UPDATED: Tom Carper Explains Why Mike Castle is Wrong
While Mike Castle wants everyone to think that the Iraq Study Group reccomendations can be invoked to fix Iraq as if they are some kind of magical incantation – Tom Carper explains that the ISG reccomendations are moot.
“Despite months of American prodding, Iraqi lawmakers have yet to agree on any of the major issues before them — how to deal with oil revenues or settle sectarian differences that so badly divide the country,” he said.
The ISG reccomendation depend on a functioning Iraqi government. In real life (as opposed the the fantasy world that Mike Castle lives in) the ISG reccomendations are moot.
Castle is not only trying to close the barn door with the horse long gone – he wants to take a bunch of charred barn door hardware and pretend that the barn did not burn down three years ago.
UPDATE: One of the major initiatives proposed by the Iraq Study Group is to increase support for the Iraqi police. Yes. Those Iraqi police. The ones colluding with insurgents and killing our guys.
A previously undisclosed Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents.
The assault on the night of Jan. 20 stunned U.S. officials with its planning and sophistication. A column of SUVs filled with gunmen who posed as an American security team passed through Iraqi police checkpoints at a provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city.
Within a few minutes, the attackers killed one American, wounded three and abducted four. The captives were later found shot to death; the gunmen escaped.
The U.S. “defense hinged on a level of trust that … early warning and defense would be provided by the Karbala Iraqi police. This trust was violated,” the report dated Feb. 27 says.training and
ISG precepts do not depend entirely on the Iraqi government’s cohesion. We were supposed to get into the act of diplomacy with as much ferocity as we threw the military at the insurgency.
Carper wants to cry about the Iraqis yet he still upholds our military presence in this country and is encouraged by the Bush escalation.
The Iraqi government is taking the entire month of August off. Bring the troops home. Keep only diplomatic and training personel there and secure the embassy and get everyone else immediately onto a redeployment schedule.
Hardly the authority.
AP Poll: Public gives Congress low marks (I’ll add Democratic Congress)
In the eyes of the public, Congress is doing even worse than the president.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Congress_AP_Poll.html
Good point J.
The public is not happy with people like Mike Castle who want to “stay the course.”