Too Late

You don't believe it, but after Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton "yes we can" and hence eventually "yes we will", creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's Zip code.
Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted by counting each African American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent, of sorts, for that arithmetic (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment).
Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role says: "We don't think this is just going to be about some numerical metric."
Mere numbers? Heaven forfend. That is how people speak when numerical metrics -- numbers of popular votes and delegates -- are inconvenient.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: "too late." Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton's political defeat can be similarly explained -- too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in understanding that she had a serious challenger, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat.

Most of all, she was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party's mania for "fairness," as mandated by liberals like her, has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama's early lead in delegates. If Democrats, who genuflect at the altar of "diversity," allowed more of it in their delegate selection process, things might look very different. If even, say, Texas, California and Ohio were permitted to have winner-take-all primaries (as 48 states have winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes), Clinton would have been more than 400 delegates ahead of Obama before Tuesday and today would be at her ancestral home in New York planning to return some of its furniture to the White House next January.

Tuesday night must have been almost as much fun for John McCain as for Obama. The Republican brand has been badly smudged by recent foreign and domestic policies, which are the only kinds there are, so McCain's hopes rest on the still-unattached cohort called "Reagan Democrats," who still seem somewhat resistant to Obama.

McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness -- the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

Exit Polls: Limbaugh Effect Seems To Rear Its Head

Photo: Lost in North Carolina and defeated with doubble diggits the Billarygang is celebrating their 2% victory over Barack Obama, but they don't look very happy.
Did Rush Limbaugh actually impact the Democratic primary?
The loud-mouthed radio talk show host has been encouraging Republicans to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton to continue the "chaos" in the Democratic race. And a sampling of some key exit poll information suggests he may, to a certain extent, be having an effect.
Thirty-six percent of primary voters said that Clinton does not share their values. And yet, among that total, one out of every five (20 percent) nevertheless voted for her in the Indiana election. Moreover, of the 10 percent of Hoosiers who said "neither candidate" shared their values, 75 percent cast their ballots for Clinton.
These are not small numbers. By comparison, of the 33 percent of voters who said Sen. Barack Obama does not share their values, only seven percent cast their ballots in his favor. Basically, more people who don't relate to Clinton are, for one reason or another, still voting for her. These are not likely to be loyal supporters.
On a broader level, among the 17 percent of primary goers who said they would choose Sen. John McCain over Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election match-up, 41 percent of that group came from Clinton's own camp. In essence, roughly seven percent of Clinton support in Indiana (40 percent of 17 percent) said they would defect to the Republican should she end up the nominee. That would be a difficult punch to stomach in November. In 2004, nearly 1 million Indianans voted for John Kerry. A seven percent defection rate would have meant 70,000 less votes.
By contrast, if the general election is between Obama and McCain, 19 percent of the Indiana Democratic primary goers said they would support the Republican. But only 12 percent of that group (2.28 percent) would come from Obama's camp.
The numbers suggest one of three things: A) Clinton's support in Indiana, while clearly there, is not entirely solid; B) a large swath of Indiana primary goers simply didn't like the nominees and thought of Clinton as the lesser of two evils; or C) Limbaugh's hatchet plan could be having political ripples.
Perhaps it's a mix of all three.

Proofs of Demolition

Demolition of the Twin Towers is Provable Through Simple Analysis
Despite the destruction of the most significant evidence of the Twin Tower collapses -- the structural steel -- it is relatively easy to prove the towers were demolished. Determining how they were demolished without the benefit of the steel may be difficult or impossible, but proving that a gravity-driven collapse is insufficient to explain the characteristics of the collapses documented by photographic and seismic evidence is not.
There are numerous pieces of evidence that strongly indicate demolition, including the fact that authorities destroyed and suppressed evidence, the more than 100 years of engineering experience with steel-frame buildings, the misleading representation of the towers' design by truss theory proponents and the implausible sequence of events proposed by that theory, and the many collapse features that seem irreconcilable with gravity-driven collapses.
Proving demolition requires more than enumerating evidence. It requires making logical inferences about events using the evidence. Three fairly strong proofs are as follows. These are presented as qualitative arguments only. Each suggests an approach for developing a rigorous quantitative proof.

* The towers fell faster than they could have if they were crushing themselves.
* The volume of dust was too great to have been the product of a gravity-driven collapse.
* The South Tower's top shattered before falling, and so its breakup was not a result of gravity-driven crushing.

Speed of Fall
Twin Towers' Rates of Fall Proves Demolition
The towers collapsed completely in intervals of time similar to that taken for a block of wood dropped from a tower's roof to reach the ground. A block of wood has about the same average density as the main components of the towers near their tops.
In a vacuum, a block of wood (or lead) would take 9.2 seconds to fall from the tower's roof. In the air a block of wood, say ten inches on a side, might take 50 percent longer than in a vacuum. Fifteen seconds, a good estimate for the total time of collapse of the North Tower, is about the time it would take our block to fall from the roof. The rubble from the Tower probably had similar average density to our block of wood, since the floor slabs consisted of corrugated sheet metal and lightweight concrete, and the perimeter steel columns were hollow with walls only 1/4th inch thick at the Towers' tops. Air resistance alone could account for the slowing of the falls to the point where each Tower took about 15 seconds to completely come down.
The official story requires that more than air resistance was slowing the descents. The falling rubble would be having to crush every story below the crash zone -- ripping apart the steel grids of the outer walls and obliterating the steel lattice of the core structure. The resistance of the intact building itself would be thousands of times greater than air resistance.
If air resistance is able to increase total collapse times by even 20 percent, then shouldn't the addition of the resistance of the buildings themselves increase the time several thousand percent, to at least tens of minutes?
Of course the idea of a collapse lasting minutes is absurd. So is the idea of a steel frame building crushing itself.

Breakup of WTC 2's Top
Shattering of South Tower's Top Proves Demolition
There are several pieces of evidence that show the structure of the 30 stories of the South Tower above the impact zone was shattered before it started its precipitous plunge. How could the steel frame of many stories above the impact zone have broken up even before it started to fall? The proponents of gravity-driven collapse maintain that the tops of the towers crushed the floors below the impact zones as they fell. The tops functioned as pistons, according to Bazant and Zhou, crushing the stories one by one. What one actually sees in the case of the South Tower is that their piston disintegrated even before it started to fall. A gravity-driven collapse cannot account for that disintegration, nor for how a cloud of rubble could crush the intact structure below the impact zone.


These frames from a South Tower collapse video are separated by equal time intervals. Examining the middle edge of the falling portion of the tower shows that its angle of tilt from vertical remains about the same between the second and third frames, and therefore the top has stopped rotating. But unless the top had already been shattered, it should have continued to rotate in accordance with the law of conservation of angular momentum.

The Mysterious Leveling of Building WTC-7

large high resolution photograph

FEMA on Building 7
Despite the inescapable logic, the official theory for the collapse, as published in Chapter 5 of the FEMA report goes as follows:

* At 9:59 AM (after the South Tower collapse), electrical power to the substations in WTC 7 was shut off.
* Due to a design flaw, generators in WTC 7 started up by themselves.
* Debris from the collapsing North Tower breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. (This means the debris had to travel across WTC 6 and Vesey Street -- a distance of at least 355 feet -- penetrate the outer wall of WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of the building, including a concrete masonry wall.)
* This, and other debris (that also made the journey across Building 6 and Vesey Street), managed to start numerous fires in the building. (Unfortunately, this event did not prompt anyone to turn off the generators.)
* The backup mechanism (that should have shut off the fuel oil pumps when a breach occurred) failed to work, and the fuel oil (diesel) was pumped from the tanks on the ground floor to the fifth floor where it ignited. The pumps emptied the tanks of all 12,000 gallons of fuel.
* The extant fires raised the temperature of the spilled fuel oil to the 140 degrees F required for it to ignite.
* The sprinkler system malfunctioned and failed to extinguish the fire.
* The burning diesel fuel heated trusses to the point where they lost most of their strength, precipitating a total collapse of Building 7.

The last point is the greatest stretch, since it asks us to believe that an event that would be expected only to cause the sagging of a floor instead led not only to total collapse, but to such a tidy collapse that directly adjacent buildings were scarcely even damaged. This is surprising behavior for a steel frame skyscraper designed to survive fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes.
After laying out this highly improbable scenario, the FEMA report authors conclude:
The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.
Unfortunately for investigators hoping to resolve this issue, nearly all of the evidence had already been destroyed by the time the FEMA report was published.

But... we have some near better; Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud Following the Collapse of 1 World Trade Center (the North Tower)


Documents Destroyed
At the time of its destruction, Building 7 housed documents relating to numerous SEC investigations. The files for approximately three to four thousand cases were destroyed, according to the Los Angeles Times. Among the destroyed documents were ones that may have demonstrated the relationship between Citigroup and the WorldCom bankruptcy.

Collapsing Buildings

The New Phenomenon of Steel Buildings Crushing Themselves
The seven World Trade Center buildings were in the two blue regions of the map here above. On September 11th 2001, all 7 buildings were destroyed. 110-story WTC 1 and 2, and 47-story WTC 7 were leveled, and WTC 3, 4, 5, and 6 were severely damaged, with large portions of WTC 3, 4, and 6 being crushed.
It is interesting that, in spite of the thorough devastation of all the buildings with World Trade Center addresses, no large buildings outside the blue zones were sufficiently damaged to warrant their demolition in the months that followed the attack. 1 The "collapse" of Building 7 was remarkably tidy. Although it was wedged between the Verizon building and the U.S. Post Office building, it barely damaged either of them.
It is even more interesting that, prior to September 11th, no steel framed building had ever undergone total collapse due to any cause or combination of causes other than controlled demolition and severe earthquakes. Such buildings have survived hurricanes, severe fires, earthquakes, and bombings, but none have fallen down of their own weight -- an event that was portrayed as inevitable on September 11th.
Of the collapses of the three huge buildings on September 11th, the collapse of Building 7 is treated separately. If you believe the official story, then Building 7 would be the only example in history of a steel framed building undergoing complete collapse as a result of fires. It and the Twin Towers would be the only permanent vertical steel structures to have fallen into themselves instead of falling over, except in cases of demolition.
The collapses of the Twin Towers are analyzed in much more detail than Building 7 because there is more evidence, and because, whereas Building 7's fall looked like a standard building demolition, the disintegrations of the Twin Towers had many features that are not easily explained.

This image, showing the site of WTC 7, is a small portion of a large high-resolution photograph taken by an airplane flying at 3,300 feet on September 23, 2001. It appears that much of the building's remains have already been removed.

Here a picture of buildings partially collapsed by the 1999 earthquake in Taiwan.

Do You Think: Is Barack Obama Honest?

Since a few days Pointer is in discussion on an American forum called Repptide and he doesn’t know what that means: ReppTide? You tell me. It’s good for practice to train writing in English language and the issues are in shape for Pointer’s interests. Meet the people you need!
Well, you need opponents for a discussion, isn’t it?
There are they and also allies, pretty folks with brains and humour. There are polls in which you can answer with Yes/No and place a comment. Look for yourself: One of the questions is “Do you think Barack Obama is honest?
My answer was “Yes” like 618 of 925 users had voted before me. Then you go to the comments, if exist. First from above was Mr. Dickson – posted on April 7, 2008.

To my JEWS brothers who are miss-informed about Obama. I want to tell you that it is ridiculous trying to hang Obama with what another man "Rev. Wright" said. More-so, it is contrary to our ideology and believe that states thus "Do to others what you'll want them do to you". The truth remains that every Jewish man like me, talks about the holocaust with real grievances. If we do so, then it will be an injustice for us to say "hang Rev. Wright" for talking about the blacks past tragic experiences in America. We all know how America maltreated blacks and even kill them in a crude way than ordinary animals. Just like what Germans did to our fathers in the holocaust. SALAMAT, I want you to know that you are making an indignant, ambiguous and inflammatory statements. More-so, you can say that you'll not vote for OBAMA not that the Jews will not vote for him. Because there are many Jews already voting for him. Everyman has his own opinion. Here is your statement that sounds like Rev. wrights statement "They Germans paid for their sins because my family stuck bayonets in their stomachs in 1944. The German Nation has paid extensive reparations for these crimes to the families of the Jewish, Serbs and Gypsy victims of these crimes",. Is there any different from why you made this statement and why Rev. Wright made his own statement of "God damn America for the black innocent blood that was shedded"? I need an answer from you.
We all know much about the past. But what we need right now in America is to grow up above the past. The only easy way to address the past is to vote Obama. If you sincerely look into America right now, you will be able to predict the future - where the terrorist will spring up from inside of America and from Americans themselves - with all these economic mayhem. I'm not trying to be sentimental. Somebody like OBAMA is whom we need right now to calm the tempo down from every ramification both within and outside of USA.

Next is a figure who knows that Obama meets harsh opposition under a few Jews on the forum and other people who loudly preach that Barack Obama is a liar and with the first answer he is hitting the mark. It is salamat4 and Pointer was also in discussion with this guy, who lives in Hannover, Germany. He is Jewish and talks very often about Obama as a liar and a anti-Semitic racist.

Dear dickson,
Your comments about Obama are 9 months out of date and totally inappropriate for an American of the Jewish faith at this time to make.

I am the father of the 12th generation descended from Bal shem Tov. My Mother in Law's family were almost 100% murdered in the Holocaust. Most of the members of my father in law's Bal shem Tov family were murdered in the Holocaust.

My mother in Law, Anna Bella Geiger, read Dreams From My father and she compares it to Mein Kampff. Her opinion is that Obama's anti-Semitic racism is a far bigger threat to all Jews in America than Hitler's racism contained in Mein Kampff,

Voting Obama in the opinion of every American Jew that we know who have read and comprehended the racism dripping from every page of Dreams From My Father is inviting the start of an American Holocaust!

Obama has a number of notorious anti-Semitic advisers on his campaign team. General McPeak is a good example of that along with Obama's long term Spiritual Adviser, the anti-Semitic preacher Jeremiah Wright.

Obama has only denounced those anti-Semitic Wright sermons that the media has questioned after they questioned them. Obama refused publicly to denounce the anti-Semite, Jeremiah Wright. Wright is a friend and close ally of the anti-Semitic Black Muslim leader Farrakhan.

I recommend that you read and comprehend the racism and racial hatred that is dripping from every page of Dreams From My Father that do not talk of the mundane details of Obama's life. Then please spread the Truth about Obama to all other Jews. Especially the anti-Semitic racism and anti white racism of Obama that disqualifies him totally from ever being President of the USA.

That book is also a warning of a pending new Holocaust in the USA if Obama would ever gets elected. That is why no Jew in America will be voting for Obama in November with the exception of Jews who have a strong death wish.

Glenn Cole
100% service connected disabled retired
Lt. Colonel, Army of the United States

You have to visit the site and read all the answers because the discussion is mixed end Dickson is very good, real cool, but this salamat4 goes totally mad. A small part of it:

The restraint on Hitler's power by the Reichstag that the Jews of Germany had depended on was destroyed in less than one month after Hitler bcame Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

How many of the Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps had voted for Adolph Hitler in the election of 1933 with the same argument that Dickson is again arguing, that the Reichstag would control Hitler?

Obama would take power on 20 January 2009. How long would it take Obama to destroy the Senate and the House and to seize absolute dictatorial power? Will he be able to do that in one month or will that take him longer than it took Adolph Hitler?

I have met our black Jewish brothers living in Ethiopia. They have the right to immigrate to Israel and many of them have exercised that right. They are not Africans, they are Jews and proud of it just like all Sephardic Jews are proud of being Jews even though they have dark colored skin.

Obama being voted into power would start a racial hatred regime like what America has never before experienced.

The millions of blacks who have rejected Obama's deceit and his theology that condemns black believers to failure, have become the best witnesses against Obama and what he is and the great evil of the black as victim that he is trying to sell to every real African American.

Dickson, I suggest you read the writings and speeches of all of the numerous African American opponents of Obama: Michael Steele, Michelle Malkin, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Juan Williams etc.,etc.,etc., who have all decisivelly rejected the theology of the black as victim of Obama and Jeremiah Wright. Their success proves that that Victim Theology is wrong and is a great evil designed to hold blacks back and depend on government handouts from Obama.
Glenn Cole
100% service connected disabled retired
Lt. Colonel, Army of the United States

The discussion goes on and Pointer will not write directly to this guy but could not wait to write the nest comment, posted on April 15, 2008:
I can not get any trace of racism or anti-Semitism in the works and words of Barack Obama and I also read the books of Barack, know about his legislature record, because I became very interested in this political phenomenon after hearing and rereading his speech on the Democratic Convention of 2004. I saw immediately his capacity to overcome the political crisis which George W. Bush should bring in the world, because I opposed the war in Iraq too from before the beginning on the same arguments and values. As a Dutchman I want to see Americans as liberators and trusted allies, but I was disappointed when our government gave political support to the war, while they knew Colin Powell was lying on the issues of WMD's, the connection Saddam/Al-Qaeda and the thread to Saudi-Arabia (an army along the border but Photoshopped on a Google-map). Sure I'm glad Saddam is finished, because he was a thread against Kurds and Israel and he supported Palestinian terrorists. So, let's kill him and some more of his kind and get out of the place. The same is to do with Al-Qaeda, the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas. Democracy is a self-help organisation. You can not order it, nor buy it, nor sell or export it. I am not a softy and Obama is not either. We don't speak or shake hands with terrorists. But the President of a nation has to speak with hostile presidents of hostile nations. That's an obligation of power. Don't be shy.
Telling the truth is not easy in politics. There are salamat1, salamat2, salamat3 and at this very moment there is salamat4 and a lot more. No wonder, because they scatter all over the place, liars of all kinds and all races. Some of them are racists and as a Jew, I am very sad to conclude there are still also Jewish racists, who even can not make a stand for the truth and against real racism. I thought the embarrassing last one was Bobby Fisher. I shall never believe that a 100% service connected disabled retired Lt. Colonel in the Army of the United States, has to be re-educated about the issue that no President of the United States ever should be able to plan and execute a Holocaust in the USA against any race. So it is evil talk and a lie to scare people. He has no quotes and no arguments too. The best thing to do is view Obama's full speech about race + transcript on his website and to view the six parts of Michelle Obama speaking in Delaware.

You have to know you next President and your next First Lady and be proud, fearless Americans, trusted again as allies!
Shame on all liars and damn all racists.
Have a good day and claim you seat at the table of democracy. ENDOFPOST

Further reading leads to my last quote on the same salamat4:

As susanaldridge has informed you I am in a hospital being operated on because of a US Army connected tumor located behind my skull cap just below my brain. This situation results on the one thing concentration susan talks to you about.

But is brain damage the issue or the question: “Do you think Barack Obama is honest?” I mean, shall we kill Barack Obama, because of a pity with salamad4’s illness and how can 2 cancer lesions be military related as he said his disability is?

The Triangular Viewpoint On The War In Iraq

March 21 2008 will be seen in history as the day of the truth about the surge in Iraq. The Washington Post reported:

“Graham and others opened the door for Petraeus and Crocker to match White House rhetoric on the ongoing threat from al-Qaeda in Iraq and the rising menace of Iran. But while Petraeus noted that the recent Iraqi government offensive in Basra against the Iranian-backed Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr illustrated Tehran's malign influence, Crocker repeated something he said in September: Persian Iran is up to no good in Iraq, but its role there is limited by deep Arab Iraqi antipathy.
Both Petraeus and Crocker described the Basra operation as a positive demonstration of Iraqi sovereignty and military determination, though one with operational flaws.
Petraeus confirmed that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had rejected his advice to delay the offensive until Iraqi troops were better prepared.
"There is no question that it could have been better planned," Petraeus said. He agreed that the 1,000 Iraqi army troops and police who either deserted or refused to fight were "a disappointment." But, he added, thousands of others had fought well, particularly in other areas of southern Iraq where simultaneous violence also broke out.”

Attend that where Nouri al-Maliki called the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr “Iranian backed groups of criminal bandits,” but he could not defeat them in Basra with 50,000troops of his official Iraqi army. Petraeus and Crocker witnessed that Maliki’s Shiite-dominated Government is reluctant to put the 90,000 Sunni security volunteers on its payroll. These fighters, former insurgents and now called the Awakening Movement, diminished the influence and numbers of al-Qaeda, knowing where to find end how to fight them, and the United States are still funding them, because they are the cornerstone of the surge.
Senator Barbara Boxer said: “I’m just asking you [Petraeus] why you would object to asking [Iraq] to pay for that entire program, given all we are giving them in blood and everything else.”
Petraeus responded: “It is a very fair question and I think that if there’s anything that ambassador Crocker and I will take back to Iraq candidly after this morning’s session and this afternoon’s is, in fact, to ask those kind of questions more directly.”
David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker had nothing to say but there is significant progress but fragile, reversible and there is no light in the tunnel. The conclusion must be that we are confronted with the reality: the war in Iraq is a black hole.
That is one point of the triangle.

Compared with the experts on the ground, the commanding general and the US ambassador in Iraq, the vision of the senators Lieberman, Graham and McCain is a different one and far more optimistic.
Senator Joe Lieberman scoffed at war skeptics for embracing what he called a see-no-progress, hear-no-progress, speak-no-progress view of the war. "According to some, we should fire you," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told the witnesses. "It sounds like... really nothing good has happened in the last year and this is a hopeless endeavor. Well, I beg to differ." "We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, success is within reach." said the presumed GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Here we meet the conclusion: the circumstances are fine and we are settled for another 100 years. They cited various indicators of what they consider success. "Weekly security incidents" are down to 2005 levels – at least until last week, before Maliki’s attack on Basra. Civilian deaths, according to U.S. military figures, have fallen to early 2006 levels. Bombings are down to mid-2006 levels. The number of Iraqi battalions taking the lead in operations is up 20 percent since January 2007. The Sunni opposition to Al Qaeda in Iraq within Anbar province remains strong. Several pieces of legislation important to national political reconciliation have moved forward in the Iraqi parliament. A budget was passed with record amounts of capital expenditures. And, as Crocker noted, Iraq's Council of Representatives approved a redesign of the Iraqi flag. Their message: We must stay the course.
This is the second point of the triangular viewpoint."

Then there is another way to look at the reality. Troops are sitting back, mostly hiding in the tunnel during signs of unrest, with no light backwards and no light ahead. They hired 90,000 Sunni insurgents for 10 dollar a day each to fight al-Qaeda, while there is a ceasefire in the civil war and in stead of negotiating and building a democratic government and political practice Maliki attacks his political opposition with the Iraqi army, but does not succeed to overcome his opponent. This is no progress. It is a mess. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) remarked that the testimony from Petraeus and Crocker, who each claimed there has been significant though fragile progress in Iraq, "describes one Iraq while we see another." Also McCain could have said that, meaning the opposite. In his opening remarks, senior Senator and chairman Levin noted, that the main purpose of the surge – to provide Iraqi leaders breathing room to hammer out a political settlement – “has not been achieved," and he argued that "our current open-ended commitment is an invitation to continuing [Iraqi] dependency." He blasted the "incompetence and excessively sectarian leadership" of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and noted Iraq was not spending the billions of dollars in surplus it has obtained thanks to rising oil prices, leaving the American taxpayers (who are forced to pay up to $4.00 a gallon for gas) paying for tens of billions of reconstruction within Iraq. He cited a State Department report that noted that "the intransigence of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government [is] the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaida terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias." And he said that he was recently informed that of 110 joint U.S.-Iraqi operations of company size or greater in Iraq in the first three months of 2008, Iraqi forces assumed the lead in only 10 of those missions. If the military operations of the Iraqi army are up with 20%, you can do the math that this is too few to mention. Kennedy wondered when Iraqi forces – the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance – are "ready to fight on their own." And they can not fight with any success “some groups of bandits” scattered over the harbour of Basra. Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) noted that the "awakening" in Anbar started before the escalation of U.S. troops in Iraq, and he shared his concern that the war was producing serious "strain" for the military.
This vision is the third point of the triangular viewpoint on the war of Iraq.