When are the liberals going to stop predicting civil war in Iraq?

[Le Jacquelope]

Top U.S. generals warn of Iraq civil war

By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press WriterFri Aug 4, 8:10 AM ET

Two top Pentagon commanders said Thursday that spiraling violence in Baghdad could propel Iraq into outright civil war, using a politically loaded term that the Bush administration has long avoided.

The generals said they believe a full-scale civil war is unlikely. Even so, their comments to Congress cast the war in more somber hues than the administration usually uses, and further dampened lawmakers' hopes that troops would begin returning home in substantial numbers from the widely unpopular war in time for this fall's elections.

"I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war," Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the senators, "We do have the possibility of that devolving into civil war."

White House press secretary Tony Snow, flying with President Bush to Texas aboard Air Force One, said the generals had "reiterated something we've talked about on a number of occasions, which is the importance of securing Baghdad, which is why ... you're going to see more and more of a troop presence in Baghdad. ... Obviously, sectarian violence is a concern."

Asked specifically about the generals' comments about a civil war, Snow said, "OK, well, I don't think the president is going to quibble with his generals on their characterizations."

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have steadfastly refused to call the situation in Iraq a civil war, although Rumsfeld acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday that the violence was increasing.

Asked whether the United States would continue to have a military mission in Iraq if civil war broke out, Rumsfeld declined to respond directly, saying he didn't want to give the impression he presumed there would be a civil war. He said the question must ultimately be handled by the Iraqis.

"Our role is to support the government. The government is holding together. The armed forces are holding together," Rumsfeld said at the Senate hearing Thursday.

There are currently about 133,000 U.S. forces in Iraq. The Pentagon has recently decided to extend the deployment of some 3,500 troops and send them into Baghdad, along with Iraqi forces, to bolster security.

Last year, Army Gen. George Casey, then the top U.S. commander in Iraq, expressed hopes of significant troop cuts this year, comments Abizaid seemed to temper on Thursday.

"It's possible to imagine some reductions in forces, but I think the most important thing to imagine is Baghdad coming under the control of the Iraqi government," Abizaid said.

Abizaid raised the specter of a rise in U.S. casualties, saying, "I think it's possible that in the period ahead of us in Baghdad that we'll take increased casualties — that's possible."

Many voters have tired of the 3-year-old war, which has cost more than 2,500 U.S. lives and more than $250 billion dollars.

Abizaid and Pace said they did not foresee a year ago that sectarian violence would be as high as it is now.

Abizaid said he believed Iraq would "move toward equilibrium in the next five years" with the right mix of political and military pressure. Bush has said he does not expect the last U.S. troops to leave during his presidency, which ends in January 2009.

"Shiite and Sunni are going to have to love their children more than they hate each other," Pace said. "The weight of that must be on the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government."

The Bush administration's handling of the war drew sharp rebukes from Democrats and some Republicans Thursday. Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) likened the positioning of forces in Iraq to a game of "whack-a-mole," where generals try to curb violence in one area only to see it pop up somewhere else.

"It's very disturbing," said McCain, R-Ariz. "And if it's all up to the Iraqi military, General Abizaid, and if it's all up to them, then I wonder why we have to move troops into Baghdad to intervene in what is clearly sectarian violence."

Rumsfeld also sparred with Democratic senators over his handling of the war.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York told Rumsfeld he was "presiding over a failed policy" in Iraq, and asked him why lawmakers should believe his assurances that conditions in Iraq would improve.

"My goodness," Rumsfeld responded to her list of complaints; then he restated administration positions.

Clinton later told the Associated Press the president should accept Rumsfeld's resignation.

The generals' comments posed anew the question of what would happen if the Iraqi government crumbled and U.S. troops were left between competing armed militias. Sen. John W. Warner (news, bio, voting record), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said a civil war in Iraq would raise questions about the U.S. commitment there.

"I think we have to examine very carefully what Congress authorized the president to do in the context of a situation if we're faced with an all-out civil war and whether we have to come back to the Congress to get further indication of support," said Warner, R-Va.

In yet another sign of lawmakers' uncertainty of the situation in Iraq, Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., on Thursday called for a revised intelligence estimate of Iraq, a document prepared by the intelligence community to give officials an unvarnished snapshot of the security situation.

Pace told McCain that U.S. troops are trained and equipped to respond to violence caused by ethnic strife, but their role would be limited.

"There's a difference between the kind of violence they have to handle and what will prevent that violence," Pace said. "And preventing that violence is very much the role of the political leaders in Iraq to solve, sir."

Later in the hearing, the generals expressed confidence that the Iraqi government was moving in the right direction.

"Am I optimistic whether or not Iraqi forces, with our support, with the backing of the Iraqi government, can prevent the slide to civil war? My answer is yes," Abizaid said.

Damned liberals. Everyone knew this civil war was coming, right?

 

[Le Jacquelope]

From 100% Ulaven_Demorte-certified unreliable sources...

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060805/NEWS/608050321

Troops on the ground: Iraq already in throes of civil war

By Tom Lasseter

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While politicians and generals in Washington, D.C., debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston.

Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.

As he spoke, the sights and sounds of battle grew: first, the rat-a-tat-tat of fire from AK-47 assault rifles, then the heavier bursts of PKC machine guns, and finally the booms of mortar rounds crisscrossing the night sky and crashing down onto houses and roads.

The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters will turn up the next day, dropped in canals and on the side of roads.

"We've seen some that have been executed on site, with bullet holes in the ground; the rest were tortured and executed somewhere else and dumped," Johnson said.

The recent assertion by U.S. soldiers here that Iraq is in a civil war is a stunning indication of the status of U.S. efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.

Some Iraqi troops, too, share that assessment.

"This is a civil war," said a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad.

"The problem between Sunnis and Shiites is a religious one, and it gets worse every time they attack each other's mosques," said the adviser, who gave only his rank and first name, Col. Ahmed, because of security concerns. "Iraq is now caught in hell."

Higher-ranking officers concede that the developments are threatening to move beyond their grasp.

"There's no plan - we are constantly reacting," said a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."

The issue of whether Iraq has descended into civil war has been a hot-button topic even before U.S. troops entered Iraq in 2003, when some opponents of the war raised the likelihood that Iraq would fragment along sectarian lines if Saddam's oppressive regime was removed. Bush administration officials consistently rejected such speculation as unlikely to come to fruition.

On Thursday, however, two top U.S. generals told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq could slip into civil war, though both stopped well short of saying that one had begun.

Political sensitivity has made some officers here hesitant to use the words "civil war," but they aren't shy about describing the situation that they and their men have found on their patrols.

"I hate to use the word 'purify,' because it sounds very bad, but they are trying to force Shiites into Shiite areas and Sunnis into Sunni areas," said Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, who commands a 4th Infantry Division battalion on the western edge of Baghdad, a hotspot of sectarian violence.

Osborne, 39, of Decatur, Ill., compared Iraq to Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an orgy of inter-tribal violence in 1994. "That was without doubt a civil war - the same thing is happening here.

"But it's not called a civil war - there's such a negative connotation to that word and it suggests failure," he said.

A human rights report released last month by the United Nations mission in Baghdad said 2,669 civilians were killed across Iraq during May, and 3,149 were killed in June. In total, 14,338 civilians were killed from January to June of this year, and 150,000 civilians were forced out of their homes, the report said.

Pointing to a map, 1st Lt. Robert Murray, last week highlighted a small Shiite village of 25 homes that was abandoned after a flurry of death threats came to town on small pieces of paper.

"The letters tell them if they don't leave in 48 hours, they'll kill their entire families," said Murray, 29, of Franklin, Mass. "It's happening a lot right now. There have been a lot of murders recently; between that and the kidnappings, they're making good on their threats. ... They need to learn to live together. I'd like to see it happen, but I don't know if it's possible."

Riding in a Humvee later that day, Capt. Jared Rudacille, Murray's commander in the 4th Infantry Division, noted the market of a town he was passing through. The stalls were all vacant. The nearby homes were empty. There wasn't a single civilian car on the road.

"Between 1,500 and 2,000 people have moved out," said Rudacille, 29, of York, Pa. "I now see only 15 or 20 people out during the day."

In Taji, an area north of Baghdad, where the roads between Sunni and Shiite villages have become killing fields, many soldiers said they saw little chance that things would get better.

"I don't think there's any winning here. Victory for us is withdrawing," said Sgt. James Ellis, 25, of Chicago. "In this part of the world they have been fighting for 3,000 years, and we're not going to fix it in three."

 

[Sean]

Have you seen this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/03/ambassador.iraq/index.html

 

[Nostalgy_Prince]

I think it is so obvious political orientations are not a concern anymore. Only fools would think it's not at least a distinct and very, very, probable outcome of the situation.

Note : I've tried to be really positive, re: civil war in Iraq in this post.

 

[semen4her]

There already IS civil war FFS!

The only reason it isn't more widespread is because there is an occupying force illegally forcing their views upon the good people of Iraq.

 

[Le Jacquelope]

Have you seen this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/03/ambassador.iraq/index.html

Yes indeedy. But that article came from CNN, clearly a Ulaven_Demorte-certified unreliable source.

And I can see JackAssJim now... "After two years of predictions by me, a hurricane hits the US."

Ishmael will post "of course I saw this coming. You didn't predict anything you libbies!"

Yup, we all know how this thread's goin', hahahahah!

 

[Nostalgy_Prince]

Yes indeedy. But that article came from CNN, clearly a Ulaven_Demorte-certified unreliable source.

And I can see JackAssJim now... "After two years of predictions by me, a hurricane hits the US."

Ishmael will post "of course I saw this coming. You didn't predict anything you libbies!"

Yup, we all know how this thread's goin', hahahahah!

The only sad part is that it's actually almost going the same way. I mean, talk about boredom ...

 

[Le Jacquelope]

The only sad part is that it's actually almost going the same way. I mean, talk about boredom ...

I wonder what they'll say when Bush is forced to admit Iraq is embroiled in a sectarian civil war?