BushCo – still selling snake oil on Iraq

Heckova job, Chimpy! Way to go, Rummy! What a plan, Cheney! It’s all succeeding past your wildest dreams.

Really – there’s just too much focus on the bad news. The media really wants to portray Iraq as a battleground in civil war because they hate you…or something.

Or – just maybe – it’s because the f*cking country’s gone straight down the tubes since you got rid of the non existent WMDs…removed Saddam…..installed a new government…..got Iraqis to hold democratic elections (three of them!)….um….

From Reuters:

Gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms abducted about 50 people, including the head of Iraq’s national Olympic committee, while they were holding a meeting in Baghdad on Saturday, police sources said.

[snip]

Police sources said the well-known Olympic Committee chief Ahmed al-Hadjiya and 21 bodyguards had been taken, along with some 30 athletes, by gunmen in blue camouflage uniforms who were driving official-looking four-wheel drive vehicles.

A Reuters journalist saw a convoy of such vehicles with a large number of young people apparently under arrest driving at speed through the Karrada neighborhood close to the conference hall around 1.30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. ET). It was not clear if the incidents were related.

From the Associated Press:

Bombs and mortars struck Shiite and Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area Friday, the latest in a week of tit-for-tat sectarian attacks that have killed more than 250 people.

The deadliest explosion came as worshippers left services at a Sunni mosque in northern Baghdad, killing 14 people and wounding five, police said.

[snip]

Shiite clerics, meanwhile, denounced Israel’s attacks on Lebanon during Friday prayers, and hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated to show solidarity with the Lebanese. Israel began its assault after guerrillas from the Shiite group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a raid inside Israel.

Thousands of Iraqis also demonstrated in the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad and the southeastern cities of Kut and Amarah, praising the leader of Hezbollah and denouncing Israel and the United States. Some protesters said they were ready to fight the Israelis.

“No, no to Israel! No, no to America!” demonstrators chanted in Sadr City.

“Let everyone understand that we will not stand idle,” read one of the banners carried by the demonstrators. “Iraq and Lebanon are calling. Enough silence, Arabs,” read another.

[snip]

Also Friday, Iraq’s national wrestling team pulled out of a tournament in the United Arab Emirates after its coach was killed in an attack in Baghdad, sports reporter Sagban al-Rubaie said, acting as a spokesman for the team.

The Sunni coach, Mohammed Karim Abid Sahib, was seized with one of his wrestlers as they left the sports center to buy some sweets in the northern neighborhood of Kazamiyah, where the team was preparing for the tournament.

Civil war, you say? “Oh, heck no!” says the idiot at DoD.

From the Assoicated Press:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites is as important as the military effort in establishing security in Iraq, where thousands more U.S. troops have been summoned to Baghdad to quell an upsurge in violence.

The U.S. may have to send still more troops to the capital city, said the top U.S. general in the country, while Rumsfeld said it was too early to estimate when overall levels of U.S. forces in Iraq might begin to fall.

Gen. George Casey, the senior U.S. commander, said al-Qaida has increased its killings in Baghdad to show it remains a force to be reckoned with after the June 7 killing of its leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

[snip]

Rumsfeld said U.S. forces remain committed to helping stabilize the country, but he stressed that the key concern now is political rather than military.

“It’s as much a political task as anything,” he told reporters who were accompanying him on his 12th visit to Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and his Sunni Arab power base. “They’re going to have to engage in a reconciliation process” between Sunnis and Shiites, including the Shiite militias that are engaging in acts of intimidation and violence in the Baghdad area, Rumsfeld said.

“Engage in a reconciliation process”?!

Of course! After all, we’ve seen how well that’s worked in Lebanon… and Somalia… and Afghanistan….