"Sunni leaders are demanding an end to military operations inside Iraq, claiming the operations will depress Sunni turnout in next month's elections"

More accurate version: claiming the operations will depress their campaign of murder and intimidation. Next they will be demanding the release of Hussein because they need an extra poll watcher.

Nah. How bout this: stop attacking coalition and IA troops, stop abetting the AQ members doing so, and turn over the ones you are harboring. Then we can stop military operations.

Amidst the reported development, Iraq is still far from realistic recovery. In fact, Iraq is in the middle of nowhere. Economically, Iraq is making a movement, but it does not make anything positive. The government is a mess and will always be because of US's meddling.

Hu makes an articulate and well reasoned argument. Clearly we are all deluding ourselves. Thank God he showed up.

I do have one serious question though. What happens when the Sunnis really do finally turn on the Qaeda and jihadi elements in Iraq? Where do those guys end up going? Syria, to continue the fight across the border? Iran, to do the same? Not likely. Jordan? Not if they want to survive long enough to plan and carry out attacks. So where do they go?

Saudi Arabia. We need to be opening a new front here as the old one winds down.We need to direct the jihadi energy, not let them pick their targets in the order they want.

Falluja, One Year Later

Interesting piece from Christian Peace Teams. It's disappointing because they don't compare it with the situation in Falluja before the American attack.

They did visit the city before the attack, didn't they?

Apologies for the slight topic change. Though the issue of torture is so central to our progress, and backsliding thereof, in the War on Terror, that this quote from Sen McCain's Newsweek piece is worth cutting and pasting.

For instance, there has been considerable press attention to a tactic called "waterboarding," where a prisoner is restrained and blindfolded while an interrogator pours water on his face and into his mouth—causing the prisoner to believe he is being drowned. He isn't, of course; there is no intention to injure him physically. But if you gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a beating. The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal. In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture.

If anyone has the stature to comment on our torturers it is Sen McCain. And I'm not sure it gets any clearer than this.
Again, let's work to impeach Bush, and send him and his disgraced generals down to his disgraced privates to prison.
Once we have stepped back from the abyss, and the voices that tell us to be like those we fight, then we can start winning.
Because we're not right now.

Being locked in a cell for years with no idea if or when you will be released will haunt you for a very long time too, and i'd certainly take a few beatings to avoid that. Is that torture?

Fallujah, One Year Later

The article from the Christian Peacenik Teams smells funny. How could anyone know whether an old man turned away from a checkpoint out of confusion, if he died? The stories of confiscated monies may or may not be true, but they sound an awful lot like apocryphal stories made up in many other "sources." Finally, and most telling, the behaviors attributed to the Marines do not jibe or even resemble stories that I've heard from Marines who have been there.

Fallujah is recovering from a tough time, but this "journalistic" article reaks of an agenda.

"If anyone has the stature to comment on our torturers it is Sen McCain. And I'm not sure it gets any clearer than this.
Again, let's work to impeach Bush"

im confused. Sen McCain hasnt called for the impeachment of Bush, has he?

No, he hasn't. He is not rocking the boat too much. In his Newsweek piece he bends over backwards to give Bush et al the benefit of the doubt.
Impeachment is my idea. I'd like to see him in prison.

I'd hate to see what you'd have done to Lincoln for suspending Habbeus Corpus or FDR for the internments. Crucifixtion?

Our world is different than FDR's, or Lincoln's time.
We know better now. We've gotten past slavery, Jim Crow, women's suffrage, and most of anti gay discrimmination.
Bush absolutely knows better. And the torture he has inflicted upon innocents, deliberately, deserves impeachement and trial.

INNOCENTS?! These are freaking Al Qaeda members and Husseins goons. The loud music and waterboarding they get is hardly the hangings rioters got in the Civil War sans trial. You dont want them questioned? Fine. Hang them from the highest flagpole. Somehow i dont think that will go over with the soft-on Al Qaesa sects either. These are our most ferocious enemies, I dont need to lay down the laundy lists of their crimes. Im just in utter shock that the mild questioning (by ANY historical standard) they undergo under CIA or Pentagon orders is creating this ridiculous uproar. Im just waiting for the day it turns out prison is too rough on em, which as I pointed out before there is plenty of medical and psychiatric evidence is just as damaging as anything else we do to them. My god. These arent clueless Japanese peasant conscripts. These are volunteer bombers of the innocent and executioner by decapitation. Fine, but im done coddling them. Hang them.

The majority of those tortured were rounded up in sweeps, and later let go.
But, even if we just focus on the "high value targets"... let's let McCain speak some more:

Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear—whether it is true or false—if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse.

Mark, I think you need to read McCain's piece:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10019179/site/newsweek/?nav=slate

McCain's approach is counterproductive and will lead to more killed terrorists and fewer captured. Any terrorists that might need extra convincing to cause them to talk, will be transferred outside of US jurisdiction for the necessary persuasion. More dead terrorists, and rather than the minor psychological coercion used by US forces, more of the physical torture routinely used by allies not operating under McCain's law.

Idiots like *% sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to defend him from men who want him dead.

I've read it. I believe it is misguided. Yes, i give him credence for having first hand experience. But, and i know its politically incorrect to voice this, should we not consider the possibility that McCain may not be approaching this from the most logical and unemotional point of view? The man was traumatised by an enemy who was committing the worst of war crimes, bearing no comparison to anything that has been ordered by the US government. I respect the mans experience, but i dont his impartiality nor would I expect it in this matter.
And i'd also like to add that i dont believe Iraqis are being rounded up randomly and tortured. They certainly arent being randomly sent to Cuba, where most of these allegations are directed. If there is evidence of random Iraqis being abused I would like to see it and I will be happy to see any US offical who ordered such to be punished as Oz would like. Lets see the evidence.

Oz,
A nice handsome lad who worked out with my son in Middle School and high school DIED in the Fallujah assult. He was the 5th Marine killed.

Now his girlfriend is in the Marines and scheduled to go to Iraq.

I take umbrage at 5th columnist like yourself and hope that someday one of these terrorist you find so sainted hurts you.

Have a very bad day.

Quoth Oz:

Apologies for the slight topic change.

Oz, you have hijacked this thread. It wasn't and isn't about torture. Thanks for the (probably disingenous) apology.