DUDE! WHERE'S THE QUAGMIRE???

Dude, where's the Quagmire? One wire dispatch put it this way:

"It was something not seen in Baghdad since before the 2003 invasion -- people publicly welcoming a new year with singing, dancing and general revelry. The ballrooms of two landmark hotels -- the Palestine and the Sheraton -- were full of people for the first New Year's Eve celebrations after four years of violence that has bloodied Iraq . . . Iraq's capital was sufficiently calm to warrant the two high-end parties in the once posh hotels."

This is Iraq, one year after the surge was announced:

"U.S. troop deaths in December -- 21 -- numbered just one more than they did in February 2004, the least-deadly month since the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, according to the Associated Press.

And the U.S. deaths fell sharply in the second half of 2007 after the influx of 30,000 additional troops." -- Lancasteronline.com

In an article titled, "Normalcy returns to Baghdad, block by block," the Washington Times reports that "signs of improved security in Baghdad go beyond the obvious dampening of street battles and bombings:

It's in the smaller transformations taking place in neighborhoods that the seeds of possibility are starting to take root."

In places like East Rashid, "best known from 2006 until last fall for sectarian violence and al Qaeda's campaign of terror," where U.S. troops faced "snipers, mortar attacks and roadside blasts," everything has changed and there's a "growing sense of hope and confidence," as shown by the growing number of refugees who are returning home.

Last week the Iraqi parliament, by a unanimous show of hands, passed landmark de-Baathification legislation, a political reconciliation bill that was one of the big benchmarks that Congress established to measure progress.

But, hold on. What were the Democrats saying back when Bush announced the surge? They're now claiming they knew all along it would work -- at least to tamp down the violence. I quote, you decide:

Four days before Bush announced the surge, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi said that "adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans."

The day after the Democrats took control of Congress, Reid and Pelosi told Bush in a letter that "We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq."

A few weeks later, Pelosi said this:

[Bush] has to answer for his war. He has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder."

Pelosi: "The president wants to escalate a war where his generals are telling him that the additional troops will not be effective."

Immediately after Bush announced the surge, Sen. Barack Obama, appearing on the Larry King Show, said there is no "evidence that an additional 15,000 to 20,000 more U.S. troops is going to make a significant dent in the sectarian violence that's taking place there."

Sen. Dick Durbin, delivering the Democrat response to the President's announcement last January, complained that "escalation of this war is not the change the American people called for in the last election . . . the president's plan moves the American commitment in the wrong direction."

And, besides, "twenty-thousand American soldiers are too few to end this civil war in Iraq and too many American lives to risk on top of those we've already lost."

Sen. Hillary Clinton, in an interview on Fox News' "On The Record," blasted the surge: "I opposed it, based on what I knew of the situation before I went, and I'm even more strongly against it now because I think the chances of success are limited at best."

In another TV interview, she warned that the "president's proposal to add 21,000 troops in an escalation of the combat situation is not going to work."

Sen. Ben Nelson slammed the proposed surge as relying on too many assumptions. "It assumes an increase of 21,000 troops is sustainable . . . it assumes 21,000 troops are sufficient to achieve the objective of securing Baghdad . . . it assumes Iraqi troops will be trained, equipped and capable and will show up and engage the enemy . . . The failure of any one of these assumptions could undermine the entire plan."

Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona blasted the surge, saying "I sense from (talking with) our soldiers that the Iraqi people's heart is not in this."

Democrat Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania said that "we're doubling down on a bad military bet. A surge hasn't worked and it won't work again."

Democrat Rep. Ike Shelton of Missouri, Armed Services Committee head honcho, warned that "our experience has shown that a limited infusion of troops (as called for in Bush's surge strategy) will not necessarily produce the improvement to Iraqi security we had hoped. I remain to be convinced that increasing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will have a measurable affect on the security situation in Iraq."

In April 2007, before the full surge had kicked in, Harry Reid emphatically declared "this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday."

Even the "experts" were against the surge, predicting it wouldn't work:

Retired Marine General Joseph Hoar, former head of CENTCOM, criticized the troop surge and advised Bush to pull out of Iraq.

Other than a higher rank, has the same old fuddy-duddy mental accuity as FORMER Marine, Congressman Jack (the Pork-Barrel) Murtha.

"In the Marines, we say, "When you're in a hole, stop digging."

Retired Army General and NBC News military "analyst" Barry McCaffrey said.

"I personally think the surge of five U.S. Army brigades and a few Marine battalions dribbled out over five months is a fool's errand."

Even U.S. intelligence was against the surge -- the surest sign yet that it was going to work. "A new National Intelligence Estimate on the conflict presented to the president . . . describes 'an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration'" despite the surge, reported the Christian Science Monitor in an article cheerfully titled, "US Intelligence report projects deteriorating situation in Iraq".

Small wonder Iraq has been moved to the back-burner by the media.

AND the Media want us all to forget the DEMOCRATS (in control at the time) promoted and passed bills pointing to go to war. BEFORE BUSH BECAME PRESIDENT!

See links below.

http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:HR04655:@@@RTOM:/bss/d105query.html

http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:HJ00114:TOM:/bss/d107query.html