Oxford Research Group aligns with "War for Oil" crowd

It's really not much of a report if you ask me... The war in Iraq is still in its early stages and US and British troops are likely to be bogged down in the conflict for decades, a report by the Oxford Research Group said on Wednesday. The independent think tank’s report will make unwelcome reading for the British and US governments, both of which have indicated that they hope to begin reducing the number of troops in Iraq after the next Iraqi parliamentary elections in December. Like Dubya and Blair are really going to care what snooty old oxford scholars think. They may still slowly start to diminish troops in Iraq after the next round of elections. Key word: s l o w l y... Not the Murtha let's-get-the-hell-outta-there-like-now plan. Under growing pressure from domestic opponents of the war, both governments have suggested that the improved capabilities of the Iraqi security forces - now numbering 200,000 - may allow them to reduce their military commitment in Iraq next year. Duh. What the hell do they think we've been doing over there? Twiddling our thumbs? Neither have not put forward any timetable for withdrawal, however, despite repeated calls for them to do so. Again... the timetable is s l o w l y. Get the wax out of your ears... Condoleeza Rice, US secretary of state said this week she suspected US forces were “not going to be needed” in the same numbers “for all that much longer”. "all that much longer" is too close to "slowly" so the intellectuals probably won't understand that either. I really don't get it; why is not giving an exact date and time such a big deal? Can't they grasp the concept that if we tell them when we're leaving they're just going to wait until we leave to try to take over the nation? But Tony Bair, UK prime minister, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that it was vital not to “back away” from Iraq before ensuring that the country’s democratic institutions were properly established. “The terrorists and insurgents would take over unless the multinational force was there to safeguard the democratic process,’’ said Mr Blair. Blair gets it. Ensuring a friendly government in Baghdad is an essential part of US security policy, even if this requires a permanent US military presence, because long-term access to oil from the region is essential to the US, given its increasing dependence on imported oil, says the report. If Iraq can no longer be controlled, and if Iran guards its independence, then the US risks finding its access to Gulf oil diminishing at precisely the same time as China seeks to make gains in the region. I think this is where the moonbats hijack the report. Freindly to the US so we can get cheap oil is a distant hope well behind other important things such as democratic, free, actively anti-terror, capitalist, and tolerant. We're not there to try and make a new best friend; this isn't the elementary school playground. Want to solve the oil supply problem. DRILL IN ANWR!!! ...for crying out loud... it's like talking to a brick wall here... [update: I always forget about nuclear power. Why not use a little more of that? Talk to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and see if they'll approve it. If it's good enough for Europe, surely it's good enough for us.] The report by Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University provides a detailed month-by-month assessment of the developing insurgency for a year between May 2004 and April this year. This ought to be interesting... It points to the growing numbers of civilian casualties, as well as the failure to control the insurgency, even with the use of overwhelming firepower, as with the assault on Fallujah last November, and concludes that the war in Iraq has been a ‘gift’ for al-Qaeda. Well, since we're not killing civilians, I wonder who is? Maybe it' the terrorists; maybe that threat is inspiring the Iraqi people to join the Iraqi armed forces (numbering 200,000 now remember?) to combat terror and help make their country safe for the innocent civilians. And we shouldn't be trying to control the terrorists, we're trying to kill them. Or arrest them for interrogation purposes so that we can use the intel to find/kill/arrest more terrorists... bigger terrorists. It's a difficult concept, but try to wrap your head around it. And if al-Qaeda wants a gift tell them to come out of their cave, and we'd be happy to give them a great gift... hopefully a bullet, center mass. Or if they're really lucky a trial by a jury and then an execution. We'll even wrap it for them. Iraq has become a magnet for young jihadists, replacing Afghanistan as a combat training zone, even to the extent that jihadists from that country now travel to Iraq to gain combat experience, taking their skills back to Afghanistan to use against western forces there, it says. Yeah a magnet. It's easier to kill them if they come to us instead of us going and looking for them. "Easier to catch flies with honey..." is how the saying goes I believe... And it's better for Americans if they do it on foreign soil fighting our highly trained, well armed military rather then here on the streets of New York, Washington, or Los Angeles. UPDATE: More talk of troop reduction.