There was no "Mission Accomplished" banner.

[hater]

howcome? :lol

With little fanfare, U.S. formally ends Iraq war

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/53120976-68/iraq-war-troops-panetta.html.csp

http://www.sltrib.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls?STREAMOID=R7_F0 miaeaLuOmdYpC3MmM$daE2N3K4ZzOUsqbU5sYsp4YL2pbwuRCq 79jtbOX21WCsjLu883Ygn4B49Lvm9bPe2QeMKQdVeZmXF$9l$4 uCZ8QDXhaHEp3rvzXRJFdy0KqPHLoMevcTLo3h8xh70Y6N_U_C ryOsw6FTOdKL_jpQ-&CONTENTTYPE=image/jpeg

[hater]

http://press.take88.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Bush_codpiece_debbc.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/ff/Bush_mission_accomplished.jpg/220px-Bush_mission_accomplished.jpg

:lol

[hater]

Eight years later, Mohammed is perhaps the most widely quoted activist on women’s rights in Iraq. A resident of both Iraq and Canada, she travels internationally, speaks at universities and conferences and has received prestigious awards for her service. And yet her message remains little known outside Iraq.

One of her main talking points is this: Iraq is a more dangerous place for women than it was before the U.S. invasion and it is getting worse. Reports by international human rights groups support her observations. According to the 2011 Iraq summary report by Human Rights Watch: “The deterioration of security has promoted a rise in tribal customs and religiously-inflected political extremism, which have had a deleterious effect on women's rights, both inside and outside the home.”

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/15/9444042-iraqi-voices-for-women-freedoms-under-fire

[DarrinS]

2003 forum

[hater]

mmm any similarities?


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RtY8kK3a6oc/TkhSom_zJcI/AAAAAAAAAkU/SdusjO0sMhQ/s1600/berlinwall.jpg

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0705/baghdad_wall0509.jpg

[hater]

good article

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017017885_iraqimages15.html

While Vietnam gave us the Huey helicopter landing among rotor-washed palms, Iraq's icon is the Humvee rumbling through a dun-colored desert. The arc of the American experience in Iraq can be told through the collage from hope to barbarity, from swaggering invasion to quiet departure.

Those pictures capture the early celebration-by-defacement — the ebullient tearing down of murals, statues and mosaics of Saddam Hussein, at times aided by U.S. troops pleased that the initial thunder run to Baghdad had ended swiftly.

But the joy passed quickly, subsumed by wholesale looting of the capital and beheadings of those captured during a nascent insurgency, by Shiite uprisings and the Sunni Triangle, by haunting evidence of American-supervised humiliation and torture inside Abu Ghraib, and by bodies of Blackwater contractors hanging burned and beaten from a steel bridge over the Euphrates.

Beyond the images, the war has left a legacy on American politics and culture. There is the federal debt, inflated by an estimated $1 trillion spent on the war, along with 4,485 dead troops, a generation of young amputees, a fragile ally in the heart of the Arab Middle East and narrowed ambitions for American power.

"History will judge the decision to go into Iraq," President Obama said this week, then listed the achievements secured by the more than 1 million U.S. troops and civilians who have served there since March 2003.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

4.0 = 0.4 l:loll

[CosmicCowboy]

mmm any similarities?


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RtY8kK3a6oc/TkhSom_zJcI/AAAAAAAAAkU/SdusjO0sMhQ/s1600/berlinwall.jpg

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0705/baghdad_wall0509.jpg

uhhh...they are both walls?

[Trainwreck2100]

Eight years later, Mohammed is perhaps the most widely quoted activist on women’s rights in Iraq. A resident of both Iraq and Canada, she travels internationally, speaks at universities and conferences and has received prestigious awards for her service. And yet her message remains little known outside Iraq.

One of her main talking points is this: Iraq is a more dangerous place for women than it was before the U.S. invasion and it is getting worse. Reports by international human rights groups support her observations. According to the 2011 Iraq summary report by Human Rights Watch: “The deterioration of security has promoted a rise in tribal customs and religiously-inflected political extremism, which have had a deleterious effect on women's rights, both inside and outside the home.”

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/15/9444042-iraqi-voices-for-women-freedoms-under-fire

so

[Viva Las Espuelas]

uhhh...they are both walls?

Nah. He's clearly mmmm'ing. Maybe they have a syrup or candy coating on them.

[Yonivore]

We're not done in Iraq. It's just going to be logistically harder to save our personnel and protect our assets left behind.

[ChumpDumper]

We're not done in Iraq. It's just going to be logistically harder to save our personnel and protect our assets left behind.All part of Bush's plan.

[boutons_deux]

Finally the Iraqis can stop welcoming us with open arms and blowing us kisses.

[Wild Cobra]

On wall was to keep people in. The other wall is to keep people out. Otherwise, they are just walls we should have on the southern border.

[ChumpDumper]

On wall was to keep people in. The other wall is to keep people out. Otherwise, they are just walls we should have on the southern border.Putting aside your idiotic ignorance of geography, tell us how much your 2,000 mile wall would cost.

[Wild Cobra]

There was no "Mission Accomplished" banner
Of course there wasn't. That banner was for a warship returning to port.

[ChumpDumper]

Of course there wasn't. That banner was for a warship returning to port.Do you think every ship returning to port does that?

Yes or no.

[ChumpDumper]

And I'm still waiting on your estimate.

[johnsmith]

And I'm still waiting on your estimate.

How thick is the wall? How tall? What is the soil like? Will we just use a continuous footing or do we need piers? What grade of reinforcement do you want? What type of spacing? What type of concrete? Do we need it to go well below grade or typical? What about labor? Will their be restrictions on nationality? Where will the materials come from? Does hazard pay play a factor?


Answer all of these and I'll do the estimate for WC.

[CosmicCowboy]

Putting aside your idiotic ignorance of geography, tell us how much your 2,000 mile wall would cost.

I'm with Chump on this one. A wall/fence is an incredibly stupid idea.

[johnsmith]

I'm with Chump on this one. A wall/fence is an incredibly stupid idea.

Agreed, but since he requested the estimate, I feel it's on him to supply the specs......that's how it works.

[Yonivore]

All the breathless and sappy coverage without one mention that we are leaving Iraq on a time table developed and initiated by President Bush, is Barack Obama's "Mission Accomplished" banner.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Of course there wasn't. That banner was for a warship returning to port.

That was delayed a full day so dubya could appear on the flght deck. yes folks, GWB held up the ship to have his phot op..can anyone imagine the OUTRAGE had Obama done this?

[Yonivore]

That was delayed a full day so dubya could appear on the flght deck. yes folks, GWB held up the ship to have his phot op..can anyone imagine the OUTRAGE had Obama done this?
Uh, no. Michelle Obama just took several millions of dollars worth of military and government assets to Hawaii because she's too impatient to travel with her husband who will, in short order, take several millions of dollars worth of military and government assets to Hawaii.

No, I can't imagine the outrage.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Uh, no. Michelle Obama just took several millions of dollars worth of military assets to Hawaii because she's to impatient to travel with her husband who will, in short order, take several millions of dollars worth of military assets to Hawaii.

No, I can't imagine the outrage.

so you equate the first lady's travel expenses to troops being delayed another FULL day (after spending 6 months at sea) from their relatives... got it

[ChumpDumper]

How thick is the wall? How tall? What is the soil like? Will we just use a continuous footing or do we need piers? What grade of reinforcement do you want? What type of spacing? What type of concrete? Do we need it to go well below grade or typical? What about labor? Will their be restrictions on nationality? Where will the materials come from? Does hazard pay play a factor?


Answer all of these and I'll do the estimate for WC.For simplicity's sake, let's pretend it looks like WC envisioned it:

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0705/baghdad_wall0509.jpg

2000 miles of that, constructed by real 'mericans.

[Winehole23]

wrong thread

[Winehole23]

wrong thread

[Wild Cobra]

I'm with Chump on this one. A wall/fence is an incredibly stupid idea.
I never thought a fence was the best idea. It is one of last resort. If we aren't going to do the other measure for prevention, shouldn't we do something?

[Th'Pusher]

I never thought a fence was the best idea. It is one of last resort. If we aren't going to do the other measure for prevention, shouldn't we do something?

So, do something, just to do something regardless of expense or effect?

[Wild Cobra]

So, do something, just to do something regardless of expense or effect?
If you have read my posts on the issue, I have most often advocated making it next to impossible for them to get work here. Require employers to check legal work status. Harsh penalties for those employing them also. This will make huge changes alone.

[Blake]

I never thought a fence was the best idea. It is one of last resort. If we aren't going to do the other measure for prevention, shouldn't we do something?

Shoot them!

[CosmicCowboy]

If you have read my posts on the issue, I have most often advocated making it next to impossible for them to get work here. Require employers to check legal work status. Harsh penalties for those employing them also. This will make huge changes alone.

This plus no support, no lonestar card, no free healthcare, etc.

If you or I got sick in Mexico they wouldn't let us out of the hospital until we made arrangements to pay our bill.

[Obstructed_View]

Did they call the aircraft carriers back?

[Wild Cobra]

Shoot them!
Why not.

Bullets are cheaper than jail cells.

[Winehole23]

lettin em wade back is cheaper than both

[Capt Bringdown]

http://iflizwerequeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Screen-shot-2011-12-17-at-7.00.30-AM.png

Chris Hondros of Getty Images was with an army unit in Tal Afar on January 18, 2005, when its soldiers killed the parents of this blood-spattered girl at a checkpoint, and his photo was published around the world. Mr. Hondros was kicked out of the unit, though he soon became embedded with a unit in another city.

[Nbadan]

Obama Got Us Out of Iraq, but Voters Just Don't Care Anymore

Although it was a signature issue for Sen. Obama during his campaign, President Obama won't get much political capital for following through on his promise.

Dec 16 2011, 5:32 PM ET 57


Although it was a signature issue for Sen. Obama during his campaign, President Obama won't get much political capital for following through on his promise.

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/politics/iraqobama.banner.reuters.jpg

The leitmotif of Sen. Barack Obama's early presidential campaign was the inherent wrongness of the war in Iraq and how it represented to him the protuberant ineptitude of the Bush Administration and the Washington establishment that enabled it. Obama liked to say that his speech against the Iraq war in Chicago in October 2002 was a brave stand at the time. True, it ran contrary to the "strong" Democratic position held by party leadership. But it bore little risk because at the time, he was considered a non-too-promising Senate candidate and certainly had no one pining to vault him to higher office. Indeed, liberals at the time opposed the war. Barack Obama was a liberal.

Don't question his prescience and judgment: most of the country would later move toward his position. And he got lucky: the war was so bad, as Democrats began to think about running for president in 2006 and 2007, that the new charismatic young senator from Chicago had a perfect answer to inevitable questions about his lack of experience.

In the campaign, he promised to fight the right war -- in Afghanistan, against core Al Qaeda -- and end the wrong war, Iraq, an evocation of a phrase he used in that Chicago speech:


What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

If you can, read Obama's speech back then. His language is his own, although less varnished, and full of taunts.

Today, his campaign web site features a video of his stirring speech to soldiers at Ft. Bragg, and then a video looking back his consistent statements against the war.

To be sure, which is a phrase used by journalists then they're attempting to balance a point, the withdrawal of all American troops might not have been possible without the president's decision to supplement JSOC's insurgent campaign with David Petraeus's surge -- President Bush's decision. Nor would it be feasible without the Status of Forces Agreement signed by President Bush.

But Obama correctly foresaw the consequences of the Iraq war nine years ago, and has, as president, figured out how to end it. That's to his credit.

But what a difference a decade makes: our collective appreciation for soldiers aside.... Iraq isn't on the front pages anymore, and won't be.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/obama-got-us-out-of-iraq-but-voters-just-dont-care-anymore/250132/?google_editors_picks=true

[Wild Cobra]

Obama Got Us Out of Iraq, but Voters Just Don't Care Anymore

Although it was a signature issue for Sen. Obama during his campaign, President Obama won't get much political capital for following through on his promise.

Why should he?

He didn't sign the SOFA agreement to have us out by years end. Bush did.

[boutons_deux]

"Why should he"

Because he didn't cave, this time, to the neocons/obstructionists/MIC-corrupted Repugs who wanted to stay in Iraq "for a 100 years".

[boutons_deux]

As The Iraq War Ends, Reassessing The U.S. Surge

And in a 2007 speech to Congress on the situation in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus said, "The military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met."

But Doug Ollivant, who was an Army planning officer in Baghdad, took part in putting the surge troops on the street. And he disagrees with the idea that the surge fixed things.

"The surge really didn't work, per se," Ollivant says.

Ollivant is now with a Washington think tank, the New America Foundation. He says what happened had less to do with the Americans and more to do with deep political and social forces inside Iraq.

"I think it was the Iraqis who essentially figured out their problems [and] used the Americans who were there to help them formulate that solution," he says. "Fundamentally, it was the Iraqis trying to find a solution, and they did."
U.S. troops topple a statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, the 21st day of Operation Iraqi Freedom, in central Baghdad.

Timeline: The U.S. And The War In Iraq

Sunnis Allied With The U.S.

According to Ollivant, Iraq's Sunni leadership realized it was losing a civil war to Iraq's much larger Shiite population. The Shiites were running the government, and Shiite militias were wiping out entire Sunni neighborhoods and refugee camps.

"So there was probably a very early signal to the Sunni leadership that this was not going well," he says. He argues that the Iraqi Sunnis — who had been at war with the U.S. — decided to work with the Americans.

And here's the key thing, according to Ollivant: They came to that conclusion before the surge. So Sunni leaders broke with their ally — al-Qaida — and helped the Americans target the terrorist group.

In Ollivant's view, the Sunni thinking went something like this: "The Americans then become our best friends because we've allied with them against al-Qaida, which is nominally the whole reason they're here in the first place. They can help us cut a deal with the central Shiite government and get us the best deal out of this we can."

The American troop surge helped, Ollivant says, but the real change came from inside Iraq.

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/16/143832121/as-the-iraq-war-ends-reassessing-the-u-s-surge?sc=17&f=1004

==================

The Unpaid Bills of the Iraq War


We owe some terrible bills over this. We owe them to ourselves, for letting ourselves get duped and fooled by a passel of profiteers and geopolitical magical-thinkers into a war that we kept saying, over and over again, that we didn't want. We owe them to ourselves because of the ongoing wreck we've made out of the constitutional order. (If it weren't for the Iraq war, torture wouldn't be a topic for Serious Discussion in this country.) We owe it to ourselves because, confronted with the crimes and savage maladministration that led us into this mess, we have resolutely declined to hold any of the criminal bastards who perpetrated it responsible for their offenses against this nation. That's why they're out there on Fox, telling everyone how terrible it is that their pet war is allegedly coming to an end. To borrow a line from Bruce Springsteen, to thousands of dead and wounded servicepeople, and their families, and for turning the name "Walter Reed" into a synonym for dysfunction and neglect, we owe debts no honest man can pay.

We owe some terrible bills to the world for blundering around like a blind ape with a bazooka in the most volatile section of the planet. We owe them to the world for sneering at the French and laughing at the Canadians when they wouldn't follow us into the quagmire just because we said they should. We owe them to the world for our belief in our invincibility. If we'd armor-plated our Humvees as thickly as our politicians armor-plated their self-righteousness, a lot of soldiers would still be alive. We owe them to the world for re-electing C-Plus Augustus and his soulless vice-president in the middle of what we already knew was a hubristic bungle of historic proportions.

We owe some terrible bills to the Iraqis. We slaughtered their citizens, demolished their infrastructure, and touched off a godawfully predictable civil war in which more of those first two happened. We left them refugees in their own country. We left them refugees in a whole lot of other countries. We should at least make a proper, humble accounting of all of this for ourselves.


http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/iraq-war-not-over-6617843


Then there's another $1T or more for lifetime medical care/disability for vets (if the Repugs don't cut it) and for restocking materiel lost or left in Iraq.

But, Repugs cut Pell grants, making America's poor kids pay for getting the US/UK oilcos into Iraq.

[Yonivore]

My new favorite pundit puts the past 10 years in proper perspective...

Take it away, Bill:

5DbJX3y4-1Y

[Wild Cobra]

"Why should he"

Because he didn't cave, this time, to the neocons/obstructionists/MIC-corrupted Repugs who wanted to stay in Iraq "for a 100 years".
LOL...

That isn't our decision to make. The SOFA spelled out the future from it's moment of signing.

Stop your whining over this issue.

[boutons_deux]

"SOFA spelled out the future from it's moment of signing"

then why are neocons and Repugs trashing Barry as a cut-and-run chickenshit quitter?

Have it both ways, and GFY.

And since when does USA respect treaties with foreigners (another Repug-hated item), eg, like breaking the nuke agreement with Russia, the genocide, persecution, stealing from "not-real-Euro-American" Native Americans, etc?

[Wild Cobra]

then why are neocons and Repugs trashing Barry as a cut-and-run chickenshit quitter?

Have it both ways, and GFY.

Sorry, I haven't seen that at all.

Link please.

[Winehole23]

"Iraqi parties are contacting Iran to mediate over the Hashemi issue," an official close to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, three political sources belonging to parties including the ruling Kurdistania alliance said a senior Iranian delegation met with Kurdish regional President Massud Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, in recent days to discuss the Hashemi arrest warrant.


The delegation, which includes officials from the Iranian intelligence service and army, was headed by Sardar Majidi, the deputy chief of the Quds Force of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, according to the sources, who did not want to be named.


They said the delegation pushed for a meeting of senior political leaders, but Maliki refused to attend any meeting held in Arbil, and Barzani declined to join talks in Baghdad.


Two independent Kurdish newspapers, Awene and Baas, have also reported that a top Iranian delegation visited Iraq and made the request.
http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-blocs-talking-iran-over-deadlock-165227945.html

[JoeChalupa]

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/3207

Perry Slams Obama For Not Throwing An End-Of-Iraq-War Parade

In Iowa Wednesday, Rick Perry took aim at President Obama for not properly feting the end of the Iraq war as the troops returned home last week. CNN reports, Perry told a crowd gathered that “This president wouldn’t welcome home our many heroes with a simple parade in their honor.”

Maybe it’s because this war isn’t popular with the Democrats, I don’t know... But Mr. President, our soldiers come first. It comes before party politics. We need to welcome our soldiers home. Give them that parade. Give them that pat on the back.



~~Perry is an idiot.

[hater]

because the war was a failure. 1 trillion, 5 thousand dead americans. And what did we gain?

[George Gervin's Afro]

because the war was a failure. 1 trillion, 5 thousand dead americans. And what did we gain?

the winds of freedom are blowing through the middle east

[boutons_deux]

JimmyRicky is not only be embarrassing himself and TX, he may be losing the next TX gov election. What a slimebag, ignorant jerk.