I’m happy with the reduction in violence that has come from paying off the Sunni tribes but I have deep reservations that this is going to haunt us the same way that using religious warriors in Afghanistan was a mistake of historical proportions.

Now we are told that Iraq will require outside security through 2018! Seriously, what does a ‘prediction’ like that even mean? All I know is that the US shouldn’t be tied down with over one hundred thousand troops in Iraq preventing us from necessary military action for a generation. How do we prevent that? I’d say we set up a timetable for withdrawal. I think we’ll see that when troops are drawn down as the ‘surge’ ends that the levels of violence will remain where it is. Thus, I think we could lower these levels even further though I don’t know how far or how fast.

seriously, could you just clearly state your complaints instead of just bitching? is it that americans are in iraq? or how long they will be there? or lack of progress on security? or lack of progress by iraqis? lack of progress by their government? people dying?
WHAT’S YOUR SOLUTION? you don’t have one.

“I wouldn’t come back to my job because of this law,” Sunni parliament member Saleh Mutlak said. “It’s humiliating to the people. You have to condemn yourself, and then be investigated, and then you could be killed [by someone] after going to the committee.”

The vote itself showed how divided Iraqis remain on the matter. Barely 150 members of the 275-seat parliament attended the session.

Mutlak’s National Dialogue Front, with 11 seats, and some members of another Sunni bloc, the 44-seat Iraqi Accordance Front, boycotted the vote. All major Shiite parties in attendance voted for the legislation, including 30 lawmakers loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr. But if some endorsed the measure, others skipped the session rather than vote for a proposal they vehemently opposed.

“I consider this law as a pure American law aiming to restore the Baath Party to the political process,” said Sadr lawmaker Maha Adil Mehdi, who boycotted the session. “I refuse this law completely.”

Others whose parties have been associated with the mass purges and even attacks on former Baathists backed the law.

It’s typical that the measure was immediately praised as an progress by an Administration who spins looting as ‘freedom’ and car bombings as an insurgency in the ‘last throes.’

“To avoid civil war?”
this is a noble goal, and while in americas best interest and arguably the iraqis, it’s an artificial standard of victory.

“…for the United States to leave?”
you, like obama, still seem to want to retreat with victory in sight. why? are you so consumed with bipartisan points scoring that you can only see victory via retreat?

you’ve established that your patience is nill but there are still many including the majority of iraqis that still want america to have a presence in the country. suggesting that progress “is only a portion of what needs to happen” shows what a whiney, bitchty, entitled, lttle baby you are.

Democrats haven’t felt the surge effect yet, and it shows. Democratic congressional leaders insist the surge has achieved little that matters. Until questioned in a televised debate in New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential candidates had largely ignored the surge.

Barack Obama was the most disappointing in the debate. He offered an imaginative excuse for dismissing the surge: that the embrace of American forces in Iraq by Sunnis, the ruling ethnic group under Saddam Hussein, had been prompted by the Democratic election victory in 2006. The Sunnis were suddenly fearful of an American pullout that would leave them vulnerable to Shia oppression.

But the Sunni Awakening was a rebellion against the brutality of al Qaeda, the one-time ally of the Sunnis in the insurgency. And it began well before the American election. Indeed Sunni leaders have made clear that the Awakening happened because of their confidence the Americans would be sticking around to protect them from al Qaeda reprisals.

The Surge Effect.

As a side note, Obambi’s main opponent, Mrs. Clinton, is now trying to distort what she has done, and what is happening in Iraq. Typical.

How post-modern of you.