<p>Flip Flopper, A leak, and a Scoop.
Something to watch on Sunday morning TV.</p>
<p>Oh, don’t be so secretive!<br>
Here’s a link for those who prefer to get their news fast and in print than deal with the Sunday morning political talk shows:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03military.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03military.html</a></p>
<p>So what? You’d have to be a dummy not to make course corrections. This is no big deal. And I’m not defending Rummy, either.</p>
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<p>Yes, you would. And we haven’t.</p>
<p>“Staying the course,” by definition, means that you are not turning.</p>
<p>Oh, Hanna! I’m afraid you’ve made the mistake of assuming that words have actual set meanings. That’s so, so - so September 10th of you! “Stay the course” means whatever Humpty Bush says its means: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=255030[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=255030</a></p>
<p>What evidence do you have Hanna, that corrections have not already been made? Or could it be that existing changes are merely not in keeping with your political predilections and are accordingly ignored?</p>
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<p>Well, I have the words of the president informing me that we’re staying the course – for three years. We also have the words of Rumsfeld in October of 2006 that: “In my view it is time for a major adjustment…Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough,” which doesn’t sound much like we were already making big changes.</p>
<p>If you’d like to elaborate on the theory that they’re both liars, I’m all ears.</p>
<p>For a second there, I thought you were about to second guess military commanders on the field of battle. But now I see your comments are merely political in nature.</p>
<p>Never mind. Rummy’s toast and now gone. Like I said the first time, so what? </p>
<p>Time to move on. ;)</p>
<p>Any chance the memo led to the “resignation”?</p>
<p>Personally, I doubt it. I think Rummy was becoming the focus of ire and too much of a distraction. Someone high up made a personnel decision and the word was passed down. Time to go or ‘the President would accept your resignation now’.</p>
<p>Do you think he knew he was “gone” when he sent the memo? Taken another way, if he knew he was on the way out, did that free him up to say what he really beleived?</p>
<p>Who knows? </p>
<p>But someone in Rummy’s position can pretty much say what he wants. He doesn’t need the money. I think this independent streak got him into trouble with entrenched interests in the Defense Department, the media and the defense industry. I suspect Bush wanted him because of this…</p>
<p>How about this theory. Rummy was history months ago.</p>
<p>Memo has drafted to take advantage of Rummy leaving. If the memo is taken badly by the US People, Rummy becomes the whipped dead dog. If the memo is taken favorably, W gives the illusion that he is swaying towards Baker-Hamilton Committee possible recommendations. The later will also prepare the diehards to a course correction in the mode of staying the course. Rummy will come though it all relatively unscathed other than the lingering problem-Why wasn’t the alternatives examined before the thousands were killed and maimed?</p>
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<p>The daily body count.</p>
<p>Actually, corrections have been made repeatedly – starting in 2003 with the replacement of Paul Bremer as viceroy, increased troop deployments, changing patterns of troop deployments, etc. The mix of nation-building vs. military operations has been adjusted constantly. We went through a period of co-ordinated Fallujah-type operations, but you haven’t read about those recently. As the Rumsfeld memo indicates, the number of bases has already been cut by 2/3.</p>
<p>The issue isn’t that commanders, military and civilian, haven’t noticed that what they’re doing isn’t working and haven’t tried something else. People pretend that’s the case – sometimes people on both sides of the debate – but it’s a silly position good for sound bites and little else. The issue is that all of the choices have been subject to strong political constraints, and that no one has managed to define a rational, achievable mission.</p>
<p>Another one bites the dust…(although this won’t affect Bush’s Stay the Course position one iota)…</p>
<p>Buh bye Bolton…</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/12/04/bush_accepts_boltons_un_resignation/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/12/04/bush_accepts_boltons_un_resignation/</a></p>
<p>The more essential problem is recognizing that there are no way to make the puzzle pieces fit into a pleasing picture from an American point of view. It’s all futility. The Iraqi government (that we largely designed) is structurally weak, giving too many vetoes to various factions. None of the various militias have any incentive to work for the government instead of their own interests, even those of government majority factions. Replacing Maliki isn’t the answer…nobody else can do anything more. Rein in the Muqtada’s Mahdi Army and SCIRI’s Badr Corps will be the big winner. Actually, the biggest winner in our invasion of Iraq has been and will be Iran. And if we side with the Shiites to squelch the Sunnis in lieu of going for a multisided government, we **** off the rest of the [mostly Sunni] Arab world and give Osama bin Laden yet another recruiting poster. What an effed up situation, produced by an effed up administration. </p>
<p>I don’t think the US has ever made a strategic error of anywhere near these dimensions. The excessive punitive measures by the Allies on Germany after WW I, contributing to German hypernationalism and opening the door for the Nazis, might be on the same scale.</p>
<p>I think folks forget how localized the Sunni-Shiite split is to Iraq. Iran is overwhelming Shia. Syria is overwhelming Sunni. Both support Hezbollah, which is Shia, and Hamas, which is predominantly Sunni. The divisions in Iraq are (firstly) a British-American creation, with U.S. support of a Sunni but secular Baathist regime, which in turn repressed and oppressed a majority Shia population. Sunnis and Shias get along pretty well virtually everywhere in the Middle East except where first the British, and then the Americans, played the minority-rules-the-majority game.</p>
<p>Now there are consequences.</p>
<p>It’s time for the boy in the china shop to be escorted outside (after paying for the damage out of his next 10 years worth of allowance), and reprimanded by his mother.</p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>“The issue is that all of the choices have been subject to strong political constraints, and that no one has managed to define a rational, achievable mission.”</p>
<p>It’s called “losing”. </p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>Yes, and I’ve called it that elsewhere.</p>
<p>I was just pointing out that there have been lots of course corrections like those proposed by Rumsfeld over the past 3 years. What’s wrong isn’t inflexibility about stuff like this. What’s wrong is being wrong about the big stuff, like what we’re supposed to be accomplishing.</p>