Why the troops will stay.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlarge We have heard it a million times, once the surge is successful, Bush tells us he will bring the troops home, "when the job is finished." So why are they still there? The Right Wing press has been suffering seizures over the lull in violence in Iraq, exclaiming how "liburls are hand-wringing" over "Bush's success." But why aren't they asking the NEXT question? (they never ask the next smart question) Why did the violence slow down? There are a multitude of answers. The first being the fact that Moqtada al-Sadr's Madhi Army has declared a cease fire. The recent "pact of honor" made by two of Iraq's most influential Shiite clerics, Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim—aimed at preventing violence and helping to maintain the "Islamic and national interest" of Iraq—appears to signal a significant shift toward stability in Iraq. The second reason violence is down is due to the fact that there is hardly anyone else left to ethnically cleanse. Much of the work of the Sunni/Shia Death Squads has been completed. The "unpure" Muslims were either executed or they have fled. Fewer people to shoot at. Bush's war has created a silent disaster that is rarely reported on - the existence of over 5 million refugees, half of which have fled the nation entirely. There are over 1.2 million in Syria, there are 750,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon, 10,000 in Turkey and 200,000 in various Persian Gulf countries, according to the UNHCR. So why are we still there? The answer is obvious, Iraq is not stable, it is far from stable and I doubt will be stable in the next decade. Why is it far from stable? Why will Bush keep troops there? The cease fire from the Madhi Army is only for six months, it expires in January, 2008. Refugees are returning home because they are out of money to support themselves and their families. Which means the ethnic cleansing is far from over once these "cleansed" neighborhoods begin to fill back up with the original inhabitants. Oh yeah, they still have oil.

What happened to Al Qaeda in Baghdad?

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing click to enlargeGo read this full bore, 100% Bingo article by Kossack, Brandon Friedman. From the diary... As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: "Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?" Simply put, the answer is no. The surge is not working and George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan were not right. Despite what right-wing blogs are saying, and despite what conservative observers are noting, the plunge in violence is actually the result of an Iraqi political decision made by and implemented by Iraqis—and the drop has little to do with the "surge"—an infusion of 30,000 troops (which wouldn’t fill a Major League stadium) into Baghdad, a city of six million people. What’s happening is really simple—and it’s happening in plain sight, in the traditional media. But it just so happens that, as far as I can tell, no one is connecting the dots. As Friedman points out, The Madhi Army went into a state of cease fire and the violence greatly retracted. Here is my question, where is Al Qaeda? We have been told for months about Al Qaeda being in Iraq and Bush Administration has been trumpeting Al Qaeda as a reason for extending the war in Iraq. Following that line of questioning, where are the Iranian elements? You know, the Iranians that have flooded Baghdad over the years with the sole purposes to kill Americans? What happened to them? Maybe the Iranians and Al Qaeda weren't there to begin with? Maybe this really was a civil war? It isn't the first time Bush claimed something was in Iraq and it turned out it wasn't there. Anyone remember the weapons of mass destruction?