Iraq is nearly over. BTW we won.

The faces that we are not seeing are the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees from the war stranded in Syria and Jordan or the 2+ million displaced within Iraq as a result of the sectarian violence.

Most of these 4+ million (12-15% of the Iraqi population) have no home to come home to.

Five years into the US military intervention in Iraq, the country is dealing with one of the largest humanitarian and displacement crises in the world. Millions of Iraqis have fled their homes – either for safer locations within Iraq, or to other countries in the region – and are living in increasingly desperate circumstances. Failure to address the needs of Iraqis will have dramatic impacts on security inside Iraq.

http://www.refintl.org/where-we-work/middle-east/iraq

The new Iraq democracy is a good thing, despite the cost in US and Iraqi lives and US $billions. But they still face enormous challenges, mostly political and economic in which the continued large US military occupation cant help.

Its time for the US to get out in an orderly and reasonably short term time frame....according to the wishes of both the Iraqi people and the American people.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

And we're beginning to hear of refugees returning home and making a success of things. Things are beginning to look up. Fox News mentioned a restauranteur reopening his place in Adhamiyah, a city formerly an insurgency stronghold and now much pacified. This is not this guy a few years back but another. Exerpt:

SINCE OCTOBER, CAPTAIN WILLIAM MURPHY AND HIS MILITARY CIVIL AFFAIRS TEAM HAVE PUT IN HUNDREDS OF SOLAR LIGHTS IN ADAHMIYAH, A FORMER INSURGENT STRONGHOLD.
THEY SAY... IT'S ALREADY PAID OFF--
STREETS ARE GETTING SAFER...

AND BUSINESSES ARE BENEFITTING.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD'S MOST POPULAR KEBAB SHOP RE-OPENED SEVERAL WEEKS AGO..
WHEN THE OWNER RETURNED TO BAGHDAD FROM ABROAD... ENCOURAGED BY IMPROVING SECURITY.

AL KAS says: "I am [K]asim, and I am back in Adhamiyah. I have other shops in Qatar, Syria and Amman, Jordan. the street is lit now. before it was dark, so when there is light, people start to go out."

From here.

[classicman]

Nobody left Iraq when Saddam was there did they? Oh thats right they and their children were probably murdered if they tried. Whatever.

Most estimates puts Saddam's murders at the 200,000 - 300,000 level...a horrific number.

So are 4 million refugees in a population of 25 million.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

And we're beginning to hear of refugees returning home and making a success of things. Things are beginning to look up.

I havent seen or heard those stories. Most of the Sunni refugees who fled Baghad have no home or its been taken over by Shiia's.

One serious issue that the government is attempting to cope with is that these refugees represented a large part of the professional working class in Iraq.

Nearly all non-Muslims who lived in relative security under Saddam have fled Iraq for good for for fear of religious backlash and limited rights under the new Constitution.

Baghdad is still a walled and divided city by most accounts.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Gotta admit the four million's chances are a lot better than the three hundred thousand's.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Gotta admit the four million's chances are a lot better than the three hundred thousand's.

I would guess that depends on whether it becomes a generational issue.

The record or Iraq's neighboring Arab states treatment of other Arab refugees is nothing to brag about.

[classicman]

Figuring out exactly how many people were killed in Saddam's 24 years as president of Iraq isn't easy. Saddam's murders were frequent and numerous, but the victims and their executioners were often the only witnesses. The true extent of his murderousness will be revealed only when Iraq's many mass graves are exhumed, an enormous and painfully slow task that has just begun. For now, though, we have credible estimates to work with. Almost certainly, most of them understate the regime's bloodletting.

In a single episode in the mid-1980s, the regime rounded up and killed around 10,000 Kurds. Human Rights Watch estimated that Anfal killed "more than 100,000" Kurds, and that Kurdish victims of the regime's campaigns between 1983 and 1993 reached "well into six figures."

60,000 lives a year, if we use UNICEF's numbers.

Ok according to the UNICEF numbers just multiply 60,000 times the 28 years - and you get something like 1.7 million - thats a far cry from 200-300,000.

hell he killed over 100,000 Kurds in the late 80's alone...

November 14, 2006
Kurds Want Early Death for Saddam

by Mohammed Salih

ARBIL - As Saddam Hussein faces his second trial, this one over the killing of an estimated 180,000 Kurds in the late 1980s, people in Kurdistan are taking a particular interest whether the death sentence in the first case will be carried out before there can be a verdict in the second.

Ok...we won. Saddam is dead....a fledgling democracy is in place.

Iraq's challenges ahead are, for the most part, political and economic.

Now lets go home!

The cost to the US has already been more than 4,000 US deaths and $500 billiion (and will be in $trillions for long term vet care for many of the more than 25,000 wounded.)

[classicman]

"With only a few days of 2008 remaining, the year so far has seen another 8,315-9,028 civilian deaths added to the IBC database. This compares to 25,774-27,599 deaths reported in 2006, and 22,671-24,295 in 2007. This is a substantial drop on the preceding two years: on a per-day rate, it represents a reduction from 76 per day (2006) and 67 per day (2007) to 25 per day in 2008.

Iraq's elections: a win for Prime Minister Maliki and the US
Iraq's January 31 provincial elections were another important milestone on Iraq's long and difficult journey toward becoming a stable democracy.

According to preliminary results, the big electoral winner was Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition. While 10 per cent of the votes must still be counted, it is apparent that the relatively peaceful atmosphere on Election Day was a triumph for US policy and a vindication of the Bush Administration's surge strategy.

But it remains to be seen whether all the contending factions will peacefully accept the provincial election results and, more importantly, the results of national elections slated for December. The Obama Administration must be careful to maintain adequate US troops in Iraq to safeguard the prospects for continued political progress.

US dominance over Iraq has ended: Maliki

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Tuesday that the era of US dominance in Iraq was over, in a broadside to Washington almost six years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The Shiite premier, boosted by the strong showing of his allies in provincial elections, said Iraq was now taking charge of its own destiny and was making good progress towards rebuilding the war-torn country.

His remarks were a pointed rebuke to US Vice President Joe Biden, who last week said Washington would have to be "more aggressive" in pushing Baghdad towards faster political reform.

"The time for putting pressure on Iraq is over," Maliki told reporters when asked about Biden's comments.

"The Iraqi government knows what are its responsibilities. We are carrying out reform and we are in the last step of the reconciliation."

Biden said the January 31 provincial elections -- in which Maliki's allies triumphed -- had shown that progress was being made, but more needed to be done as Iraq's leaders had not "gotten their political arrangements together yet."

The new US administration of President Barack Obama would have to be "much more aggressive... forcing them to deal with those issues," Biden said.

But Maliki insisted: "If there are demands for political reforms, it is up to the government, the Iraqi parliament and political forces.

"It was we who took the initiative for national reconciliation, and we have stated that without national reconciliation there will be no security in the country."

Maliki's remarks were a strong signal ahead of a parliamentary election due to be held in about a year that he is unwilling to allow the United States to dictate how Iraq should rebuild and consolidate its fledgling democracy.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Redux

Ok...we won. Saddam is dead....a fledgling democracy is in place.
Now lets go home!

Remember the principle stated by Project for a New American Century. We must protection **OUR** oil. So much of the US military has now been deposited in Iraq that it will easily take a year to get out. We moved into Iraq to stay - as if we intend to rescue victims of a Hurricane Katrina disaster. It will easily take a year to leave - assuming the civil war does not break out.

It was no accident that a massive (but not majority) of the US military is in Iraq. We moved in to stay permanently as a 1996 PNAC doctrine stated. We moved in to stay permanently despite administration denials. Massive amounts of permantly fixed and very secret equipment must be removed. It will take that much longer to leave.

Originally Posted by tw

....assuming the civil war does not break out.

Interesting article in the Wash Post Today:

The war in Iraq isn't over. The main events may not even have happened yet.

We created the environment for civil war by buddying up and arming both (or more) sides for the political expediency of declaring victory and a very fragile democracy so the PNAC crowd could proclaim "told you so"

[tw]

Originally Posted by Redux

Interesting article in the Wash Post Today:
"The war in Iraq isn't over. The main events may not even have happened yet".

Slowly we are seeing indications that we have no idea what will happen once we leave. We know violence diminished when various insurgent groups were ordered to stand down. They still have weapons - and plenty of time to rebuild stockpiles. Do they still have the hatred of their countrymen? "Mission Accomplished" was always a civil war. Within the past year, cities that were once safe have now become 'unstable'. From the NY Times of 23 Jun 2009:

Falluja Rumblings Threaten to Disrupt Withdrawal Script
Then a series of troubling attacks began cropping up this year. One in particular, at the end of May, seemed to drive home the possibility that things were changing for the worse. On a heavily patrolled military road between a Marine camp and the wastewater plant, a huge buried bomb tore through an armored American convoy, killing three prominent reconstruction officials and striking at hopes that the way was completely clear for peacetime projects.

With the June 30 withdrawal deadline for American combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns drawing near, that attack and others like it are particularly ominous for officials who see Falluja as a test case for the rest of the country. Security here is becoming a solely Iraqi operation, and while the United States military says the number of attacks remains encouragingly low, there are signs that Falluja could again plunge into violence.

We are out because our leadership has grasped reality. It is their country to build or destroy. They had a year to decide what kind of country they want - now that we had enabled so much violence.

We broke it. We owned it. Now we leave it with our legacy. Nobody can predict that legacy with certainty.

[sugarpop]

I just hope this doesn't cause us to stay longer. As it is, I don't trust that we will be leaving completely anyway, and I think we should.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

From reading T.P.M. Barnett's latest book, Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, I don't think we should. He doesn't think we can or should. Take a read of his stuff. He's also got a blog for the week-to-week.