Retired Spy -
but of course there is no "foolproof" plan to deal with terrorism. Ah, I get it: if liberal critics of the Iraq debacle don't have a "fool-proof" alternative plan, then our only choice is to stick with the Republicon status-quo - right?
Nice try, spy - any 6th grader would easily see through the false choices you've constructed.
Apparently, you somehow regard staying the course in Iraq under the direction of the most incompetent Defense Secretary ever as constituting a "comprehensive foolproof plan for dealing with terrorism".
First, lets do away with this nonsense that the Iraq quagmire is synonymous with the "Global War on Terror". Iraq never had links with al-qaeda before we invaded - indeed, the government of Saddam Hussein was a staunch enemy of al-qaeda. What we have now in Iraq is a civil war pitting Sunni against Shi'a - which side are we fighting against, Spy? The Sunni insurgents have links with the old regime, and are increasingly seeking ties to al-qaeda. The Shi'a fighters, meanwhile, are riven with religious fanatics, want to establish an Islamic theocracy, and want close ties to Iran. While they busily kill each other, what are our troops supposed to do there?
That al-qaeda affiliates are operating in Iraq *now* is a byproduct of our occupation of that country. But most of these groups in Iraq that claim an affiliation with al-qaeda (al-qaeda wannabes) are home-grown (this per numerous intelligence assessments, including the most recent NIE). Thus, the "flypaper" theory hastily assembled by the Bushies after all the other rationale for invading Iraq proved to be false, is also pure fantasy. And for every "fly" we catch or kill, 10 more are created as a by-product of the miserable conditions we have wrought on Iraq through our invasion and ongoing occupation.
So what I'm saying to you, Spy, is that the first step to actually coming up with a "plan for dealing with terrorism" is to take a long and very critical look at what is *really* happening in Iraq. But as long as we choose instead to comfort ourselves with rosy stories about how things are getting better there, we can never hope to find better solutions - indeed, we won't even try. First, we have to admit to ourselves that Iraq was a mistake, and has been miserably mismanaged ever since.
So here's a plan:
1) Don't do the dumb thing by invading and occupying Iraq - instead stay and rebuild Afghanistan, and pursue the folks who attacked us on 9/11. Make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a harbor for terrorism...
ooops, too late!! So I guess we have to proceed with step 2:
2) Leave Iraq. Tell the Iraqis that we will no longer be militarily involved in the internal conflicts of Iraq by such and such date. Will this be ugly? Absolutely. Thousands will likely die, and chaos will ensue. However, thousands are already dying (to the tune of 100 Iraqi civilians per day), and the situation is already chaotic - indeed there is a civil war. And much of that is due to the presence of a foreign occupation. Leaving would remove the US as a visible irritant in the area, thus undercutting recruitment to violent groups who use the rallying cry of "fight the US occupation".
3) Cut off all funding to US contractors like Halliburton, and instead work directly to build and fund *Iraqi* development organizations. Funding to US contractors has proven to be nothing but an opportunity for gross corruption, which has done as much to stymie our efforts to rebuild Iraq as the insurgency.
4) Redirect the billions per month in money mispent on occupying Iraq to instead developing and securing Afghanistan. Like Iraq, this should also be done directly with local non-governmental development and aid organizations, and not with US war profiteers.
Afghanistan has been slipping back into Taliban hands - we must not allow this. To that end, the US must redeploy our forces to secure the border area with Pakistan over which al-qaeda and their Taliban allies have been operating with impugnity. We never committed the troops and resources we needed to secure and rebuild Afghanistan - indeed, we are withdrawing from Afghanistan at a time when the regime that harbored the terrorists who attacked us are making a big come-back (curiously, the Republicans don't call this "cutting and running"!).
For a fraction of the billions per month we are spending in Iraq, the US could completely turn impoverished war-torn Afghanistan around, making it that shining example of US good-will that we all hoped it would become. Instead, we chose to flush billions a month down the toilet on militray operations in Iraq, while leaving Afghanistan a mound of rubble.
5) Get tough on Musharraf and other elements of the Pakistani armed forces to pursue al-qaeda and crack down on religious schools that train children to hate the US. The leaders of the group who attacked us on 9/11 are most likely holed up in Pakistan - indeed, the Paki military recently signed a truce with them! So lets see... 1) Pakistan is harboring al-qaeda and Osama, 2) is a festering nest of anti_americanism, 3) is a military dictatorship, 4) possesses weapons of mass destruction, inlcuding nukes, and 5) has given nuke secrets and missile technology to N Korea. Why is Bush having this guy over to the White House for fun and games? Musharraf instead needs to be held accountable, and needs to set a timetable for elections... in return, the US should promise to assist Pakistan in providing a secular educational alternative to the Islamic Madrassas indoctrinating hatred for the US.
6) Work with Iran! I am sure you think this is crazy, but it makes all the sense in the world. The Iranians have much influence over what happens in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They also are threatening to develop nukes. However, contrary to how they are portrayed in the US media, they are not a bunch of lunatics.
Ahmadinejad is not the most savory character, I'll admit - we would all prefer a diffent leader. However, you have to work with what you got, and he is not beyond reason nor is Iran beyond establishing better relations with. Remember this: although the USSR possessed nukes and threatened our very survival for decades, Reagan worked with the Soviet Union and became very close to Gorbachev. Despite his tough talk, Reagan and Gorby achieved impressive accords (much to the dismay of the neo-cons on both sides). Reagan understood that you could work with supposedly "evil" adversaries. He also understood that working closely with them undermines their more radical tendencies - indeed, in the long run it undermines their very regime. We need to be more engaged with Iran - it would both help our position in the middle east (and boy could we use it!), and forment political moderation within Iran. It also may be the best, least costly way of moving Iran away from the road to nuclear weapons. Time to re-establish diplomatic relations with our adversay - if we could do it with Vietnam, we can certainly be more active pursuing relations with Iran than we have been. And unlike in Pakistan and many other countries in the region, the Iranian people are not rabidly anti-American.
7) More aggressively seek a lasting peace in Palestine/Israel. This will mean getting tougher with our allies the Israelis, and biting the bullet and working with Hamas. The miserable conditions under which the majority of Palestinians live is one of the root causes for turmoil and terrorism in the middle east (along with teh miserable conditions brought on by our invasion of Iraq, and the conditions we have ignored in Afghanistan).
A comprehensive settlement has proven frustratingly difficult, but currently we are hardly even trying for one! A peaceful, secure homeland for both the Palestinians and the Israelis would do wonders for peace and stability in the region - far more than we could possibly hope to achieve by occupying Iraq for 100 years! And the US being seen as helping to achieve a plan that relieves Palestinian suffering would do more to undercut terrorism against the US than any military actions could ever achieve.
So that's my 7 point plan. Will it stop all terrorism? No, of course not. Will it be "foolproof"? A long way from it. You can find plenty to criticize in my plan, but I believe that an approach similar to what I've outlined above would be damn sure better than what we've got going on now. The game "plan" we have now in the middle east (to the extent that it constitutes a "plan" at all) is only contributing to untold suffering, increased hatred for the US, the weakening of US power and prestige, and the squandering of our moral authority - all the while increasing the attractiveness of terrorism in the region. It is a recipe for perpetual war.
But hey - maybe the neo-cons prefer murder and mayhem ad infinitum. If that's their goal, then they couldn't have come up with a better plan than what they are doing now.
yeah - we have to kill all of those.... those... terrorists we are creating.
And more US soldiers must die in Iraq, because... um, soldiers have died.
Round and round and round and...round
What's your comprehensive and foolproof plan for dealing with terrorism, Airtime?
Spy, Airhead would cut and run, cower with the rest of the "intellectual" crowd, drink wine and eat cheese, and be at the head of the Islamofascism infidel hit list.
And of course fight terrorism from Japan.
And blame the result on W.
Man, do they have 288,000 virgins ready for those guys?
I would imagine they wouldn't find them in a DNC convention, Bigfoot.
Number of Al Qaeda killed in Iraq: 4000
Number of Al Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded: 0
Number of new terrorists created by our incompetent
occupation:
Countless.
"Just think, if we had cut-and-run like the Democrats wanted, they'd be alive and trying to kill us here at home."
Yeah, I can just see them all piling aboard a plane, coming to shoot up our streets.
Let's keep the arguments plausible, guys.
4K is a lowball number. More like 20K, counting all the dead jihadists who crossed the border into Iraq from other countries as al Qaeda recruits.
The insurgents have taken a page from the VC back in Vietnam and are dragging their casualties away and burying them secretly to hide their losses but estimates run 50K - 60K total KIA for them since 2003. They've pretty much given up on attacking US or Iraqi troops directly now and are committing attacks against civilians. Even then they're having trouble finding willing martyrs anymore. Iraqi officials have found cases where they've kidnapped motorists, rigged their cars, and forced them to drive up to checkpoints where the vehicles are remote-detonated.
Number of Al Qaeda in Iraq before we invaded: 0
Wyckyd, it was pretty well publicized after 9/11 that al Qaeda was in over 60 countries -- but not Iraq, huh?
Al Qaeda was in the United states but not Iraq
righhhhhhhht
Think Roach Motel...
Terrorists go in (to Iraq)...but they don't come out.
C'mon, spook...Wyckyd just loves to regurgitate those Airhead talking points---don't try to distract him with facts.
Ranty Rhodes says there were no Al Queda in Iraq before we got there, so you know it's gotta be true, her (?) being such an expert and all.
Why would she claim such a stupid thing, you ask? Well, she has her base of diehard Airheads who fawn over her every adenoidal word, and who accept every bizarre lie she tells them as absolute fact, that's why. She knows she can say something that insane and it will be parroted all over the country by the mindless, when they can tear themselves away from D&D anyway.
My question is how many fewer deaths might have occurred if the military had not been informed that any and all prisoners would be given VIP treatment, full constitutional protections, and trials for their activities. I've been told that the unintended consquence of the Liberal demands that we coddle prisoners is, simply, fewer prisoners.
Not that I'm objecting to killing them off. When a man says to you that he will never stop trying to kill you, your family, your neighbors, and your entire country, as long as he has breath, it seems like a pretty obvious demand that he not be allowed to breathe.
Hick seems to get a snicker out of the idea of these guys coming here to kill us in our own streets. Hey Hick, check out how many NON-Mexicans have been caught strolling over our southern border---and note the word "caught". And didn't Momo Atta come in from Canada?
Why is it considered to be clever to deny that terrorist want to kill Americans? What would it take to convince them? Didn't we have a few on planes killing off a few thousand, not too far in the past? Just what, exactly, do the loony libs think that was all about?
Wycked...
Number of innocent civilian Americans killed by radical muslim terrorists BEFORE we went into IRAQ
COUNTLESS
Number of innocent civilian Americans killed by radical muslim terrorists if we had never gone into IRAQ
COUNTLESS
Number of innocent civilian Americans killed by radical muslim terrorists now that we have gone into IRAQ.
ZERO
Retired Spy -
but of course there is no "foolproof" plan to deal with terrorism. Ah, I get it: if liberal critics of the Iraq debacle don't have a "fool-proof" alternative plan, then our only choice is to stick with the Republicon status-quo - right?
Nice try, spy - any 6th grader would easily see through the false choices you've constructed.
Apparently, you somehow regard staying the course in Iraq under the direction of the most incompetent Defense Secretary ever as constituting a "comprehensive foolproof plan for dealing with terrorism".
First, lets do away with this nonsense that the Iraq quagmire is synonymous with the "Global War on Terror". Iraq never had links with al-qaeda before we invaded - indeed, the government of Saddam Hussein was a staunch enemy of al-qaeda. What we have now in Iraq is a civil war pitting Sunni against Shi'a - which side are we fighting against, Spy? The Sunni insurgents have links with the old regime, and are increasingly seeking ties to al-qaeda. The Shi'a fighters, meanwhile, are riven with religious fanatics, want to establish an Islamic theocracy, and want close ties to Iran. While they busily kill each other, what are our troops supposed to do there?
That al-qaeda affiliates are operating in Iraq *now* is a byproduct of our occupation of that country. But most of these groups in Iraq that claim an affiliation with al-qaeda (al-qaeda wannabes) are home-grown (this per numerous intelligence assessments, including the most recent NIE). Thus, the "flypaper" theory hastily assembled by the Bushies after all the other rationale for invading Iraq proved to be false, is also pure fantasy. And for every "fly" we catch or kill, 10 more are created as a by-product of the miserable conditions we have wrought on Iraq through our invasion and ongoing occupation.
So what I'm saying to you, Spy, is that the first step to actually coming up with a "plan for dealing with terrorism" is to take a long and very critical look at what is *really* happening in Iraq. But as long as we choose instead to comfort ourselves with rosy stories about how things are getting better there, we can never hope to find better solutions - indeed, we won't even try. First, we have to admit to ourselves that Iraq was a mistake, and has been miserably mismanaged ever since.
So here's a plan:
1) Don't do the dumb thing by invading and occupying Iraq - instead stay and rebuild Afghanistan, and pursue the folks who attacked us on 9/11. Make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a harbor for terrorism...
ooops, too late!! So I guess we have to proceed with step 2:
2) Leave Iraq. Tell the Iraqis that we will no longer be militarily involved in the internal conflicts of Iraq by such and such date. Will this be ugly? Absolutely. Thousands will likely die, and chaos will ensue. However, thousands are already dying (to the tune of 100 Iraqi civilians per day), and the situation is already chaotic - indeed there is a civil war. And much of that is due to the presence of a foreign occupation. Leaving would remove the US as a visible irritant in the area, thus undercutting recruitment to violent groups who use the rallying cry of "fight the US occupation".
3) Cut off all funding to US contractors like Halliburton, and instead work directly to build and fund *Iraqi* development organizations. Funding to US contractors has proven to be nothing but an opportunity for gross corruption, which has done as much to stymie our efforts to rebuild Iraq as the insurgency.
4) Redirect the billions per month in money mispent on occupying Iraq to instead developing and securing Afghanistan. Like Iraq, this should also be done directly with local non-governmental development and aid organizations, and not with US war profiteers.
Afghanistan has been slipping back into Taliban hands - we must not allow this. To that end, the US must redeploy our forces to secure the border area with Pakistan over which al-qaeda and their Taliban allies have been operating with impugnity. We never committed the troops and resources we needed to secure and rebuild Afghanistan - indeed, we are withdrawing from Afghanistan at a time when the regime that harbored the terrorists who attacked us are making a big come-back (curiously, the Republicans don't call this "cutting and running"!).
For a fraction of the billions per month we are spending in Iraq, the US could completely turn impoverished war-torn Afghanistan around, making it that shining example of US good-will that we all hoped it would become. Instead, we chose to flush billions a month down the toilet on militray operations in Iraq, while leaving Afghanistan a mound of rubble.
5) Get tough on Musharraf and other elements of the Pakistani armed forces to pursue al-qaeda and crack down on religious schools that train children to hate the US. The leaders of the group who attacked us on 9/11 are most likely holed up in Pakistan - indeed, the Paki military recently signed a truce with them! So lets see... 1) Pakistan is harboring al-qaeda and Osama, 2) is a festering nest of anti_americanism, 3) is a military dictatorship, 4) possesses weapons of mass destruction, inlcuding nukes, and 5) has given nuke secrets and missile technology to N Korea. Why is Bush having this guy over to the White House for fun and games? Musharraf instead needs to be held accountable, and needs to set a timetable for elections... in return, the US should promise to assist Pakistan in providing a secular educational alternative to the Islamic Madrassas indoctrinating hatred for the US.
6) Work with Iran! I am sure you think this is crazy, but it makes all the sense in the world. The Iranians have much influence over what happens in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They also are threatening to develop nukes. However, contrary to how they are portrayed in the US media, they are not a bunch of lunatics.
Ahmadinejad is not the most savory character, I'll admit - we would all prefer a diffent leader. However, you have to work with what you got, and he is not beyond reason nor is Iran beyond establishing better relations with. Remember this: although the USSR possessed nukes and threatened our very survival for decades, Reagan worked with the Soviet Union and became very close to Gorbachev. Despite his tough talk, Reagan and Gorby achieved impressive accords (much to the dismay of the neo-cons on both sides). Reagan understood that you could work with supposedly "evil" adversaries. He also understood that working closely with them undermines their more radical tendencies - indeed, in the long run it undermines their very regime. We need to be more engaged with Iran - it would both help our position in the middle east (and boy could we use it!), and forment political moderation within Iran. It also may be the best, least costly way of moving Iran away from the road to nuclear weapons. Time to re-establish diplomatic relations with our adversay - if we could do it with Vietnam, we can certainly be more active pursuing relations with Iran than we have been. And unlike in Pakistan and many other countries in the region, the Iranian people are not rabidly anti-American.
7) More aggressively seek a lasting peace in Palestine/Israel. This will mean getting tougher with our allies the Israelis, and biting the bullet and working with Hamas. The miserable conditions under which the majority of Palestinians live is one of the root causes for turmoil and terrorism in the middle east (along with teh miserable conditions brought on by our invasion of Iraq, and the conditions we have ignored in Afghanistan).
A comprehensive settlement has proven frustratingly difficult, but currently we are hardly even trying for one! A peaceful, secure homeland for both the Palestinians and the Israelis would do wonders for peace and stability in the region - far more than we could possibly hope to achieve by occupying Iraq for 100 years! And the US being seen as helping to achieve a plan that relieves Palestinian suffering would do more to undercut terrorism against the US than any military actions could ever achieve.
So that's my 7 point plan. Will it stop all terrorism? No, of course not. Will it be "foolproof"? A long way from it. You can find plenty to criticize in my plan, but I believe that an approach similar to what I've outlined above would be damn sure better than what we've got going on now. The game "plan" we have now in the middle east (to the extent that it constitutes a "plan" at all) is only contributing to untold suffering, increased hatred for the US, the weakening of US power and prestige, and the squandering of our moral authority - all the while increasing the attractiveness of terrorism in the region. It is a recipe for perpetual war.
But hey - maybe the neo-cons prefer murder and mayhem ad infinitum. If that's their goal, then they couldn't have come up with a better plan than what they are doing now.
Stand back, he's about to spawn
Aaron...for the last friggin time...we are not OCCUPYING Iraq. You make it sound like we are some imperialist nation. Everyone knows we will leave when it's safe to leave.
"Get tough with Musharaf"...HOW. Explain HOW you plan on doing this. I always love answers like this..'you just go tell them blah blah blah'
If it was that easy it would be done. If it was that easy wouldn't CLINTON have done it?
Doh
Warrior -
Of course we are "occupying" Iraq. We invaded the country and ever since we have had about 150,000 military forces stationed there against the will of the majority of the people of Iraq. Isn't that the very definition of militarily occupying a country? In any case, it does not matter what you or I call it - what matters is how the people of the region view it, and they see it as an *occupation*.
To your second point - I am the first to say that getting tough on Musharraf is not easy. None of the things we need to do be doing in the middle east are easy. But does that mean we shouldn't try? My, warrior, you sound like such a defeatist, claiming this and that is just too hard to do.
You want easy? - go back yo living in your fairy tale world manufactured by the Lincoln Group. I know getting on Musharraf would be difficult - but having the kind of kiss kiss relations with him we've seen the past few days is beyond appalling. Certainly we can do better than that!
Number of new terrorists created by our incompetent occupation:
Countless.
Number of new terrorists who will be created if we leave Iraq in any way that is taken as an admission of weakness:
Infinite.
Number of terrorists who will have mercy on any non-muslim because that non-muslim disagrees with, criticises, or protests against our occupation of Iraq:
Zero.
Number of terrorists who will have mercy on any non-muslim because that non-muslim hates George W. Bush:
Zero.
Nancy Pelosi complained today; after the detainee bill passed the House yesterday and the Senate today. She needed to take a swipe at Hastert, so she asked a question that will certainly haunt the dems in the election....'do you think anyone here really wants to coddle terrorists!' ....the American electorate (sans shipless and airtime) will certainly let them know who they think the coddlers are! LOL This is gonna be fun.
Number of Democrats that can be trusted to protect our nation:
0
4000 al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents have been killed -- according to al-Qaeda anyway. How many coalition troops have been killed? How many Iraqi troops?
Meanwhile, insurgent attacks are averaging over 800 per month. Multiple fatality bombings have been averaging almost 2 a day for 5 months.
It sounds to me like we need a better agenda. And I think it's a crime that distribution of Baker and Hamilton's Iraq Study Group report has been postponed until after the elections. I say let the chips fall where they may. It's about time we all started loving our country more than our party. Gen. Peter Pace said last month that "The Shiite and Sunni leaders are going to have to love their kids more than they hate each other", well it's the same for us. This partisan bullshit has to stop.
Last night at their White House soirre Musharref and Kharzai didn't even talk to each other. Their silence shouted. We're supposed to be allies, for crying out loud!
4000 al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents have been killed -- according to al-Qaeda anyway. How many coalition troops have been killed? How many Iraqi troops?
Meanwhile, insurgent attacks are averaging over 800 per month. Multiple fatality bombings have been averaging almost 2 a day for 5 months.
It sounds to me like we need a better agenda. And I think it's a crime that distribution of Baker and Hamilton's Iraq Study Group report has been postponed until after the elections. I say let the chips fall where they may. It's about time we all started loving our country more than our party. Gen. Peter Pace said last month that "The Shiite and Sunni leaders are going to have to love their kids more than they hate each other", well it's the same for us. This partisan bullshit has to stop.
Last night at their White House soirre Musharref and Kharzai didn't even talk to each other. Their silence shouted. We're supposed to be allies, for crying out loud!
Did this kind of thing happen in post-war Germany or Japan? Or Korea? Or Taiwan? We are in the post-war period in Iraq, right?
2 billion dollars a week to stay the course. Bullshit. Think about how you're going to explain it to your children, and your grandchildren.
RicoCutAndRun, I somehow missed your plan to win the war on terror. I did, however, note your whining. Whining about the war on terror is different than winning the war on terror, in case you didn't know.
Warrior, Aaron will never believe that we are not occupying Iraq. Following WWII he would say the rebuilding of Germany and Japan was an occupation with no real need as well. He lives in a fantasy world that says if you do not confront the bully, the bully will leave you alone. In the real world we know, if you don't confront a bully that bully will come after you.
"Following WWII he would say the rebuilding of Germany and Japan was an occupation with no real need as well. He lives in a fantasy world that says if you do not confront the bully, the bully will leave you alone."
And just when did the big bad "bully" Iraq attack us, kjstrouble? I must have missed that.
Japan and Germany were hell bent on world domination and had the means to do it. These were highly developed industrial societies with a military might that at the start of WWII dwarfed our own. And most importantly, Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Iraq, however, was a poor third world nation with a defeated rag-tag military led by a tin-pot secular dictator and which never attacked us. In the words of Condi and Colin, Iraq was "totally contained". Iraq was not involved in 9/11, and indeed was the enemy of the radical Islamists trying to kill us.
Sheesh, these WWII analogies are getting loonier and loonier.
A little montage video I put together after the Second Battle of Fallujah. The Song is "It's not Easy (Superman)"
http://vidsearch.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1218419045
Bob: "I somehow missed your plan to win the war on terror."
I suspect that's because you haven't been paying attention. What do you want me to do, reiterate everything I've said for months in every comment I post? I offer you the following challenge: I've been posting on this site quite regularly for months now, and many times about the both the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Go back through all my posts and show me even ONE where I have advocated cutting and running.
But if you are inclined to believe me (which is not to say that you are), I can save you a whole lot of trouble: there is none. Not one. Rather, what I have advocated up to this point is MORE troops are needed, not less. I believe that if you look at all the other nation-building attempts that our country has made in the last 60 or so years, ALL of them were made or broken on the basis of whether we were able to establish a viable security situation. Some were more difficult than others (e.g., Germany vs Japan, or Haiti vs. Panama). Some were established by proxy governments (e.g., Korea and Taiwan). But however it was achieved, establishing a viable security situation was essential. And those that failed, e.g., Haiti and Somalia, and those that are teetering on the brink of failure, e.g., Afghanistan and Iraq, all bear the same earmark: a viable security situation was not achieved. Sadly, it appears to me that Lebanon may end up being added to the list -- allowing Hezbollah to participate in the reconstruction there is asking for it.
But I digress. My point this time around is to suggest that the opinion of the Iraq Study Group is essential. These guys know far more about the situation than you or I ever could. They are a bi-partisan commission, and they were selected because there is every reason to believe that they DO love their country more than their respective parties.
That's one thing. The other thing is that Lee Hamilton, one of the co-directors of that group, indicated a couple of weeks ago that the window of opportunity for real change in Iraq is about 3 months. The specific quote was, "Each of us agrees that the next three months are critical," Hamilton said. "The challenges ... are many and they are daunting."
So if the report is postponed until after the elections, that leaves... 1 more month. No one has yet to contradict him, and if what he says about the concensus of opinion among the group is true, they're not likely to. On the other hand, lots of folks -- not just folks, but GENERALS ON THE GROUND -- Gen Pace, Gen. Casey, Gen. Abizaid, and most recently Gen. Chiarelli, have said essentially the same thing (although sometimes more nuanced than others) -- the Iraqi government is RUNNING OUT OF TIME. Also just yesterday there was a report that Muqtada al Sadr may have lost control of a good 1/3 of his Mahdi Army. Why? Because he's not militant enough. Did you get that -- MUQTADA AL SADR ISN'T MILITANT ENOUGH! Jeepers.
Is that whining? I don't freakin' think so. And by the way, every indication is that 2 billion dollars a week is the minimum we're likely to pay for this adventure in Iraq for quite some time. The only question is... how much more time? The current strategy obviously isn't cutting it.
And if I were a Democrat, I think my talking point would be this: dump Rumsfeld, force Bush to break up his neo-con war cabinet, and get the military more involved in the decision-making process. That might not be practical, but it would make a hell of a talking point. Because I'll tell you what -- every moderate Republican I know would go for it if it was presented right.
“get the military more involved in the decision-making process” Posted by: Ricorun
Gee Ricor… isn’t that what we’re hearing from Bush, “We talk to the Generals on the ground regularly. They ask for anything they need and we’re not going to second guess them”. Isn’t that exactly what we’re hearing from the Generals in the field themselves? – “They’re given us whatever we ask for”.
I hear the cry for “more troops to get the job done”, but what I see is people making suggests with limited knowledge of the TOTAL SCOPE of all transactions and interactions. For example, it’s been suggested that if we just throw everything we’ve got at the terrorist then we’ll knock them back but hard. At the same time some people are screaming “just let the Iraqi forces take over and get out”. So, does anyone see a dilemma here? If we send in more troops and do all of the work how will the Iraqi forces ever get up to speed?
Are there mistakes being made? – Probably. Are there things that could be done better? – Probably. Do you think this administration including Rummy hasn’t considered adding troops? – I highly doubt it. Hasn’t the critics of this administration screamed for both increasing AND decreasing the troop level? – Absolutely.
I think both the Administration and the military leaders on the ground have excellent communication and respect for each others decisions. This along with a great deal of information and planning from a good many people in the “know”. It’s easy to be an armchair general where you can scream suggestions with limited knowledge of the big picture. Of course if you’re wrong, who will know (and criticize you to no end).
"Some were established by proxy governments (e.g., Korea and Taiwan). But however it was achieved, establishing a viable security situation was essential." Ricorun
And that is what we are trying to do
"And those that failed, e.g., Haiti and Somalia"
uhhh who was President then??? Oh that's right CLINTON!
"And if I were a Democrat, I think my talking point would be this: dump Rumsfeld, force Bush to break up his neo-con war cabinet, and get the military more involved in the decision-making process."
uhhh Rico, that's what the dems have been saying for the past number of years. But that still isn't a plan.
Oh and BTW How are you planning to FORCE President Bush to break up his cabinet?
Overthrow the DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Government?
Point by point WHAT is YOUR PLAN...not what is your STRATEGY? Or don't you know the difference?
DM says,
-"Do you think this administration including Rummy hasn’t considered adding troops? – I highly doubt it."
Right, you mean the way he "considered" it at the beginning of the war? Is there something that makes you think Rumsfeld has changed his mind?
-"I think both the Administration and the military leaders on the ground have excellent communication and respect for each others decisions."
So, what makes you think this? We have half a dozen recently retired generals that seem to disagree with you, and they were there. Rico and I have both posted many other bits of toubling information on this forum in recent days. Is there something you can show us that might explain your confidence in the current administration?
We must have a draft and we must send 500,000 troops to Iraq. The honor of America demands this...
DM,
Can I ask you why you chose to respond only to the part of my post which I very clearly identified as a digression (and intended only to add context) rather than the part which I very clearly identified as my main point? If you re-read what I wrote I said, "My point this time around is to suggest that the opinion of the Iraq Study Group is essential. These guys know far more about the situation than you or I ever could."
And yet you imply I am trying to be an armchair general. That doesn't make sense.
I also established the reasons why I felt the Iraq Study Group report should be released immediately. The reason is that there is a growing chorus of voices indicating that Iraq is at a cusp point and immediate attention is essential. Ambassador Khalilzad is the latest voice to be added. We're spending 2 billion dollars a week there right now, which is about double the rate we spent this time last year. If we don't seize this critical moment, what do you think we're going to spend next year? Or the year after that? Or the year after that? In that light I am very curious, DM, as to how would you answer Nate's guestion: "Is there something you can show us that might explain your confidence in the current administration?"