Oh great!
Now we will never leave.

If these people could just shut up and pretend to get along we would have left already!

Posted by: Mr Ape Pig at March 6, 2006 3:08 PM

The Iranians want a timeline? Here's a timeline, When hell freezes over!!! Or the hell known as Iran freezes over!!! Which ever comes first.

Posted by: Ironman Hondo at March 6, 2006 3:11 PM

We are the conquering nation...we have every right to be there.

The question should be "what is the timeline for Iranian troops to leave Iraq?".

America is already fighting the war with Iran in Iraq.

Posted by: alaskan1000 at March 6, 2006 3:12 PM

I agree with him. Lets leave quick and then our armed forces can be ready for the real threat....IRAN!

OH! The irony

Posted by: DaveyFreak at March 6, 2006 3:19 PM

At least Mr. Fitzerald never 'demanded' a timeline...

Posted by: jsla at March 6, 2006 3:36 PM

The bombing of the Shiite Shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra was probably carried out by Iran's agents. The Persian-Aryan Nation (51% of Iran's population are Persian) needs outside enemies (the U.S.) to hold onto power-hence even the U.S. is blamed for the bombing of the Shiite Shrine.

Iran is being geopolitically surrounded and Iraq is the western side of the encirclement. When the regime in Iran goes there may be ethnic strife there that will make the sectarian strife in Iraq look very mild. Iran will be a dangerous place then-and not a good place for anyone to have nukes. (They will not be allowed to get nukes.)

The whole region is so unstable that we must do everything we can to develop-invent alternative energy as soon as possible. That must be the U.S. and the world's policy re "the Eurasian Balkans."

Posted by: Frank at March 6, 2006 3:56 PM

Either way we’re screwed. If we take 6 months or 6 years to leave, once we’re out, the jihadists and the like will be crowding the streets shooting their rifles in the air claiming victory for having pushed out the crusaders.

There must be some sort of ‘reality-warping’ going on in Iraq. Perhaps it’s the intense heat?

Posted by: illustr8rg8r at March 6, 2006 4:00 PM

Is it now funny how both the Iranians and the Democrats both have the same talking points.. a timeline for troop withdrawls..l think they will find Bush's answer not amusing! the poster above saying that they are alreadying fight iranians in iraq! iranians are also complaining about weapons being sent to iran to fight against their goverment... let them have terror in their own country!

Posted by: Lulu at March 6, 2006 4:03 PM

He said that the “presence of occupiers in Iraq” was the reason behind the “desecration of Muslim sanctities”, a reference to the recent bombing of a revered Shiite Shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra.

Oh great, I knew it was all our fault that Sunnis are killing Shi'ites and vice versa. As soon as we leave, we'll see them embracing each other as brothers sharing in the peace and honor of Islam. [translation: knife fight to the death]

Yes, we should withdraw from Iraq, but because it is in our best interest; who cares what Iran wants.

Iran wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq. The longer we are bogged down in Iraq, the longer we are unable to act against the Iranian nuclear threat. Iran would love for U.S. and Iraqi Sunnis to keep killing each other in constant skirmishes for decades. So how do they keep us there? By saying they want us to leave. What U.S. politician (or JW pundit) wants to be seen as agreeing with the Iranian mullahs?

We should withdraw because our work there is complete. We have overthrown a vicious dictator, installed a democracy that includes representatives from all ethnic groups in Iraq, created a military that is de-Baathified, and restored water/electricity/gas infrastructure. We have declared their civil war to be over. The Iraqis should now be free to choose their own destiny without the pesky interference of us occupiers.

Posted by: special_guest at March 6, 2006 4:10 PM

I demand, I demand, I demand, that is all I ever hear a muslim say, I demand. Try asking with your head bowed low or get on your knees and beg. You might get further if you realized you have no right to demand anything. Our response should be as childlike as the demand "make me". Why would anyone listen to a muslim demand anything, they have no working government, they destroy everything they touch, they teach their children to hate as young as 3 and they produce nothing useful for anyone, at least on their own. My personal answer to this clown would get me banned but most of you can figure it out. A demand implies a position of power or equality, I don't see that as reality. Iran is a rouge state run by idiots. I’m sorry I had to candy coat it but I’m learning to be PC. Besides I wouldn’t want to offend my friend Naseem.

Posted by: Ronin at March 6, 2006 4:11 PM

"Lets leave quick and then our armed forces can be ready for the real threat....IRAN!"

Right, any Iranian nuclear bomb potential needs to be removed, though I think Hugh has correctly pointed out that this should not involve on-site military.

Right also about becoming independent re energy.

BTW, what are any of you guys thinking about the planned Iranian oil bourse and its effect on the economy? Personally, I think it is a real economic risk AND that there are completely other genuine security reasons to make Iran unable to attack Israel.

The MSM seems to be avoiding the Iranian oil bourse topic altogether, and most internet references seem to think that the bourse is the U.S.'s wicked 'real reason' for wanting to attack Iran. Whether it will be part of the reason - who knows? But who can now deny that Iran is run by a lunatic potential mass-murderer who has been working on getting 'the bomb'?

Posted by: Lilith at March 6, 2006 5:49 PM

The Timeline:

-as soon as we are ready to attack you, Iran.

Satisfied?

Posted by: profitsbeard at March 6, 2006 5:58 PM

No timeline. No announcement. Just, little by little by little, Americans leaving from here, and from here, and from there, until there is nothing or almost nothing left. And then, in one fell swoop, goodbye to all that. Goodbye to the plans for that $595 million embassy. Goodbye to the dreams of permanent bases (save possibly in Kurdistan). Goodbye to "democracy" that ensures a Shi'a ascendancy.

The American army should make sure not to leave anything behind. No airplanes, of course. No helicopters. No Bradley fighting vehicles, no tanks, no nothing. Except for a few Jeeps, if sufficiently battered, and possibly some rifles, and that one other item suitable for incorporation into Arab or Muslim armies -- you are waiting to read it here yet again, and I wouldn't want to disappoint -- the zumbooruk.

Posted by: Hugh at March 6, 2006 8:38 PM

Of course Iran wants to know when we are leaving Iraq. All their posturing lately I am sure is because right now they are the meat in the US Military sandwich. We have a giant working war machine just 400 miles southwest of Tehran and one thousand miles east, we have troops in Afghanistan. They should be frightened, anyone with half a brain would be.

Posted by: BurgerBoy at March 6, 2006 8:39 PM

Mr. Fitzgerald never disappoints. The zumbooruk!

If I only knew how to do that super bold treatment that some have mastered, I'd do if for the zumbooruk!

But failing that, I'll just repeat it three times, this last being the final time:

The ZUMBOORUK!

Blammo! SPLOOSH!!! Plunk....

Posted by: jsla at March 6, 2006 9:09 PM

Could we leave them some petards too?

Posted by: jsla at March 6, 2006 9:15 PM

(1,300,000,000 petards?)

Posted by: jsla at March 6, 2006 9:30 PM

Iran has completely lost it's marbles, threatening world one day to demanding a timeline on a war they are not even in.

Posted by: Denver at March 6, 2006 10:18 PM

A poster above demonstrates one does not need George Lucas or complicated Hollywood machines to create sound effects. The best kind are those you do not hear, but see in print, and then your mind collaborates, so that to make them work, you reproduce them, hearing them internally, perhaps even prompted to uttering them aloud. Mental soundtrack, magical print.

That blammo. That sploosh. That plunk.

Posted by: Hugh at March 6, 2006 10:39 PM

Excellent Post Special Guest..most excellent, well thought out, consise and rational.

This point, I fear was missed by many

By saying they want us to leave. What U.S. politician (or JW pundit) wants to be seen as agreeing with the Iranian mullahs?

Many "conservatives" have never read Lenin, in fact most haven't. But the wise study the enemy.

Lenin knew how to play reactionaries, and that is by using reverse psychology, his dictum of Indirect Reversal goes "Make yourself as obnoxious as you can, and then your enemy (or target) will oppose what you propose and propose what you oppose, and by such measures hand you the keys to the kingdom on a silver platter."

Americans may not have read Lenin, and conservatives don't think much of psychology, but it is very apparent that the Muslims read and study more than the Qur'an.

Posted by: Nariz at March 6, 2006 11:09 PM

You don't need Lenin. You just need Joel Chandler Harris, and Brer Fox, and Brer Rabbit, and the tarbaby.

'Mawnin!' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee -- 'nice wedder dis mawnin','sezee.

"Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nothin', en Brer Fox, he lay low."

And so on. Iraq is that tarbaby.

The Iranians are not sayin' nothin', but they are saying enough to get the American government to refuse to recognize what is the best course of action for the Americans --which is not to do the opposite of whatever someone tells us to do, but to do what makes sense - sense from the viewpoint of American national interests, and the greater good of Infidels everywhere. And even, one might say, in the long-term interests of Muslims though not of Islam itself.

Who's that hippity-hopping down the bunny trail? It's George Bush. It's Condoleeza Rice. It's the remarkably silent, and therefore acquiescent in this Iraq nonsense, members of Congress.

That's who's hippity-hopping down the bunny trail.

And Easter's on its way.

Posted by: Hugh at March 6, 2006 11:22 PM

I thought the atrocities were being done by those crazy Muslim against Muslim car bombing party's going on. So, blowing up a building not people is more of a reason for us to leave. Now that is IDOLATRY!!!!
the worship of idols; the worship of images that are not God.

Posted by: disciple at March 7, 2006 12:15 AM

I clearly disagree with specialguests theory that Iran has covert strategy to apply reverse psychology and say the opposite of what they truly want, namely to get the U.S. out of Iraq when they secretly want the U.S. to stay in Iraq and get bogged down so as to avoid a confrontation with Iran.

How ridiculous!

First, I don't think that the Iranians understand western psychology very well. Psychology is not taught much in the Middle East and has little relevance to Iranian leaders such as President Ahmedinejad or Foreign Minister Mattaki, who treat anything from the west as inferior and poisonous. These guys are not a sophisticated group of politicians who understand how to apply sophisticted western psychology theories to military strategies.

Second, if the U.S. stays the course in Iraq, then the Americans are that much closer to Iran than they would be if they were to leave Iraq.

Any organized American military presence in a neighboring country such as Iraq poses a real threat to Iran simply because Iraq could act as a base for an attack on Iran. It is easy to deploy planes, cruise missles, and ships from Iraq compared to another American ally in the Middle East.

Also, the Iraq/Iran border is an easy entry point to confront a military target in Iran. Intelligence gathering from the Iraq/Iran border is smoother to facilitate as is the survelliance monitoring. It is clear as crystal that there are absolutely no benefits to Iran by having an American military power nearby, especially when they are causing such a stir on the world stage by failing to cooperate with the civilized world on the nuclear issue.

I believe that the real reason that Mottaki said the “presence of occupiers in Iraq was the reason behind the desecration of Muslim sanctities" is because he is a hardline Islamic fundamentalist who believes that the war in Iraq is a threat to Islam, his revered religion.

He wants to turn Muslims against the U.S. and the west. His ulterior motive is to use the Islamic faith to evoke a reaction in the Muslim world and further his own agenda to weaken the United States and the west.

Posted by: Johnathan at March 7, 2006 1:00 AM

I find it intersting that an Iranian leader is trying to manage Iraqi foreign affirs.

What right does Foreign Minister Mottaki have to tell the country of Iraq what it should do?

How condescending and patronizing.

Iran is eying Iraq because it knows that there is a power vacuum in this fragile country.

Iran wants to insert more power and control over Iraq.

Shiites want to unite and have more dominace in the Middle East.

Posted by: Johnathan at March 7, 2006 1:09 AM

Nariz kindly said "most excellent, well thought out, consise and rational."

And all done without fancy schmantzy sound effects nor dromedary-mounted-blunderpuss's, I might add. It lightens an infidels' heavy heart to see the indominatable Hugh getting giddy. Spring is on the way.

"'Skin me, Brer Fox,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, 'snatch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my yeras by de roots, en cut off my legs,' sezee, 'but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch,' sezee.

Posted by: special_guest at March 7, 2006 1:11 AM

No timeline. No announcement. Just, little by little by little, Americans leaving from here, and from here, and from there, until there is nothing or almost nothing left. And then, in one fell swoop, goodbye to all that. Goodbye to the plans for that $595 million embassy. Goodbye to the dreams of permanent bases (save possibly in Kurdistan). Goodbye to "democracy" that ensures a Shi'a ascendancy.

Hugh

Given that prescription, what makes you think that despite the rhetoric, the administration is not actually secretly doing just that?

Posted by: Infidel Pride at March 7, 2006 1:15 AM

Jonathan said "How ridiculous!"

Oh well, you win some you lose some.

"He wants to turn Muslims against the U.S. and the west."

Based on the news reports of bad SUV driving etc., it happeers dat dey all dun' turnd 'ganst us allreddy.

Posted by: special_guest at March 7, 2006 1:20 AM

Infidel Pride said

what makes you think that despite the rhetoric, the administration is not actually secretly doing just that?

According to debka, the U.S. has already begun its pullout, and has withdrawn from 1/5 of Iraqi territory.

Posted by: special_guest at March 7, 2006 1:26 AM

re: Iranian leadership

Overestimating an enemy is seldom as costly as underestimating one. Even a midget ('little person' or whatever the current PC term is) has enough reach to knife you in the groin.

Posted by: Eisenhund at March 7, 2006 3:00 AM

And what plans does iran have for iraq once we leave?

We should stay as long as it takes to tame this ideology.

Posted by: chuck at March 7, 2006 6:14 AM

I find it intersting that an Iranian leader is trying to manage Iraqi foreign affirs.

What right does Foreign Minister Mottaki have to tell the country of Iraq what it should do?

Posted by: Johnathan at March 7, 2006 01:09 AM

"Interesting" in what way? Iran has been Hezbollah's banker for decades now and thus the puppetmaster behind the curtains for not only Lebanon, but Syria as well. Iran's greater ambitions have been there for all to see for some time.

No rights at all, given the expressed will of the Iraqi people is for staged pull-outs when conditions are stablized and the population generally safe. And we know what Iran's contribution has been in that area, don't we.

And the usual suspects screwed up their faces in contempt when David Frum described Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at March 7, 2006 8:17 AM

"We should stay as long as it takes to tame this ideology."
-- from a posting above

American soldiers have been in Iraq for three years, at a cost of close to $400 billion (another $50 billion in Afghanistan). Those soldiers removed Saddam Hussein, and his entire regime. They have been all over the place, doing everything they can, along with civilian contractors, to make life better, with the building or refurbishing of schools and hospitals, water-treatment plants, courses on economic activity and entrepreneurship (shades of Dr. Arthur H. Cole and Prof. Alfred Chandler), all the way to soccer balls and candy. The country has more visible Islam now, Islam in the air after having been partly suppressed or exploited for his own purposes under Saddam Hussein.

This ideology cannot be tamed by Infidels. It can be disarmed. It can be deprived of money. But no Infidels are going to "tame" Islam. It will have to come from within, and only when a sufficient number of people within the world of Islam live in a world where the deficiencies of Islam, this static and essentially totalitarian belief-system, is shown up -- first to Infidels, so that they are confident of their own opposition to it, and not uncertain, inclined to yield here and there, or holding out false hopes of adherents of a fabricated "moderate" Islam which, though there are Muslims who are unobservant, or less enthusiastic about putting in practice all the tenets, and fulfilling all the duties, of Islam.

The goal for the entire Infidel world (that means China and the Hindus of India, Japan and Korea, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, and not merely North America and Western Europe and Australia and Israel) should be to prevent the Muslim world from acquiring the most dangerous weaponry, or where it has done so, as in Pakistan, work to render use of those weapons ineffective. It means to prevent the acquisition of large sums of money that are used, in part, to spread Islam. It means to stop all forms of Jizyah, all diplomatic support, and easy access to the Western world's technology, beginning but not ending with arms. It means to do nothing to discourage, and everything to encourage, divisions within the Islamic world, focussing mostly on the two that present themselves in Iraq: the Sunni-Shi'a divide, which has consequences mostly for that very area of the Middle East (in Iraq, and then in Bahrain, eastern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen) but also in Pakistan, and among the Sunnis and Shi'a in the Western world; the Kurdish resentment of Arab domination, that encapsulates, and reflects, and if that resentment leads to a free Kurdistan, could inspire other non-Arab Muslims to work against, at the very least, the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs.

It is in order to "tame the ideology" that the Americans should leave Iraq. Let it collapse into civil war. Let it be a mess. Let the mess extend to Iran. Let the Islamic Republic of Iran use up men, money, materiel. Let that regime weaken, as a result. Let the Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs within Iran move from unhappiness to open revolt, and in the attempt to suppress those revolts, ideally occurring at the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran will come toppling down. But don't forget that the Shi'a in Yemen, and in the eastern Saudi province of al-Hasa, will also be affected. And so will Hezbollah, whether the Shi'a seem to be winning or losing -- an irresistible fight, for some of them, and the more members of Hezbollah who go off to fight in Iraq, against Sunnis (or to do so in Lebanon), the more this may relieve pressure on Lebanese Christians.

Infidels need to repeatedly point out that Islam, by its very nature, naturally favors despotism. Infidels need to point out that despite being the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, Muslim Arabs have failed to do very much with that money, have continued to rely on wage-slaves from outside, and have failed to build modern economies (there is the Las-Vegas-cum-Disneyworld-cum-Rodeo-Drive of Dubai, but that depends entirely on oil revenues, directly or indirectly). Infidels need to point out that the habit of mental submission in Islam -- "Allah knows best" or, more often, Muhammad (uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil) does, and no one can deny the force of his example, for he is the Perfect Man -- leads to a habit of mental submission in all things, a failure to be sufficiently alert to the advantages of free and critical inquiry, and that is why for at least a thousand years, within Islam, there has been a failure either to engage in, or to support, the enterprise of science. There is much more to be said. Islam needs to be related -- to be blamed -- for the failures of Muslim politiies and peoples.

It is not the fault of infidels. If Muslims want what most of us regard as a better life, they will have to tame Islam itself. It is their problem. It is not a problem that should be exported to the Lands of the Infidels, either through the acceptance of blame by those Infidels, and the payment of the Jizyah of foreign aid, or the undertaking of messianic missions to bring "democracy" or some such to the Islamic world if there is no necessary connection, and there is not, between that "democracy" and a lessening of the menace of Islam and its endless Jihad. And there is no such connection, no matter how often Bush implicitly assumes that there is.

Tame the ideology not by bringing money and democracy, but by forcing the Islamic world to deal with itself and its own self-generated failures, in an atmosphere of Infidel awareness of, justified alarm about, and articulate opposition to, Islam and all its works and days.

Posted by: Hugh at March 7, 2006 10:00 AM

The present Iranian regime sure likes to make a lot of noise. Mottaki asks the U.S. and Britain for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, knowing (how could they not know?) how unpopular the Iraq situation is among the general public in both of those countries. The present Iranian regime also faces a lot of opposition at home among their own citizens. Perhaps this noise-making is to deflect attention back onto the Iraq situation.

Posted by: Archimedes at March 7, 2006 1:31 PM

-Archimedes

Mottaki asks the U.S. and Britain for a timeline? Since when do those clowns ever ask us filthy inferior infidels for anything. He DEMANDED a timeline!

Posted by: Eisenhund at March 7, 2006 8:34 PM