Refugees and Baghdad Street Fighting Afterall; Cheney may be US Baghdad Bob

VP Cheney's rose tint is undiminished - He's starting to look like Baghdad Bob, yes? Time Magazine's quote of the day:

"I look at it and see it is actually an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well." - VP Dick Cheney, responding to Tony Blair's decision to withdraw 1,600 British troops from Iraq
-----------------"Basra is dominated by 4 paramilitaries, who are fighting turf wars with one another and with the Iraqi government over oil smuggling rights." - Juan Cole

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Mother Jones crunches the numbers and comes up with evidence that tensions and fitna imposed by the rejectionists in Iraq have created room for general rise in "jihadi" attacks (see chart below and story here - btw, read all of the rest of the feature, some of the statistics are astounding).

At this point in time, the world is not obviously safer (we've merely traded one kind of conflict for another), there are massive refugees (just not related to US bombing campaign to oust Saddam), and there will be street fighting in Baghdad by US Marines of significant intensity ...

They say things get worse before they get better, and while that is often the case, this project seems to be on long, long term horizon..