politicartoons | 190,000 missing guns

OK...so terrorists are arming terrorists...this is nothing new. More reasons to go after terrorist who want to kill the good guys..thats the US, England, and the others who want to see an end to terrorism.

These two came up together:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070815/tpl-uk-iraq-aa3debf_8.html
Which is the Sunni insurgents and Al Qaeda.

and this:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070815/tpl-uk-usa-iran-guard-43a8d4f_2.html
Which is the Shiites.

We've no allies left there apart from the Kurds. Everyone involved is buying arms wherever they can. It makes for another small problem, but even if we were to shut down all conduits of arms they'd throw rocks at us. Or try to sabotage and booby trap us with whatever they could fabricate....not caring about their own lives. Whether we admit it now or not we've lost. Short of the genocide of killing every able bodied man, they will oppose us to their dying breath.
How does genocide sound to you? Because we could go down that route. We either need very strong stomachs indeed (and no concept of morality - supposedly why we got involved in the first place) or we give in and get out soon, preserving the lives of our forces.

Then the bloodbath will be (to some extent) in their own hands.
We've looked for containment. That model I think has broken down. And I do think it's going to come down to how many we have to kill. That's not a pleasant equation, by anyone's standards.
Of course, I'd rather be wrong.

I think you may be off by saying that there is no chance we can win. Improvements have been everywhere:

"The number of truck bombs and other large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started increasing troop levels in Iraq about six months ago, according to the U.S. military command in Iraq."

"The high-profile attacks — generally large bombs hitting markets, mosques or other "soft" targets that produce mass casualties — have dropped to about 70 in July from a high during the past year of about 130 in March, according to the Multi-National Force — Iraq."

"The enemy had the initiative and the momentum in '06, We've got it now."
-Gen. David Petraeus

"Successes against al-Qaeda have also been helped by shifting Sunni public opinion and a growing number of insurgent defections, the military says."

"Tribes and people are starting to stand up and fight back," said Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, deputy commander of the U.S. division north of Baghdad. "They are turning against al-Qaeda."

"The U.S. military gets 23,000 tips per month from Iraqis, four times more than last year..."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-08-12-lede13_N.htm

Just because there are improvements doesn't mean we have this thing in the bag...we got a long way to victory, but we have not lost yet as the cut and run party wants to say.

"U.S. forces are winning over once-hostile Sunni Arabs in Iraq, but the Sunnis could "flip back" if the government does not welcome them, a U.S. commander said on Wednesday.

Major-General Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces south of Baghdad, said 80 percent of the Sunni Arabs in his territory now were cooperating with U.S. troops, in a "major change in the battle space" over the past several weeks.

"But they could flip back tomorrow, and the only thing that's going to keep them from flipping back is the government of Iraq," he said during a briefing with his subordinates in the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GRA554054.htm

I hear (admittedly anecdotal) personal testimony from folk who've served in our mob, and some of that may well be out of date. But they're not at all of the opinion that it's containable. However none of these folk rank as high as a Major-General or have access to the sort of intelligence that is a Major-General's perquisite.
However, we're not quite keeping order at the moment, though it is getting better.
Alas another Guardian link, but put in because it includes a quote from Chatham House's Middle East specialist Robert Lowe which essentially agrees about the length of the task ahead.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2149212,00.html

I think if it goes like that we may see all sorts of new factors.

190,000 missing guns

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