It really sad to see the faith that the right wing believers of this administration have placed in this sham. While some like to chide their more naively believing conservative peers, I disagree. I disagree, for the same reason I disagreed many years ago, with those that denounced the Americans that served in Viet Nam. You don’t denounce or chide those whose trust has been betrayed. The right wing “puff pieces” appearing in National Review or wherever, still have the believers convinced that other than some temporary bumps, all will be well.
In reality, the MIC never was prepared to handle post war Iraq. The article you brought here on Friday graphically illustrated how poorly the post war planning was prior to the initiation of hostilities.
Message 19124640
Since any post war planning was “botched” pre-war, the only hope was to “pull it out” after the we got to Baghdad. The first attempt was poor Garner’s pre-doomed effort. Now we have Bremmer’s attempt at the impossible. How’s it going? Russert had Bremmer on Meet the Press
msnbc.com
Bremmer says that
what we’re faced here with is a small group of killers, trained killers, who are basically trying to hold back the tide of history in Iraq, and the tide of history is flowing towards democracy. These are people who are ex-Ba’athists, Fedayeen Saddam ex-people in the intelligence community there,
and we simply have to overpower them, and we will.
Even though he admits that his intelligence isn’t good enough to know how many bad guys there are, he’s sure that we’ll “kill or capture” Saddam and will deal with the resistance that’s 85% in a small Baathist loyal area. Why he’s already got a “Governing Council”, soon a constitution, may be even elections next year. The right wing publication lap this up like “mothers milk”.
Never mind that the “Governing Council” has already been denounced, and that there is so far no evidence that the Iraqi people have any idea how to reach the necessary compromises required to agree on a constitution much less an election. Now, one can try to finesse the constitution problem by producing one, and having it declared official. No ratification required other than from the “Governing Council”. But then there’s that pesky election. Just how long is that going to take, and who can run. And never any mention of the possibility that given a world wide jihad has been called, and that there are already reports of “jihadists” among the attackers, maybe 85% of the attacks won’t remain in “a small Baathist loyal area.
Bremmer’s sadly transparent obfuscation to Russert
I’ve already said we have 12 different nations that already have forces on the ground. Almost all the NATO members have forces on the ground...
resulted in the following dialog
MR. RUSSERT: But it’s a miniscule amount.
AMB. BREMER: ...and committed.
MR. RUSSERT: It’s 13,000; we have 147,000.
AMB. BREMER: Well...
MR. RUSSERT: The ratio is a little bit overextended.
But you got to maintain that coalition fantasy. When Russert obliquely brought up the jihad problem in the context of the required number of troops with a question about sealing Iraq’s border’s even Bremmer admitted that would be difficult.
The Hastert: part of the interview is … well you judge. In response to Russert listing some Iraqi problems, and then asking Hastert “How troubled are you by the situation in Iraq?”, Hastert’s response was a 9-11 diatribe. When Russert finally broke into this with “Was Saddam involved in any way in September 11?”, all Hastert could say was “I don’t think he was.” He then tried the shopworn obfuscation of “But we know that al-Qaeda were training in northern Iraq for a period of time.”
Russert then summarizes the arguments used to justify the war to congress stressing Hastert’s own words in his home state paper. Russert ended with
In hindsight, with all the questionable intelligence, if you will, about uranium from Africa and aluminum tubes, do you believe that the potential nuclear threat of Saddam Hussein was overstated?
Hastert’s response
You know, we don’t know. First of all, we do know that Saddam Hussein possessed, even today, that it’s there, barrels, as a matter of fact tons, of plutonium, some of it this yellow cake plutonium from Niger, that they had purchased, you know, previously.
Probably confused by this (I wonder why?), Rusert asked
Where is it?
Again Hastert’s response
Well, it’s there; it’s contained. I mean, it’s of record that it is there, and it’s stored, it’s in barrels and it’s marked. And, you know, that is there. There’s no question about it. But, you know, this was purchased years ago. So they do have capability, and, you know, the intelligence that some folks had in 1998 to make decisions in 1998 and 1999, the 16 resolutions that the U.N. passed in 12 years, said there were weapons of mass destruction. In that included the potential of creating a nuclear weapon. And I think he had the potential for a dirty bomb and a nuclear device takes a little bit longer and more technology, but I think he was clearly striving to get that.
Now folks this is from a man that the constitution says is in line to become the President. From a man, who in his very next response says “It’s part of my job to know what’s going on. “
Hastert then tries the classic House Repub tactic – trot out a Bill Clinton ploy. After making sure he gets in a Clinton trial reference, he says Clinton used this intelligence to bomb and use Cruise missiles. Hello Dennis, anybody home. The threshold for sending American troops into harms way, is considerably higher than that for munitions. Duh.
And the poor believers in their President who is going to protect them, are fed more lies. The real picture emerged yesterday on Russert’s own show on CNBC. Guest Campbell Brown, recently in Iraq, describes how the same dichotomy in policy that has dogged any planning in Iraq, still obtains. In Bremmer’s own headquarters, there’s the State Dept group and the DOD group. They don’t talk to each other. They even hold separate meetings on the same subject, never inviting anyone from the “opposing” faction. When you couple that with the quotes from your article:
He said, 'If you keep them hungry, they'll do anything for us.' Every Iraqi says the Americans are doing this on purpose. It's quite obvious."
”I met the man who was hired to create a new civil government in Baghdad, to bring Baghdad back to order…I asked him what he knew about Iraqis. He knew nothing, and didn't care to know anything. He didn't know their history, their government, didn't speak a word of Arabic and didn't care to learn. This guy doesn't work for the American government, doesn't work for the State Department, and doesn't work for the CPA. He works for a corporation created by ex-Generals. Their job is to create the new Iraqi government structure."
we know how this will end.
What about the poor duped ones?
Again JMO
lurqer |
