Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

al Qaeda was always a tiny band of nut-jobs who landed a lucky punch on 9/11. OF COURSE they are losing the war.

Even if some high school all-star football team (playing against Miami) gets lucky and runs a punt back for a TD, they still have ZERO hope of "winning" but of course, inflating the threat from al Qaeda is also a dandy tool for bashing "libruls"

Iraq is a net loss for al Qaeda AND a huge net loss for America. Those propositions are not mutually exclusive.

Posted by Bill White at January 12, 2007 06:55 AM

The Iranian's have been winning in Iraq, but Simberg
isn't smart enough to understand this

Posted by anonymous at January 12, 2007 07:18 AM

Yes, I'm not smart enough to understand that, Anomymous Moron. That must be why I've been encouraging the administration to do something about it.

[rolling eyes at the idiocy]

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 12, 2007 07:28 AM

What is missing from this web site (except in the comments) is the fundamental point that the United States handed a giant victory to Iran by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. It's not just that Iran "is winning", it's that the United States fought for it.

In fact, Iraq is so far gone that it has blown clear past Iran's radicalism, so that Iran and the United States have common interests in Iraq. That ought to be obvious, because the the US and Iran have picked the same favorites in that country, e.g., Hakim and Maliki. It ought to be obvious, but it isn't in certain right-wing quarters, unfortunately including the White House.

Attacking Iran as a way to "do something about it" would be like donating your wife and car keys to a neighbor who you hate, then kicking him in the shins to make up for it.

Posted by at January 12, 2007 08:10 AM

not only have the neo-cons picked Iran's candidate
Maliki, and Hakim, but they started this stupidity
by backing Ahmed Chalabi, giving him millions
to gin up this war.

It was the Army that found out Chalabi was an Iranian
agent.

Posted by anonymous at January 12, 2007 08:36 AM

As for the "surge" al-Maliki is luke-warm at best:

BAGHDAD, Jan. 11 — Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.

with the ability to move into Sadr City being one huge sticking point:

Within hours of Mr. Bush’s speech, American commanders were meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad to work out the details of a new command arrangement that would give Mr. Maliki a direct role in overseeing the new crackdown. The Iraqis named a commander for the operation, Lt. Gen. Aboud Gambar, a Shiite from southern Iraq who was a top general in Saddam Hussein’s army until the American-led invasion in 2003.
General Gambar will report directly to Mr. Maliki, outside the chain of command that runs through the Defense Ministry, which the Maliki government has long viewed as a bastion of American influence, and, because the defense minister is a Sunni, of resistance to Shiite control. General Gambar will have two deputies, one for the heavily Shiite east part of Baghdad, another for the mostly Sunni west part, and they will oversee nine new military districts, each assigned an Iraqi brigade.

al-Maliki has in the past imposed restrictions on the ability of US forces to operate in Sadr City and the new plan has the key officers reporting directly to al-Maliki rather than through the established chain of command.

“It’s been agreed that in order to succeed they have to consult,” Mr. Dabbagh said — a bland requirement as he stated it — but some distance from the formula put forward at Washington briefings on the new plan. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, at a news conference on Wednesday, said that American and Iraqi troops would be free to go into “all parts of Baghdad, including Sadr City” and that one benchmark in the plan was that there would be no “political interference” with military operations or attempts to protect death squad leaders.
That appeared to be an allusion to the past American experience with Mr. Maliki, who has consistently refused to sanction major offensives in Sadr City.

Tehran will protest the "new" plan to surge 20,000 troops but I do not see why they have anything to fear, as a practical matter.

Posted by Bill White at January 12, 2007 08:53 AM

It was the Army that found out Chalabi was an Iranian agent.

It is true that there have been a lot of unpleasant discoveries about Chalabi, like that he could be a traitor. But let's make a distinction between murky scandals and completely straightforward facts. It has always been obvious that Chalabi, and everyone else that the US found to lead the "liberation", was and is pro-Iranian. They said so openly.

Here is the lede of a New York Times article from December, 2002:

In advance of the expected war against Iraq, the American-backed Iraqi opposition is solidifying ties to Iran, part of what President Bush has called the "axis of evil," and opposing the possibility of an American-installed government in a postwar Iraq.

And a quote in the same article from Chalabi himself:

"Our alliance with Iran is not temporary."

It should have been a red flag for the Bush Administration. But at the time, it was swept aside along with other red flags as unimportant nuance. (Not to mention that it was published by those nincompoops at the New York Times.) A year after Ahmed Chalabi openly expressed alliance with Iran, he was a guest of honor at Bush's State of the Union address. Now, years later, Bush and his right-wing followers suppose that the Iranians snuck in through a back door.

Posted by at January 12, 2007 09:52 AM

Tehran will protest the "new" plan to surge 20,000 troops but I do not see why they have anything to fear, as a practical matter.

Rand argued that the verbal backlash from Iran and Syria suggests that Bush is right and the Democrats are disloyal. But it really means very little. They responded simply because Bush blamed them. Just as in professional sports, trash talk begets trash talk. It doesn't tell you anything about who is going to win anything, or even about who is on which side.

Indeed, the thesis that Iran and Syria are the bad guys, moreover that that explains everything that is going wrong in Iraq, reflects a foolish and long-standing aspect of American nationalism. Namely, the tendency to lump all enemies together. The Syrian and Iranian governments are as different as any two Middle Eastern government could be. The Syrian government is Alawite and secular; Iran is Shiite and theocratic. They have totally different interests in Iraq and they are both substantially different from Al Qaeda. They are all adversaries to one degree or another, but lumping them together is just a way to both unite and radicalize America's enemies. (Nor is the US the only military power in history that has been prone to this basic mistake.)

Posted by at January 12, 2007 10:13 AM

Indeed, the thesis that Iran and Syria are the bad guys, moreover that that explains everything that is going wrong in Iraq.

Whose thesis is that?

I guess when you don't have any arguments against peoples' actual positions, its easier to make up straw men.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 12, 2007 10:20 AM

Oh, please, empty name field. The web site has this article, too:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20070110.aspx

Perhaps you meant only the one page on the site didn't talk about the Iranians or Shia?

Posted by Larry at January 12, 2007 10:24 AM

Whose thesis is that?

It's close enough to your thesis that you will have no success splitting hairs. You had a post just yesterday in which you plainly referred to Syria and Iran as "the enemy". You may not want to believe that you lumped together Syria and Iran as "the enemy", but that is what you did. And you gave this combined enemy as the reason that you are "feeling a little better about Bush's plan now".

Perhaps you meant only the one page on the site didn't talk about the Iranians or Shia?

The site that I had in mind was transterrestrial.com. But since you mention it, your Strategy Page link also stops short of describing the invasion of Iraq itself as the US handing Iraq to Iran on a platter. Instead it has weasel phrases like "what is seen as an Iranian takeover of Iraq". It also washes away the blame with a march-of-history thesis, instead of confronting the American strategic debacle of 2003.

Posted by at January 12, 2007 10:41 AM

You had a post just yesterday in which you plainly referred to Syria and Iran as "the enemy".

Of course I did. They are.

What does that have to do with the statement "moreover that that explains everything that is going wrong in Iraq"?

Don't you even read what you write?

Hint, for the logic impaired--it is possible to both believe that Syria and Iran are our and the moderate Iraqis' enemy, and that there are additional reasons that there are problems in Iraq. But as I said, straw man arguments that no one is making are so much easier to knock down than real ones).

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 12, 2007 10:56 AM

Hint, for the logic impaired--it is possible to both believe that Syria and Iran are our and the moderate Iraqis' enemy, and that there are additional reasons that there are problems in Iraq.

Okay, that was as an exaggeration, but not a relevant one -- this is still splitting hairs. The conceptual role of the phrase "THE enemy" is to lump all enemies together: Iran, Syria, Al Qaeda, and whatever other bad people exist in Iraq. Which was clearly the drift of that post and also the other one, entitled "Recognizing THE enemy". It certainly is a fallacy, because in reality the civil war in Iraq is far more radical than what either Syria and Iran want, so for the time being these countries are actually allies of convenience.

Besides the fallacy of "the enemy", you also have the fallacy right here of "moderate Iraqis". To be sure, there are truly moderate Iraqis, they just don't have any influence right now. Iran, Syria, and their friends in Iraq are as moderate as you can hope for presently. Actually the White House knows this full well, they just don't want to admit that their such-as friends in Iraq are friends of Iran and Syria.

Posted by at January 12, 2007 11:29 AM

Lord have mercy. While Anonymoron clings to his rotting "chickenhawk" line of attack, here we have different anonymous commenter who thinks the biggest issue is what he/she considers improper use of the word "enemy."

Anonymoron is one of the "formers" I described here. The other one is an example of the "latter" type.

Posted by at January 12, 2007 01:40 PM

Oh poor Rand Simberg,
Pity poor Rand Simberg,
Surrounded by anonymous and unknown snipers,
shooting at each and every one of his neo-con
arguments, he finds himself beset and
bedeviled in the quagmire of Iraq.

Sadly this is as close to Iraq as Simberg will
ever find himself.

Posted by anonymous at January 12, 2007 03:06 PM

Oh poor Rand Simberg,
Pity poor Rand Simberg,

Save your pity for people with room-temperature IQs, like you. I surely don't need it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at January 12, 2007 03:09 PM

Hey Rand, you can nuke these anon-bastard e-tards anytime you want to. They are asking for it IMO. Make them the e-martyrs they desire to become.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 12, 2007 06:05 PM

That was quite the attack by anonymous and no name tag. Holy shit and Bejeezus. You're a good guy Rand, at least you believe in free speech. I think its time, like Bill Stern once said to give Mike Puckett the shotgun and instructions.

Posted by Offside at January 12, 2007 07:29 PM

Question for Mike: I can't help but ask this and it is absolutely not meant in any chickenhawk argument sense. Just curious to know your military background, only if you don't mind sharing....

Posted by Offside at January 12, 2007 07:38 PM

Armored Cav, Unit Armorer for HHC and later Supply Sgt.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 12, 2007 08:26 PM

Offside,

I don't need the shotgun. Rand is the man with the Gun here. All he needs to do is use his super atomic powers of delete and block IP.

I am all for free speech too but they have abused their guest privies by constantly abusing and insulting the host.

In essence, they have become not a symbiotic participant but a pure opportunistic parasite giving nothing back of value, simply taking advantage of Rand's hospitality.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 12, 2007 08:34 PM

Thanks.

Posted by Offside at January 13, 2007 10:21 AM

Thanks.

Posted by Offside at January 13, 2007 10:21 AM

Apologies for the double post. Here's an FT piece with their take on the surge..very depressing...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ef4edfbe-a19f-11db-8bc1-0000779e2340.html

We need a different plan.

Posted by Offside at January 13, 2007 10:26 AM

Intelligence Chiefs Pessimistic In Assessing Worldwide Threats
Negroponte Cites Resilience of Al-Qaeda, Iraqi Insurgency

By Dafna Linzer and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 12, 2007; A12

Iraq is at a violent and "precarious juncture," while al-Qaeda is significantly expanding its global reach, effectively immune to the loss of leaders in battle, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte told Congress yesterday. He also warned that the Taliban is mounting a vigorous insurgency in Afghanistan, that Pakistan has become a safe haven for top terrorists and that Iran's growing regional power is threatening Middle East stability.

In their annual worldwide threat assessment before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Negroponte and other top intelligence chiefs provided a bleak assessment of regions and conflicts at the center of President Bush's foreign policy agenda.

One day after Bush unveiled a plan to send more than 21,000 additional troops to work alongside Iraqi troops in an increasingly violent war, the head of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said Iraqi forces could not combat the insurgency there.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples said Iraqi security forces have been thoroughly infiltrated by Shiite militias and "are presently unable to stand alone against Sunni insurgents, al-Qaeda in Iraq" or the militias themselves. Negroponte, who was ambassador to Iraq in 2004-05, said sectarian violence had become the greatest problem inside the country.

"The struggle among and within Iraqi communities over national identity and the distribution of power has eclipsed attacks by Iraqis against the coalition forces as the greatest impediment to Iraq's future as a peaceful, democratic and unified state," he said.

The assessments, and Bush's plan for additional troops, drew fierce criticism from the intelligence panel's Democratic chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.). Rockefeller said he is "extremely concerned that well-intentioned but misguided policies of the administration have increased the threats facing our nation, and hampered our ability to isolate and defeat al-Qaeda and other terrorists that seek to strike against the United States."

As they have for several years, the intelligence chiefs said al-Qaeda remains the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland. Negroponte claimed four U.S. successes in 2006 in what Bush has called the global war on terrorism, one being the U.S. military's killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Despite Zarqawi's death in June, violence in Iraq has increased substantially.

Maples said that al-Qaeda "has consistently recovered from losses of senior leadership," and that its "increasing cooperation with like-minded groups has improved its ability to facilitate, support and direct its objectives." Negroponte said the group's leaders have found a haven in secure locations in Pakistan.

He said a second major threat stemmed from nuclear weapons in the hands of U.S. enemies, with Iran and North Korea of greatest concern. But, he said, "Iran's influence is rising in ways that go beyond the menace of its nuclear program."

He said Hezbollah in Lebanon, which receives considerable logistical and financial support from Iran, also poses a significant threat in the region. Despite its 34-day war with Israel last summer, "Hezbollah's leadership remains unscathed and probably has already replenished its weapons stockpiles with Iranian and Syrian assistance," Maples said.

Negroponte said stability in Iraq will depend in part on persuading Iran and Syria "to stop the flow of militants and munitions across their borders." For the first time, he said, "forty to 70 foreign fighters every month come over the Syrian border." Maples said foreign fighters account for less than 10 percent of insurgents and usually are recruited as suicide bombers.

The officials said Iran is providing Shiite militias with sophisticated anti-armor projectiles capable of penetrating U.S. armored vehicles. Negroponte added that Iran, in the past, supported the idea of a Shiite-dominated stable Iraq. But he now believes Tehran may be shifting to a more aggressive posture.

Posted by at January 13, 2007 10:58 AM

Mike is all for free speech as long as he agrees with it.

No doubt he will consider that an insult.

Posted by anonymous at January 13, 2007 12:49 PM

Insult? It is like trying to watch a monkey phuck a football, that is not insulting, just slightly sad and tremendously funny at the same time.

I consider it hilariously retarded and a stellar example of your grotesque ignorance of the US Constitution and the stipulations of the First Amendment.

Lets see, to put this in terms someone with a subnormal I.Q. such as yourself can understand....

The first amendment and resultant freedom of speech cover protecting you the individual from govenrment sanctioned interference, not give you a right to act the madman on private property.

It does not give you an unlimited right to tresspass onto someones private property and make yourself into a lifelong squatter with an entitlement to act the village idiot at will ad nauseum for eternity.

You see, this site is Rand Simberg's private property, not a government run or sanctioned website.

Rand is quite fully within his rights to regulate and limit speech on this forum in any way he sees fit. That is his right to control his private property as he sees fit. If you don't like that slice of reality, that is tough.

Where is your respect for Rand's private property?

Where is your respect for the host?

If Rand chooses to give you the boot, it is because you earned it. Go cry somewhere somebody cares or is too stupid to see thru your short bus antics.

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 13, 2007 01:31 PM

Mike

You seem so familiar with the short bus.

Did you ride it everyday to visit your dad?

Posted by anonymous at January 13, 2007 10:50 PM

Dear Anonymous Jew-Hater,

Totally unlike you, at least I (and my mother) know who my father is and that he was of normal genetic stock. In fact, him and her recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Growing up not knowing is certainly a factor in your maldevelopment I am sure.

I know it must have been quite a shock when your uncles refused your request for a DNA test. Well, your search must go on.....

As for the short bus, you seem to be confusing me with yourself. I naver asked for nor do I need your short bus pass.

I know it must have been a funny sight to see you as a kid with a Nazi 'coal bucket' shaped football helmet and drool covered jackboots get on the short bus on a daily basis. I am sure you imagined being chauffured to your bunker in you very own armored car. Veeery interesting indeed!

Posted by Mike Puckett at January 14, 2007 09:27 AM

Just a note on Fred Kagan – the guy is not an expert on insurgency, civil war, or stability ops. He has a Ph.D in history, with a focus on the 19th century Russian military. His major scholarly book is on Napoleon from 1801-5. From what I can tell, he has no serious background studying the issues that are at the core of his “surge” plan (his AEI bio page is below). So I am completely baffled by the extent to which the media has given him credibility as a “military expert”; one imagines how the surge would have been received if Kagan was accurately identified as “an expert on Napoleon and the early 19th century Russian army.” His CV reveals no publications in refereed history or political science journals in the last decade. Basically the intellectual architect of the surge is an oped/Weekly Standard writer whose only substantive expertise is on Napoleon. Great. . . .
And it gets better.
BelgraviaDispatch notes that Kagan seems to have trimmed his necessary number for the surge from 80,000 to 30,000 over the three and a half weeks from early to late December. They've got him kowtowing so bad you'd think the White House were a tenure committee.

Posted by at January 14, 2007 04:41 PM

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