they should just leave iraq already

Iraqi PM: Criticism 'signals' militants


BAGHDAD - Iraq's beleaguered prime minister accused his American critics on Sunday of underestimating how hard it is to rebuild his country and failing to appreciate his government's achievements "such as stopping the civil and sectarian war."

it's not our job to rebuild their country we had 5 years to do that
we failed

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said told reporters that some of the criticism from Washington sends "signals to terrorists luring them into thinking that the security situation in the country is not good." He offered no specific examples.

He also said U.S. critics may not know "the size of the destruction that Iraq passed through" and do not appreciate "the big role of the Iraqi government and its achievements, such as stopping the civil and sectarian war."

The Democratic-controlled Congress is growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of political reform in Iraq. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for al-Maliki to be replaced.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and the top American military commander, Gen. David Petraeus, are to report to Congress during the week of Sept. 10 on the degree of progress achieved since President Bush ordered nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office concluded Iraq has satisfied only three of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for measuring progress and partially met two others.

None of those five benchmarks are the high-profile political issues such as passage of a national oil revenue sharing law that the U.S. has said are critical to Iraq's future.

During an interview broadcast Sunday by Iraqi state television, Crocker also urged patience with the Iraqis as they try to reach power-sharing agreements among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

"After 35 years of injustice under Saddam Hussein, there are some problems since liberation and the problems of 40 years cannot be solved in a year or two," Crocker said, speaking in Arabic. "What is important is that there is progress."

Separately, al-Maliki ordered what he said would be an unbiased investigation into last week's deadly clashes surrounding a Shiite religious celebration in Karbala, which many have blamed on the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr has himself demanded an investigation, while his followers have condemned the arrests of more than 200 people in Karbala — many of them supporters of the firebrand cleric. The bloodshed in Karbala saw more than 50 people killed and hundreds injured.

Al-Sadr, who has denied that the Mahdi Army provoked the confrontation, announced a surprise six-month suspension of the militia's activities last Wednesday following the fighting in Karbala, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism.

"After the procrastination we had seen in the past two days, we warn the Iraqi government and the executive authorities in Karbala if they don't open a fair, neutral and quick investigation, the Sadr office will be obliged to take unspecified measures," spokesman Sheik Salah al-Obeidi said in Najaf.

Though the Iraqi government and U.S. commanders have praised al-Sadr's move to stand down his militia, security forces have been keeping the Mahdi Army under pressure, saying they are focusing on breakaway factions believed to be receiving weapons, training and money from Iran — a charge that Iranians deny.

A statement from Sadr's office said that more than 200 al-Sadr followers have been detained in the past three days in Karbala province, making al-Maliki's praise of the decision to freeze the Mahdi Army nothing more than "ink on paper."

Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Raid Shaker, commander of Karbala police, said 300 detainees are being questioned over the Karbala incident.

Jawad al-Hasnawi, a Sadrist member of Karbala's provincial council, accused the prime minister of reneging on promises to stop detaining people in the Karbala violence: "They have taken us back to the era of the former dictatorship."

Elsewhere, military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox confirmed Sunday that U.S. forces arrested six people in a raid Thursday at the al-Sabah state-run newspaper in Baghdad. Fox said the military staged the raid on "actionable intelligence" and found illegal weapons when they searched the facility.

In the southern city of Basra, an Iraqi commander said that British forces would officially hand over its base at a palace complex within a few days.

"Iraqi forces are already deployed and concentrated in the palace," General Mohan al Fireji said at a press conference. "The Iraqi forces are ready to take security responsibility in Basra."

Following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Britain controlled security across southern Iraq, but has since handed over three of four provinces to Iraqi forces. Britain's Ministry of Defense has previously said it hopes to hand security responsibility for Basra, the last remaining province, over to Iraqi forces sometime this autumn.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has consistently refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops from the country, but Iraqi forces could take control of the country's second-largest city as soon as October, Britain's Sunday Times reported, citing unidentified government sources.

Bush should step down no one likes him

 

It is your job to rebuild that country, wether or not you've failed miserably in this war. You walked in with a promise of finding WMD's, failed, trashed the country and now you want to leave?

When the oil contracts are finalised and your government finds some other country to make the scapegoat of the worlds troubles, I'm sure you can leave.

 

when we failed to find WMD's we should have left then and there
we shouldn't have been fighting their war

 

And leave the country in ruins? How very responsible.

 

GAO: Iraq hasn't met 11 of 18 benchmarks

WASHINGTON - Baghdad has not met 11 of its 18 political and security goals, according to a new independent report on Iraq that challenges President Bush's assessment on the war.


The study, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, was slightly more upbeat than initially planned. After receiving substantial resistance from the White House, the GAO determined that four benchmarks - instead of two - had been partially met.

But GAO stuck with its original contention that only three goals out of the 18 had been achieved. The goals met include establishing joint security stations in Baghdad, ensuring minority rights in the Iraqi legislature and creating support committees for the Baghdad security plan.

"Overall key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," said U.S. Comptroller David Walker in prepared remarks for a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

An advance copy of the 100-page report and Walker's testimony was obtained by The Associated Press.

GAO's findings paint a bleaker view of progress in Iraq than offered by Bush in July and comes at a critical time in the Iraq debate. So far, Republicans have stuck by Bush and staved off Democratic legislation ordering troops home. But many, who have grown uneasy about the unpopularity of the war, say they want to see substantial improvement in Iraq by September.

Next week the top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, are scheduled to brief Congress.

"While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, measuring such violence may be difficult since the perpetrator's intent is not clearly known," GAO states in its report. "Other measures of violence, such as the number of enemy-initiated attacks, show that violence has remained high through July 2007."

Republican leaders on Tuesday showed no signs of wavering in their support for Bush.

"The GAO report really amounts to asking someone to kick an 80-yard field goal and criticizing them when they came up 20 or 25 yards short," said House GOP leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters he would like to ensure a long-term U.S. presence in the Middle East to fight al-Qaida and deter aggression from Iran.

"And I hope that this reaction to Iraq and the highly politicized nature of dealing with Iraq this year doesn't end up in a situation where we just bring all the troops back home and thereby expose us, once again, to the kind of attacks we've had here in the homeland or on American facilities," said McConnell, R-Ky.

Democrats said the GAO report showed that Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq was failing because Baghdad was not making the political progress needed to tamp down sectarian violence.

"No matter what spin we may hear in the coming days, this independent assessment is a failing grade for a policy that simply isn't working," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The report does not make any substantial policy recommendations, but says future administration reports "would be more useful to the Congress" if they provided more detailed information.

Earlier this year, Bush sent 30,000 extra troops to Iraq to enhance security in Baghdad and Anbar province. In a congressionally mandated progress report released by the White House in July, Bush judged that Baghdad had made satisfactory progress in eight of the 18 benchmarks. In five of those eight areas, GAO determined that Iraq had either failed or made only partial progress.

The disparity is largely due to the stricter standard applied by GAO in preparing the report. GAO used a "thumbs up or thumbs down" approach in grading Baghdad, whereas Bush's assessment looked at whether Iraq was achieving progress. For example, Bush said Iraqi politicians had made satisfactory progress in reviewing its constitution, whereas GAO ruled they had failed because the process was not complete.

The State Department and Defense Department reviewed the report before its release. According to officials interviewed last week, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the study had not been released, the administration disputed GAO's conclusion that Iraq has failed to provide three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations or to ensure that the security plan will not provide a safe haven for outlaws.

In the final report released Tuesday, GAO marked those two benchmarks as "partially met" and alludes to pushback it received from the Pentagon.

For example, GAO said it found that despite increased military operations in Baghdad, "temporary safe havens still exist due to strong sectarian loyalties and militia infiltration of security forces." The Defense Department countered that the recent troop buildup had significantly reduced the number of safe havens inside Baghdad and in al-Anbar and Diyala provinces.

Regarding the deployment of the three Iraqi brigades, GAO found that of the 19 Iraqi units supporting Baghdad operations only 5 had performed well. The remaining units experienced problems with lack of personnel or equipment

"okay we can help rebuild once all the violence is over for good"
we shouldn't have been their in the first place
both sides should stop fighting and they should put an end
to extremism!

 

Exactly!

It's a shame that the United States was led down this path of deception by President Bush still looking for WMD's after he received new intel that clearly stated they were not there. That said we still freed the Iraqi people from a dictator. In my mind if the people themselves now without a dictator want to squabble and even kill each other rather than get along and build an all inclusive government... that's they're choice.

Personally I agree with Joe Biden that if we were going to stay (which we shouldn't have) we should have divided the country up into three religious territories and then just tried to enforce buffer zones while the groups settled.

Truthfully the better thing would have been to not go in at all and just selectively bomb important Hussein targets... palaces and such. It worked with Kadafi. The whole occupation thing is as ill conceived as the original Cheney prediction... We'll be greeted as liberators.

Oh yeah... how's that workin' out for us?

 

Actually our country is being "responsible" for rebuilding that country and more. Leaving astronomical debt for our children, our childrens children and their children.

How many other countries have enacted military force upon another country and then did the "responsible" thing and financed the rebuilding of said country.

I am of the opinion that the U.S. should instead focus on protecting our own and to hell with everyone else. Isolationism? Why not. As a taxpayer and a U.S. citizen with children, I find no reason for the U.S. to continually play policeman to the entire world. No declarations of wars due to us sticking our noses where it does not belong (fighting for others freedoms - or at least that's what our illustrious leaders want us to believe.. har... as if we do!?) and only attacking/declaring war upon those who trasgress against us and threaten our well being - and stuff the financial help of rebuilding squat.

 

But wasnt it our war? Did you suddenly forget they attacked us and started the war? We havnt found WMD's but as we have seen they are succesful with planes as well, and cars, and their own feet and body. Do you forget that they hate you, me, and every Christian and other ifidel out there? But of course its THEIR war, not ours.

 

What are you talking about? Iraq didn't attack us, Al Qeada did. Bush, himself, has admitted that. Saddam presided over a secular government, he was no friend of Bin Laden. You seem drenched in fear, get a grip.