more truth

YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

yes i can

NO YOU CAN'T

yes i can

NO YOU CAN'T

yes i can - so let me hear it
(video at the link below)

U.S. Is Paying Off Iraq's Worst War Criminals in Attempt to Ward Off Attacks

By Katie Halper, AlterNet
Title: Director's Cut: New Video shows the truth in Anbar that Petraeus does not want us to see.
When Bush was in Iraq two weeks ago he posed for photographs with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the leader of the Anbar Awakening, an alliance of Sunni tribes who vow to back the United States and fight against al Qaeda.
Last Monday, General Petraeus testified to Congress that "a year ago" Anbar province "was assessed 'lost' politically ... Today, it is a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al Qaeda and reject its Taliban-like ideology."
Three days later, the assassination of Abu Risha in Ramadi dramatically undercut Bush and Petraeus' claims of Anbar victory and peacekeeping. But what else is the administration keeping from us about Anbar?
Rick Rowley, a journalist and independent filmmaker of Big Noise Films, was one of the last people to videotape and interview the Sunni sheikh, and his video report Uncovering the Truth Behind the Anbar Success Story, presents a very different picture of the Anbar Awakening.
Embedded with the U.S. Army and Iraqi militias, Rowley shows us that the Sunni "freedom fighters" with whom the United States is now allied are not just insurgents who had been killing Americans but war criminals responsible for sectarian cleansing........

and now for some

REAL facts and figures.....

What They’re Saying in Anbar Province

by Gary Langer
IN his address to the nation on Thursday, President Bush singled out progress in Anbar Province as the model for United States success in Iraq. The president’s claims echoed those made earlier in the week by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, in his Congressional testimony. And they raised a question worth examining: Do United States military alliances with Sunni tribal leaders truly reflect a turning of hearts and minds away from Anbar’s bitter anti-Americanism?
The data from our latest Iraq poll suggest not.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq - 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.” No wonder: Anbar, in western Iraq, is almost entirely populated by Sunni Arabs, long protected by Saddam Hussein and dispossessed by his overthrow. There are critical improvements in Anbar. Most important have been remarkable advances in confidence in the Iraqi Army and police. In ABC’s survey in March, not a single respondent rated local security positively - now 38 percent do. Nonetheless, nobody surveyed in Anbar last month gave the United States any credit. Ratings of living conditions remain dismal: respondents were deeply dissatisfied with the availability of electricity and fuel, jobs, medical care and a host of other elements of daily life. And the violence, while sharply down, has hardly ended: One in four reported that car bombs or suicide attacks had occurred near them in the last six months. Last week’s murder of Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, an Anbar sheik who had allied himself with the United States, only underscored this grim reality.

tenuous, temporary and illusory (not my words)

but certainly how i feel and what i believe is the truth. what are those words describing? the effect of our presence in pockets in iraq. sure the figures may go down here and there. but you know sure as shite when they move to another place (and of course they have to move SOMETIME), that first place falls to ruins again. violence, torture, death. what hath king george wrought???

Weighing the 'Surge'
The U.S. War in Iraq Now Hinges on the Counterinsurgency Strategy Of Gen. Petraeus. The Results Have Been Tenuous.

By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD -- Nearly every week, American generals and politicians visit Combat Outpost Gator, nestled behind a towering blast wall in the Dora market. They arrive in convoys of armored Humvees, sometimes accompanied by helicopter gunships, to see what U.S. commanders display as proof of the effectiveness of a seven-month-long security offensive, fueled by 30,000 U.S. reinforcements. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military leader in Iraq, frequently cites the market as a sign of progress.
"This is General Petraeus's baby," said Staff Sgt. Josh Campbell, 24, of Winfield, Kan., as he set out on a patrol near the market on a hot evening in mid-August..........
....................If there is one indisputable truth regarding the current offensive, it is this: When large numbers of U.S. troops are funneled into areas, security improves. But the numbers only partly describe the reality on the ground. Visits to key U.S. bases and neighborhoods in and around Baghdad show that recent improvements are sometimes tenuous, temporary, even illusory.....................

i have an idea

why don't we send those assholes (who as PRIVATE citizens walk the mexico united states border to stop illegal border crossings) to guard the saudi iraq border? i think it's a DAMN fine idea. plus, it won't innvolve any of our troops! plus, it will give the assholes a big fat woody

Petraeus denies militants cross Saudi/Iraq border but officials admit infiltration

David Edwards and Muriel Kane

The top US commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told Diane Sawyer of ABC's Good Morning America on Monday that jihadis are not crossing the Saudi border into Iraq. However, other sources indicate that the border is far more porous than Petraeus was willing to acknowledge.
Sawyer asked Petraeus about recent reports that "about half of the 60 to 80 foreign fighters coming into Iraq [each month] are coming across Saudi borders," including a large number of suicide bombers. "You have been very hard on the Syrians for letting foreign fighters come in through their borders," she said. "Are the Saudis not doing enough to shut down their borders?"
"I'm not sure that they're coming across the Saudi border," replied Petraeus. "I think what we have found is that it is Saudi citizens and citizens from other countries in North Africa and in the region who are coming through Syria."
When Sawyer asked again, "So you don't see them coming across the Saudi border?" Petraeus responded, more emphatically, "We do not, actually. The Saudis have a reasonably tight grip on the Saudi border, and it is a substantial expanse of desert. You really have to want to be a suicide bomber if you want to come across that expanse of desert that defines the Saudi-Iraq border in western Anbar Province."..........

you know what?

we wouldn't have to worry about an "EXIT" strategy if we didn't f**k up the country to begin with.


why did we invade iraq?


9/11, NO. THEY had NOTHING to do with that


wmd? NO, THEY didn't have ANY


lining the pockets of some ALREADY rich good ol' white boys? YUP


you can plan all you want. the dice is thrown, the tables are turned. the country will NEVER be the same

one more thing. IT'S NOT A GAME

Exit Strategy
Would Iran Take Over Iraq? Would Al-Qaeda? The Debate About How and When to Leave Centers on What Might Happen After the U.S. Goes.

By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. RicksWashington Post Staff Writers

If U.S. combat forces withdraw from Iraq in the near future, three developments would be likely to unfold. Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations.
That was the conclusion reached in recent "war games" exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic," said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But "it will be ugly."............