[Sea Demon]

This link shows the USA just might see success in Iraq after all.

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20060413-110216-1235r.htm

[Skybird]

1. Put it to the stack with all the other notes.
2. Get another glass of champagne and once more salute the flag.
3. Request silence and announce with a serious voice: " Mission Accomplished II"
4. Start thinking about the release date for "Mission Accomplished III". Next US election campaign might be a good timing.

The chaos there is a self-running show now, since months. Maybe that is why they are leaving? IF they are leaving.

[STEED]

Success in Iraq not from what I have read and seen to date. :nope:

[micky1up]

its amazing how some can selectivly pick which news stories to quote and which to ignore to prove there point use your common sense if you have any! they are on there way out maybe not fully down but definatley heading out the lack of any major strike against the US shows the extent that they have been hurt skybird grow up and start thinking

[CCIP]

I have my doubts Zarqawi has been running anything of any major importance, myself. I'm fairly certain he just likes to pretend that :hmm:

As Skybird said, the thing is self-running or at least running on a very "decentralized" basis. It's not Zarqawi and his likes that they have to get rid of to succeed, but probably hundreds of small individual cells of a few people. And that is NOT by any means an easy job.

[CCIP]

[micky1up]

and thats wht there limited to doing at the moment they are now incapable of exporting it to the us or uk without extreme luck being on there side

[Skybird]

The foreign insurgents, terrorists in this case, have shown no real interest since over 18 months to hit the US troops as their primary target. Their goal was sowing civil unrest, hinder the government to settle down, sow hate between Shias and sunni, and prepare the field for civil war. One year ago Konovalov and me had an argu7ment oin the question if the situation in Iraq back then alraedy was civil war. He said no, I argued that it is a preparatory phase directly leading into civil war and thus I tend to see it as part of civil war. In this regards the foreign insurgents had been successful, and the Us troops failed.

The internal insurgents are Sunni sympathizers of the old regime, and organized crime, and lastly extremists fighting for the dominance of their confessions, and here, on the Shia side, the internal insurgents again mix up with foreigners, from Iran for example. While gangsters have no idealistic goals and do kidnapping for reasons of money only, the religious "fighters" more and more are deathlocked in a.) a quest for power and dominance, and b.) taking revenge for the strikes of the other site. Both reasons are increased by the hate that had been sown between both groups by too much bloodshed. Neither Iraqi troops nor US troops have stopped the organized crime, are able to provide protection from that, or are capable to provide a minimum of stability and security so that any government could settle down and start to adress things. Not to mention that the government is deeply devided in itself and often blocks itself, and is not trusted by it's own people. And every day new assaults on the oil infrastructure costs the country billions of dollars.

there had been repeated "offensives", "brakethroughs", "decisive steps" and "hopes" after elections or constitutional assemblies that were used by defenders of the war to claim that "now", "finally", "as predicted", "without doubt", success is near. And all of these statements have shown no substance at all. Unfortunately i cannot see anything in Iraq making me think different than that this time it will be any different with this latest in a longer seqeunce of "optimistic" announcements. Just another desparate and helpless appeal to hold out and support the war, not more and not less it is. The country in in a worse situation than ever before. Claiming that there is "progress" illustrates only how big the derealization in the mind of the speaker is.

[The Avon Lady]

[CCIP]

[sonar732]

I agree that we shouldn't worry about Zarqawi and Al Qaeda as much as the unrest between Sunni's and Shiites. That is where the threat is! The number of American soldiers killed only hit peaks when they are in the prescence of Iraqi's that are targeted or a rouge IED.

What we should be worried about are the scores of Iraqi's being found shot in the head execution style by their own people.

[The Avon Lady]

[Skybird]

It is picture material and reports like this, or better: conclusions from these, that make me doubt that the Us plans to leave Iraq anytime within the next decades.

http://www.heise.de/bin/tp/issue/r4/dl-artikel2.cgi?artikelnr=22465&mode=print

The article desccribes how intense base-building in Iraq had been conducted, how far out of reach for Iraqis these bases are, and concludes that their purposes has little to do with the internal fighting in Iraq. they are not about winning the war in Iraq and beating the insurgents and protecting the country.

Such bases have emerged rapidly in recent years around all geostrategical places wi9th american interests, oil and pipelines, that is.

remember, concerning Iraq it all had been about control of the access to oil. such bases are alomost non-attackable by terrorist or partisan tactics. Now it is about controlling access to Iranian oil - probably the biggest oil reserves in the world. These bases are in very short striking distance to Iran, fighterplanes need minutes only to get there, and they are within reach of every other hotspot in the middle East. They bypass the dependence on Turkish cooperation. Why giving up Iraq as a strategical platform, when the war - the neocon strategy, that is - had been about gaining such strategical platform in the area? The long demonstrated desinterest of the US troops to engage in the country'S internal security struggle shows that their real mission is oriented towards a completely different mission that has little to do with Iraq's internal situation.

Concerning "freedom for Iraq!", the ongoing presence of foreign troops does not make sense, the troops cannot acchieve anything more and have lost the war on winning the battle for security. But concerning strategical geopolitcal planning, having combat-capable bases in Iraq - all of a sudden makes very much sense.

[The Avon Lady]

[The Avon Lady]

I just noticed the footnotes in the German article. There are links to details about all these bases at Globalsecurity.org.

For example, about Balad AB, it states:

Balad occupies a 25 square kilometer site and is protected by a 20 kilometers security perimeter. According to the "Gulf War Air Power Survey, there were 39 hardened aircraft shelters. At the each end of the main runway are hardened aircraft shelters knowns as "trapezoids" or "Yugos" which were build by Yugoslavian contractors some time prior to 1985.

So we now know that this "gigantic" AB was already around 20 years ago.

More:

It is the largest and busiest aerial port operation in all of Iraq. In a typical month at Balad, as much cargo and five times as many people move through there as does through Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

More:

As of Febuary 2006, Balad AB was home to about 25,000 U.S. troops.

The base is so large it has its own 'neighborhoods'. These include: 'KBR-land' (a Halliburton subsidiary company); 'CJSOTF' which is home to a special operations unit,' the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force and is surrounded by especially high walls that is, according to The Washington Post, so secretive that even the base Army public affairs chief has never been inside. There is a Subway sandwich shop, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye's, a 24-hour Burger King, two post exchanges which sell an impressive array of goods, four mess halls, a minature golf course and a hospital. The base has a strictly enforced on-base speed limit of 10 MPH.

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee in March 2004 that ". . . we are making Balad Airfield our primary hub in the region, and the idea of doing that is because we need to have the Baghdad International Airport revert to civilian control."

I'll stop over here. It seems to me that the size or materials of this airbase is indicative of prior announcements of the US' plans to remain in Iraq for several years. How much is several? I don't believe that these bases serve as any proof of the US' planning in advance to hunker down for a decade or more.