Just remember

[Mulu]

[Grand Fromage]

That candy bowl looks like a cross between an innocent bowl of chocolate and dick-in-a-box guy.

[Mulu]

Myself I was wondering where his chin was.

[Mulu]

Note, not a cartoon, but an actual CIA logo called "Terrorist Buster."

[Mulu]

[ç i p h é r]

Based on what I've read, it appears that displacing 4 million civilians by forced religious segregation can somewhat reduce violence. Are we calling that a win?

No, we're calling it progress. This whole thread was one you started to suggest that any change in strategy was hopeless and that the statistics being reported were not an indication of any strategic impact but rather the usual weather based cycle of violence.

Don't move the goal posts now. You were wrong. It isn't just the heat that's influencing the levels of violence in Iraq.

Anyway, I'm curious to see where things will be in November and if the trend continues for some time. The lives of every day Iraqi's can eventually return to some semblance of normalcy if that happens.

[Mord]

You all suck.

[JaydeMoon]

We learned from your mom.

[Nekulor]

Anyone know why I left Mxlm speechless and didn't illicit an angry rant from Mulu with my last post about the Iran situation on the previous page? I feel like I'm loosing my touch now, since neither was angry enough to decry me as a nutty rightwing warmonger.

[Mulu]

Anyway, I'm curious to see where things will be in November and if the trend continues for some time. The lives of every day Iraqi's can eventually return to some semblance of normalcy if that happens.

[edit]Well, I posted an article previously that debunked the value of the trend, from a soldier's perspective. Fluff already said it best, the reduction in violence is due to ethnic cleansing.[/edit]
Not worth another soldier's life
Here it is again.

"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.

Barriers in Sadiyah are daubed with graffiti about an Iraqi National Police brigade that used to patrol the area and the Iraqi army brigade that replaced it. U.S. soldiers and residents said the police were complicit in Shiite attacks on Sunnis.

They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.

A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.

"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."

That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.

Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."

While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy -- the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.

Before the war, Sadiyah was a bustling middle-class district, popular with Sunni officers in Saddam Hussein's military. It has become strategically important because it represents a fault line between militia power bases in al-Amil to the west and the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Dora to the east. U.S. commanders say the militias have made a strong push for the neighborhood in part because it lies along the main road that Shiite pilgrims travel to the southern holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people. After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces could stop it happening.

The descent of Sadiyah followed a now-familiar pattern in Baghdad. In response to suicide bombings blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, went from house to house killing and intimidating Sunni families. In many formerly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, such as al-Amil and Bayaa, Shiites have become the dominant sect, with their militias the most powerful force.

"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.

The focus of the battalion's efforts in Sadiyah was to develop the Iraqi security forces into an organized, fair and proficient force -- but the American soldiers soon realized this goal was unattainable. The sectarian warfare in Sadiyah was helped along by the Wolf Brigade, a predominantly Shiite unit of the Iraqi National Police that tolerated, and at times encouraged, Mahdi Army attacks against Sunnis, according to U.S. soldiers and residents. The soldiers endured repeated bombings of their convoys within view of police checkpoints. During their time here, they have arrested 70 members of the national police for collaboration in such attacks and other crimes.

Barriers in Sadiyah are daubed with graffiti about an Iraqi National Police brigade that used to patrol the area and the Iraqi army brigade that replaced it. U.S. soldiers and residents said the police were complicit in Shiite attacks on Sunnis. (Photos By Joshua Partlow -- The Washington Post)

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police, has said that officials are working hard to root out militiamen from the force and denied that officers have any intention of participating in sectarian violence.

But in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses that had Sunnis in them."

"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there," recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the area."

As the militiamen and insurgents battled it out, the bodies mounted up. U.S. troops said that earlier this year it was common for them to find at least half a dozen corpses scattered on the pavement during their daily patrols.

Militiamen in BMWs rode around the neighborhood with megaphones, demanding that residents evacuate. Mortar rounds launched from nearby Bayaa, a Mahdi Army stronghold, began crashing down regularly in Sadiyah. Three mosques in the neighborhood were rigged with explosives and destroyed.

The national police erected checkpoints outside other mosques and prevented Sunnis from attending services. The U.S. soldiers began facing ever more sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs known as EFPs, short for explosively formed penetrators. Some of them were linked in arrays that blasted out as many as 18 heated copper slugs.

Over time, the neighborhood became a battleground that residents fled by the thousands. Hundreds of shops shut down, schools closed, and access to basic services such as electricity, fuel and food deteriorated. "The end state was people left. They felt unsafe," said Timmerman, the operations officer.

"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort," Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.

//

"This is a dangerous place," said Capt. Lee Showman, 28, a senior officer in the battalion. "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it."

//

"I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back to a hellhole," Marino said. "That was a playground compared to Baghdad."

The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.

"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground."

[ç i p h é r]

Oh I read that Mulu, but that does not debunk the value of the trend at all. It's one soldiers perspective in one part of Iraq. I've heard plenty of Iraq veterans call into talk shows who paint a different picture and who talk about increasing Sunni/Shiite collaboration.

There is still violence in Iraq, obviously. But the TREND is moving in the RIGHT direction, and if you're looking at the overall picture that's what's important. This "wedge" between Sunni and Shiite has been created entirely by a minority of extremists. Are you even aware that there are mixed Sunni/Shiite families in Iraq?

Now if you want to hang your hat on the simple fact that there is still violence in Iraq, then I say again that you are vested in a failed Iraq. First it was the weather. Now it's ethnic cleansing. Tomorrow it will be something else. No one is ever going to take you seriously if your views are so utterly one sided.

[Mulu]

It's a lot more than one soldier's opinion, if you actually read the article it's several and their commanders. I think its always been ethnic cleansing. First it was a source of violence, now it's still a source of violence, but less so as its effects are felt in ethnically cleansed neighborhoods. Though I did give US efforts 1/3 of the credit.

So, the TREND is that Iraq is mostly destroyed and ethnically cleansed, and the various factions are becoming entrenched within their neighborhoods. I do not see in any way how this is a return to normalcy. We took a reasonably prosperous metropolis in Baghdad and turned it into a bombed out shell of a city where half-starved dogs wander the streets mostly surviving on human corpses. And yes, I was aware that roughly 40% of all marriages were mixed religion, but those days are over.

I'd love to see Iraq become a much better place. But four years of disaster is not undone by a couple months of slightly reduced violence in a country that has largely been reduced to rubble and abandoned buildings. That's even assuming the violence actually is reduced, and its not just a matter of underreporting. ( "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it." ) We've turned Iraq into Somalia. 10% fewer killings doesn't equal success.

[ç i p h é r]

And yes, I was aware that roughly 40% of all marriages were mixed religion, but those days are over.

But you see I think the people of Iraq want things to return to normal, which is why you're seeing locals turning on the extremists. This sort of self reliance could lead to further divides but then again it could also lead to greater reconciliation once the extremists are removed from the equation.

I'd love to see Iraq become a much better place. But four years of disaster is not undone by a couple months of slightly reduced violence in a country that has largely been reduced to rubble and abandoned buildings. That's even assuming the violence actually is reduced, and its not just a matter of underreporting. ( "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it." ) We've turned Iraq into Somalia. 10% fewer killings doesn't equal success.

It doesn't equal success and nobody has equated it to success. Let's look at it for what it is: one small sign of progress, something which I might add the critics have said wouldn't happen, couldn't happen. This isn't the end game, but it is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

To get to the finish line, you need to string together a lot of small wins. People seem to always want a big win to feel good about things, but I don't think you'll ever see a big win in Iraq. If things are going to improve, they will turn around slowly over time. And if we can stem the attacks on our troops, there is far less urgency to simply abandon Iraq.

[Mulu]

Well, none of the presidential candidates are discussing a pull out anymore, so I think we're married to Iraq for better or worse for at least another 4-6 years. Once again, the lesson learned is, "don't go in."

[Lazlo]

Hmm, political thread.

NEXT!!!