The "Changing Dynamic" in Iraq Posted by Michael Cohen

From an advance copy of today's speech on Iraq by President Bush:

Our troops are seeing this progress on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?”

A brief overview of the good news coming out of Iraq:

A helicopter went down in northern Iraq on Wednesday, killing all 14 U.S. soldiers aboard, the military said, the deadliest crash since January 2005

. . .Wednesday’s deaths raised to at least 3,721 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

More good news. . .

One week after a series of truck bombs hit a poor rural area near the Syrian border, the known casualty toll has soared to more than 500 dead and 1,500 wounded, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, making it the bloodiest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion in 2003.

Even more good news. . .

Iraq's prime minister lashed out Wednesday at U.S. criticism, saying no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his country "can find friends elsewhere."

. . . Without naming any American official, al-Maliki said some of the criticism of him and his government had been "discourteous."

Now if only the Congress wouldn't pull the rug out, maybe we could continue this great progress.

Political Reform

Comments

[Mike M.]

If you don't want the rug soiled, you gotta pull it out.

[SolderNoLongerInIraq]

An electrical problem caused the UH-60 crash. If that's a sign of "bad news," then one might wish to consider all the many peacetime accidents involving vertical insertion aircraft and weigh it in the balance.

Better examples could have been found of bloodshed that would have made the same point.

Has any of the contributors on this site served a day of active duty? One would wonder, since "Arsenal" tends to connote martial experience or at least competence, and "Democracy" the foreign policy goal of the exercise.

Or at least that's what FDR tended to mean. He, obviously, would be considered too hawkish today for a site that pays some mention to his words and deeds.

Pity.

[masaccio]

I don't know about the main pagers here, but at least one commenter did.