Happy New Year!

MeTheSheeple would like to wish everyone a wonderful new year, with success in your plans.

This also offers an opportunity for the most hopeful and/or most deluded person of the year:

CNN's Ed Henry: But now as 2006 ends, Osama bin Laden is still at large. Heading into 2007, how confident are you that he can be brought to justice this coming year?
... You know, going back to September 2001, the president said, dead or alive, we're going to get him. Still don't have him. I know you are saying there's successes on the war on terror, and there have been. That's a failure.

Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend: Well, I'm not sure -- it's a success that hasn't occurred yet. I don't know that I view that as a failure.

Arrogance or stutter?

In the press conference a few days back, Bush seemed to chortle when he was asked what the situation was like in Iraq.

Wars all over but the dying?

Via that pinko publication The Nation MeTheSheeple finally became aware of a September survey showing just how badly the United States has already lost in Iraq.

(For those who want the thumbnail version, CNN has this report via CrooksAndLiars.)

The full report shows a majority believe American withdrawal would decrease inter-ethnic violence (read: "civil war") but a majority believe it would hurt day-to-day security for Iraqis.

Yet here's the part that tells us how much the United States is seen as an unwelcome, destablizing and occupation force. This is simply appalling. In MeTheSheeples' opinion, there's damned little -- likely nothing -- that could be done. Guerrilla war theorists posit that it's difficult to wipe out insurgencies when public support goes above one-third. Here, we see it's nearly double that:

Support for attacks against US-led forces has increased sharply to 61 percent (27% strongly, 34% somewhat). This represents a 14-point increase from January 2006, when only 47 percent of Iraqis supported attacks.
This change is due primarily to a dramatic 21-point increase among Shias, whose approval of attacks has risen from 41 percent in January to 62 percent in September. A very large majority (86%) of Kurds disapprove of attacks (59% strongly), with only 15 percent supporting them. Kurdish disapproval is up slightly from January, when it was 81 percent, but approval of attacks has held constant. Similarly, Sunni support for attacks has remained relatively constant with 92 percent approving (up only slightly from 88% in January, when it was 81 percent, but approval of attacks has held constant. Similarly, Sunni support for attacks has remained relatively constant with 92 percent approving (up only slightly from 88% in January).

And what of that occupation force?

Naturally the question arises: If only one in three Iraqis favors US withdrawal in the shortest possible time frame of six months, why then is support for attacks on US-led forces as high as 61 percent? Indeed, among those who approve of such attacks, only 50 percent favor withdrawal in six months—though another 37 percent favor it in a year.
It is always difficult to know why people have certain attitudes, but some findings are strongly suggestive. A large majority of Iraqis—and a majority in all ethnic groups-- believes that the US plans to maintain permanent military bases in Iraq and would not withdraw its forces if the Iraqi government asked it to.

Is it possible for the United States to have more badly bungled the political and military aspects of Iraq? Not really. Is it possible to find a way out of here without destroying two militaries and one country, or maybe two?