Series of deadly blasts hit Iraqi capital as government prepares to attack rebel-held Fallujah - Polidicks

[url]http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/01/series-deadly-blasts-iraq-20141512283317467.html[/url] [quote]A new wave of bombings has hit Iraq's capital, Baghdad, killing at least 20 and wounding dozens more, Iraqi authorities have said. Iraqi police say the deadliest in Sunday's attacks took place in Baghdad's northern Shaab neighbourhood, when two parked car bombs exploded simultaneously near a restaurant and a tea house. Officials say that blast killed at least ten people and wounded 26. Another parked car bomb ripped through in capital's Shia eastern district of Sadr City, killing five and wounding 10, while another explosion killed three civilians and wounded six in a commercial area in the central Bab al-Muadham neighbourhood, officials said. Two further blasts killed two civilians and wounded 13, police said. [B]Battle for Fallujah[/B] Elsewhere in Iraq, government forces are preparing a "major attack" to retake rebel-held Fallujah, a senior official said on Sunday. ... Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the United States would provide assistance to Iraqi forces in their battle against the group but that it was "their fight". Kerry said Washington was "very, very concerned" about the resurgence of ISIL but said it was not contemplating any return of US ground troops, after their withdrawal in December 2011. [B]"We are not obviously contemplating returning, we are not contemplating putting boots on the ground, this is their fight," Kerry told reporters in Jerusalem.[/B] "But we're going to help them in their fight... We are going to do everything that is possible to help them." On Friday and Saturday, more than 160 people were killed in the worst violence to hit Anbar province in years.[/quote] Maybe Kerry just had shitty wording but phrasing as "it is their fight" is dumb as hell for a nation that started the fight.

Its fair to label the current conflicts in Iraq as "their problem". Although the US did topple the government, secretarian violence in the middle east is pretty much commonplace and not something caused by US intervention.

It wasn't "common place" in Iraq before they were toppled.

[QUOTE=Pig;43425278]Its fair to label the current conflicts in Iraq as "their problem". Although the US did topple the government, secretarian violence in the middle east is pretty much commonplace and not something caused by US intervention.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Starpluck;43425325]It wasn't "common place" in Iraq before they were toppled.[/QUOTE] Yup! Even though Saddam was a crazy bastard it was actually quite nice since he had a firm grasp on all the different religions factions whom were all scared of him. Now it's gone to shit.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;43425325]It wasn't "common place" in Iraq before they were toppled.[/QUOTE] Because they had an dictatorship government and leader there who killed their opponents, were they innocent or not. Lack of such fear sparked up into surface a conflict way older than saddam's rule.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;43425325]It wasn't "common place" in Iraq before they were toppled.[/QUOTE] With the Arab Spring having spread across the land, there's a decent chance such a thing would have happened without US interventionism. Odds are the Syrian civil war would have spilled over anyway, as it has into Lebanon and has come close to doing so in Jordan and Turkey. And placing the blame on the US really isn't helping the incompetence of the Iraqi government right now. We occupied them for nearly a decade and did our best to train their forces and give them equipment. We can't babysit them forever at the expense of American troops and resources.

[quote=President George W. Bush]Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Region;43425380]Yup! Even though Saddam was a crazy bastard it was actually quite nice since he had a firm grasp on all the different religions factions whom were all scared of him. [/QUOTE] Ah, the good ol days when everyone was terrorized into submission

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;43425422]With the Arab Spring having spread across the land, there's a decent chance such a thing would have happened without US interventionism. Odds are the Syrian civil war would have spilled over anyway, as it has into Lebanon and has come close to doing so in Jordan and Turkey. And placing the blame on the US really isn't helping the incompetence of the Iraqi government right now. We occupied them for nearly a decade and did our best to train their forces and give them equipment. We can't babysit them forever at the expense of American troops and resources.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=ripsipiirakk;43425395]Because they had an dictatorship government and leader there who killed their opponents, were they innocent or not. Lack of such fear sparked up into surface a conflict way older than saddam's rule.[/QUOTE] A stable secular dictatorship is better than the Islamist state that is aspiring to form. The common consensus among Iraqis is that they much prefer when their country was actually functional, even with Saddam. Iraq is now unstable and is no longer a safe place. Sure there's democracy in theory now at Iraq but with its current dysfunctional state, that matters little.

[QUOTE=BusterBluth;43425503]Ah, the good ol days when everyone was terrorized into submission[/QUOTE] Well not much has changed. At least back then if you laid low you were alright. Now everyone's a target. Everyone's still being terrorized into submission. At least there was some form of government back then. People in government now hog all the money and sit around cleaning each other's buttholes. Ya people used to die back then. Definately not as much as now though.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;43425639]A stable secular dictatorship is better than the Islamist state that is aspiring to form. The common consensus among Iraqis is that they much prefer when their country was actually functional, even with Saddam. Iraq is now unstable and is no longer a safe place. Sure there's democracy in theory now at Iraq but with its current dysfunctional state, that matters little.[/QUOTE] Democracy doesn't happen overnight. Or in a decade of occupation. It takes a long while and usually goes through a lot off down turns before finally functioning well. Perhaps it's true that Saddam's Iraq was more "stable" but that there was still a lot of death, like executing dissidents and gassing Kurds.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;43425696]Democracy doesn't happen overnight. Or in a decade of occupation. It takes a long while and usually goes through a lot off down turns before finally functioning well. Perhaps it's true that Saddam's Iraq was more "stable" but that there was still a lot of death, like executing dissidents and gassing Kurds.[/QUOTE] Do you think there will be less death now?

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;43425696]Democracy doesn't happen overnight. Or in a decade of occupation. It takes a long while and usually goes through a lot off down turns before finally functioning well. Perhaps it's true that Saddam's Iraq was more "stable" but that there was still a lot of death, like executing dissidents and gassing Kurds.[/QUOTE] You're kidding yourself if you think Iraq's incompetent government will be able to procure something meaningful without the direct assistance of coalition forces. America toppled Saddam, installed democratic administrative institutions, stayed for a bit and then left. Even with the occupation there were significant amounts of uncontrollable bombings that took place throughout Iraq. Now insurgents are overrunning Iraq with not only the persisting random bombings, but also direct organized offensives akin to pre-Taliban. Democracy does not happen overnight, true, but that's going to be a phrase we're going to hear again and again in 5, 10 and 15 years from now. What's happening in Iraq is starkly contrasted with the end-stages of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan#Taliban_Emirate_and_the_United_Front"]1996-2001[/URL] as the Taliban began advance and take over the government to install an Islamist dictatorship.

thats what happens when the US prevents anyone even remotely affiliated with the Ba'ath party from being part of the new government(which were actually experienced in doing their jobs). [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba'athification[/url]

[QUOTE=Starpluck;43425639]A stable secular dictatorship is better than the Islamist state that is aspiring to form. The common consensus among Iraqis is that they much prefer when their country was actually functional, even with Saddam. Iraq is now unstable and is no longer a safe place. Sure there's democracy in theory now at Iraq but with its current dysfunctional state, that matters little.[/QUOTE] AH...ahahahahahaha. Yes, it was so stable after he gassed his own people and attacked his neighbors for oil. So fucking stable. Are we seriously rose-tinting Saddam Fucking Hussein?

Do you know what stable means

Do you?

Yeah and you do not. To explain its definition in simple terms; a country's ability to function is not measured by the extent of its atrocities or human rights abuses.

Its measured by how much control it has, and the Iraqi government has always had issue with Kurdish people in the North. Everyone seems to forget that Iraq, even before the first Gulf War, had been fighting the Kurds in the north.

[QUOTE=Swilly;43429425]Its measured by how much control it has, and the Iraqi government has always had issue with Kurdish people in the North. Everyone seems to forget that Iraq, even before the first Gulf War, had been fighting the Kurds in the north.[/QUOTE] And? Turkey still has 'issues' with the Kurds till this day, this does not make them unstable. The extent of the Kurds had zero impact on Iraqi stability.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;43429461]And? Turkey still has 'issues' with the Kurds till this day, this does not make them unstable. The extent of the Kurds had zero impact on Iraqi stability.[/QUOTE] Then there were the Shia rebels in the south. And they had a lot of impact because those were part of Iraq's oil fields.

Iraq under saddam had forfeited it's rights to sovereignty when there were numerous genocides and invasions of neighboring states.

[QUOTE=Starpluck;43429461]And? Turkey still has 'issues' with the Kurds till this day, this does not make them unstable. The extent of the Kurds had zero impact on Iraqi stability.[/QUOTE] Except Iraq was only stable internally in the short term, not the long term. I could see the discussion of stability if you were talking about say, Myanmar, or Argentina, or Spain, where the dictatorships were propped up because they maintained stability and were likely to continue functioning for a long time, but Saddam's Iraq was being run into the ground by the equivalent of a Stalin who had a hateboner for everyone and an environment where no one was going to stop him. I mean, if you want, we can discuss the fact that the reason the 1991 Gulf War happened was because Iraq's economy was so weak after the Iran-Iraq War that it was about to collapse (Which was deliberately being provoked by Kuwait), or the fact that the only reason the 2002 era Iraq was anywhere near stable was because nations like Venezuela and other anti-US nations decided to start trading in deliberate violation of UN Sanctions. Either way, It's very hard to police a place that has gigantic swathes of territory that are [URL="http://images.nationmaster.com/images/motw/middle_east_and_asia/iraq_pop_2003.jpg"]literally uninhabited[/URL], so of course groups who have ill plans will simply be able to escape attention by going into areas that are simply out of the scope of military and police forces. Why do you think the US has a border control problem? I mean, we have a massive government force on it, yet we still have illicit materials that cross through and criminals who cross without ever getting caught.

[QUOTE=BusterBluth;43425503]Ah, the good ol days when everyone was terrorized into submission[/QUOTE] "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety... unless they're not Westerners."

I don't know how stable it was for the Kurds being gassed? Stability doesn't excuse atrocity.

[QUOTE=Pig;43425278]Its fair to label the current conflicts in Iraq as "their problem". Although the US did topple the government, secretarian violence in the middle east is pretty much commonplace and not something caused by US intervention.[/QUOTE] I disagree, we decided to set up a Shia government, which means we picked a side and planted the seeds for exactly what is happening now. You could even make an argument that the wider sectarian conflict started in earnest when we dismantled the government and touched off the civil war in 2004-05. I still don't think we have any business whatsoever dumping more blood and treasure into that country, but we can't claim no responsibility.

[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;43432369]I disagree, we decided to set up a Shia government, which means we picked a side and planted the seeds for exactly what is happening now. You could even make an argument that the wider sectarian conflict started in earnest when we dismantled the government and touched off the civil war in 2004-05. I still don't think we have any business whatsoever dumping more blood and treasure into that country, but we can't claim no responsibility.[/QUOTE] What exactly can you do? Split it into North Iraq and South Iraq, give each side their own government, and pray that they don't just continue to fight the perpetual religious war anyway?

[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;43434272]What exactly can you do? Split it into North Iraq and South Iraq, give each side their own government, and pray that they don't just continue to fight the perpetual religious war anyway?[/QUOTE] Yeah, you're right - your oil companies got their contracts, you don't really need to do anything for them anymore.

[QUOTE='[sluggo];43431849']I don't know how stable it was for the Kurds being gassed? Stability doesn't excuse atrocity.[/QUOTE] Does for the empire in starwars and they rule the whole galaxy. I don't see your point.

if they start executing everyone hopefully that doesn't get out of control. [quote]Translation: Immediate execution for the 'Daa3ish' terrorists Eat up O dogs of the desert, for the army of Iraq has more obligations.[/quote] [IMG]http://puu.sh/6bAgd.jpg[/IMG]