Rice: Civil war? What civil war?

This is off topic, but works.

My mailbox is flooded with mail concerning gas prices and illegal immigrants. To boycott oil companies or not; to provide amnesty to illegal immigrants or not, etc.

Since I have become jaded to the various solutions proposed by the Republicans, Democrats, Sierra Club, ACLU, etc., I have elected to solve the problems as they affect me. It solves both my gas and illegal
immigrant problems.

I have hired illegal immigrants to push my car. They're plentiful and cheaper than buying gas. Then I pay them in pesos so they have to go
home to spend it.

I love it when a plan comes together.

The Texican.

Wonder of wonders, even Thomas Friedman is now saying that Bush should start implementing "Plan B", since it is clear we are now baby sitting a civil war. Is Rice really that dense?

The feds are blind to the truth. It does not matter if they are Democrat or Republican.

The truth will only come to light after the wmd's or nukes go off in America or Israel.

Sad....................

Prepare, be armed, be ready.

The Texican.
Freeedom, the only choice at any cost and the cost will be immense.

Looks like the oil is still there, The Iraqians would be doing us a favour blowing up the oil fields and ridding us of the constant crap coming from these @%#&%#@ politicians...

Bush Didn't Know Difference Between Shiites and Sunnis
A new book by former U.S. ambassador Peter Galbraith has raised questions about President Bush's understanding of the Middle East. According to Galbraith, the president didn't understand as recently as 2002 that there were two major branches of Islam in Iraq -- Sunnis and Shiites. At a meeting with Iraqi Americans the president reportedly said, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims."

Texican...

"The truth will only come to light after the wmd's or nukes go off in America or Israel".

Gee, guy, you're an optimist. No it won't...it will still be blamed on the Methodists. Remember, the oil lobby and attendent bottom feeders will not do anything to threaten their cash inflows from the Arabs. Condi will just talk more about dialog...Bush will talk more about reaching out to the ROP...

We will move from 'CLUELESS' to 'OSTRICH'....

Loved your gas conservation idea. Instead of the CCC, we can start the MCC...Mexican Conservation Corps. And to increase mileage even more, we can pull out the engines in our cars and save all that weight to be pushed.

Hagel here is right. Hagel is also dangerous, because he is not one to welcome the divisions and demoralizations of Islam, but is rather sympathetic to the appeasers who do not want to deal with, or even recognize, the world-wide problem of Jihad, but by inclination is one of those who thinks that throwing Israel to the wolves may calm things down, may sate rather than wet the unsatable and triumphalist Muslims. Nor would he be in the slightest inclined to act forcefully against Iran.

A pity that McCain (or for that matter Lieberman) are incapable of seeing what is so wrong, so wasteful, so very much the opposite of what needs and can and will be achieved -- but after how long, and at what further American cost, cost to the soldiers, cost to the civilians --- that is,the hostilities that will continue, and grow larger, for the Sunni Arabs will never admit that they have lost power forever to the Shi'a, will never admit that they now constitute 19% of the population of Iraq, will never admit or acquiesce in the transfer of power to the equally unyielding, equally malevolent -- as far as we, the Infidels, are concerned -- Shi'a Arabs.

The wrong policy in Iraq is being supported, often, by people for the wrong reasons, people who should by this point have grasped the nature of that inevitable civil war, and further grasped how useful it will be, that civil war, in promoting our ends, our need to divide, demoralize, and otherwise weaken the camp of Islam -- not by strenous effort, but by the very reverse, by not strenusously exerting ourselves to prevent what will come, and what we should welcome.

Confusion, timidity, stupidity, cupidity, all way round. And sometimes, the wrong people, who do not understand Islam but are of an appeasing bent, especially when it comes to such idiocies as "we have to pay more attention to the Palestinian problem" or still worse, and still more idiotic, "we have to solve [the unsovable and without-end conflict betwen Israel and the Palestinians" or worse still, we need to convince Israel that it has to give up the entire West Bank" or, the complete version of the suicide note some would wish Israel to sign -- notably Lt. Gen. (ret'd-- but it's an important part of his shtick) William Odom, who not only thinks that Israel must be forced back to the utterly indefensible 1949 armistice lines (which the Arabs refused to recognize as permanent borders, yet Odom now thinks Israel is obligated to do so), but believes that the "only" way to prevent, or delay, or degrade (not necessarily destroy completely) the Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, is to force Israel to give up its own nuclear weapons. Of course the Iranians, were they able to acquire such weapons, never would (and why does Odom, curiously, not make the same suggestion for India and Pakistan?), but the point is clear: he wishes for Israel to give up the only thing, its nuclear arsenal, that may ensure its continued existence. And dares to present this, without fear of being properly answered back.

Yet Odom has -- much later than I, of course, and for all the wrong reasons (while I have not wavered from the right ones) -- argued for withdrawal from Iraq.

So we have quite a few people -- Odom, Markos Kos, tutti quanti, whose policies are hideous, whose worldviews are dangerous, yet who want us out of Iraq. If we persist in staying in Iraq to suppress that inevitable civil war, that will domestically only encourage the worst elements, if those elements can claim, as they will -- see, we should never have gone to Iraq, and we should never now attempt anything against Iran, and we should adopt a policy of "dialogue" and finding out just how we can address the "root causes" (don't expect to find, from these people, the tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam as the "root cause" of hatred of Infidels, please -- that would be like asking O.J. Simpson to produce the "real killer" which is to say, himself).

Every idiotic day we reamin in Iraq we weaken ourselves, and what's more, strengthen the forces of appeasement and misunderstanding in this country. One more reason to get out now.

The latest today in iraq.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=43792206-9aae-4dca-bc61-b4514c9d8748&k=42112

What civil war ?

What civil war?
Charles Krauhammer had this to say back in March:

"Of Course It's a Civil War"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032301157.html

Excerpt:

"This whole debate about civil war is surreal. What is the insurgency if not a war supported by one (minority) part of Iraqi society fighting to prevent the birth of the new Iraqi state supported by another (majority) part of Iraqi society?

By definition that is civil war, and there's nothing new about it. As I noted here in November 2004: "People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes..."

The absurdity is twofold:

The first absurdity is thinking that once Saddam Hussein and his regime was overthrown, that the Shi'a would somehow share power in the manner of sweet-reasonable Western man, and that the Sunnis would acquiesce in the loss of the power they did hold. Neither has happened, neither will happen. The Shi'a Arabs are keenly aware that the major oilfields of Iraq are in the territories that they control, keenly aware that their percentage of the population has steadily risen (just as the Shi'a in Lebanon have become over the past half-century come to constitute a much greater part of the population in that country), to about 60-65% of the total, or more than three times that of the Sunni Arabs who kept them down, and out, for so long.

The second absurdity, even greater than the first, is to think this inevitable fissiparousness is to be deplored, regarded as a catastrophe, a disaster. It is nothing of the sort. It is as useful, for our aims, as was the Iran-Iraq War. Not good for Iraq, that war. Not good for Iran, that war. Not good for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the U.A.E., that had to pour $60 billion into Iraq. But for us? For the Infidels of the world? Should have gone on forever.

Two main absurdities, and variations on each. A florilegium of misconceptions, sillinesses, missing-the-obvious-point.

Historians in the future, if there is a future (I think there is) will not be kind. Not to the
Administration, not to its cheerleaders, nor to those who in Europe, or here, attacked the policy in Iraq for all the wrong, rather than the right reasons.

Practically no one shall 'scape whipping.

civil war, well manage it, stand back, let muslims kill each other, when enough are gone to meet their allah, then it will be time to state how they run their civiilzation.. let Christian Iragi and Kurds take over the country. its a time cosuming project, but hey if we backed over the deaths at D day, the French would talking in German.

If one reads the piece by Krauthammer, one sees that, while he flatters himself on mentioning "civil war" back in a 2004 column, it is clear, from that column, and from all his columns since, that he is simply using "civil war" to define those "Iraqis" who do not wish to see the bright new democratic regime succeed, and that other "Iraqis" are supporters of this brave new Iraq.

In other words, he still gets it wrong. He still thinks the war is between the supporters of the messianic American project, and those who oppose it. That is not the main driving force in Iraq's internecine warfare, and it never was. It was always a fight over who whom, over Sunni Arabs refusing to acknowledge their diminished status, and Shi'a Arabs not wishing to give an inch, with a helpiing, on the side, of the Kurds eager for no longer having to submit to Arab rule, Sunni or Shi'a or both.

Krauthammer has consistently been a cheerleader for the Iraq venture, consistently failed to see how those conflicts could work in our interest. In the same way, he was a great supporter -- go back and look -- for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

He is also a past master at covering up this record, or by selective quotation making it seem as if he said or meant other things. He has been, like so many others, including many at My Weekly Reader -- the cheerleaders first for the "good Shi'a" (see Schwartz, see Gerecht, see the best of the lot, Taheri) in Iraq as opposed to the bad old Sunnis, and leading the list, that Prince of Peace, Sistani, and now having to twist as the disturbingly complacent and not-very-intelligent but self-assured William Kristol continues to fail to understand Iraq and its uses, but has gone on to make pronouncements, equally certain, about "what needs to be done in Iran."

Don't let all these people off, just because, on the whole, you may share their worldview. They did not ask enough of themselves. They have yet to stop and study Islam. They have been wrong, and wrong again. Wrong about the basis of the Arab siege of Israel, even if they support Israel in this or that setting, and wrong about Iraq. Not to be forgotten or easily forgiven.

Until the leadership of the Western world accepts islam as the enemy of democracy and peace, chaos will reign. The inconsistencies in policy regarding conflict in the Middle East are alarming. While supporting the cause to disarm and disable Hezbollah in Lebanon, an organization led by shiite Hassan Nasrallah, the Mahdi Army in Iraq, led by shiite Muqtada al-Sadr is allowed to escape the same necessary fate. Both are sworn enemies of democracy and freedom, yet in the eyes of our leaders are not the same. The efforts to appease different branches of hatred on the tree of islam are bound to fail. †

This is true, Hugh. It also bears reminding that we did not send our men and women into harm's way to force people who can't get along with one another to live together.

If things do get worse, one has to wonder at what point will the Bush Administration (or the one to follow) face the facts and facilitate the division of Iraq along its sectarian fault-lines?

Texican & SCV

I like your solution as well. As SVC suggested, remove the engines (thereby eliminating maintenance costs from oil changes to transmission tune-ups; only mechanical things, like wheel balancing, or suspensions might need maintaining, and that too after a much higher time and distance) and replace it with more trunk space. That would also reduce the dependence on SUV's, and allow even small cars to cover the needs of most families.

I don't think Mexicans will be enough - maybe bring in everyone from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, and have them all push our cars. After all, doesn't everyone want a better life?

The greates mistake the US made, after WWII, is the creation of the UN. The UN was created based on the assumption that all nations will respect law, that which contradicts to reality.

Prior to the creation of UN, there was no political correctness intertwined with arm struggles. We fought WWI and WWII whole heartedly and won.

Every since UN exist, political correctness pervades in all diplomacies to the extend of appeassing allies who play double games. The creation of the UN was followed with other useless NGO, who became the master of distortion, such Human Rights Organization, Amnesty International, ACLU, etc. So news media followed all of them to the precipice.

To win war againt the ruthless Islamic enemies in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, the UN must first be dissolved.

l keep reading words above that equate retreat, apease, close the borders, start driving cars the size of ceraal boxes, well l am sorry l would of thought l would of expected more from some, some of you sound more Eurowiennies. you want to give more amunision to the libs and far left of the Democrats, yeah retreat, prove to the muslim horde, you can allow only so many killed. and before any of you start howling, l have enough family and friends in the both the US and Cdn military. the muslim horde only repsect strenght, Bush for all his failings, has been the best friend of Israel to date, not as good as we all would like, but this is reality here.
there are ways to manage this iraqi civil war, my God we lost more Cdn in one battle during WW2, than so far in Iraq, and this war is as important if not more important for the survival of western civiliaztion.

"[If] Jeffersonian democracy remains a strategic goal for Iraq, anything short of that goal will be scored as a failure. But what if we accept the politically incorrect fact that our failure to establish liberty and justice for all in Iraq --namely, freedom of conscience and equality before the law
-- is due to the nature of Islamic culture, not to the efficacy of American efforts? If, five years after Sept. 11, we finally faced the fact that liberty in Islam -- defined, literally, as "freedom from unbelief" -- has nothing to do with liberty in the West, we could finally understand why an Iraqi constitution enshrining sharia is wholly incompatible with everything our own democracy stands for, and is thus not something worth dying for."

Looks like the Middle East is really going nuts.

The American plan is working perfectly. It's not really about helping the tools in the Middle East. It's about protecting American interests.

And right now it interests us to fuck up the Middle East. It's time to teach the jihadis a thing or two about "asymetrical" warfare. Take out a few thousand innocent Americans, we come over there and fuck up the entire Middle East.

I wonder if they even get it yet.

Personally, I could not care less what happens to the muslims. And the more we fuck up the Middle East, the more we fuck up their ability to expand.

No need for the American military, or civilians, to do anything to bring about the situation in Iraq most favorable to us. A little lesson or two at the National War College, from General Kutuzov or another clever cuncatotorial general in history, would be helpful in diminishing the gung-ho enthusiasm for remaking the world. Exercises in how to identify, and then how to encourage, the fissures or other points of weakness within the camp of the enemy would be worth giving.

In that vast Pentagon, is there anywhere an office devoted to tracking those potential sources of weakness and internecine warfare, in the camp of Islam? For example, is there an office where the Shi'a presence in various Sunni-dominated countries is carefully tracked, and the treatment of those Shi'a, by both the Sunni rulers and the Sunni population, are carefully tracked as well?

And is there a special office designed to do nothing but figure out ways to use the peculiar vulnerability of the Alawites -- who must prove to both Sunnis and to Shi'a that despite their Mary-worship, despite the Syrian government closing on Christmas, despite the Good Friday processions that, incredibly for a supposedly "Muslim" country, actually take place publicly, without incident (because the Alawite officers have the army in place to protect those Christian processions from the real Muslims, some of whom have resigned themselves to accepting these things) -- to obtain, not the "friendship" (for god's sake, put that idiotic goal out of your mind) but rather the cooperation of those "Alawites," by threatening to encourage others -- Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia -- to use their propaganda machines to harp on this little matter of the Alawite despots who have murdered Sunnis, genuine Muslims, and continue to hold them in thrall. The Alawite rulers may think we would never do this, but that is only because they fail to realize that at this point, if the Alawites behave so as to promote the worst and most violent and most potent of Muslim armed groups, they should not expect their worship of Mary to get them off the hook.

Last year they lost Lebanon as a place to exploit financially. Now they have, in their insensate williingness to fulfill Iranian bidding and thereby to risk everything, have figurately lost their heads. If they do not come to their senses, Americans, with not their "Sunni Arab allies" but rather with some help from Sunni Arabs who have their own reason for cutting Syria's ties with Iran, then they will be in danger, and not far in the future, of turning that figurative loss into a literal one. Surely they know that. Surely they know what happened to those Alawite military cadets in Homs. Surely they know their local Muslims, and what is just beneath the surface, and what could so easily be made to come out, to the great chagrin of those Alawite officrs, suddenly losing control of their maddened men.

Why risk it? Why risk everything? Hezbollah is in trouble, Iran is going to be in bigger trouble. Why should the Alawites of Syria risk all?

My own analysis and opinion:

The real reason we invaded Iraq.

l. Greedy corporations (Bush's real base) looked at the profits from sales of supplies, military and civilian,the lucrative contracts for building bases, maintaining them and reconstruction..etc, and of course increased control over oil

2. The needs and fears of the Saudis', Kuwaiti, Qatar, Bahrain etc.. They feared Saddam and wanted him gone. In fact the Saudis have been manipulating every Republican administration since Eisenhower, it was their idea, and even funding, to recruit the Muslim brotherhood and they gave up their son Osama bin Laden to expand their influence into South Asia.

3. Iran. Iran helped Bush and Blair justify the invasion by providing cooked documents and photos to the Iraqi National Congress. via Talabani and Alawi.

Blair's famous statement that Saddam can hit Britain in 45 minutes is based on photo's and documents of Iran's missles, that were doctored and provided to Alawi and INC. The U.S. and Britain wasted our blood and money doing Iran's bidding, making it easier for them to expand their power and influence in the Muslim world.

The mullahs of the Iranian Revolutionary Council once had to skip over Iraq to get to Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, now with their satrapy of SCIRI and the Da'wa party, as well as Moqtada/Nasrallah Mehdi Army. They don't have to skip over anything. there is a direct line from Tehran to Beirut as Chris Matthews calls the Shi'a Crescent.

Finally Israel. Israel misplayed it's hand, used it's influence and AIPAC to encourage the neo cons, who also have a strong pro Israel bias, to invade Iraq.. hoping to weaken and divide the Arab threat. Saddam was no real threat to Israel, only a symbolic threat, the same symbolic threat it posed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc.. his reinvention as Saladin.

So we pulled Israel's irons out of the fire, but more importantly the threat to the Sultanates, Emirates and Kingdoms of the Arabs, and the threat to the mullahcracy of Iran. Ahmadinjad owes his office as much to the U.S. as he does to the voting Iranian public.

We pulled one set of irons out of the fire for the Israeli's and the Saudi/Kuwaiti's, only to make the situation even more dangerous and precarious for the Israelis and Saudi's and Kuwaitis.

As ever, when it comes to right wing reactionaries, no thought of adverse unintended consequences...and worse the Islamic like inability and unwillingness to admit error, guilt, gullibility or culpability.

OT, but I have to tell everyone.

Coconut oil mixed with diesel is being used as petrol (gasoline) in cars in the Solomon Islands. An engineer said that if engines are modified, they can be made to run on coconut oil alone.

Drawback, they cannot run under 24 degrees because then the coconut oil turns to butter. However at all places above 24 degrees, can use coconut oil with, or instead of petrol.

Voltaire
Coconut oil, the food grade stuff I use topically, solidifies below around 80 F (or so).
The 24 you refer to may be C. That could be a practical problem in the U.S., however it is easilly warmed to fluid state. Interesting anyway.

Yes, pismopal, the 24 I was referring to was 24 degress Celsius.

Is Rice really that dense?

Posted by: Infidel33 at August 7, 2006 11:00 AM

What did you expect from someone who, after 9/11, asked "What is Al-Qeda?". Later, to tell, of all the organizations, Hamas supporting CAIR: "We know the benevolence, in the heart of Islam". No, seriously, what did you expect? Ofcourse, with Dubya parroting "Izlum is a Religion of Peace", suddenly, Rice doesn't look that dense, does she?

Until the leadership of the Western world accepts islam as the enemy of democracy and peace, chaos will reign.

Posted by: Kreuzueber Halbmond at August 7, 2006 01:18 PM

This is one simple truth that will have to be accept sooner (if civilization and lives are to be saved) rather than later (when stark truth will stare down at us from the eyes with Kafia covered barbarian). Mosques, madrassas, Islamic centers, Cultural understanding programs are a part of Jihad toolkit. Contradictions, confusion, corrctions, appeasements, political correctnes are barriers in the struggle to save civilization and lives.

Well summarized, Kreuzueber Halbmond !!!

This woman doesn't understand, or refuses to see, that islamists hold her in contempt.

Rowane

This woman's appeasement seems to know no bound (remember she offered $100/- to each terrorist who gave up a weapon.. like a terorrist won't take back the same weapon, right after pocketing the $100/- bill)?. Call me cynical but Condi, after Dubya, is the single bigges danger to America.

Voltaire,
When Rudolph Diesel made the diesel engine, he intended it to run on vegetable oils of all sorts. And they do. I am looking for the link to a German company that makes engines that run on SVO (straight vegetable oils). But the present day diesel engines will run on vegetable oils as well. See this.

http://www.bio-power.co.uk/tryit.htm