- 90 Billion BBLsof oil under the ice. [1]
- So, Obama went to the wall today [2]. We’re suppsoed to be impressed by the turnout. Perhaps before you get too impressed with how well Germans react to his posturing, perhaps you’ll be smart enough to remember that about half the country is still annoyed that the communists are no longer in power. Do you suppose it’d be hard for him in that environment, to gather a bunch of drooling morons to hear him spout? I mean, forget the guy is offering rockbands and beer, [3] and food. The press didn’t mention it last time, either. Forget that the posters annoucing the thing look like something out of Joe Goebels Closet.
- There’s a lot of argument [4] about electric cars. The electric car is no panacea [5], gang. Sorry. Go and read.
- Meantime, Oil continues to fall [6]. As I predicted. Another $4 down yesterday. Down to about $125 as of this writing, and doubtless lower by the time you see this, particularly once folks figure out that Dolly didn’t do all that much damage to oil platforms in the gulf. An I’m paying under $4/gal now. I’ll keep my SUV, thank you.
- Wonder no longer [7] why business types are leaving California. The all-powerful government.
- I mentioned this morning [8] about John Edwards. Apparently the Clintonistas are still after him. [9] Far as I’m concerned that confirms the thinking.
- Bruce gets this one: [10]
The surge insured and helped spread the Anbar Awakening. The fact that we promised to stay made it easy for tribal leaders in other provinces to cooperate with us. The fact that we surged 30,000 troops into Iraq made it pretty much a no-brainer, in a tactical sense, for al Sadr to stand his motley crew down. And while we’re at it, it also allowed the time necessary to continue the training of the ISF to the point that they were recently able to mount successful major operations in Basra and more recently, Baghdad’s Sadr City.So don’t let the Democrats rewrite history on this one. They were wrong about opposing it and that is what they’re trying so hard to duck. When all is said and done, it was the decision to change strategy and surge troops into Iraq to implement that strategy which played the major role in defeating AQI, turning the rest of the insurgents into allies and driving the Mahdi army off the battlefield, at least temporarily (and later permanently).
Correct. As for the timing, the mere commitment to the policy was enough. You don’t stay in a burning house just because the fire isn’t in your room yet. The Mahadi and AQI split when they knew there was more folks coming than they could handle. Let me draw you a bit of a picture, by way of an interesting little parallel…Let me take you back a mere few days…
Bush steps up before the mikes yesterday and says we gotta drill… open up offshore fields… and chides congress about opening up ANWR, and what happens? Price drops $9/bbl almost at once. That’s the biggest drop in the price of oil since 1991.
So, tell me again, oil haters, how our committing to drilling for our own oil, and freeing up domestic production, including ANWR, won’t have an immediate effect on the price of oil… even before such fields come online.
Here we have the mere spectre of a commitment by the US to drilling our own oil, and the price falls like it hasn’t in nearly 20 years
Clearly, we affected the sutuation before the policy Bush mentions is put in place.
So to attach that to the subject at hand…tell me, when did we decide on the surge strategy? Late 2006, wasn’t it? Since Bush made the pronouncements on the matter in his SOTU address in 2007, and it was panned as nothing new at the time, clearly the idea that the US was going to go with the surge was out there prior to that time. Even Wikipedia notes that the planning stages of the thing went back to 2006. Do you consider that the Iranians and the Sheiks are not watching our domestic politics closely enough to react to such situations as they appear on the horizon? You know they were. They saw the threat on the horizon and split. As for the ones who remained, I submt that abesent the Surge the Awakening would have been back in dreamland before anyone noticed it. The surge gave the Iraqis an alternative to al Qaeda, and in more than just Anbar. The Democrats were wrong about the outcome of the surge, and it’s really that simple. Had we listened to them, we’d have been defeated.