Is there any issue the Bush administration won't pass the buck on? I guess if the war in Iraq gets any worse it will turn into Kerry's idea somehow.
More from Tommy... ____________________ General in Iraq war recounts his warning of postwar bloodshed By Corky Siemaszko New York Daily News NEW YORK — The U.S. general who routed Saddam Hussein's army in three weeks warned before the invasion that a quick victory could lead to a "catastrophic success" because neither the United States nor Iraq was prepared for postwar anarchy. "We will have to stand up a new Iraqi army, and create a constabulary that includes a representative tribal, religious, and ethnic mix," retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks writes in a new autobiography recounting the tense days before the war. "It will take time." President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed, Franks writes, but he says he did not get the "open checkbook" he needed to put Saddam's soldiers on the new Iraqi government's payroll. "I would continue to argue that there could be no security without civic action," Franks writes in "American Soldier," which goes on sale tomorrow. "Penny wise will surely be pound foolish, I thought. We will spend dollars today ... or blood tomorrow." His warning echoed that of Powell, who believed Franks should have struck Iraq with a bigger force and warned Bush of the dangers of occupying Iraq. "If you break it, you own it," Franks says Powell warned Bush before the invasion. Franks, however, expresses no regrets about the war and says everyone believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. "History reveals that wars often end in chaos that continues for years," he writes. Franks' struggles to run the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld breathing down his neck drives the narrative. At one point, Franks writes, he even threatened to quit. "Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, we'd become accustomed to the demands of Secretary Rumsfeld," Franks writes. "But now even my industrious planners found that the daily barrage of tasks and questions was beginning to border on harassment." Franks also is unsparing in his criticism of Pentagon officials such as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, whom he derides as the "dumbest ... guy on the planet." "No one could deny Feith's academic achievements," Franks writes. "But Feith was a theorist whose ideas were often impractical." Franks also writes: Bush has "the natural leader's ability to put his subordinates at ease." Franks describes how Bush gave the final order on March 19, 2003, to invade Iraq. Saddam was fooled into thinking the United States would attack Iraq from Turkey, even after that country said it would not allow any assault from their territory. The United States got a "nasty surprise" when Saddam suddenly sent in paramilitary Fedayeen from Baghdad who nearly stymied the assault on Iraq. He regrets Rumsfeld's Pentagon and Powell's State Department could not work together better. "On far too many occasions the ... bureaucracy fought like cats in a sack," he writes. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2001994553&zsection_id=268448413&slug=franks02&date=20040802
I'm pretty sure that MISSION ACCOMPLISHED as well as CASE CLOSED and several other gems are not (c) Gen. Franks or someone else, but (c) TRADER JORGE
"...trying to discredit an event that has no national import whatsoever other than recognizing the efforts of our military" ~basso No national import?? Come on! The whole thing was staged to have a national political impact, and to improve the standing of the President. Sometimes I wonder how you can type this stuff with a straight face, basso. (hell, maybe you don't! )
Well, bass, you brought it up, so apparently it's important to somebody -- but anyway it's obvious the arrogance that was on display that day is emblematic, and the cause, of a great many matters (and tragedies) of national import, past, present, and future. Ashlee for a day? Only if her sister would hang out with me in her underwear.
