A New Iraq: Updated With Unrelated Romney Good News And Video

Mike Yon's "Ghosts of Anbar Pt.III" is posted and it is a remarkable contrast from his early dispatches from the front filled with combat and IEDs, he has pictures of gardens and palm groves and colorful Iraqi soldiers afraid of nothing that were once trying to kill us and are now trying to emulate our Marines and their code, Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful.
That may be the Marine's code it is not that of our defeatocrats in Congress that would abandon the people of Iraq to the thugs of AQ and Iranian proxies. I posted a while back that much of what was going on was as much organized crime and typical gangster thug behaviour as driven by Islamic fundamentalism. Some of what I hypothesized has proven true as many of the so called insurgents were just desparate for money and terrorized into planting bombs, the stories that Mike and other longterm embeds have been telling are incredible history that I devour. I wish I could be there so I follow it as closely as I can through milblogs and the longterm embeds not the nightly news from the Green Zone or the pages of agenda driven newspapers.
The Iraqis are proud people and very willing to work very hard to better themselves, they are far more capitalist than socialist while being an extremely tightly knit family/clan/tribal based society, they had to be under Saddam's brutal rule. Iraq has an extremely rich agricultural valley much like California's and in many many ways shares our geology and growing zones of our southwest and Ca's central valley. I think it would be a great idea for our central and inland valley cities form partnerships with cities in Iraq, Bakersfield and Baquba, Fresno and Fallujah, for example to share agricultural know how, it was the bread basket of the Middle-East at one time after all. Employment and markets for their goods are far better weapons against AQ and extremism than bullets ever will be, that is why AQ targeted them with massive bombs. It backfired on them and bad.
I for one am more optimistic now than at any other time since I now have a feel for the people, decent folks that just want to get on with their lives, Islam and a Caliphate are not really even on their radar. They are just a simple people wanting to live their lives, they just want simple things we take for granted like clean tapwater, sewage and garbage disposal and electricity. Will it be a Jeffersonian republic? Probably not but it will be Iraqi born and bred and we must let them and guide them not dictate to them for our experience is unique among nations and history and very new in the annals of Middle-Eastern history, 400 years as opposed to 10,000 plus years and this is a most ancient of lands that many consider the birth place of man and the resting place of the Arc of Noah and the Arc of God. I am not an end of times Biblical nut but dang things are really wierd right now ?!?
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Update: Mitt Romney has roared to the front of the GOP Bloggers straw poll pushing 50%. I know these polls are unscientific and prone to error but this is a significant shift recently as I am a polled member of the GOP Bloggers. Mitt Romney is simply the most qualified candidate the electorate has seen in many years and the GOP field is the strongest in many years against one of the weakest DNC fields ever, Hillary, Silky Pink Saphire Edwards and the Rookie Obama. Did the GOP pull off an Ali style rope-a-dope with the '06 elections? I am beginning to think so .
Mitt's new ad, how many other candidates would put out an ad like this, this is good, its called sex appeal, he's fit and ready to lead and it will connect.



I know, Sen. McCain can't but he has a very good reason and sHucksterbee is a marathoner and nanny statist. Picture Hillary trying to pull that off, ouch, BO or Silky could have if they had thought of it.