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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (461653)	9/19/2003 10:51:52 AM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Now if that isn't a pathetic racial slur from a moron, I don't know what is..... CC

To: Wayners who wrote (461653)	9/19/2003 10:52:22 AM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 769667

So Which Story Is It? President Bush's declaration Wednesday that Saddam Hussein had Al Qaeda ties but that there was "no evidence" he was linked to 9/11 had an Alice-in-Wonderland quality. Only a few days earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney on national television had expanded the administration's claims, hinting darkly that Hussein's security forces might have been involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and that Iraq was at "the heart of the base" of the terrorist threat that culminated in Sept. 11. Who is the public supposed to believe, Bush or Cheney? In delivering a different message depending on what day of the week it is, the administration is shredding whatever remains of its credibility on Iraq. On Thursday, Hans Blix, the former United Nations weapons inspector who has patiently watched as the United States and Britain fruitlessly search for weapons they said Blix was too incompetent to discover, finally decried "the culture of spin, the culture of hyping." Both Blix and his successor at the U.N., Demetrius Perricos, say Hussein probably destroyed any weapons of mass destruction a decade ago. The administration's flip-flops aren't trivial, but rather are symptomatic of wider disarray. At a moment when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is trying to win the cooperation of wary allies for a U.N. resolution that will internationalize the occupation and bring in foreign troops and money, Cheney went out of his way to antagonize Europeans. Cheney made an impassioned case Wednesday at the Air Force Assn.'s annual convention for an America goes-it-alone policy — preemptive strikes abroad whenever and wherever Bush sees fit. The unspoken premise is that the U.S. doesn't need the U.N. or other countries to help rebuild invaded countries. With Iraq in danger of meltdown, however, it's clear that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon have failed to properly plan for the postwar period. Bush not only needs Europe on board, he also must listen to Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.), who are urging the White House to shift control of Iraq's reconstruction from the Pentagon to the State Department. In April, Congress went on record stating that it wanted Powell, not Rumsfeld, to oversee reconstruction. It backed down after lobbying by Cheney but shouldn't make the same mistake again. It seems clear that civilian employees would be less apt to anger Iraqis. Moreover, U.S. aid workers have far more experience in nation-building than the military. Instead of giving the administration carte blanche with the additional $87 billion it has requested for Iraq, Congress should insist that the State Department take the lead. Better yet, Bush could make clear his full and total support of the internationalization of the reconstruction in Iraq when he addresses the U.N. on Tuesday. It's the first step toward restoring the administration's credibility. CC

To: Wayners who wrote (461653)	9/19/2003 10:58:21 AM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 769667

of course W has never even seen the movie...let alone taken a lesson from history Eighth Pillar of Wisdom? Iraq Is a Deep Morass By Michael Keane, Michael Keane, a lecturer on strategy at the USC's Marshall School of Business, is also a fellow of the U.S. Department of Defense's National Security Education Program. That Iraq would become a troublesome source of guerrilla tactics should come as no surprise to any student of T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence is considered by many strategists to be the father of guerrilla warfare. He articulated a powerful treatise on the topic in his classic book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom." During World War I, Lawrence's guerrilla victories against the Turkish forces occupying the Arabian peninsula provided a stunning contrast to the simultaneous slaughter occurring in the trenches of Europe. Although Lawrence claimed that his vision of warfare came to him as he lay dazed in a feverish state, he was actually formalizing a form of war practiced by Arab tribes for centuries. Lawrence's thesis was that a successful rebellion required three elements. First, the rebels must have an unassailable base, not merely a physical base of operations but also a psychological fortress in the mind of every soldier willing to die for his convictions. Second, in what he called the "doctrine of acreage" (what strategists now call the force-to-space ratio), Lawrence stated that an insurgent victory required that the size of the occupying force must be insufficient to pacify the contested area. Finally, the guerrillas must have a friendly population. Although the population need not be actively friendly, it must not be hostile to the point of betraying the insurgents. This support can be generated either from fear of retaliation or sympathy for the guerrilla cause or both. The application of Lawrence's theory to the current military situation in Iraq is not comforting. First, the rebels seem to possess an unassailable base in both physical and psychological terms. Within Iraq, hostile forces have demonstrated an ongoing ability to launch numerous daily attacks. The continuing inability to capture Saddam Hussein is the most significant evidence of this problem. Externally, there is a base of bordering states like Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran that are failing to stop volunteers from infiltrating Iraq. American troops have found foreign passports on the bodies of enemy forces killed. Perhaps more troubling, however, is the psychological "base" — the mind of the enemy. When religious extremism is mixed with nationalistic fervor, it cements to form the bricks of unshakeable conviction. As Lawrence himself noted, "An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot." Then there is the force-to-space ratio of coalition forces, which is clearly inadequate. The Americans have only about 130,000 soldiers in Iraq. To match the number of soldiers per inhabitant as the United States has in Kosovo would require 526,000 troops in Iraq. Finally, guerrilla victories can work to slowly undermine U.S. credibility while simultaneously building support and gaining recruits for the insurgents. Over time, guerrilla tactics tend to frustrate conventional troops, which are increasingly likely to overreact by humiliating men and offending women and thereby alienating the local population. Though Iraqi guerrillas lack the necessary firepower and manpower to forcibly remove the Americans, Lawrence would argue that should not be their proper objective. Even while suffering tactical defeats, the guerrillas could erode the will of the Americans and thereby achieve a strategic victory. As Henry Kissinger succinctly stated: "The guerrilla wins by not losing. The army loses by not winning." After liberating the region from the Turks in World War I, Britain ruled the newly formed country of Iraq under a mandate from the League of Nations. The population's gratitude for having been freed from 400 years of Ottoman oppression was short-lived. There were uprisings and assassinations of British soldiers and civilian administrators. Lawrence was sent back to Baghdad to report on conditions there. He wrote these haunting words: "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from a disaster."