Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

He really is that stupid.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / Surge Perspective

Surge Perspective

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Jim Henley:

The pretended meaning is, The US increased troop strength in Iraq for a period of time beginning in 2007. The actual meaning is, the US increased troop strength WHILE ramping up a program to pay off Sunni resistance leaders WHILE Iraq’s warring ethno-religious factions finished completely remaking Iraq’s demographic patterns, owing to tens-to-hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of exiled and internally displaced, WHILE the US turned the capital into a warren of barricades. The net result of all those changes has been a less obtrusively violent Iraq for the time being, and the whole arrangement is “The Surge” in practice, but the cheerleaders talk as if it was all due to The Surge in pretense. Meanwhile Iraq’s “calm” would count as calamity almost anywhere on earth but Darfur or Zimbabwe.

Yes.

Reader Interactions

25Comments

  5. 5.

    Dennis - SGMM

    Forty percent of Iraq’s professionals have fled the country. Millions of Iraqis are refugees in Syria and Jordan. Hundreds of thousands more are internally displaced.
    If this is success then failure must look a lot like apocalypse.

  8. 8.

    Face

    OT:

    What a great use of state legislatures’ time and money: they’re going to continue to pass clear and obvious unconstitutional statues, just cuz…

    Check out this soundbite:

    Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called the ruling “incredibly absurd” and “a clear abuse of judicial authority” and said officials will “evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime.”

    Yes, a clear abuse of the Judicial branch…only when they rule against you. These people are fucking insane.

  9. 9.

    Dreggas

    Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called the ruling “incredibly absurd” and “a clear abuse of judicial authority” and said officials will “evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime.”

    Once the Supreme’s decide something is unconstitutional isn’t it basically a violation to do it again anyway? This is what shitstains like bush gave us, now even states are telling the highest court in the land to fuck off.

  10. 10.

    ThymeZone

    So, my suspicions are confirmed … the whole surge was a political cover, a scam aimed at making shit seem like shinola.

    What a surprise.

  11. 11.

    The Moar You Know

    cleek Says:

    if the country was smart enough to understand that, we’d never have gone into Iraq in the first place.

    “If” I were rich, I’d have a trollop and a c#nt as a wife. But I’m not.

    That’s one big “if”, there.

  12. 12.

    Dreggas

    ThymeZone Says:

    So, my suspicions are confirmed … the whole surge was a political cover, a scam aimed at making shit seem like shinola.

    What a surprise.

    When has anything in this admin not been that?

  13. 13.

    Tsulagi

    aimed at making shit seem like shinola.

    Like this?

    Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over.

    So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives — and the liberty — of the American people.

    It’s a process.

  14. 14.

    Incertus

    Y’all left out the best part of the Jindal story–that people convicted of child rape will now have to choose between physical or chemical castration and serve out their jail sentences. I’m certainly no advocate for child rapists, but it’s like we’ve suddenly decided that instead of keeping them in jail forever, we’re just going to fuck with them for the rest of their lives and never give them the chance to rejoin society. I’m all for making child rape a mandatory life sentence, but let’s not make it less and then continue to screw with them once they’ve done their time.

  19. 19.

    The Moar You Know

    Dreggas Says:

    Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called the ruling “incredibly absurd” and “a clear abuse of judicial authority” and said officials will “evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime.”

    Once the Supreme’s decide something is unconstitutional isn’t it basically a violation to do it again anyway? This is what shitstains like bush gave us, now even states are telling the highest court in the land to fuck off.

    I can’t pin this on Bush much as I’d like to – he’s a symptom, not a cause. The cause is thirty years of Republican screaming about “activist judges”, starting back even before Roe v. Wade (although Roe really gave that meme the boost it needed to make it stick). The meme is a deliberate one – it engendered a lack of respect for the judiciary and the law.

    As a result, we have the executive branch openly telling the judicial and legislative branches to fuck themselves; we already have big business buying the verdicts they want rather than the ones they deserve.

    The end of the rule of law is at hand in this country. If we are lucky, in ten years we’ll look like Mexico. If we’re not, we’ll look like Iraq.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    Face Says:

    Check out this soundbite:

    Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called the ruling “incredibly absurd” and “a clear abuse of judicial authority” and said officials will “evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime.”

    Yes, a clear abuse of the Judicial branch…only when they rule against you. These people are fucking insane.

    Bonus point: Jindal is Catholic. The GOP loves to claim that they are on the right side of Jesus when they note that the Catholic Church opposes abortion. But they studiously ignore the Church’s opposition to the death penalty.

    Incertus Says:

    Y’all left out the best part of the Jindal story—that people convicted of child rape will now have to choose between physical or chemical castration and serve out their jail sentences. I’m certainly no advocate for child rapists, but it’s like we’ve suddenly decided that instead of keeping them in jail forever, we’re just going to fuck with them for the rest of their lives and never give them the chance to rejoin society. I’m all for making child rape a mandatory life sentence, but let’s not make it less and then continue to screw with them once they’ve done their time.

    Physical castration seems to me to be cruel and unusual punishment. I’d have to think more about chemical castration.

  21. 21.

    jake

    I have to check this guy‘s counters out. He seems to actually think about these things.

    Fixed.

    people convicted of child rape will now have to choose between physical or chemical castration and serve out their jail sentences.

    Yeah! Because as pHuckabee can tell you, there is no possible way to sexually assault someone unless your balls work.

    Bloody buggery hell people are stupid.

  22. 22.

    nightjar

    ThymeZone Says:

    So, my suspicions are confirmed … the whole surge was a political cover, a scam aimed at making shit seem like shinola.

    Hey, while we’re trying to figure out their shit, their busy creating new shinola, and so on.

  23. 23.

    w vincentz

    Seems to me that those that bought the “We’re fightin’ the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” meme found something…the REAL tarrah-rists-st-s, the ones that wanted to take away our freedoms and way of life here in Ammerrica, are the memebers of the current junta…right, RIGHT here in the fascist Whitehouse and all those appointed by same.
    “Islamofacists”??? We’ve got our very own Bushofascists.

  24. 24.

    NR

    Violence in Iraq is down because the ethnic cleansing is complete. Period. The neighborhoods in Baghdad are now nearly perfectly segregated.

  25. 25.

    TenguPhule

    If we are lucky, in ten years we’ll look like Mexico. If we’re not, we’ll look like Iraq.

    Look on the bright side, the long term survival rate of incompetent nitwits in government there is very close to nil.

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