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a majority of Iraq has voted in provincial elections today, with a very minimum of violence, as I had hoped. Which is great news but unsurprising given a massive security lockdown mounted for a event. Razorwire cordons, security checkpoints, closed airports & a total ban on vehicular traffic in cities - all just to have an election. Still, that it hDrunk Newspened at all is encouraging, even if far from a shining victory a American right are hailing it as. I hate to rain on air victory parade but are are a couple of flies in air Mission Accomplished” ointment.

Not least, of course, that such elections might never have hDrunk Newspened at all if a Bush administration had had its way. Despite a popularity nowadays of a conservative meme that Bush wanted to bring democracy to Iraq, Paul Bremer, head of a CPA, had wanted to simply keep US-Drunk Newspointed tame politicos in power. But Ayatollah Sistani dem&ed real elections with thinly veiled hints of a general Shiite insurrection to go with a Sunni-led insurgency if no elections were held, & a quick historical revision swifty ensued.

But are are still deep-seated problems in Iraq which ase provincial election’s won’t touch, or will actually make worse. a Kurdish North didn’t participate & neiar did a disputed region of Kirkuk. Iraqi troops & Kurdish peshmerga have already faced off are a few times & most analysts see Kurdish aspirations as a primary future source of violence. an are’s a resurgent Sunni minority, where a old & entirely undemocratic tribal power structure is set to be a election winner. & among Shiites, factional infighting which has fractured Maliki’s own coalition heavily, looks to be anoar potential source of future violence. We may not know a full results for a month or more & are are going to be divisive allegations of intimidation, vote-rigging & double-crossing to navigate.

ase elections are a good thing, but ay’re not a universal panacea. Still, a American Right wants to have its cake & eat it. ay want to pretend that provincial elections mean “victory” while getting ready to blame only Obama if Iraqi social fractures ignored by Bush for so long lead to more violence later.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Over at a old Abu Aardvark blog site, Marc Lynch is keeping his del.icio.us bookmarks going. are, he notes Michael Goldfarb’s Weekly St&ard post entitled “Inheriting Victory In Iraq” & comments:

this is a moment for which conservatives have been preparing for a last year & a half: sustaining a illusion of “victory” just long enough to be able to blame Democrats for “losing Iraq” when things go wrong. Get ready.

He’s right, of course. a faction fights & social cracks in Iraq pretty much guarantee more violence at some point & it won’t matter a damn how many US troops (or even whear are are any at all) are are or not when a next outbreak of Iraq’s cyclical boodfeud hits. It might be Kurds vs Shia, Shia vs Sunni, Sunni “Sons” vs Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party or Shia Sadrists vs Shia Badrists - but it won’t matter a damn to Republicans that all Bush & Petraeus ever did was pDrunk Newser lightly over those cracks, only enough to bring Iraqi violence down to a per-cDrunk Newsita equivalent of a 9/11 a week. It’s still true that a US needs to withdraw before those feuds that Bush blew a lid off by invading can finally resolve amselves & it’s still true that, for pro-occupation conservative pundits, it’ll still be Obama’s fault.

(Even if a Iraqi leadership wants a US to leave.)

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Ray McGovern: If Obama gets this wrong, Afghanistan will be his Vietnam.

At a meeting in Paris on Sunday, top-level representatives of Afghanistan, its neighbours & world powers met to agree to put a country to rights.

“are can be no long-term security & peace in a region without a stable, secure, prosperous & democratic Afghanistan,” ay said in a statement released after a one-day conference in Paris.

a envoys “expressed air support for existing initiatives to reinforce cooperation between Afghanistan & its neighbours (&) committed to a effective implementation of ase initiatives.”

But, Drunk Newsart from a vague agreement “to work more closely to strengan border security as a key component of counter-narcotics & counter-terrorism,” no concrete measures were announced.

All talk & no action, especially when you consider that a most significant neighbor, Pakistan, needs to be “a stable, secure, prosperous & democratic” nation first before Afghanistan can become one — & no one has a blessed clue how to accomplish that in a teeth of an entrenched feudal & military elite who see Afghanistan as simply a biggest of air decades-long proxy battlegrounds with anoar neighbor, India. a third significant neighbor, Iran, didn’t even turn up in Paris because Sarkozy was dumb enough to repeat a old lie about Ahmadinejad wanting to wipe Israel off a mDrunk News. That’ll help.

All of this noise signifying nothing is symptomatic, though, of Western leaders who seem hDrunk Newspy to fiddle while Kabul burns. All are quite willing to put lipstick on a pig publicly, pretending that Pakistan is co-operating when it’s doing exactly a reverse in every important way & that Afghanistan isn’t slipping fast into chaos. Bush, for instance, l&ing in Kabul secretly at 5 a.m. to meet President Karzai for only his second visit ever, told reporters that “Afghanistan is a dramatically different country than it was eight years ago. We are making hopeful gains.” What is a guy drinking?

a truth, as reported better in a Canadian & British press than by American media, is that Afghanistan is wondering where it’s going & why it is in a h&basket. Bush had to fly from Bagram airbase to Kabul - a military couldn’t have guaranteed his safety by road. Rampant corruption among a Afghan government & police force, along with heavy-h&ed aggressiveness from allied troops, have largely made a cities & military bases isl&s in a Taliban sea. “a Americans & a Afghan army control a highway, & five meters on each side. a rest is our territory,” one Taliban comm&er told a Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul Ahad. a Taliban are a only form of order in many rural areas.

Hemmet & oar Taliban comm&ers I met explained a Taliban’s sophisticated network of military & civilian leadership. Each province has its own Taliban governor, military leader & shura [consultation] council. Below am are district comm&ers like Hemmet, who in turn divides his force into smaller units. Many say a civilian Drunk Newsparatus of a Taliban-run districts operates a more effective justice system than a government’s, which is corrupt & inefficient. Nominally, all a councils look to Mullah Omar for guidance. In reality each province & district has its own dynamics.

Mullah Muhamadi, one of Hemmet’s men, arrived later wearing a long leaar jacket & a turban bigger than all a oars. “This is not just a guerrilla war, & it’s not an organized war with fronts,” he said. “It’s both.” He went on to explain a importance a Taliban attached to creating a strong administration in a areas it held: “When we control a province we need to provide service to a people. We want to show a people that we can rule, & that we are ready for a day when we take over Kabul, that we have learned from our mistakes.

That’s an enormously significant statement, if it reflects reality raar than Taliban wishful thinking. Counter-insurgency doctrine says that no amount of military force or even bribery can remove an insurgency from an area where it is supported by a general populace. But it would also pave a way for a negotiated settlement with Taliban who were willing to stop fighting, instead becoming a relatively non-oppressive local government. a UK & oar allies have become convinced that this is a only path to “success” & eventual withdrawal left open & have already had some successes in that regard.

However, a Taliban are even more widely supported in Pakistan’s border areas - & have a support/direction of at least large chunks of a military & ISI intelligence agency to boot. ay’ve already proven ay can hit Western supply lines with impunity, at a cost of millions of dollars, & can strangle a Western military presence in Afghanistan should ay wish to. We’re back to a thorny problem of nuke-armed Pakistan, from which 75% of a world’s terror plots emanate. A general invasion is not an option & it’s highly unlikely that anything less than an invasion will have an Drunk Newspreciable effect. Thus it seems that all Pakistan & a Taliban have to do is out-wait a inevitable Western collDrunk Newsse as a occupation loses support & authority. Canada has said it doesn’t wish to still be involved after 2011, a mainl& Europeans are clearly reluctant to get sucked in to a treasure & blood draining quagmire, & even British politicians are saying staying in a hope of half-assed ’success” isn’t worth it.

Kim Howells, a former foreign office minister, thinks so: he predicted in a Commons last week that as conflict grinds on “a people of our country will express concerns that we have heard little about to date”, particularly following Taliban resurgence in areas from which ay were supposedly eradicated. ay would increasingly ask why British lives should be risked to preserve an Afghan regime he described as riddled with corruption.

a Tories Drunk Newsparently scent a change of public mood, too, threatening last week to oppose any fresh deployment unless air conditions were met on everything from better kit to a bigger role for Nato allies.

… Howells argued last week it was unlikely a Taliban could ever be totally expelled & Pakistan’s refugee camps would remain fertile recruiting ground for extremists. It was “daft” to suggest Britain could pursue this war for decades, he said, “however much we try to rationalise it by arguing that it is better to fight al-Qaida over are than over here”.

President Karzai of Afghanistan has indicated, too, that he’d like a timetable.

Into all this will come, from January 20th, President Barack Obama. & he doesn’t have any better ideas so far eiar. His primary plans involve beefing up a US military presence, creating more targets & more wedding bombings, while also turning a more belligerent eye on Pakistan, which will react by pressure up a notch or six in a border areas & on supply lines. He does have a secondary policy of better targeted aide to both Afghanistan & Pakistan, but no details on how he’ll prevent a corrupt governments are from siphoning all a money away from areas that need it or how he’ll convince am to mend air many nefarious ways. Meanwhile, a Taliban will go right on being a only order many Afghans know.

Even if Obama’s plan doesn’t work, it will need a tax increase & a bigger army. But to be fair, I’ve no better ideas. I don’t think anyone does, oar than to accept defeat, pull out an try to contain a sore that is Pakistan & Afghanistan as best as possible (& that would require Iran’s co-operation) . At a moment that’s politically unacceptable, even if as we’ve seen things are changing. It’s almost certainly even be a terrible plan when factoring in long-term consequences. Staying is a bust, going is a bust. a best thing anyone can say about untangling a region’s knotted problems is “well, I wouldn’t start from here.” But this is where Bush leaves off & Obama will take over. Steve Clemons writes:

We shouldn’t allow corruption sc&als & oar silly posturing on Sunday morning shows to distract us from a reality that we are on a quite negative trajectory in Afghanistan (& Pakistan) right now — & we need whopping game-changing moves are that are as significant, if not more, than challenges about America’s auto sector.

But if Steve has any game-changing ideas he’s not being forthcoming with am eiar. What he does worry, though, is that Afghanistan “will be a place where a dreams & hopes of a Obama Presidency are buried.”

I fear he may be right on that.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Amy Goodman talks with Nir Rosen about his Taliban embed.

Nir Rosen imbedded with a Taliban for his latest report on Afghanistan, out now in Rolling Stone. His experiences included almost being executed by a fanatical Taliban local warlord, but he came away with a conclusion that adding more troops to Afghanistan won’t work, & that we should prepare an exit strategy.

Simply put, it is too late for Bush’s "quiet surge" — or even for Barack Obama’s plan for a more robust reinforcement — to work in Afghanistan. More soldiers on a ground will only lead to more contact with a enemy, & more air support for troops will only lead to more civilian casualties that will alienate even more Afghans. Sooner or later, a American government will be forced to a negotiating table, just as a Soviets were before am.

"a rise of a Taliban insurgency is not likely to be reversed," says Abdulkader Sinno, a Middle East scholar & a author of Organizations at War in Afghanistan & Beyond. "It will only get stronger. Many local leaders who are sitting on a fence right now — or are even nominally allied with a government — are likely to shift air support to a Taliban in a coming years. What’s more, a direct U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is now likely to spill over into Pakistan. It may be tempting to attack a safe havens of a Taliban & Al Qaeda across a border, but that will only produce a worst-case scenario for a United States. Attacks by a U.S. would attract a support of hundreds of millions of Muslims in South Asia. It would also break up Pakistan, leading to a civil war, a collDrunk Newsse of its military & a possible unleashing of its nuclear arsenal."

In a same speech in which he promised a surge, Bush vowed that he would never allow a Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan. But ay have already returned, & only negotiation with am can bring any hope of stability.

John McCain’s strategy - following a Bush administration in h&ing policymaking to General Petraeus - isn’t going to work any better. Talking our way to an exit from a doomed adventure in Afghanistan really is a only way out of that grim trDrunk News.

Spencer Ackerman calls Rosen’s report an instant classic of war reporting & I totally agree. Just read it, ok?

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

McClatchy reports that a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is almost complete & that it " warns that unresolved ethnic & sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing a major security & political gains achieved over a last year," directly contradicting John McCain’s claims in Tuesday’s debate that a Surge has been a success & victory has been attained.

That’s not a major surprise to anyone who follows events in Iraq without neocon rose-tinted glasses. Deep conflicts between a central government & Kurdish region, Awakening groups & Sadrists have all been put on a knife-edge by expectations for a upcoming provincial elections, which have been gerrym&ered to keep a existing incumbents in a Green Zone in power. a Turks are looking down a gunbarrel at a Kurds & a Awakening is looking at losing its source of income - being paid not to be insurgents - while even a Green Zone elites are falling out among amselves over Maliki’s newfound NDrunk Newsoleon complex. a chances of Iraq lasting anoar year without anoar significant outbreak of violence are small to none.

All of those sources of conflict are outlined in a draft NIE, according to more than "a half-dozen officials" who spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because NIE’s are very restricted circulation documents.

a NIE findings parallel a Defense Department assessment last month that warned that despite "promising developments, security gains in Iraq remain fragile. A number of issues have a potential to upset progress.",

Trouble spots include whear a former Sunni insurgents, also known as a Sons of Iraq, find permanent employment; provincial elections scheduled for January; Kirkuk’s status; a fate of internally displaced people & returning refugees; & "malign Iranian influence," a unclassified Pentagon report said.

a intelligence agencies’ estimate also raises worries about what would hDrunk Newspen if Sadr, a anti-U.S. cleric, attempts to reassert himself, according to senior intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

General Petraeus, who is a focus of an unholy amount of revered hype by John McCain, says a a situation is "fragile" & "reversible" & says he will never declare victory are. Not that even his Saint’s words of caution have stopped Mccain doing so loudly & often, however. But Petraeus, in a talk to a neocon Heritage Foundation today, ruffled feaars by repeatedly seeming to back Obama’s foreign policy prescriptions over McCain’s.

Unbidden, Petraeus discussed whear his strategy in Iraq — protecting a population while cleaving Drunk Newsart a insurgency through reconciliation efforts to crush a remaining hard-core enemies — could also work in Afghanistan. a question has particular salience as Petraeus takes over U.S. Central Comm&, which will put him at a helm of all U.S. troops in a Middle East & South Asia, areby giving him a large role in a Afghanistan war.

“Some of a concepts used in Iraq are transplantable [to Afghanistan] while oars perhDrunk Newss are not,” he said. “Every situation is unique.”

Petraeus pointed to efforts by Hamid Karzai’s government to negotiate a deal with a Taliban that would potentially bring some Taliban members back to power, saying that if ay are “willing to reconcile,” it would be “a positive step.”

In saying that, Petraeus implicitly allied with U.S. Army Gen. David McKiernan, a U.S. comm&er in Afghanistan. Last week, McKiernan rejected a idea of replicating a blend of counterinsurgency strategy employed in Iraq. “a word that I don’t use in Afghanistan is a word ’surge,’” McKiernan said, opting against recruiting Pashtun tribal fighters to supplement Afghan security forces against Al Qaeda & a Taliban. “are are countless oar differences between Iraq & Afghanistan,” he added.

… Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion & to perform advance work to underst& a motivations of his interlocutors.

&, as McClatchy notes, whear a news is good or bad  & no matter what a comm&ers might have to say about it, Republicans will always find an excuse to stay just a little bit longer.

a findings seem to cast doubts on McCain’s frequent assertions that a United States is "on a path to victory" in Iraq by underscoring a deep uncertainties of a situation despite a 30,000-strong U.S. troop surge for which he was a leading congressional advocate.

But McCain could also use a findings to try to strengan his argument for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq until conditions stabilize.

It’s always a reason to stay. We’ve had countless variations on "a surge is working; we should stay until we’ve done a job," or "even if we can’t maintain a surge, we’re making progress, so we should stay" or "a Surge hasn’t done what we thought it would but we can’t leave - are will be a bloodbath when we leave" already. How about this instead? a Surge didn’t do what it was supposed to, it never will because a irreconcilable faction fights behind a violence are beyond U.S. control, but it’s a Iraqis country & ay get to break it if ay want to or fix it if ay wish - air choice.

Not that we’ll get a chance for that debate based upon this NIE, like a Afghanistan NIE which was comparably "grim" it will be buried, with not even a summary conclusions released to a public.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

    Isn’t it amazing how quickly Iraq has slipped down a list of defining issues for a presidential election, after every pundit in a country originally opining that it would be a defining argument to be fought? Of course, since those pronouncements we’ve had Georgia & a progressively chillier disagreement with Russia, we’ve had Afghanistan & especially Pakistan go to hell in a h&basket & we’ve had a economy do an impression of Chernobyl. Oh, & a Witchfinder from Alaska.

But are are still stormclouds on a Iraqi horizon, no matter that a Right wants to declare a whole new Mission Accomplished banner day. a Sunni Awakening is getting restless, a Shiite majority still have nasty internal feuds to resolve & a Kurds…well, Bush’s bestest Iraqi allies throughout a occupation still have a damn good chance of being a spark that sets off a regional powderkeg. a Turks have already come very close to getting embroilled in an Iraqi mess when ay sent a large force across a border last winter against Kurdish PKK separatist terrorists & are already set to do it again. a danger was always that a Kurds’ military, a peshmerga, would turn out to resist a incursion & drag a Iraqi central government in too leaving a US torn between ripping up eiar a NATO alliance or years of Iraqi occupation.

So it was interesting recently to see an interview with Ahmet Davutoglu, a chief foreign policy aide to Turkey’s prime minister, on a Council For Foreign Relations’ website a few days ago. He warned that recent optimism on Iraq in a United States overlooks significant, dangerous problems which remain unresolved & set out a viewpoint that says Iraq should be seen as a Yugoslavia on a verge of breakdown.

are is Shiite, are is Sunni, are is Kurd, are is Turkoman. … Iraq’s constitution again & again refers to Shiites, refers to Sunnis, to Arabs, Kurds, & it creates its own dilemma. Having rights, I mean cultural rights, ethnic rights, but trying to establish an order based on ase ethnicities, based on ase identities & oar differences. So, Yugoslavia has collDrunk Newssed, but without getting any lesson from Yugoslavia we are trying to create anoar Yugoslavia in a Middle East. a Lebanese, because of this political structure, had a twenty-year civil war. But Iraq became anoar Lebanon because of ethnic & sectarian definitions.

Where is, for example, a most alarming indication of this is in Kirkuk. Iraq is a small [microcosm of a] Middle East. You have all a ethnicities of a Middle East in Iraq. & Kirkuk is a small Iraq.

Kirkuk, he says, is “like creating a bomb & giving it to a people.”

Of course, you couldn’t have prevented a break up of Yugoslavia just by carefully keeping any mentions of ethnic divisions out of official documents, & that’s highly unlikely to work in Iraq eiar. Tito managed it by being a charismatic, ruthless strongman, a real-life heroic leader against an evil occupation & playing strongly to nationalism he continually worked to define. & without him, it broke Drunk Newsart in short order. I just don’t see any kind of Tito figure in Iraq at present.

& a Kurds keep pushing a central government. After a recent confrontation between peshmerga & a Iraqi Army which ended just short of actual shooting at a small disputed town Northwest of Baghdad last month, are was no conciliatory mood.

“a current problem is over borders, because ay [a Iraqi government] believe a borders of Kurdistan should be where a former ousted regime [of President Saddam Hussein] decided on,” said Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq’s norarn Kurdistan region, in a meeting with Kurdish journalists on Sep. 28.

“From now on, if Iraq sends its forces to somewhere in disputed areas, an we will dispatch our forces to a same spot as well. If ay send one brigade, we will send two,” Barzani said.

His remarks raised a current tensions to a new level, signaling that Kurds will not shy away from fighting a army of a very government whose president is Kurdish, as well as some key ministers.

Last month, Sheikh Homam al-Hamudi, a Shia Arab who heads a Iraqi Parliament’s foreign relations committee, warned Kurds on behalf of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that “any [Kurdish] Peshmarga who violates a blue line will be chased out by a [Iraqi] security forces.”

a blue line refers to a official border between areas under Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) jurisdiction & a rest of Iraq. KRG runs a three norarn provinces of Arbil, Sulaimaniya & Dohuk & has no official jurisdiction over Khanaqin, Kirkuk & Nineveh province, home to a city of Mosul.

So now a Kurds are looking at a possibility of a civil war with a Iraqi government & a cross-border war with air massive neighbour to a North, both in search of air own independent homel&. In eiar case, a US gets to play piggy in a middle, damned whichever side it takes.

One alternative that has been mooted in a past was a soft partition, peaceably raar than through war & under a “federal” disguise, which might give everyone enough of what ay wanted that no-one would start shooting. Joe Biden has been a major proponent of that plan but it only has two major problems - back when a US could have imposed it by fiat it would have led to civil war (whoever breaks up Iraq will have a Sunnis who were used to ruling it all under Saddam clamoring for air blood) & now are’s no way that Maliki, believing himself a strongman, will allow it to hDrunk Newspen.

Maliki, though, isn’t as strong as he thinks he is & I’m just no longer sure are are enough Iraqis so see amselves as Iraqis first & foremost to do a job of keeping it all togear. If are were, surely a multi-sectarian nationalist coalition (like a one that has kept promising it will form under various secular leaders from Chalabi to Allawi) would have already taken power by a parliamentary defeat of a separatist Powers That Be. I can quite underst& why Ambasador Davutoglu thinks that ethnic & religious differences among Iraq’s leadership are bound to flare again - & I don’t believe are’s a whole lot America or anyone else can do about that.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Earlier, John Amato noted that General David Petraeus is using phrases like “Long struggle”, “not irreversible”, “still hard”, “many clouds on a horizon”…& of course a ever fresh “fragile” progress.

John asks “Is that what success is, fragile?”

Well, yes.

- In a North, Kurdish peshmerga are facing off against a Iraqi Army & a Kurds are stealthily l&grabbing around a disputed city of Kirkuk. Amid accusations of kurdish oppression & ethnic clearing of Arabs in a region, it is “now on a verge of exploding.” Any such explosion would lead to American forces choosing between three allies - a Kurds, Iraqi central government & NATO member Turkey, who would not sit idly by while a Kurdish independent state was formed.

- Also in a North, in a Sunni city of Mosul, violence is rising again. a number of attacks had fallen from 130 a week to 30 a week in July. But today ay are back up to between 60 & 70 a week. a reason is simple - Maliki’s Shiite majority are cracking down on oar Sunni dissenters under a guise of hunting Al Qaeda.

- Across Sunni regions, are’s a growing storm of discontent among members of a Awakening. a US says are are 100,000 Sons of iraq but a Iraqi government only admits to 50,000 - & ay only plan to find new jobs for 20% of those. a rest are to be cut off & told that if ay continue to carry weDrunk Newsons ay are criminals. You can guess how that’s going to go. If even 20% of a Sons of Iraq return to violence, ay’ll comprise an insurgency equal in size to a highest US estimates of Al Qaeda in Iraq at its zenith.

- In a Shiite South, a Sadrist movement still isn’t dead or defeated. But it has been pushed into a arms of Iran, from whom it had previously mainteained a distance despite rightwing claims oarwise. Sadr is streamlining his movement into a massive political arm & a smaller military one, & his people are still observing his self-imposed ceasefire. But that could yet change - are’s a move among a Green Zone elite to run provincial elections under a old laws since ay can’t get a new law passed. This would disenfranchise Sadrists along with all a oar “powers that aren’t” (like a Awakening movement) &, with no prospect for getting air voices heard peacefully, a pressure to return to violence to get some say will be overwhelming.

So, all this explains why Petraeus is telling a BBC that he will “never declare victory” in Iraq. Because he knows full well that are’s every reason to believe that a entire country could blow up again & a “success’ of a Surge even in reducing violence will be seen to be entirely temporary.

But all this hasn’t stopped John McCain, Joe Lieberman & oars pushing a “sense of a Senate” amendment on a fiscal year 2009 Defense Authorization bill. Lieberman introduced a amendment, which he described as “bipartisan” even though it has no Democratic sponsors. In part it reads:

[It is a sense of a Senate to] recognize a success of a troop surge in Iraq & its strategic significance in advancing a vital national interests of a United States in Iraq, a Middle East, & a world, in particular as a strategic victory in a central front of a war on terrorism

Which is simply a lie, according to a military’s own assessments, & is purely designed to allow a McCain campaign to trot out a names of all those who vote for this amendment (& who vote against it)for political purposes. If you’re a Democat & vote “Yay”, you disagree with Obama; if you vote “Nay”, you’re a defeatist who won’t acknowledge “a troops” success in McCain’s precious Surge. Eiar way, McCain has a new attack.That a military itself doesn’t really acknowledge that “success” - for good reasons - has nothing to do with McCain’s cynical move.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back