Sectarian Violence in Iraq

According to the Pentagon's own report published in August titled, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq", page 34, "Sectarian violence has increased the last quarter". This misleads the reader, as seen when you examine the graph above, the violence took a dramatic increase in February 2006. This was the result of a very provoking and catastrophic incident, the Samarra Mosque bombing in which 1000 civilians were killed with thousands more wounded. This holiest of sites in Iraq, with its Golden Dome, was targeted exactly to incite Shi’a Muslims to retaliate in kind against Sunnis. And as hoped by the thugs, the sectarian violence has continued. That was the moment in time the war changed from just harming Americans to where it turned inward to the Iraqi people to brew the hatred and violence, which ensued.

That is why we must now leave Iraq, as we have no dog in this fight. In my previous post, I raised questions as to why we were not engaged in this war in Iraq with overwhelming force, as espoused by Colin Powell. And I raised the suggestion that in order to win this war we would need to institute a Draft. I even suggested that if this were a war so important to us as was WWII, why wouldn't Americans support the Administration and go for it. I said then, that is because they would have to admit they made a mistake in troop levels and what was necessary to win the war and they didn't want to admit a mistake.

I now think an even more compelling reason they have decided not to use overwhelming force and is the real only reason it has not been used. President Bush, VP Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld must truly believe this Sectarian war is not possible to win. There is no other logical reason, given the recent analogy to WWII and that this war is the greatest struggle of the 21st Century.

So this means that we are still fighting a war we know we can't win and that if continued will have a lasting impact on the health and well being of this economy and psyche for generations to come. We are going bankrupt and knowing we are but continually not having the courage to pull the plug on it. It seems that the Republicans want to get out of this after the 2008 elections so that they can say the Democrats pulled the plug on it and lost it. When in fact, the Republicans have lost this war and all that is left is for the referee, the voters, to make the call. Well you've heard it here. Have the courage to pull the plug on the members of Congress and the Senate that are playing a losing, fools game and believing the President's, VP's and Rumsfeld's BS. Less than 65 days left to vote. Make sure you are registered and VOTE if you are outraged!

UPDATE: Sept. 4, 2006

It appears that the number 2 person in Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Saeedi, was captured today. He is responsible for the February bombing of the Samarra Mosque, which killed over 1000 civilians.