While some people encourage our failure and want to ignore anything that might show any type of good or progress coming to Iraq, we see the Ambassadors statements are not all that terrible as some would like to make it. Crocker made some interesting statements and he pointed out the negatives that are occurring and need to be addressed. However, the Bush bashers don't care about that, they have already given up.
So let's see some comments that Ambassador Crocker told the Foreign Relations Committee.
"cautioned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee via a balky video
hookup that a "non-conditioned withdrawal" of U.S. forces from Iraq --
such as a redeployment mandated by Congress -- could undo recent
successes and give al-Qaeda "further room to operate."
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"Both Crocker and Odierno asserted that the surge has had a significant
impact on al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group held responsible for most of the
spectacular suicide bombings in the country. And they said a
potentially crucial phenomenon in Anbar province, where Sunni Arab
tribes have turned against al-Qaeda, is spreading to parts of the
capital and other provinces"
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"I'm certainly not moving any goalposts," he said. "There are a lot of
processes at work -- some of them positive, some of them negative."
While Anbar is unique, "there are similar phenomena being repeated
around the country," Crocker said."
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"Crocker stressed that at the national level, he has been encouraged by
the evolution of a "presidency council" made up of Iraq's Kurdish
president, the country's two vice presidents -- one Shiite, the other
Sunni -- and the Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki."
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"The longer I am here, the more I am persuaded that progress in Iraq
cannot be analyzed solely in terms of these discrete, precisely defined
benchmarks," Crocker told the committee. He said this was because "in
many cases, these benchmarks do not serve as reliable measures of
everything that is important -- Iraqi attitudes toward each other and
their willingness to work toward political reconciliation."
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"With an additional 45 days to examine trends, "I'll be able to make a
bit more accurate assessment," Odierno said. "What I imagine we'll have
to do is do assessments that follow that initial assessment in
September. . . ."
