Fort Bragg, we’re here to mark a historic moment in the life of our country and our military.  For nearly nine years, our nation has been at war in Iraq.  And you — the incredible men and women of Fort Bragg — have been there every step of the way, serving with honor, sacrificing greatly, from the first waves of the invasion to some of the last troops to come home.  So, as your Commander-in-Chief, and on behalf of a grateful nation, I’m proud to finally say these two words, and I know your families agree:  Welcome home!  (Applause.)  Welcome home.  Welcome home.  (Applause.)  Welcome home.

The 9 years later, the Iraq War is drawn to a close.

I would also like to add: just because a guy is an awful, miserable dictator and  really disliked by our country and our allies (Gaddifi is all of those) doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea for us to throw our country’s resources behind an armed uprising against his government. That includes no fly zones, Navy ships off the shore of Libya, and arms shipments to rebel leaders and troops on the ground.

I wonder where all the resources went? Oh …right:

Mr. BAER: Well, let me put it this way, Egyptian Arabic is peculiar, a peculiar accent, and it’s difficult to learn especially, you know, the familiar Arabic. And it would take an officer two years of studying Arabic, three years on the ground mastering Arabic, and about 10 years to get a grasp of a society like Egypt. That’s ideally what happens. You know, it’s very difficult for someone to devote a career of 20 years on a single country like Egypt, especially when you’ve got two wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has just sucked resources and people and – mainly in support of the military and these two countries. So the CIA is truly – the bench strength is very, very thin. And you can see what’s happened that this expertise – it’s just been drawn away by these two wars and, you know, how you get it back, it’ll take years.

via A Covert Affair: When CIA Agents Fall In Love : NPR.

 

photo credit: The U.S. Army

US/Israel relationship is getting a little less special.

Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus’s Mullen briefing:  “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American  lives.

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers — and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden’s trip to Israel has forever shifted America’s relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

via The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story, by Mark Perry | The Middle East Channel.

The Jail at Camp Taji north of Baghdad holds 3,000 inmates, mostly “low level insurgents”, the military said.

Only a small number of inmates have been convicted of a crime with most detained because of Iraqi government-issued arrest warrants.

[...]

The prison in Camp Taji was opened in 2008.

[...]

The US military controls one other prison in Iraq, while all others including the notorious Abu Ghraib have been handed over to the Iraqis.

via BBC News – US hands over prison to the government of Iraq.

Tony Blair’s widely panned appearance at last week’s Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war reminded the world about the former British prime minister’s role in that lethal fiasco. Like many of the Iraq war’s instigators here in the United States, Blair has gotten a free pass while flaunting his lack of remorse. Indeed, the failure to hold him accountable resulted in his appointment as the special envoy of the “Mideast Quartet” in June 2007,  charged with reviving the peace process on behalf of its members — the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the Russian Federation.
[...]
During Blair’s long-winded justification of his actions, he compared the current threat from Iran’s nuclear program with the supposed threat from Iraq’s supposed WMD arsenal no fewer than 58 times. “We face the same problem about Iran today,” he said — a call to war that sounded weirdly discordant coming from a man committed to encouraging peaceful negotiation.

via Joe Conason – Did Tony Blair blow it as Mideast envoy? – Salon.com.

Tony Blair as Mideast Peace Envoy is a ridiculous position for someone who either grossly miscalculated  or lied through his teeth to magnify the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the rest of the world. At this point, all that matters is that Tony Blair is the absolute wrong choice. Conason captures the worst thing about Blair’s inquiry appearance: “We face the same problem about Iran today,”.

As he vociferously defends his decision to lead his nation into a costly invasion of Iraq Blair’s belief that 2010 Iran is the “same problem” as 2003 Iraq means that he believes we should attempt to bomb and bribe them into a functioning Democracy as well. Not the best mindset for a peace convoy.

The British said cheerio back in July, around the same time the Romanians cleared out “Camp Dracula,” their compound on a U.S. base in southern Iraq. Tonga and Kazakhstan left ages ago, and no one seems to remember if any Icelandic forces ever made it to Iraq.

It doesn’t matter now, anyway, because as of Friday, former president George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” formally ceased to exist, leaving only the U.S. military’s 130,000 or so forces to shepherd their Iraqi counterparts through a volatile election season before a full American troop withdrawal that’s expected by the end of 2011.

via The ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq becomes an army of one | McClatchy.

This skit makes me laugh. And then I think about how its more truth than fiction. This skit makes me sad. Damn you Chappelle.

Text of memo from Col. Timothy R. Reese, Chief, Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, MND-B, Baghdad, Iraq.

It’s Time for the US to Declare Victory and Go Home

As the old saying goes, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose. Today the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are good enough to keep the Government of Iraq (GOI) from being overthrown by the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Baathists, and the Shia violent extremists that might have toppled it a year or two ago. Iraq may well collapse into chaos of other causes, but we have made the ISF strong enough for the internal security mission. Perhaps it is one of those infamous paradoxes of counterinsurgency that while the ISF is not good in any objective sense, it is good enough for Iraq in 2009. Despite this foreboding disclaimer about an unstable future for Iraq, the United States has achieved our objectives in Iraq.

via Text of Colonel Reese’s Memo – Text – NYTimes.com.

Plus we need to focus on Afghanistan war/ Pakistan stability conundrum