President Bush’s speech

Perhaps many will see it as “Same old, same old.” Most oppose the war and they’ve written him off as a lame duck and not too many approve of the job he’s doing. So most likely not much attention was paid to it, other than those looking for “Gotcha!” lines.

So here’s the text. I thought he did well in outlining where progress is being made. There should have been more. He admitted that. He should have done this more often in the last five years.

Where will we be five years from now? I wish I knew.

Let’s hope progress continues.

How will we know when we’ve “won” in Iraq?

Keith Schmitz (the famous krshorewood) makes a good point here.

We beat Germany and Japan, two of the world’s greatest powers in three years and eight months.

We have been at it in Iraq for five years with no end in sight.

I would disagree that Bush (and Cheney) are dragging things out intentionally. I think they are genuinely clueless here.

Not that I’m much better. We Republicans talk about victory, but what will that look like?

No more casualties with a stable Iraq? What will be stable? And will we realistically get there?

“A US solider, a fellow human and a blogger, is dead in Iraq”

UPDATE: Mike Nichols of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel basically reprints some of Maj. Olmsted’s post, whose parents apparently live in Cedarburg.

Michael Mathias of Pundit Nation points to this post, humorous, realistic, moving last word by a blogger killed in Iraq. No matter what your views of the war, it’s worth reading. If you get through it without tearing up, you’re a better man than I, even though I didn’t know, nor had ever read his posts.

Some excerpts to whet your appetite,

…while you’re free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I’ll tell you you’re wrong. We’re all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.

A lot of people will protest that argument by noting that the people we are fighting in Iraq are unlikely to threaten the rights of the average American. That’s certainly true; while our enemies would certainly like to wreak great levels of havoc on our society, the fact is they’re not likely to succeed. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a need for an army (setting aside debates regarding whether ours is the right size at the moment).

Regardless of the merits of this war, or of any war, I think that many of us in America have forgotten that war means death and suffering in wholesale lots. A decision that for most of us in America was academic, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, had very real consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. Yet I was as guilty as anyone of minimizing those very real consequences….

If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision. Because it is pretty clear that the average American would not have supported the Iraq War had they known the costs going in.

There’s more, much more.

Rest in peace, Major Andrew Olmsted.

His last post at Obsidian Wings as G’kar. His blog at Rocky Mountain News.

Iraq war tattoos

An art show at Pasadena City College Art Gallery includes Marine tattoos.

IT’S a canvas of sorts, one threaded through with blue veins, nasty bruises, an explosion of hatch-marks that, upon closer inspection, turn out to be scars. It’s skin — but that’s just one layer of a story.

Read more at the link. Photos of some of the tattoos are here.

A Waukesha Carnival edition 9

The rally at the capitol was the big news and was covered by the following Waukesha-based blogs (there are others also):

Dad29 (and here), silent e had several posts, many with pictures, as did the Asian Badger who flew in (imagine beating all that traffic!).

David at Carrick Bend Thoughts had a post which caused me to think about how much those who favor a
federalization of Iraq are giving Turkey the idea that they could make their excursion into Iraq against the Kurds.

Jeff at Five Points Blog looks at religious buildings and zoning, especially in relationship to the proposed mosque in Pewaukee.

Sancho rants at Hobo Springs about band competition judging.

Jessica McBride gives her good, bad and very bad on the state budget.

Pete Fanning informs us about what is happening in Tennessee since their rise in the cigarette tax.

Lisa at Sequentially Speaking tells us about some cool upcoming stuff.

The Spring City Chronicle fisked the piece in the Waukesha Freeman on regional transit.

Scott Feldstein shares a video and tells us why he doesn’t follow politicians around.

Fox Head has a long post on schools. Yes, it’s long. Yes, it’s important.

Tim at The Other Side of My Mouth gives us a delightful three act play, his version of Harvey.

You can catch up with Fletch at Two Heroes.

Jim Bouman at Water Blogged in Waukesha writes an letter to Laura Walker of the Journal Sentinel over her opinions on the Pabst Farm interchange.

James Wigderson gives the Waukesha School Board ideas for saving money.

Yorick’s Persiflage opines that Social Security will not be around when he needs it. His post also includes thoughts on Carroll University College and morning people.

The MyCommunityNOW blogs have been updated to allow comments and they now have feeds. Here are some pertinent ones: The Right Side of New Berlin (Matt Thomas), Conservatively Speaking  (State Sen. Mary Lazich), New Berlin Citizens for Responsible Government, Brookfield City News (Cindy Kilkenny), Thinking Out Loud, Common Ground, Takin’ the Blog for a Walk, Wake Up! Waukesha, Maple & Main, Inside New Berlin, Environmental Stewards, As I See It (New Berlin alderman Joe Poshepny), Pauls’ Falls, Public Trough, Balancing Brookfield, Practically Speaking, and Land Savers. Some of these post periodically, some once a week, some several times a week, others rarely. More are added periodically.

Well, that’s it again for this week. Again if you have a suggestion, know a Waukesha County blogger not on my blog roll, or have read a blogger’s take on happenings in Waukesha (usually the water problem and sprawl issues are most likely), let me know, either by email at thoughtfulconservative [at] yahoo [dot] com or in the comments.

Biden and Brownback propose common Iraq Plan

From AP via Breitbart news

Presidential candidates from opposing parties, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sam Brownback, took the unusual step Friday of holding a joint event to tout their proposal for a political solution to the war in Iraq.

Biden, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been the most prominent advocate of a plan in Congress that would limit the power of Iraq’s central government and give more control to three ethnically divided states.

“We often don’t agree … but one thing we agree on is that the solution to our situation in Iraq is, quite frankly, more important than who among us will be the next president of the United States of America,” Biden said. [Emphasis mine]

“More important than who among us will be the next president” We’ll let them believe that if they want.

Couric: ‘Real Progress’ In Iraq

From WCBS with a tip of the conservative ball cap to the Drudge Report

“We hear so much about things going bad, but real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability,” Couric said Tuesday. “I mean, obviously, infrastructure problems abound, but Sunnis and U.S. forces are working together. They banded together because they had a common enemy: al Qaeda.”

Oh, no, not more good news about Iraq

And from Der Spiegel, no less. I don’t know if the Left will be able to stand it.

Hope and Despair in Divided Iraq

Yeah, I know, the headline is not all that promising, and there’s still a lot of work to be done. But it’s an in-depth article and not all bad news. Here’s how it ends,

That’s the situation in Iraq. A race is underway. Now every day on the calendar is historic. The future can be won or it can be gambled away.

A tip of the ol’ conservative cap to the Queen of All Evil, who wonders “How has Karl Rove managed to get the German Press to do a 180°?”

Indeed.

You can find more on Der Spiegel’s previous reports on Iraq at David’s Medienkritik Online (linked to by the QOAE)

First gay marriage and now Iraq?

Democrats Say Leaving Iraq May Take Years

Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.

Another article says the surge is working

This time it’s AP military writer Robert Burns (a tip of the conservative cap to Little Miss Sunshine) who says the surge is working. Again to avoid too rosy a picture,

It is a phase with fresh promise yet the same old worry: Iraq may be too fractured to make whole.

Even as security gets better the political climate worsens.

Iraq’s political crisis worsened Monday as five more ministers announced a boycott of Cabinet meetings - leaving the embattled prime minister’s unity government with no members affiliated with Sunni political factions.

Improvement in Iraq

Reported on by traditionally liberal think tank? In the NY Times? I’m speechless. (A tip of the conservative cap to Best of the Web.)

Well, not quite. But here is an amazing two paragraphs after months (years?) of bad news,

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Startling, isn’t it? The surge is working, apparently.

Some things they saw.

• morale is high
• civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.
• In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit.
• In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers.
• We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate.
• A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq.
• far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.
• Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

They (nor I) want to give just a rosy view.

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

Their conclusion is stunning,

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Not what we’ve been used to hearing, is it?

Reflections on the debate

Democrats are against gay marriage? It appears so, except for Dennis Kucinich.

Were all the questions submitted as silly as the ones CNN used? Why did they choose these? Especially that guy with his rifle. Was that the only one concerned with the Second Amendment that they received? The most articulate?

Kucinich was also right about Democrats ending the war, if they really wanted to. So one must suspect that with all their protestations, they don’t really want to. And then one would wonder, why?

Bush Tries to Revive Support for Iraq War

I think it may be too little too late, but this was different:

“Bush sought to emphasize Iraq’s progress in a second event of the day, appearing in the Oval Office beside Massoud Barzani, the president of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. The two stood to offer reporters and photographers a view of Barzani’s traditional Kurdish outfit — a khaki jacket tucked into matching, loosely pleated pants adorned by a knotted sash at his waist and a red-and-white headdress.

” ‘It wasn’t all that long ago if he had of worn this outfit and was captured by Saddam Hussein’s thugs he would have been killed for wearing it,’ Bush said. ‘He feels comfortable wearing it here because we’re a free land. He feels comfortable wearing it in his home country because Iraq is free.’ “

More illustrations like this of how we’re making a real difference is needed to turn the tide.