Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Deterioration
According to Reuters, gunmen wearing police uniforms kidnapped at least three Western lecturers and their bodyguards from a Finance Ministry building in Baghdad on Tuesday.
The lecturers were Germans and employed by a U.S. organization.
Reuters says the kidnappings appeared to be the first time that Westerners were kidnapped from inside a government building where many foreigners work assisting the Iraqi government.
Pretty brazen. No doubt the gunmen had help on the inside as well.
Doesn't bode well for handing over security to our Iraqi allies, does it?
As this NY Times article reported yesterday, it seems many of our Iraqi allies - the Iraqi police and security forces - are either insurgents or militiamen.
Certainly they're untrustworthy.
Yet the preznut and his merry men and women apologists continue to make believe we're trying to stabilize conditions in Iraq so we can hand the country over to Hakim Jefferson and Rasheed Madison.
Uh, huh.
As this soldier noted in yesterday's Times article:
Time to rip the Band-Aid off, see just how much damage Bush, Cheney et al. have done to the region and try and contain it.
This delaying withdrawal just so we can make believe we still have a chance to succeed in creating a stable country is stupid.
As the soldier says, whether we pull out today or 10 years from now, that country is going to blow sky-high.
The lecturers were Germans and employed by a U.S. organization.
Reuters says the kidnappings appeared to be the first time that Westerners were kidnapped from inside a government building where many foreigners work assisting the Iraqi government.
Pretty brazen. No doubt the gunmen had help on the inside as well.
Doesn't bode well for handing over security to our Iraqi allies, does it?
As this NY Times article reported yesterday, it seems many of our Iraqi allies - the Iraqi police and security forces - are either insurgents or militiamen.
Certainly they're untrustworthy.
Yet the preznut and his merry men and women apologists continue to make believe we're trying to stabilize conditions in Iraq so we can hand the country over to Hakim Jefferson and Rasheed Madison.
Uh, huh.
As this soldier noted in yesterday's Times article:
“I thought: ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Sergeant Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
...
“If we stayed here for 5, even 10 more years, the day we leave here these guys will go crazy,” he said. “It would go straight into a civil war. That’s how it feels, like we’re putting a Band-Aid on this country until we leave here.”
Time to rip the Band-Aid off, see just how much damage Bush, Cheney et al. have done to the region and try and contain it.
This delaying withdrawal just so we can make believe we still have a chance to succeed in creating a stable country is stupid.
As the soldier says, whether we pull out today or 10 years from now, that country is going to blow sky-high.
