The Good News From Iraq thread

[War.mongeR1]

Here's some FANTASTIC news! The booze is back in Baghdad. Men are getting away with shaving their beards, women are taking off their headscarfs in public, etc, etc. It looks like the "liberal"(by islamic standards) secular majority is getting their country back! This is very positive. Read this great article...
http://www.newsweek.com/id/142639?GT1=43002

[leejo]

Hopeless quagmire!

[Hambergler]

How many of you true believers have dinars stacked to your eyelids?

Just curious..

[Kerostasis]

I don't have any Dinars at all. I use dollars.

[leejo]

The latest Brooking's Institute index shows dramatic improvement in metrics across the board.

http://www.brookings.edu/saban/~/med...ndex/index.pdf

[USN_Squid]

You may have missed this increcible story on your local news station...or maybe they just aren't reporting it? I guess it's not news fit to print.

Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

[AMosely]

I can't tell if this is good news or bad - the Iraqi government wants to set a withdrawal date, but Bush won't do it, supposedly citing the need for greater security on the ground. Fortunately or unfortunately, it seems the decision isn't up to the U.S. - the U.N. mandate for occupation will expire at the end of the year.

On Monday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki suggested for the first time that a timetable be set for the departure of U.S. forces under the deal being negotiated, which he called a memorandum of understanding.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie appeared to go further on Tuesday.

"We can't have a memorandum of understanding with foreign forces unless it has dates and clear horizons determining the departure of foreign forces. We're unambiguously talking about their departure," he told reporters in Najaf after meeting Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world...hdrawal&st=nyt

[USN_Squid]

Originally Posted by AMosely

I can't tell if this is good news or bad - the Iraqi government wants to set a withdrawal date, but Bush won't do it, supposedly citing the need for greater security on the ground. Fortunately or unfortunately, it seems the decision isn't up to the U.S. - the U.N. mandate for occupation will expire at the end of the year.



http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world...hdrawal&st=nyt

It would be good news because the success of the surge has made the discussion possible. However, its not what Maliki said:

In an audio recording of his remarks, heard by the BBC, the prime minister did not use the word "withdrawal".

What he actually said was: "The direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on programming their presence."

Mr Maliki's own office had inserted the word "withdrawal" in the written version, replacing the word "presence". He (National Security Adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie) said the talks were focused on agreeing on "timeline horizons, not specific dates", and said that withdrawal timings would depend on the readiness of the Iraqi security forces.