New Plan. Arm the Sunni insurgents

[spike]

With the four-month-old "surge" in U.S. troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight Al Qaeda-linked militants who have been their allies in the past.

The commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province and have held talks with Sunni groups suspected of prior assaults on U.S. units, or of links to groups that have attacked Americans, in at least four other areas where the insurgency has been strong.

In some cases, the commanders say, these groups have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and other supplies.

U.S. officials who have engaged in what they call "outreach" to the Sunni groups say the groups are mostly ones with links to Al Qaeda but disillusioned with Al Qaeda's extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for American backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on U.S. units. Commanders who have undertaken these negotiations say that in some cases Sunni groups have agreed to alert American troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal booby traps. But critics of the strategy, including some U.S. officers, say it could amount to the Americans arming both sides in a future civil war.

The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq's new army and police, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With a U.S. troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a strong prospect that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites.

U.S. field commanders met this month in Baghdad with General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, to discuss the conditions Sunni groups would have to meet to win U.S. assistance.

Senior officers who attended the meeting said that Petraeus and the operational commander who is the second-ranking U.S. officer here, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, gave cautious approval to field commanders to negotiate with Sunni groups in their areas.

A commander who attended the meeting said that despite the risks entailed in arming groups that have until now fought against Americans, the potential gains against Al Qaeda were too great to be missed. He said the strategy held out the prospect, after three years of largely fruitless efforts by the Americans, of finally driving a wedge between two wings of the Sunni insurgency that have previously worked in a devastating alliance - diehard loyalists of Saddam Hussein's formerly dominant Baath Party, and Islamic militants belonging to a constellation of Al Qaeda-linked groups.

Even if only partially successful, the officer said, the strategy could do as much or more to stabilize Iraq, and to speed U.S. troops on their way home, as the "surge," ordered by President George W. Bush late last year, which has thrown nearly 30,000 additional American troops into the war but failed so far to fulfill the aim of bringing enhanced stability to Baghdad. An initial decline in sectarian killings in Baghdad in the first two months of the surge has reversed, with growing numbers of bodies showing up each day on the capital's streets and wastelands. Suicide bombings have continued at an undiminished rate, killing scores of civilians.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/11/frontpage/strat.php

 

[2minkey]

truly an ingenious strategy. obviously aimed at promoting democracy!

 

[chcr]

truly an ingenious strategy. obviously aimed at promoting democracy!

Does it occur to anyone else that what has really happened in this fiasco is that democracy has been set back by a century or more?

 

[Gonz]

Oh yea, They were so advanced & just before we got there.

 

[spike]

Does it occur to anyone else that what has really happened in this fiasco is that democracy has been set back by a century or more?

Maybe ours and theirs.

 

[Winky]

Sure sounds like Vietnamization.

Aw hell, why why why?

Well at least when the dems win the Casa Blanca
they will solve this mess.

 

[Gonz]

Sure sounds like Vietnamization.

Until the pols back out of this & turn it back over to the military, that's where we are. The Dems started the mess & the Republicans have joined the chorus.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED was an accurate statement. Too bad the follow up isn't being handled as well. We seem to have lost some focus (it's now favoring saving the Mexican-Americans instead of stoppng the terrorists)

 

[chcr]

Is, was and ever shall be a fiasco regardless of who you want to try to blame it on. It's pretty evident how it was started, but go ahead, stick your fingers in your ears and holler "la, la, la, la, la, ..." I don't mind.

Edit: Oh, and the "other side" aren't any more likely to "solve" the problem (hey, define "the problem," will ya) than your "side."

 

[Winky]

I gots yer solution right cheer!

 

[chcr]

I gots yer solution right cheer!

As I keep saying, that is a solution (the only workable one, IMO), just not one anyone will stand still for.

OTOH, I see that, just like the administration, you don't seem to be able to define the actual problem.

 

[unclehobart]

This war sucks. There aint no hookers or dope nowhere.

 

[Gato_Solo]

This war sucks. There aint no hookers or dope nowhere.

Yes there are...unfortunately.

What nobody seems to understand is that it no longer matters why we went into Iraq. If you focus on that, you've lost sight of something important.

 

[Winky]

*fingers in ears* "la, la, la, la, la, ..."

 

[chcr]

Yes there are...unfortunately.

What nobody seems to understand is that it no longer matters why we went into Iraq. If you focus on that, you've lost sight of something important.

Sorry Gato, "why" still matters. It's far from the most important consideration anymore and there will likely never be recriminations over it but it still matters.

 

[Gato_Solo]

Sorry Gato, "why" still matters. It's far from the most important consideration anymore and there will likely never be recriminations over it but it still matters.

Why is a smokescreen at this point. What matters is how we finish. Not when...how.

 

[chcr]

Why is a smokescreen at this point. What matters is how we finish. Not when...how.

You know as well as I do "how" it will finish. It's a foregone conclusion no matter how much we might wish it would be different. "When" should have been a long time ago. Why still matters because of the questions it raises. There needs to be an accounting but that will never happen.

It's easily the biggest governmental fiasco in American history and somebody should have the courage to ask the hard questions.

 

[Gato_Solo]

You know as well as I do "how" it will finish. It's a foregone conclusion no matter how much we might wish it would be different. "When" should have been a long time ago. Why still matters because of the questions it raises. There needs to be an accounting but that will never happen.


It's easily the biggest governmental fiasco in American history and somebody should have the courage to ask the hard questions.

Do you remember how many people were against this when it started? Check the voting. The pandering asswipes asking for hearings are the same pandering asswipes that voted for this, with a huge majority, when we went in. If there's a real 'why' behind this its 'why' did they set us on this course, and then do everything in their power to turn this into the 'biggest government fiasco in American history'? It went from 'the best intelligence available at the time' to "Bush lied, troops died' in less than 3 months, and that question isn't raised. It's only questions about pre-war intelligence. Don't fall for the media hype.

 

[chcr]

Do you remember how many people were against this when it started? Check the voting. The pandering asswipes asking for hearings are the same pandering asswipes that voted for this, with a huge majority, when we went in. If there's a real 'why' behind this its 'why' did they set us on this course, and then do everything in their power to turn this into the 'biggest government fiasco in American history'? It went from 'the best intelligence available at the time' to "Bush lied, troops died' in less than 3 months, and that question isn't raised. It's only questions about pre-war intelligence. Don't fall for the media hype.

Fine, lets have a complete, impartial investigation and find out who's "fault" it is. All I know is that one administration has been running the fiasco. They've been in power the whole time. You want to blame someone else? Okay, lets see the evidence laid out, not the various media stories and spin.

FTR, I was against it from the beginning. Specifically because I envisioned (more or less) what's happening now. Ask yourself this: who gains the most from the current divisiveness in this country? Once again, it seems to me that we've tried to distract the terrorists and their sympathizers by giving them exactly what they want.

 

[Gato_Solo]

Fine, lets have a complete, impartial investigation and find out who's "fault" it is. All I know is that one administration has been running the fiasco. They've been in power the whole time. You want to blame someone else? Okay, lets see the evidence laid out, not the various media stories and spin.

You know as well as I do that the words "complete', 'impartial', and 'investigation' in the same sentence will never happen in DC.

FTR, I was against it from the beginning. Specifically because I envisioned (more or less) what's happening now. Ask yourself this: who gains the most from the current divisiveness in this country? Once again, it seems to me that we've tried to distract the terrorists and their sympathizers by giving them exactly what they want.

Who gains the most from divisiveness? Whoever is not in power. Thats why its so funny. The same thing happened during the Clinton years. Remember that time?

What is important now is not assessing blame. Its coming up with a workable solution. You don't authorize the use of force, and then use as little force as possible to save money...which is what happened. The problem lies not in the initial expense, but in the long-term expense. If we'd've spent the money we spent over the course of the 5 years we've been in Iraq on the initial surge, this war would, most likely, be almost over. Instead, we're in a quagmire. Public opinion, which should have nothing to do with policy, is issuing demands that should be ignored by 'adult' thinkers, and Congress, with its vested interest in staying elected, gives it credence.The most common mistake being made is claiming to be 'behind the troops' and being against what the troops were sent to do.

 

[chcr]

You know as well as I do that the words "complete', 'impartial', and 'investigation' in the same sentence will never happen in DC.

Don't let them run it then. Isn't about time we looked for a government we don't have to be ashamed of anyhow? Liars, thieves and con-men should not be our only choices for leadership.

As for a "workable" solution, do you see one short of stomping on their throats until they capitulate? What will that make us? I think you know the answer to that question whether you want to admit it or not.