This past Wednesday, President Bush addressed the nation from the White House Library to unveil his "New Way Forward" 'strategy' in Iraq. (Throw out those old copies of the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq! They're worth as much as they did at release -- nothing.) The decision means the official adoption of the "McCain Doctrine" as U.S. policy, but more importantly, an escalation of American involvement with 21,500 additional forces. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) stamped his seal of approval after the speech.
Will Bunch noted the eerie similarities between Bush's national address and then-President Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union Address from 1967 -- forty-years ago to the day. But one such similarity, in particular, stuck out to me.
President Bush's 'plan' includes a reconstruction package and a commitment from the Maliki government to spend $10 billion for that purpose. Pre-speech reports said that Bush was pushing for a reconstruction package, though no mention of U.S. reconstruction aid made it into the speech to the nation.
The plan, however, includes a "jobs creation program," according to the Key Tactical Shifts [PDF]. The sixth-grade level outline, or "Fact Sheet," can be viewed here, which includes this line:
Iraq Could Not Be Graver – The War On Terror Cannot Be Won If We Fail In Iraq.
Bush announced the expansion of "provincial reconstruction teams" and an unnamed "reconstruction coordinator" to be based in Baghdad and appointed by the family-less Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
(That whole right-wing media-created 'dustup' was blown way out of proportion and as dumb as President Bush is divorced from reality. All it does is cover-up the fact that Rice and the Bush administration got hammered on Iraq by senators left and right, and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) said that if the policy were to be carried out, it would be "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam.")
Late last year, the Pentagon pressed the White House to seek another $99.7 billion in funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, which would bring the total cost for both wars in the 2007 fiscal year to $140 billion.
As part of the 'new strategy,' Bush plans to spend more than $1 billion on economic aid. (A drop in the bucket considering the billions previously spent on reconstruction efforts.)
This is 2007, mind you, and that the war started in 2003. Four years after the fact is not the best time to, all of a sudden, get serious about delivering basic services and building the country's infrastructure.
I fear, for the sake of the nation, the well-being of the U.S. military and the Iraqi people, that this is all too little and four bloody, painful years too late.
Paul Reickhoff, author of Chasing Ghosts: A Solder's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington, said it best when he reiterated his summation of this latest attempt at Iraq policy by the Bush administration in his January 10 appearance on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
REICKHOFF: Yes, they feel like this is more of a political move than a military one. If the president was serious about upping the troop numbers, he should have done it three years ago. And now they‘re just frustrated. [...]
And I said last week, people are calling this a Hail Mary. If we‘re going to use a football analogy, we‘re down in the fourth quarter. This isn‘t a Hail Mary, this is a draw play. It‘s even more stupid than a Hail Mary. [emphasis added]
The NFL playoffs continue this weekend so the use of a football analogy, for a lack of better words to explain how this 'strategy' will play out, seems quite appropriate.
It is third and long, we're behind and Bush is calling a draw play. We know how this, the 'New Way Forward' in Iraq, will play out.
When Bush's 'draw play' gets stopped well short of 'victory,' he will punt the issue to the next president. Given that there are no contingencies, according to Dr. Rice's testimony, this is it. (How is it bad policy to "speculate" on what to do next should Plan A fail? It is dangerous wishful thinking on the part of the Bush administration that costs lives.)
Throw more bodies and money at it and hope that the problem goes away. (Or the war gets bigger, whichever.)
Catch you guys in Cambodia Laos Iran and Syria when Halliburton "wins" a government contract.
[Matt Ortega writes at SOTUblog and The Right's Field, a blog focusing exclusively on the GOP's field of presidential candidates from a liberal perspective.]
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Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) stamped his seal of approval after the speech.
As has Lieberman?
impeach!
Wasn’t it a one billion dollar jobs program? You’re right, he never mentioned it during the speech.
Hillary must be stopped.
click through to page two, and comment there
The tense, strained look on Bush’s face during that speech reminds me of the way he looked sitting in that Florida classroom on Sept. 11 after Card told him we were under attack. Same nervousness.
Please excuse the poor, poor Photoshop job.
I’m still learning.
Matt — great work, as alwasy.
As I mentioned in last thread, I think Bush already had action underway against Iran and Syria before the ISG published its report.
What I want to know is if we already have troops inserted in Syria and Iran on covert actions, when they were inserted, and how they are being funded if they are.
In other words, we are already watching our own Cambodia (Iran) and Laos (Syria, Iran) and need to do something about it.
Rayne @ 8
…don’t forget Somalia
TheOtherWA — did that speech kind of remind you of this one?
Has AP gotten the story wrong…
“Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent three years investigating that claim but filed no charges based on the leak itself. He says his work is done except for trying Libby, who resigned after being indicted in October 2005.”
Work is done, I hope it’s just begun…
Jack
Sorry about the pages. I fixed it. On my blog, the “MORE” tag icon is the same as the “PAGE” icon here and I got confused.
twolf1 — haven’t forgotten Somalia, but it’s not got a direct parallel from 1973. It is not the perceived threat that Iran and Syria are in the neo-con mind; the difference between 1973 and 2007 is that we were trying to stem the spread of Communism then, and now we are trying to push corporatism via a shadowy version of democracy at the point of a gun. Somalia fits in that latter model.
Rayne @ 8
I thought Sy Hersh had already clarified that the amrukans were already fighting in Iran.
TheOtherWA @ 3
Bush had this to say about economic aid in his January 10 speech:
Re the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, I believe it was Martha Raddatz on Washington Week in Review that said that no one with any experience in this wanted to go so they were signing up 21 year olds who didn’t know any better. This all seems like deja vu all over again with what happened during Bremer and the CPA. It also gives you an idea of how successful this project is going to be.
Bay State Jack — AP doesn’t have the story wrong; they have their talking points from the RNC right.
Innoculating the public against a prosecutor “gone wild”…more propaganda.
Crazy Horse — will have to check what Hersh said, he’s generally right. There’s been all kinds of activity along the border since 2003, including at least one plane crash inside Iran. But at what point is it merely intel ops, or full-on warfare? Warfare is a violation of the War Powers.
It’s like the difference between getting a raise and getting a pay-day loan. It’s all just smoke and mirrors. The New Way Forward is neither new, a way, or forward. It’s just “Stay The Course 2.0–Now with Extra Persia!”
It looked like they rooted around in a trunk full of old Johnson speeches and changed Viet Nam, Red China and Cambodia to Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
There’s going to be a rather large explosion in the Middle East, soon.
Rayne @ 16
Thanks…. January will be a productive month
Boycott the State of the Union Address
on January 23rd…
A consitutional crisis is a brewing…
Jack
My own analogy is to compare it to 1943 North Africa. The Afrika Korps had just been severely pummeled at El Alamein, the stronghold of Tobruk fell without much of a struggle and they were steaming back to Tunisia.
Then, Germany sends more troops & tanks! Had it done so two years earlier, it might have made a difference.
Ah so now I see the rest of the post. It isn’t just Rice but press secretary Snow and deputy national security adviser Crouch who have been parroting the “we’re focusing on Plan A, not Plan B” line. These are, of course, the same people who had no Plan B for Iraq after the invasion. Why should we expect them to have one now?
Rayne @ 10
Thanks, Rayne. I’ve never seen that or read about it. There are similarities.
The Battle for Haifa Street
As American and Iraqi forces try (again) to take control of central Baghdad, they find ominous pointers of sectarian problems to come.
Over the next two days, some 20 Iraqi Army soldiers were killed, and by midweek a reported 50 insurgents were dead. The fight expanded, pulling in U.S. Apache helicopters, F-15s, more than a dozen Iraqi gun trucks, Stryker combat vehicles and about 1,000 Iraqi Army soldiers. The images were shown across the world, acting as a vivid backdrop for President’ George W. Bush’s milestone speech committing more than 20,000 extra U.S. troops to Iraq. The U.S. president argued that the additional soldiers will help to secure Baghdad, but for those on the ground there were worrying signs of problems to come. Within 24 hours of the start of the fight in Haifa Street, Gen. Razzak Hamza, a Sunni Iraqi Army commander of the Fifth Brigade, Sixth Iraqi Army Division, received a call from the office of Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki saying that Hamza was relieved of duty. He was promptly replaced by a Shiite commander. According to Duke, the prime minister’s office blamed Hamza for the violence on Haifa Street, and said he wasn’t doing enough to stop it.
Hugh @ 22
I don’t think there’s a Plan B if you’re invading a country. Any serious military plan would have included most of the likely contingencies and what our response should have been. This is, of course, exactly the thing that Rumsfeld threatened to fire his generals for doing. The Iraqi government collapsed, and we had no contingency plan for that event.
When Condoleezza Rice leaves the Middle East in the next few days after sizing up the chances of relaunching an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, her first port of call will not be Downing Street. And it certainly won’t be Paris.
Rather, the US secretary of state will head to the gleaming palace of steel, glass and concrete that is the German chancellery at the heart of the new Berlin to swap notes with Angela Merkel.
Will Condi give Merkel a neckrub?
-GSD
GSD @ 27
No. Bush is the massagonist.
GSD @ 27
Remains to be seen. The smart money is on ‘no’ though.
Putsch, putsch, in the Bush.
-GSD
Rich @ 21
To me, what is interesting about that analogy isn’t the tactical lesson, it’s the strategic one. Germany let itself get drawn into North Africa, where it had no real interests, to help the Italians, whom the British were defeating. They let themselves get drawn in further, and eventually lost an army there. What’s worse, it was a diversion from their main battle, which was with the Soviet Union. In the end, they lost that battle, as well.
I guess we will see HOW the Democrats respond to the whole thing, in good time. Not meaning ours, but who are we, we are the public who isn’t fully capable of making a difference, not completely true,small ripple.
Cujo359 @ 31
By the same token, had Germany not invaded the Soviet Union when they did, but instead waited longer, who knows how much longer Britain would have held on for.
Can I imagine Condi traveling to the Mideast to re-start the peace process? Hardly.
Poor John McCain.
All that whoring, and sucking, and posing, still SpongeDobson won’t consumate.
Sorry Johnny.
-GSD
Cujo359 @ 25
Actually, Plan A involved who to hire to clean up all the rose petals that were thrown at our troops. The Plan B that never was what to do if it wasn’t rose petals that were being thrown.
Cujo359 @ 31
Don’t forget the French in Algeria after WWII and their trouble with the Mujahadeen (sp?)
Matt O!
They’ve never had any contingency plans. From the beginning they have been delusional about the success of every act. Greeting the troops with flowers. Paying for itself with oil money. Quick victory.
Plan for reconstruction? No need.
McCain has lost his marbles.
That picture of Bush SO makes me want to draw a mustache on it. And little horns.
twolf1 @ 9
Somalia and Athens were cooked up to take our attention of Iraq and to remind people that the world is Scary! Scary, I tell you! Phony baloney.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — A Kurdish army brigade in northern Iraq is undergoing intensive urban combat training as it readies for deployment in the latest Baghdad security operation and is expected to take on the capital’s Mehdi Army Shiite militia, its commander said Saturday.
GSD @
35
hey John, they’re just not into you.
egregious @ 38
Yes, I know the disastrous history of this administration on that front.
But to argue against contingency plans in public is just flatly idiotic.
McCain says that when Dobson says “no” he really means “yes”- he just needs a little more rough foreplay!
Oklahoma kiddo @ 19
When we blow up our own ship and blame Iran? Or it could be another USS Liberty. I can’t believe that’s never been exposed.
How US forged an alliance with Ethiopia over invasion
On December 4, General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces from the Middle East through Afghanistan, arrived in Addis Ababa to meet the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. Officially, the trip was a courtesy call to an ally. Three weeks later, however, Ethiopian forces crossed into Somalia in a war on its Islamist rulers, and this week the US launched air strikes against suspected al-Qaida operatives believed to be hiding among the fleeing Islamist fighters.
Days later, the Ethiopian forces were on the move. But many believe that America’s support for Ethiopia’s military intervention could come back to haunt the US, and predict a flare-up of Somali nationalist feeling. Already, clan fighting is threatening to jeopardise attempts to restore stability. This week there have been at least three attacks on government forces.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqa.....01,00.html
We may see both Clusterfuck and McCain goin down in flames soon. McCain has hitched his wagon to the foulest star in the firmament..
Clusterfuck was already as popular as a fart in church- but he’s creepin up ta bein a turd in the punchbowl with everyone in the house dyin of thirst…Ready ta chalk up two has beens!
It’s getting so hot at the White House that the rose garden trees must be trying to bribe Barney & Miss Beazley by now.
Man. i am so fuckin mad tonight, The local headline is to build a fedederal prison here, good for some hard up jobs, you know sponswered by my the wonderful brother-in-law , former mayor and all. This is it, the city of Orr, MN does not have the space to build fucking anything. Just read that our government spends one half on prisons = to HUD housing. Need another prison, why not go to New Orleans, taking away the HUD housing there. Go, figure, somebody should.
I didn’t watch the speech. Was his lips moving?
egregious @ 46
;)
Prisons=forced labor camps.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 52
George Bush, pilot of the Ship of Spite
ccmask @ 53
Prisons = FREE labor camps.
Cheap immigrant labor? For the amateurs.
the Baghdadi bloggers at MarkfromIreland’s site (link under my name) have evacuated their families from Baghdad and report that Sadr City has been sealed off by US troops. The men and all boys over 16 are hunkered down in their neighborhoods to protect their homes and neighbors. The choice to send their families to the disastrous refugee camps or to poor relatives in the countryside in winter is a sign of how horrendous they expect this escalation to be for normal Iraqis.
And you know what? I got a beautiful double rainbow e-mailed to me today, and i’ve been tring to be optimisic about it all, but I got to say, I wish to god I didn’t have to get up every day and feel more than sickened that my countries government is making so many masses life unbearable, dead, or otherwise. It really ruins my day.
Rice: U.S. aims to curb Iran aggression
“The United States is simply responding to Iranian activities that have been going on for a while now that threaten not just to destabilize the chance for Iraq to proceed to stability but also that endanger our forces,” Rice said before meeting with Israel’s foreign minister.
Bush approved the strategy several months ago, U.S. officials said, in response to what Washington claims is Iran’s support for terrorists inside Iraq and the alleged funneling of bombs to anti-U.S. insurgents.
Delusions Al Fredo: I just took a shit on the kitchen table, and I want to know what your plan is to clean it up.
It’s almost WWII again. Except this time, we’re the bad guys. I am disgusted.
OT - Medicaid plan would cut rural funding
Speaking of prison labor, has more come from the revised DoD plans for use of civilian prison labor by the military? (egregious, I thought you had gone back to Russia to take care of the babies?)
egregious @ 55
I’m not too sure of the numbers but I think Florida used to spend more than $30,000 per prisoner and about $3,800 per student in the public school system. I met a couple of guys recently through work and both were guests of the prison system for several years. They work for almost nothing doing all kinds of jobs, eat crappy food and no medical unless they are really very sick. I’m not saying they should get caviar, but the wasted money is just another layer of this Bush cake.
OT - Welcome to my world :) (ok my hunting club world)
Medicare vote makes Berry late for Coon Supper
Great fireworks too.
ps: and their crimes are nothing compared with the men who lead this country. Shady bas*ards.
john in sacramento @ 37
Rich is right about the late winter of 1943. Thank G*d the Viennese paperhanger attacked the British Isles in 1940 and Crete in 1941. All he had to do in July 1940 was send a dozen U-boats, 600 airplanes and 4 mobile divisions to Libya, take Malta, and he’d have won the whole shebang.
Mrs. Clinton was airborne for Iraq, a visit that offered a platform to examine and perhaps alter her views on a war that she once voted to authorize but now criticizes. Asked in a telephone interview from Kuwait whether this trip might lead her to support setting a firm deadline for the withdrawal of all American troops, which would be a change in her position, she responded: “Those are questions that we’ll be better able to answer later. Obviously I’ll have more to say when I get back.”
Or if he’d concentrated on developing jet fighters instead of the V-2.
Rich is right about the late winter of 1943. Thank G*d the Viennese paperhanger attacked the British Isles in 1940 and Crete in 1941. All he had to do in July 1940 was send a dozen U-boats, 600 airplanes and 4 mobile divisions to Libya, take Malta, and he’d have won the whole shebang.
Hillary, always hedging her bets.
Hey Okaloma, were we the good guys murdering and stealing the land from the Native Americans? Were our Founding Fathers so bright, or selfish? when they ? founded the documents that didn’t recognize the blacks, women, people that didn’t own property, when They took the majority already
Steve @ 62
Does this mean that if Scooter is convicted, he could end up working for the DOD at 17 cents an hour?
To dream . . . the impossible dream . . .
Just in case someone missed this posted link last night (I forget who posted it) I wanted to add in again. It begins:
The letter that follows takes us on a darkly imagined excursion into the future. A military coup has taken place in the United States–the year is 2012–and General Thomas E. T. Brutus, Commander-in-Chief of the Unified Armed Forces of the United States, now occupies the White House as permanent Military Plenipotentiary. His position has been ratified by a national referendum, though scattered disorders still prevail and arrests for acts of sedition are underway. A senior retired officer of the Unified Armed Forces, known here simply as Prisoner 222305759, is one of those arrested, having been convicted by court-martial for opposing the coup. Prior to his execution, he is able to smuggle out of prison a letter to an old War College classmate discussing the “Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” In it, he argues that the coup was the outgrowth of trends visible as far back as 1992. These trends were the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses, the monolithic unification of the armed forces, and the insularity of the military community. His letter survives and is here presented verbatim.
It goes without saying (I hope) that the coup scenario above is purely a literary device intended to dramatize my concern over certain contemporary developments affecting the armed forces, and is emphatically not a prediction. — The Author
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/u.....dunlap.htm
I guess she hasn’t yet figured out that the Dems of today want somebody to stand for something.
As John Mellencamp sang, “you’ve got to stand for something, or you’re gonna fall for anything.”
egregious @ 46
I can’t believe I’m touching this subject, but……..
Israeli pilots and planners involved in the Liberty bombing, ALL the surviving USS Liberty crew, Admiral Morer and scores of other credible participants or investigators in Israel and the US have all stated the attack was deliberate. It isn’t that the event hasn’t been exposed again and again for having been planned. It is that these reports have been discredited as being untrue, ignorant or downright anti-Semitic. And there’s an endless procession of writers willing to re-tell the faulty version of the story.
I’m not sure the truth will come out before most of the participants have passed away, but the facts have been documented way past the point of being able to be disappeared.
“Mrs. Clinton, who put out a measured statement opposing the troop increase but has stayed away from the Senate vanguard opposing Mr. Bush’s latest strategy.”
I read awhile back that Iran was thinking about trading its’ oil in euro’s instead of dollars.
If they do that, the US dollar becomes virtually worthless.
China holds all our debts in dollars, so if the dollar becomes worthless they call in the debts and our economy is toast.(or even if they don’t)
Wonder if this has anything to do with it?
Here’s a link to a very intersting article:
http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html
Ed*ard Teller @ 74
;)
http://news.independent.co.uk/.....152461.ece
the latest on Ms Rice’s trip - sure sounds like war with Iran.
Is Crazy Horse here? I’m drinking a 10 year old Glen Garioch. Yummy!
Bulletin:
A misplaced decimal point and a dyslexic President marred the meaning of his “surge” speech.
He meant to indicate he was sending these guys.
Oilfieldguy @ 80
Damn, Chuck Bronson without his pornstache. Would scare me into surrenduring!
Well, Iguess ole Bushie Baby, thinks we the people will Fall for anything. He sure has pushed us around enough, first it’s a little phone wire tapping and then e-mail, and now regular mail, and will we ever know? Of course not, that is security related and non of your business. Old life in the US, why did I have to be born HERE, there are better places, although greed is always a factor and mean Men.
As I discussed the other day, the kool-aid runs deep with alot of people. Gotta keep hitting them with the sharp stick of truth.
“Mr. McCain embarked on a high-profile television tour announcing his support for Mr. Bush’s move. In an interview, he said he would have preferred that the White House send in even more troops, and noted that he had pressed this position on the White House, unsuccessfully until now, for more than two years. It is a position that Mr. McCain and his advisers — and some other Republicans — said could end up destroying his presidential ambitions.”
“Friends, advisers, enemies said this could be very damaging,” Mr. McCain said. “I can’t worry about that, and I’m not going to worry about that.”
Nothing like a little blackmail…
Did you see the woman with the “Fuck the Eagles” shirt on! Wonder if Fox will get fined?
She can’t fuck them Eagles with all them kids watchin- that’d be unamerican. She’d have ta do it in a fancy hotel room an get 50 grand for the gig- THAT’s american!
raven @ 86
I did see that… was funny. fine Murdoch?
JERUSALEM - U.S. raids that
President Bush approved against Iranian targets in
Iraq are part of broad efforts to confront Tehran’s aggression, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....ea/us_iran
Tehran’s aggression..Rice is fanning the flames in Israel…we are so fucked.
I’ll bet the camerman’s (person) ass is in a sling.
twolf1 @ 88
I think the comments obout Clinton, fuck she is not dedicated to a position, simply because she is a wait and See, she is too confident thinking she can pull off a presidency, just because. She’ll never get my vote, and many others. Right now Kuchnich and Kennedy are making most sense but Where is the REST of the Support?
rwcole @ 87
also, she would have to purchase and throw out some meth
Golly, he sounds like a real maverick.
raven @ 86
No, it was just a Jeff Feagles jersey!
Oklahoma kiddo @ 60
The country’s government and not it’s people.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 67
ptooey! more drivel and caca.
fuck the eagles! -or- fuck! the eagles!
Per TPM Cafe
Hillary Says Its Time To Start Leaving Iraq
twolf1 @ 97
She was an Aint’s fan fer sure.
Oh, I would surmise it’s war on Iran alright. But it (war) won’t stop there.
angie @ 96
;) ;)
raven @ 99
yeah, the black and gold kinda gave it away huh
Matt Ortega @ 95
And we need to keep that in mind here about other countries too…..
NaNOO @ 70
;)
“We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.”
And when was Iraq scheduled to invade Nebraska? I missed that memo.