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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (27028)	9/4/2003 11:46:19 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Joe Conason's Journal Remember Bush's promise never to undertake a foreign intervention without an exit strategy? That boast isn't holding up so well anymore. Sept. 3, 2003 \| Washington's "grown-ups" -- and their big screw-ups Do you remember when the Bush administration was new, and its flacks assured us that "the grown-ups" had returned to power in Washington? And do you remember how the president and his claque told us that, unlike those people they replaced, this White House would never undertake a foreign intervention without an exit strategy? Those boasts aren't holding up so well anymore, as we learn more every day about the ineptitude and arrogance that the Bush leaguers brought to their great Mesopotamian adventure. Today's Washington Times, a bad newspaper with good defense sources, reports that it has obtained a "secret" Pentagon document analyzing the deficiencies and defects of the administration's Iraq planning. According to the paper's account, this report awarded three possible "grades" to each activity analyzed: "The worst was 'capabilities that fell short of expectations or needs, and need to be redressed through new initiatives.' Getting this low grade were the postwar planning and the search for weapons of mass destruction, as well as the mix of active and reserve forces, and the troop deployment to the region." A higher grade was awarded to the public relations effort, however. Today's Daypass sponsored by Thirteen Speaking of lousy planning, Reuters reports that the Pentagon may have to reduce the commitment of American troops in Iraq by half or more. (Such news is especially troubling at a time when the Taliban is evidently regaining strength and renewing its alliance with al-Qaida.) That must be why -- having openly sneered at the United Nations and our doubting European allies for most of the past year -- President Bush has suddenly decided that we need their assistance after all. Of course, Bush may also be worried by his declining poll numbers and what they portend in his bid for a second term (I don't use the term "reelect" to refer to him). As Robert Kuttner writes today: "Bush's foreign policy is a shambles. The architects of the Iraq war have been proven wrong on every contention they made -- the imminent weapons of mass destruction, the alleged Saddam-al-Qaida connection, the supposed ease of occupation and reconstruction. Thumbing America's nose at 'old Europe' proved a major blunder. Bush now needs the United Nations to clean up his mess, but he is insisting on U.S. control ... This is a hornets' nest that Bush's policy stirred up. GIs are still getting killed for a war that the American public is turning against." How did this happen? Ideology played an important part, as Joshua Micah Marshall explains elegantly here. www.salon.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (27028)	9/5/2003 12:26:28 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

raqi Civil War within months Your prediction is happening much sooner. cnn.com <font color=brown>Three gunmen opened fire Friday at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad as worshippers were leaving after morning prayers,... No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but authorities said they are concerned it could signal a violent increase in tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. </font> TP

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (27028)	9/9/2003 12:09:22 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Déjà vu All over Again ___________________________ By David H. Hackworth* sftt.org September 8, 2003 While on vacation in Crawford, Tex., Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush must have been drinking from the same well as Lyndon B. Johnson when LBJ got American boots stuck in Southeast Asia’s unforgiving swamps. In April 1965, as he was secretly signing off on the Vietnam troop buildup that would eventually grow to more than 500,000 American soldiers, LBJ said, "Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict." Bush’s assertion that our battered, overstretched combat troops in Iraq would “never retreat” was a major déjà vu moment. And the similarities don’t stop there. Both presidents got into deep doo-doo because they listened to their arrogant defense secretaries and an all-knowing coterie of civilian and uniformed go-along types running the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff rather than some smart, straight-shooting field generals. LBJ consequently lost his job and caused millions of American and Vietnamese casualties. Let’s hope that GWB isn't leading us down another rocky road. Wise commanders know when to attack, when to retreat and when to adjust their battle plans. They’re in sync with the drumbeat of the battlefield the way a doctor is with the pulse of his or her patient. Tactics, strategy, enemy strength and intentions dictate maneuvers and courses of action, not the whims of a bunch of clueless chest-beaters still having trouble accepting how dead wrong they were with their post-Saddam plans for rebuilding Iraq. Because of a massively flawed policy, a proven miscalculation for which Congress should demand accountability, America is in big trouble in Iraq. Heads should roll – and the necks of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Myers and Pace should be first on the chopping block. As the body bags returning home mounted from a few a week to thousands a month, LBJ stayed with the same flawed team of advisers right up until the nation told him to pack his bags and go back to the ranch – permanently. And today Bush is still in bed with his bureaucrats as well as scores of politicians who collectively keep conning decent Americans across this nation with the party line that all will be well after “we drain the Iraqi swamps.” Of course, neither they nor their kids are the soldiers draining the undrainable swamps during Mission Impossible. The folks on the killing fields who dodge incoming daily are mainly products of blue-collar families from small-town USA, along with the 40,000 mostly Latino green-carders who fill the ranks of the assault units. Meanwhile, yet more troops are desperately needed to perform the peacemaking/nation-building jobs – and they can't be American. The U.S. military's ground forces are just about tapped out. The Marine and Army guys needed down on the deck have barely the strength to sustain the Iraq mission at present level, let alone cover our other worldwide commitments. Yet for every guerrilla in Iraq, John Abizaid, the general running the show there, needs a minimum of 10 counter-guerrillas. Otherwise it’s impossible to protect the oil pipelines, power stations, mosques, police stations, embassies or hotels from a foe who strikes from the shadows and runs. Look at the havoc two goofy snipers operating out of a beat-up car caused in the Washington, D.C., area last year. They were fumbling amateurs – not dedicated fanatics who get off driving a bomb-loaded truck into a U.N. building or a mosque – and it still took thousands of folks to track them down With perhaps 100,000 guerrillas operating in Iraq, Bush finally seems to be doing his ‘04 campaign math. If he can lose the flight suit and drop the “retreat” rhetoric and “bring ‘em on” bravado while Colin Powell schmoozes the United Nations into taking over in Iraq, maybe the secretary of state will be able to broker a deal – as we did in Korea and Somalia – where an American general runs the show. Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, India and dozens of other counties waiting in the wings would then hopefully buy into our effort to rebuild Iraq and share the heavy costs both in blood and dollars now borne almost exclusively by thee, me and our kids. It’s the wise commander who knows when to retreat. Let’s hope this time around Bush bites the bullet and we don’t pay the price we did in Vietnam. _____________________________________________ *Hack's military career as a sailor, soldier and a military correspondent has spanned nearly a dozen wars and conflicts, from the end of World War II to the recent meltdown in the ex-Yugoslavia. He enlisted in the merchant marine at age 14 and the U.S. Army at 15. In almost 26 years in the Army he spent over seven years in combat theaters, winning a battlefield commission in Korea to become that war's youngest Army captain. After almost five years in Vietnam Hack's cup runneth over. In 1971, as the Army's youngest colonel he spoke out on national television saying, "This is a bad war ... it can't be won we need to get out." In that interview, he also said that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon in four years -- a prediction that turned out to be right on target. He was the only senior officer to sound off about the insanity of the war. sftt.org