Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top American military officer, visited Baghdad this week and said that in Iraq today, “hope abounds,” while acknowledging the insurgency’s continued capability to “murder and maim.”
The top military man in the USG sees hope but that is not he case for the people of Iraq…
Hope is a sentiment not easily felt on the streets. The Iraqi people complain about a lack of basic services, including just a few hours a day of electricity in the sweltering summer, and political leaders that have not yet formed a new government almost five months after parliamentary elections.
So not only does “hope” mean no services, simple things needed for humans to exist in some sense of civil order and peace. The violence is non stop and all the “surge” did was put a pause on it, there was no solution there. Yet everywhere one looks one finds a media and a government telling us how successful it was, so successful Lord Petraeus has been called to help “save” us once again in Afghanistan, something that should be a concern to any who care about the actions of their own government. Difficult to understand how so many people say we live in a democracy yet a democracy is defined as government by the people; in order for this to work, the people must participate. Indifference to war is not democracy, it is stupidity.
How is Baghdad faring?
In a brazen late-afternoon attack in the heart of this city’s most prominent Sunni neighborhood, gunmen attacked two police checkpoints on Thursday before a series of roadside bombs detonated on police and army patrols responding to the mayhem. After the attack — in Adhamiya, a section of Baghdad that was the site of some of the most vicious fighting of the sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007 — the gunmen raised the black flag of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, according to high-ranking Iraqi Army officer. According to an official with the Ministry of Interior, the death toll at the moment included 6 soldiers and policemen and 10 civilians, while 14 others were wounded.
And Fallujah? How we doing there, won a great battle there did the USG or so the myth goes.
In Fallujah, in western Anbar Province — the main battlefield of America’s fight against the Sunni insurgency earlier in the war — three separate explosions on Thursday killed five people, including three soldiers.
No worry though with the amount of depleted uranium and phosphorus the USG fired into Fallujah, the local population will be battling birth defects and cancer for generations, a gift from Uncle Sam that keeps on giving, much like Agent Orange. Not all regions are as lucky as Mesopotamia and Indochina
You are welcome Iraq and Vietnam; at times they seem ungrateful.
via Iraqi Insurgents Plant Qaeda Flag in Baghdad – NYTimes.com.
