[Iraq] A new way forward

Can you please explain how what we are going to be doing now is so incredibly different than what we have been doing all along?

 

Ok, now's your chance for some payback. You have been driven out of so many threads lately because you posted without knowing what you were talking about, and been dead wrong in all of the threads, but now you can show me how I am wrong, and try to shoot down my cred.

Tell me how this new strategy is drastically different than the old strategy.

Are we still going to be in Baghdad?

Are we still going to be targets?

Is there a new plan for action or just more troops?

If there is a new plan for action, what is it?

 

Careful FB, you're starting to think like a future President...

"It reminds me a little of the problem I faced in reducing crime in New York."

-- Rudy Giuliani (R), on the Hannity & Colmes Show last night, about the Iraq war.

 

Our fearless leader has his bat sh*t crazy reputation to uphold!!!

The "new way forward" is the Same Old Sh*t but more of it. Until that changes, 6, 12, 18 months from now, the Iraqi cluster f*ck will continue.

Anybody body catch the "Bush is like Lincoln" PR blitz the WH is doing. It goes "Bush like Lincoln has to fire some general until he gets the ones he likes". That any MSM, besides FNS of course, that carries this nonsense ver batim should have their press credentials revoked.

 

AKA "Stay the new course."

 

what do you know about troop morale? do you know anyone who is actually serving? do you have friends or family who are seeing combat?

ive got two cousins serving and neither is happy with what bush is doing. instead of trying to blame low troop morale on the american public, how about holding your leaders accountable for once? both of my cousins will tell you that bush is more repsonsible for low troop morale than any 'libpigs'.

and ill tell you this - the 'W' sticker came off my cousins truck after he returned from his second tour in afghanistan. there is alot more cynisism in his attitude regarding bush and 'the war on terror' than when he returned from his first tour.

you know how you destroy troop morale tradertexx? sending army rangers out for their 3rd tour in 4 years, which my cousin is about to leave for.

 

It's clear TJ's just regurgitating the talking points cranked out by Young Republicans writing in the basement of the Cato Institute as they try to make a name for themselves while aspiring to become the next Hannity... or maybe they're lobbying to be named CFO for the Iranian equivalent of the CPA.

Anyway, just as Bush gives the same speech over and over, TJ can be expected to post the same drivel over and over. It would come off as farce if it weren't so tragic on so many levels. Bush and TJ are deadenders with an unshakable world view even in the face of massive facts to the contrary. Lucky for us, one can be ignored. Unfortunately for us, TJ... er, Bush is in the White House and we have to live with his destructive, petulant actions.

 

Anyone hear the Colbert Way Forward Plan? Send 300 million Americans to Iraq, except the gays.

 

The United States of America is now officially a libpig paradise...

Clearly our libpig strategy of coordinating with Al-Q is paying off as we seek to destroy America and make it an Islamo-fascist-communist-atheistic-free sex-Green state. Kudos also to our comrades in the media who refuse to show all the good news coming out of Iraq.

(Speaking of which, did anyone catch this line last night...

Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Ugh.)

 

Senators tell Rice: The president has lost us

Ohio Sen. George Voinovich writes letters to the families of fallen U.S. soldiers. Until now, he's said in those letters that the sacrifices Americans troops are making in Iraq are every bit the equal of those U.S. soldiers made in World War II. But Voinovich told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this afternoon that he's going to have to change his letter now. "I've gone along with the president on this, and I've bought into his dream," Voinovich said, his voice choking with emotion. "At this stage of the game, I don't think it's going to happen."

The Ohio Republican's delivery was more emotional than some of his colleagues', but the sentiment he expressed this afternoon was pretty much the same as the one Rice heard from most members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: The president has lost the American people and their representatives, and the new "way forward" he put forth last night isn't enough to win them over again.

Barack Obama told Rice that the Bush administration "took a gamble" in Iraq, staking "American prestige and our national security on the premise that it could go in, overthrow Saddam Hussein and rebuild a functioning democracy. And so far . . . it appears to have failed. And essentially, the administration has repeatedly said, 'We're doubling down, we're going to keep on going. Maybe we lost that bet, but we're going to put a little more money in.'"

Like John Kerry and Norm Coleman before him, Obama tried, unsuccessfully, to get Rice to describe what would happen if the Maliki government doesn't live up to its promises this time around: "Are there any circumstances that the president or you are willing to share in which we would say to the Iraqis, 'We are no longer maintaining American combat troops in Iraq?' Are they any circumstances you can articulate in which you would say to the Maliki government, 'Enough is enough?'"

Rice said she was "not going to speculate" and that Bush has already made it clear that Americans' patience isn't unlimited.

Walking out of the hearing, Obama acknowledged that there was probably nothing Rice could have said that would have satisfied him so long as it involved sending 21,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq. Waiting for a train back to the Capitol, he told his staff that he was happy that today's hearing had shown "bipartisan" opposition to the president's new plan. He was certainly right about that. Some highlights from the day's session:

Sen. John Sununu: The New Hampshire Republican warned Rice that, "if we don't see more specifics and a timeframe" for progress in Iraq, "then Congress is probably going to step into the void and set a timeframe." He said he would prefer to have the administration, not Congress, set a more specific timeframe. Rice said she'd get back to him with a clearer sense of when the Iraqis thought they could accomplish the things they're supposed to be accomplishing, but she didn't say anything about setting hard-and-fast deadlines for when the United States expected Iraq to do anything. Indeed, at one point during today's proceedings, she seemed to soften on the whole idea of benchmarks, saying that legislatures in the United States don't always meet the deadlines they're supposed to meet for getting things done.

Sen. Russ Feingold: The Wisconsin Democrat said that that it is time for Congress to use "the power of the purse" to cut off funding for the war -- not just for the escalation, but for the entire war. "By setting an end-date for funding for the war, we can give the president the time needed to redeploy troops safely from Iraq." Feingold's words drew a rare round of applause from some of those gathered to watch the hearing.

Sen. Bill Nelson: The Florida Democrat said that, although he has supported Rice and the Bush administration on the war in the past, he can do so no longer. "I have not been told the truth," he said. "I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses. And the American people have not been told the truth."

Sen. Barbara Boxer: The California Democrat mocked Rice for telling the committee in 2005 that she had "no doubt" that Iraqis forces would be talking control of their own security and that American soldiers would be coming home in a "reasonable time frame." Boxer told Rice: "From where I sit, Madam Secretary, you are not listening to the American people. You are not listening to the military. You are not listening to the bipartisan voices of Congress; you are not listening to the Iraq Study Group."

Sen. Chuck Hagel: The Nebraska Republican said the president has "set in motion" a "very, very dangerous" series of events. "I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam," he said. When Hagel referred to the president's plan for an "escalation," Rice said that she and the president preferred the term "augmentation," and that it was important for everyone to have the right "image" of what's actually happening on the ground in Iraq. When Hagel said he had a pretty good "image" of the situation already -- "Iraqis are killing Iraqis . . . we're in a civil war" -- Rice responded lamely: "Not all of Baghdad has fallen into a civil war."

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

 

bi-partisanship at last.

I didn't know that the uniter was going to unite everyone against him.

 

If Dems hadn't won in November, the Republican side would still be a trickle instead of a flood, Rice would not be testifying today, and any legislation that opposes the administration's position would be locked away in committee.

Still, I'll take any help I can get in ending this travesty, even if it is from pussilanimous enablers now more concerned about their elective prospects in 2008 than they were about the country's future from 2000-last November.

 

I'm sure all those tens of millions of Americans that voted against the Republican party (which is different than voting for the Democrats) really wanted this to happen.

If this turns out to be another grave mistake, McCain will probably lose his chance in 2008. Good news for Rudy.

 

Sam Brownback is a libpig. Now I've heard it all.

 

Not really. Rudy has backed the surge/escalation/augmentation too as has Mitt Romney. The only GOP 08 contender that's opposed it is uber-conservative/libpig ( ) Sam Brownback.

 

Sidney Blumenthal on Condi and Iraq... we are doomed.
__________________

Shuttle without diplomacy
After signaling support for James Baker's Iraq proposals, Condi caved and stood faithfully by the president's failing policies -- assuring her irrelevance, and that of the State Department.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/01/10/condi_rice/print.html

By Sidney Blumenthal

Jan. 11, 2007 | James Baker, the consummate Republican political operator over the past 30 years, did not expect that President Bush would accept the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group he co-chaired simply on its merits. Baker's hidden political hand was unrevealed in the report's dire analysis or in its urgent suggestions for diplomacy or force redeployment. Baker summoned as witnesses the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military commanders in Iraq past and present (including the recently named commander there, Gen. David Petraeus) and even British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But he understood that enlisting all of these formidable figures was insufficient. Baker privately negotiated with Bush, but he did not rest solely on his own powers of persuasion to convince the president, as the report put it, that the "situation is grave and deteriorating" and his policies are "not working."

Ultimately, Baker's political strategy counted on the decisive intervention of one person in the president's closed inner circle -- who sees him alone and could not be kept from him, and on whom he has become dependent for support and trusts implicitly -- to deliver the bad news that continuing those policies would only deepen the disaster and explain that he had no way out except to change course.

After the debacle of the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called "the birth pangs of a new Middle East," her former mentor, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor and still his public voice, published an article on July 30, 2006, in the Washington Post titled "Beyond Lebanon: This Is the Time for a U.S.-Led Comprehensive Settlement." In it he argued that the peace process the Bush administration had abandoned was essential in stabilizing the whole region, not least Iraq, and in reducing the influence of Iran.

With the knowledge of the elder Bush and Baker, Scowcroft traveled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, broaching his ideas to President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah. They told him they were fully supportive and prepared to step forward, but were skeptical that Rice or Bush would embrace Scowcroft's program. Meanwhile, Scowcroft and Baker began reassembling the elder Bush's national security team, using the Iraq Study Group as a mobilizing tool. They saw this as a last chance to save the Bush presidency, which was indelibly tainting the father's legacy, and replace neoconservatism with foreign policy realism.

At the end of August 2006, Scowcroft briefed Rice, according to a national security official close to Scowcroft. She seemed to concur with his views and asked him, "How are we going to present this to the president?" "Not we," replied Scowcroft. "You." She appeared taken aback, but he emphasized that she was the only one who could induce Bush to change his policies. Thus Rice became the linchpin for Scowcroft's and Baker's plans.

Rice now confronted the biggest quandary of her career. On one side were the authorities that had shaped her foreign policy experience, not only Scowcroft and Baker but also, as she well knew, the looming shadow of Bush's father. On the other was the president, who had raised her into Baker's seventh-floor office in Foggy Bottom, whom she had flattered as the equal of Lincoln and Churchill, and whom, in a telling Freudian slip, she had referred to as "my husband" before a roomful of reporters and editors of the New York Times. Throughout the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and afterward Rice had been Bush's enabler. It was because Scowcroft understood her special relationship that he sought to win her over.

Rice's turn appeared to be reflected in a speech delivered at the Middle East Institute in Washington on Sept. 15 by Philip Zelikow, her counselor, closest aide and friend, who had served with her under Scowcroft on the elder Bush's National Security Council. Well publicized in advance, he asserted that "some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of things that we care about." Immediately, Zelikow came under fierce criticism from Vice President Cheney's office and Rice publicly rebuked him, which provoked his abrupt resignation. In a Nov. 27 letter to her, he wrote that he had "some truly riveting obligations to college bursars" for his children's tuition and instantly had to return to his professorship at the University of Virginia (not exactly Goldman Sachs).

Nine days after Zelikow's resignation the Iraq Study Group report was released. Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the report "a flaming turd," but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection. Still, Scowcroft and Baker, like Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot," waited for Rice.

Just as they used the Iraq Study Group as their instrument, Cheney galvanized his neoconservative allies inside and outside the administration to counter it. In order to have their own proposal they put Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff and longtime neocon fellow traveler, in touch with Frederick Kagan, an analyst at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, who urged a massive "surge" of troops into Iraq. Keane's presence lent a patina of military credibility. Encouraged by Cheney's office, Kagan and Keane and a team of neocons at AEI whipped up a PowerPoint presentation, and one week after the ISG report release, on Dec. 11, they were ushered into Bush's presence.

The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report. "Although the president was publicly polite," the Washington Post reported, "few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new 'way forward' in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme. As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton."

Donald Rumsfeld had been sacrificed as the secretary of defense, but his replacement, Robert Gates, a former director of the CIA and member of the ISG, turned from skeptic into team player. The Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command; and Gen. George Casey, commander in Iraq, all opposed the "surge" as no answer. Cheney and the neocons saw their opposition as the opening for purging and blaming them. The Joint Chiefs were ignored and sidelined, Abizaid was forced into retirement and Casey was removed (sent into internal exile as Army chief of staff). Their dissent, leaked to the Washington Post for appearance in the paper on the day of Bush's "surge" speech, was an extraordinary gesture by the senior military leaders to distance themselves from impending failure.

Rice, who had fallen into radio silence, canceling a scheduled speech on "transformational diplomacy," finally intervened. When the U.S. military commanders in Iraq and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad protested against a rush by the Iraqi government to hang Saddam Hussein, Rice overrode their objections and gave the signal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to proceed.

Maliki's management and subsequent defense of the gruesome circus surrounding Saddam's execution disabused any illusion that he could act in the larger Iraqi national interest rather than as a political representative of Shiite sectarianism. He is to his marrow a creature of the Dawa Party, founded by Muqtada al-Sadr's father, and his alliance with al-Sadr. While the intent of the surge is to revitalize the Maliki government, that government cannot and does not wish to be reformed. The problem is not merely that Maliki is a weak political leader, or that his political coalition wouldn't permit it, or that his Iranian sponsors wouldn't allow repudiation -- all of which are indisputably true. The irreducible reason is that Maliki exists only to achieve Shiite control, and if he did not he would not exist. There is no other Maliki. Nor can Bush invent one.

Bush's "surge," therefore, is a military plan that cannot produce its stated political outcome and will instead further unleash the forces he claims will be controlled. His offensive to subdue the Sunni insurgents, for example, is already accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad by the Shiite militias, which, rather than being contained, are further empowered.

Bush's rhetoric about "democracy" underlines his studied error in ignoring the lessons of nation building deeply ingrained in the experience of the U.S. Foreign Service and U.S. military in Bosnia and Kosovo. From the start, in the 2000 campaign, Bush disdained "nation building" as Bill Clinton's project. During and after the Iraq invasion, his ideological preconceptions and hostility to the State Department precluded him from adopting its successes.

In Bosnia and Kosovo, full sovereignty was not granted through an election -- to this day -- which would have turned over the country to one of the three contending religio-ethnic groups and fomented opposition insurgencies. Instead, the U.S. led in organizing a broad range of international partners and institutions in creating a structure of stability that is a basis for gradual democratic development. By contrast, the election Bush promoted in Iraq was political grandstanding in the name of "democracy" that incited the exclusion of Sunnis and aggravated civil warfare. Almost everything in place in Bosnia and Kosovo is absent in Iraq. The former is an example of U.S. leadership, the latter a case study in amateurish blundering. Moreover, Bush has turned "democracy" into a synonym for failure.

The State Department has been completely sidelined in the making of Bush's latest and last policy on Iraq. Its experience in the Balkans remains thoroughly ignored. And Rice does nothing to call it to Bush's attention, for that would require her to point out his shortcomings. The State Department founders like a ghost ship. Rice meanders back and forth to and from the Middle East, the shuttle without the diplomacy.

After twice rejecting the job of deputy secretary of state, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, was implored to accept it. In exchanging a Cabinet post for a sub-Cabinet one, a position of policymaking for an administrative post, Negroponte excited rumors that he would only have decided to make the switch if he believed that Rice would eventually leave and he would ascend to her job. But, once again, the logic of that Washington gossip is merely rational. Rice the irrelevancy remains Bush's indispensable devotee.

 

Listening to some stuff on NPR just now there will be some actual technical differences in strategy. The US troops will no longer temporarily venture out of US bases and return. There will be 24hr a day postings of US troops on street corners.

Listening to the people on the radio, apparently there is some degree of historical support for the idea that this strategy is better in dealing with sectarian violence, etc, as to some degree the militias gain strength because they are the only force which provides constant security to their constituents.

It sounds like this minor change would have been a more effective strategy from the beginning. Of course whether this move is far too little or far too late is still in question. Also, the new strategy probably increases the potential for casualties in the short term.