Iraq Redux

Friends,
These are quotes from this morning's Washington Post on the Iraq War hearings. "No Mas."
Peace and Love
Rev O


"For five years, the Americans have not done anything for the Iraqis. What do they think they can do for us in one more year?" said Hussein Jabar, 36, an employee at the Ministry of Industry. "All the Americans do is protect themselves, and we Iraqis are the victims."

"The congressional hearings yesterday demonstrated that America, Democrat and Republican alike, is aching for an end to the Iraq war. The theory of the surge was that it would generate enough military security to allow space for a political breakthrough. That didn't happen, so it's reasonable to expect that fewer troops will not achieve that goal, either."

General Petraeus, "We haven't turned any corners. We haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel," he said. "Relentless pressure" was needed to keep al-Qaeda on the run, he said, admitting a reversal in renewed fighting against Shiite militias in Basra and elsewhere."

Dan Froomkin, Washington Post, "Well, it's official. Getting out of Iraq is now exclusively the next president's problem.
That's the only serious conclusion that can be drawn from yesterday's Senate testimony by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. The two standard-bearers for President Bush's war engaged in an absurd tap-dance that nevertheless made it clear that U.S. troops aren't going anywhere anytime soon."

Evan Bayh:"I understand that, General. Many Americans will listen to that and believe this to be an open-ended commitment because, by definition, we won't know until we get there. And there have been so many ups and downs in this thing. I think it's a fair estimate to say that when this began, most did not assume that we'd be sitting here five years on with the conditions that we currently have.
"And so, again, I'm just trying to give the American people a fair judgment about where we stand and what the likely way forward is. And I guess the best answer to that is, we'll know when we get there and we don't know when we're going to get there." (I misquoted Mr. Bayh in an earlier post.)

"'A year ago, the president said we couldn't withdraw because there was too much violence,' said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). 'Now he says we can't afford to withdraw because violence is down.' Asked Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): 'Where do we go from here?'"

"Aamer Madhani and Mike Dorning write in the Chicago Tribune: "As the war's architect, Bush has spent five years making the public case for it, cajoling allies for support and battling to stop Congress from setting a timetable for troop withdrawals. But with Bush having successfully ensured that troop levels will remain largely unchanged through the end of his presidency, the debate over how to proceed in the years to come has now, it seems, been left to others."'

"The USA Today editorial board writes that "on the question of how long it would take to succeed, the answer remains: We don't know and we won't know, in Petraeus' view, until some undefined time after a pause he seeks in the drawdown of U.S. troops.
"With the public and military both weary after five years of war, that absence of accountability is not good enough."'

Simon Jenkins writes in his Guardian opinion column: "There is no way of sustaining a client who no longer exists except by virtue of being sustained. The past fortnight has shown conclusively that the Maliki government is wholly dependent on America. The surge was a military tactic, not a strategy. It was supposed, in that old cliche, to 'supply politics with a breathing space'. But hundreds have continued to die, and Iraq's politics remain rooted in the embattled culture of the green zone. The truth is that there will be no peace within the Shia regions, no peace between Sunnis and Shias, and no resolution of the issues dividing Arabs and Kurds until the occupation is over. The occupation freezes politics. All else is tinkering. .

Army Gen. William Odom on the PBS Newshour last night: "The surge has sustained military instability and achieved nothing in political consolidation."

David Ignatius writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "The language that Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker used yesterday to describe the Iranian role in Iraq was extreme -- and telling. They spoke of Tehran's 'nefarious activities,' its 'malign influence' and how it posed 'the greatest long-term threat to the viability' of the Baghdad government.
"Iran was the heart of the matter during Senate testimony on the war. With al-Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the Iranian threat has become the rationale for the mission, and also the explanation for our shortcomings. The Iranians are the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and also the reason we can't pull out our troops. The mullahs in Tehran loom over the Iraq battlefield like a giant Catch-22."