddam. Sistani has (apparently) ordered Shia insurgent groups to rein in their war on Sunnis (and among themselves). Sadr, et al apparently have complied where control exists over their people.

What we have been seeing are the 'uncontrolled' still fighting - and pulling back.

What are details? We have not a clue. All this has been ongoing for months now - Americans having been cut out of the process. A process created only because Americans have finally gotten serious about leaving what cannot be won. Iraqis have two choices. Either massacre each other by expanding the civil war, or negotiating. That means even Maliki's hard line has softened since the Iraqi army and police are all but toothless. Maliki is only there because of 140,000 Americans. Suddenly reality has struck him - and many other major insurgent groups.

Well not all will comply. Watch what happens. If we did as the Iraq Study Group recommends, then the Iraqis may just decided to go the way of Lebanon - if we get lucky. That can only happen if we leave them to 'sink or swim' - not completely leave but move out as the ISG recommended.

A major and ongoing event from months ago may have just leaked out this week. Time to watch major players - especially Sistani.

Iraq took a major downturn into greater civil war. Shia support for Iraq's government withdrew. Reason was that Maliki will not set a timetable for Iraq's enemy - US - to withdrawal. This is followed by bombings that killed 180+ while an American surge (with too few troops) was supposed to be reducing violence.

Interesting are excerpts from PBS's America at a Crossroad where Iraqi soldiers working with Americans to round up insurgent weapon caches are caught on tape saying the larger cache is safely elsewhere. Why do Iraqi Army units fail to follow up in supporting Americans? Why did S Vietnamese units do so poorly without being attached to American units / operations?

Deja vue ... complete with presidential lies about America winning the war, "we must fight them there or here" (Domino Theory), denial of who the enemy really is (surrogates for Russia and China), 'the message' that only got more Americans killed, liberation of people who did not want to be liberated, outright denial of basic military doctrine, a press that is reporting things too negative (when the situation was even worse), an enemy that successfully uses booby traps while not conducting frontal attacks (classic guerrilla warfare), outright denial of conclusions by a study group (the Wise Men), spending money massively and without accounting, and a complete denial that it was a civil war. Nam deja vue.

Hope was that a surge would be long enough and successful enough to permit all sided to start reconciliation. Hope is diminishing quickly this week. Either we start what the ISG recommends now or we accept thousands more death Americans, an Iraq that hates America, and a defeat that is even worse. George Jr continues to advocate 'big dic' thinking (ie we are winning) so that "Mission Accomplished" is not lost on his watch - as was Nixon's agenda. Both presidents being the few who are clearly anti-American - more concerned with a political agenda and with their legacy than in the United States.

Worse are the many who still deny how much worse it will become. Had we been Turkey or Greece and done this to Iraq, then we (as Turkey or Greece) would have been condemned alongside Serbia and Darfur as promoters of genocide.

While so many were watching lesser events (Imus firing; VA shooting), Iraq may have taken what an irreversible turn for the worse.

When I read that quote, it really, really does not sound like an Iraqi speaking. I think that was written by an American. I'll bet lunch on it.