John

With 2007 at a close in Iraq, it seemed that the violence was dissapating in Iraq. The second half of 2007 saw a sharp decline in Iraqi violence, with the American losing 899 troops, it was the deadlist year since 2003.

BAGHDAD - The second half of 2007 saw violence drop dramatically in Iraq, but the progress came at a high price: The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed.
American commanders and diplomats, however, say the battlefield gains against insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq offer only a partial picture of where the country stands as the war moves toward its five-year mark in March.
Two critical shifts that boosted U.S.-led forces in 2007 — a self-imposed cease-fire by a main Shiite militia and a grassroots Sunni revolt against extremists — could still unravel unless serious unity efforts are made by the Iraqi government.
Iran also remains a major wild card. U.S. officials believe the neighboring country has helped quiet Iraq by reducing its flow of suspected aid to Shiite fighters, including materials needed for deadly roadside bombs.
But Iran's apparent hands-off policies could come under strain as Shiite factions — some favoring Iran, others not — battle for control of Iraq's oil-rich south.

Uneven Iraqi security
The Pentagon, meanwhile, will increasingly look to the uneven Iraqi security forces to carry the load in 2008 as demands for an American exit strategy grow sharper during the U.S. presidential election year.
Britain, the main U.S. coalition partner in Iraq, is gradually drawing down its forces and other allies, including Poland and Australia, are contemplating full-scale withdrawals in the coming year.
"We're focusing our energy on building on what coalition and Iraqi troopers have accomplished in 2007," Gen. David Petraeus told a group of Western journalists on Saturday. "Success will not, however, be akin to flipping on a light switch. It will emerge slowly and fitfully, with reverses as well as advances, accumulating fewer bad days and gradually more good days."

That arc of progress played out in the raw statistics of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.
American military deaths peaked in May with 126 troops killed. It was then that the U.S. began ramping up its attacks against insurgent strongholds, leading to increased clashes in Baghdad and other key areas across central Iraq.
Seven months on, commanders and analysts say America's aggressive strategy of targeting al-Qaida in Iraq strongholds is paying off: U.S. casualties have dropped sharply. As of Sunday night in Baghdad, 21 deaths were reported in December, one more than in February 2004, which was the lowest monthly total of the war.
The 899 deaths in 2007 surpassed the previously highest death toll in 2004, when 850 U.S. soldiers were killed. The total for 2007 could rise slightly; occasionally the military reports new casualties a few days after they occur. The military reported the non-combat related death of a soldier on Sunday.
At least 3,902 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war. Of those, at least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Civilian deaths track decline for military
Iraqi civilian deaths have tracked that decline and overall violence across the country is down roughly 60 percent, American commanders say.
Since the influx of some 30,000 U.S. troops that began in June, the lessening violence has meant that new problems have emerged.
"There certainly are ample challenges out there in the new year. In some respects, the positive developments in the latter half of 2007 also represent the challenges of 2008," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said during a recent briefing.
An example, Crocker said, is how the improving security situation is in part luring back Iraqis who took refuge in neighboring Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.
"The return of refugees — a good thing obviously, but a process is going to have to be carefully managed so that it doesn't sow the seeds of new tension and instability," he said.
Along with the increase in American troops, Iraq's lessening violence has been attributed to a self-imposed freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army — the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Another important change was the quick growth of mostly Sunni anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups, or "awakening councils," who once fought against U.S. and Iraqi forces but now point their guns toward the insurgents.
Of the more than 70,000 fighters in the awakening councils, only 20 percent are expected to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces. The rest are to receive job training through a joint $300 million program Iraqi and American officials are creating.
That program is in its beginning stages and there are few details about how it will be carried out, but analysts say it must succeed or the Sunni fighters who do not join Iraq's military may sell their services to the insurgents.
On Saturday, a new audiotape by Osama bin Laden warned Iraqi Sunnis against fighting al-Qaida, saying "the most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life."

Holding Iran to its promise
Keeping the militia of al-Sadr and other powerful Shiite leaders on the sidelines also means keeping Iran to its promise to halt the flow of weapons and training to them, officials say.
"How lasting a phenomenon that will be and how Iran will define and play its role in Iraq in 2008 I think is going to be very important to the long-term future of the country," Crocker said.
Iraqi civilian deaths also peaked in May with 2,155 killed. That fell to 718 in November and 710 in December. For the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 civilians were killed.
Civilian deaths are compiled by the AP from hospital, police and military officials, as well as accounts from reporters and photographers. Insurgent deaths were not included. Other counts differ and some have given higher civilian death tolls.
Those numbers paint an increasingly optimistic picture, but James Carafano, a security expert with the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, D.C., warned dangers lurk.
"The number of people who have the power to turns things around appears to be dwindling," he said regarding extremists. "But there are still people in Iraq that could string together a week of really bad days."
While that might not mean a return to the bloodiest moments of the Iraq war, Carafano said it could seriously rattle the Iraqi government as it tries to bring about some form of political reconciliation in 2008, a key to long-term security.
"People have to be really careful about over-promising that this is an irreversible trend — I think it is a soft trend," he said of the declining violence.
Carafano pointed to the problem of integrating the Sunni awakening councils into Iraqi society and keeping the Shiite militias out of the fight. If either of those situations changes, he said, increased bloodshed in the country is likely.
Those warnings in mind, Carafano said he thought the "surge" in U.S. troops had to a large extent met one of its important goals: to allow the Iraqi government to focus on questions of governance instead of dealing only with security.
He likened the increase in troops to the Marshall Plan that largely rebuilt Europe after World War II and demonstrated U.S. commitment to that continent.
"I think the surge made that statement to Iraqis," Carafano said. "Here's America, fighting an unpopular war and things aren't going so well and we turn around and send more troops in. To the good guys and the bad guys is was a reaffirmation that Americans aren't going to walk away from this."

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DefensorFortis

I would hate to see the efforts of the past year go to waste because a few idiots in congress seem to be favored by the media and often have microphones stuffed in their face spouting off about what they KNOW LITTLE of and disgrace us who've battled hard since 2003... they treat our successes with disdain and LIE or make up crap - they love to MAKE a news story explaining 10% of the truth while liabel/slander is their truth... they know NOTHING of how to win the battles or the war.

It is downright disgusting to hear Paul, Biden, Dodd, Kerry, Murtha, Pelosi, Reid, Kennedy, Rangel, Nadler, Dingel, Boxer, Feinstein et al, talking about the military and what we've acheived in the last 28 years in spite of their efforts to dismantle us and 16 Intelligence agencies!!!!

There are three major global processes under way that will continue to work themselves out in 2008. First, the U.S. jihadist war is entering its final phase; the destruction of al Qaeda’s strategic capabilities now allows the United States to shift its posture which includes leveraging the Sunni world to finish the job begun in Iraq and enables Washington to begin drawing down its Middle Eastern forces. Second, an assertive Russia is re-emerging and taking advantage of the imbalance in U.S. power resulting from the war. Third, oil at historical highs and continued Asian particularly Chinese exports have created a massive redistribution of financial might that is reshaping the international financial architecture. These processes intersect with each other, as well as with a fourth phenomenon: It is a presidential election year in the United States, which remains the center of gravity of the international system. These are the trends tha t shape our global forecast.

Normally in an election year, U.S. attention on global affairs dwindles precipitously, allowing other powers to set the agenda. That will not be the case, however, in 2008. President Bush is not up for re-election, and there is no would-be successor from the administration in the race; this frees up all of the administration’s bandwidth for whatever activities it wishes. Additionally, Bush’s unpopularity means that each of the White House’s domestic initiatives essentially will be dead on arrival in Congress. All of the Bush administration’s energy will instead be focused on foreign affairs, since such activities do not require public or congressional approval. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, 2008 will see the United States acting with the most energy and purpose it has had since the months directly after the 9/11 attack.

Such energy is not simply a result of this odd hiccup in the American political system but of a major shift in circumstance on the issue that has monopolized American foreign policy efforts since 2003: Iraq. The Iraq war was an outgrowth of the jihadist war. After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States realized it lacked the military wherewithal to simultaneously deal with the four powers that made al Qaeda possible: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Pakistan. The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance. The second was to invade the state that bordered the other three, Iraq, in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda. The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda, the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate, not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name ̵ 2; broke.

As 2008 dawns, it has become apparent that though this strategy engendered many unforeseen costs, it has proven successful at grinding al Qaeda into nonfunctionality. Put simply, the jihadist war is all but over; the U.S. not only is winning but also has an alliance with the entire constellation of Sunni powers that made al Qaeda possible in the first place. The U.S. will attempt to use this alliance to pressure the remnants of al Qaeda and its allies, as well as those in the region who are not in the alliance.

This leaves Iran, the region’s only non-Sunni power, in the uncomfortable position of needing to seek an arrangement with the U.S. The year 2008 will still be about Iraq but in a different way. Iran cares deeply about the final status of Iraq, since every united Mesopotamian government has at some point in its history attempted a Persian invasion. Yet for the United States, the details of intra-Iraqi negotiations and security in Iraqi cities now are irrelevant to its geopolitical concerns. Washington does not care what Iraq looks like, so long as the Sunni jihadists or Tehran do not attain ultimate control and evolutions in 2007 have made both scenarios impossible in 2008.
Iran recognizes this, and as a result Washington and Tehran are ever less tentatively edging toward a deal. It is in this context, as an element of talks with Iran, that Iraq still matters to Washington, and this is now the primary rationale for continued involvement in Iraq. The U.S. will not completely withdraw from Iraq in 2008 indeed, it likely will have 100,000 troops on the ground when Bush leaves office, but this will be the year in which the mission evolves from tactical overwatch to strategic overwatch. (Roughly translated from military lingo, this means shifting from patrolling the cities in order to enforce the peace to hunkering in the desert in order to ensure that Iran does not try to seize Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula beyond.)

In the aftermath of the November 2007 Annapolis, Md., conference and the declassification of a National Intelligence Estimate on the nonexistence of the Iranian nuclear program, the ball is in the Iranians’ court. A U.S.-Iranian deal, no matter how beneficial it would be for both states, is not inevitable. But Stratfor finds it unlikely that Tehran would choose strategic confrontation with both the United States and the Arab world when the benefits of cooperation, and the penalties for hostility, are so potent. A framework for future relations, as well as for co-dominion of Iraq, is likely to emerge in 2008.

Still, frameworks come slowly, and crafting such a framework will require the bulk of American forces currently in Iraq to remain there for most of the year. The United States will draw forces down and eventually regain its bandwidth for other operations, but 2008 will not be the year that the United States returns to policing the world on a global scale. And considering the still-mounting costs of regenerating military capabilities after six years of conflict, manpower expansion and acquisitions, such force recovery might not even occur in 2009. The U.S. could have more energy and political freedom to act, but military realities will anchor the lion’s share of Washington’s attention on the Middle East for, at the very least, the year to come. And Afghanistan, and therefore Pakistan, will have to be dealt with, regardless of what happens in Iraq.

This means 2008 will be similar to 2007 in many ways: It will be a year of opportunity for those powers that would take advantage of the United States’ ongoing distraction. However, they will face a complication that was absent in 2007: a deadline. The Iraqi logjam is broken. Unlike in 2007, when Iraq appeared to be a quagmire and other powers therefore sensed endless opportunity, those hostile to U.S. interests realize that they only have a limited window in which to reshape their regions. Granted, this window will not close in 2008, since the United States will need to not only withdraw from Iraq but also rest and restructure its forces; but the United States no longer is mired in an open-ended conflict.

The state with the greatest need to take advantage of this U.S. occupation, bar none, is the Russian Federation. Moscow knows full well that when the Americans are finished with their efforts in the Middle East, the bulk of their attention will return to the former Soviet Union. When that happens, Russia will face a resurgent United States that commands alliances in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Russia must use the ongoing U.S. entanglement in the Middle East to redefine its immediate neighborhood or risk a developing geopolitic far less benign to Russian interests than Washington’s Cold War policy of containment. Russia needs to move — and it needs to move now.

And there are a host of secondary powers that will be interacting within the matrix of American actions in 2008. Some, such as Syria and Saudi Arabia want to be included in the U.S. Iraqi calculus and will have their chance. Others — namely South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Japan — are looking for new ways to work with Washington as they adapt to their own domestic government transitions. All of Europe is shifting back to a power structure that has been absent for two generations: the concert of powers, with all of the instability and mistrust that implies.

Others will be pursuing bold agendas, not because of the United States’ distraction but because they are rising to prominence in their own right. Angola will rise as a major African power to rival South Africa and Nigeria. Brazil will lay the groundwork for reasserting its long-dormant role as a South American superpower. Turkey now the strongest it has been in a century, will re-emerge as a major geopolitical weight in the eastern Mediterranean, albeit one that is somewhat confused about its priorities.
Quietly developing in the background, the global economy is undergoing a no less dramatic transformation. While we expect oil prices to retreat somewhat in 2008 after years of surges, their sustained strength continues to shove a great deal of cash into the hands of the world’s oil exporters, cash that these countries cannot process internally and that therefore will either be stored in dollars or invested in the only country with deep enough capital pools to handle it: the United States. Add in the torrent of exports from the Asian states, which generates nearly identical cash-management problems, and the result is a deep dollarization of the global system even as the U.S. dollar gives ground. The talk on the financial pages will be of dollar (implying American) weakness, even as the currency steadily shifts from the one of first resort to the true foundation of the entire system.

This will be a year in which the U.S. achieves more success in its foreign policies than it has since the ousting of the Taliban from Afghanistan in late 2001. But the actions of others, most notably a rising Russia, rather than U.S. achievements will determine the tenor and fury of the next major global clash.

John

that was long. As president, I plan to pull out the troops

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John

and shorten people's posts!!

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RidinHighSpeeds

As President, you should read pay attention to detail!!

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John

maybe, just maybe. I do pay attention to detail.

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Katczinsky

In 2028, lol, you might have to if McCain gets elected. Though 20 years is only 1/5th of the time McCain says we're going to stay in there.

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John

I hope we aren't there that long. I hope peace can be reached in 20 years.

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intangible child

Iraq: The War Card - The Center for Public Integrity
The 380,000-plus-word database presented here allows, for the first time, the Iraq-related public pronouncements of top Bush administration officials to be tracked on a day-by-day basis against their private assessments and the actual “ground truth” as it is now known.

Throughout the database, passages containing false statements by the top Bush administration officials are highlighted in yellow. The 935 false statements in the database may also be accessed by selecting the “False Statements” option from the “Subject” pull-down menu and may be displayed within selected date ranges using the selection tool below.

Searches may also be limited by person or subject, or both, by using the appropriate selections from the pull-down menus.
Iraq: The War Card - The Center for Public Integrity

20 Lies About the War

1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks
2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together
3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program
4. Iraq was trying to import aluminum tubes to develop nuclear weapons
5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War
6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus
7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox
8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors
9. Previous weapons inspections had failed
10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors
11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes
12. The "dodgy dossier"
13. War would be easy
14. Umm Qasr
15. Basra rebellion
16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch
17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons
18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD
19. Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis
20. WMD were found

Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer
He began with Prime Minister Blair, where the two discussed the ongoing aspects of Operation Iraqi liberation.
Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer

Operation
Iraqi
Liberation

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have committed violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:
ImpeachBush / VoteToImpeach: Articles of Impeachment

ImpeachBush / VoteToImpeach:

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The ancient Greeks used to say, "You shall know a man by the friends that he keeps." Given the nature of his friends and advisors, what are we to conclude about George W. Bush:
Stop the madness before us it stops!
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pensacola_niceman

Yeah, I need to make more money before we pull out of Iraq.