Presidential Race

[fundingfather]

<p>

EVERY account from EVERY player confirms that the Bush administration had already set a top priority of taking out Sadaam long before 9/11. There is not even any debate about that.

ID, I think you have spent a tad too much time in the echo chamber; if you don’t get out soon, you will soon be joining those who also thought that 9/11 was an inside job. If EVERY player says this, it should be no problem coming up with a list of 5 officials who say it. I’ll be waiting.</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>

What I don’t get is how the “surge” is supposed to change that, especially given that the same people will be in charge of it.

You may not have noticed, but there’s a new team in town.</p>

[mini]

<p>Yup. General Casey, head of the Joint Chiefs. General Petreaus, a retread from Mosul. Whole new team in town.</p>

<p>(But maybe you mean Pelosi and the Democrats. ;)</p>

[fundingfather]

<p>Casey will not be calling the shots in Iraq, Petreaus and fallon will. This will be Petraeus’ first chance to make strategy for the entire Iraq campaign. So, starting from the SecDef on down, it’s a new team. Some of us will be rooting for them.</p>

[mini]

<p>Petreaus is old hand from Mosul, who after the experience, wrote that for urban control in the type of situation Iraq is in, there is a requirement of a minimum of 1 soldier for every 20 residents. That works out to 250,000 in Baghdad alone. </p>

<p>Instead he has been presented with a paltry escalation over which he has no control.</p>

[conyat]

<p>

You may not have noticed, but there’s a new team in town.

</p>

<p>Any general who disagrees with Bush gets replaced. It doesn’t matter who he has conveying his orders–he’s the Decider. Petraeus has already been over-ruled on the # of troops to send–a pretty key piece of strategy. Until there’s turnover in the White House, it will be the same people calling the shots.</p>

<p>

Some of us will be rooting for them.

</p>

<p>This is so insulting to our troops. This is not a sporting event arranged for your entertainment.</p>

[kluge]

<p>For what it’s worth, I think Petreaus was probably right about the manpower needed for a successful initial occupation, and if his opinion had been heeded, it’s possible (can’t say probable) that the situation would be different now. But it wasn’t, and it isn’t. I’m afraid the arrogant incompetents in the Bush Administration have dug us into an inescapable hole at this point. The only question left is how high the ultimate price tag will end up being, in lives and money.</p>

[conyat]

<p>If it was just as simple as changing the general in charge, or putting an admiral in charge of two land wars, or telling the generals that this time, it “has to work”–why wasn’t that done four hundred billion dollars and three thousand American lives ago?</p>

[mini]

<p>" Some of us will be rooting for them."</p>

<p>Just what you’d expect from the Hate America crowd.</p>

[conyat]

<p>Since the right wing is now casting “expressing reasonable concern as to whether a strategy will work” as “rooting for failure”, I guess they’ll have to count Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney among those rooting against America. He knew all along what would happen when we invaded.</p>

<p>

Going to Baghdad, Cheney said in 1992, would require a much different approach militarily than fighting in the open desert outside the capital, a type of warfare that U.S. troops were not familiar, or comfortable fighting.</p>

<p>“All of a sudden you’ve got a battle you’re fighting in a major built-up city, a lot of civilians are around, significant limitations on our ability to use our most effective technologies and techniques,” Cheney said.</p>

<p>“Once we had rounded him up and gotten rid of his government, then the question is what do you put in its place? You know, you then have accepted the responsibility for governing Iraq.”</p>

<p><snip></snip></p>

<p>“Now what kind of government are you going to establish? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shi’ia government, or a Sunni government, or maybe a government based on the old Baathist Party, or some mixture thereof? You will have, I think by that time, lost the support of the Arab coalition that was so crucial to our operations over there,” he said.</p>

<p>The end result, Cheney said in 1992, would be a messy, dangerous situation requiring a long-term presence by U.S. forces.</p>

<p>“I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today, we’d be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home,” Cheney said, 18 months after the war ended.

</p>

<p>From the same speech:

“And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?” Cheney said then in response to a question.</p>

<p>“And the answer is not very damned many.”

</p>

<p><a href=“http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html[/url]”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[interesteddad]

<p>

Casey will not be calling the shots in Iraq, Petreaus and fallon will.

</p>

<p>IMO, Fallon has been given CENTCOM command with two objectives:</p>

<p>a) Provoke hostile action from Iran in the Straits of Hormuz</p>

<p>b) Manage the Naval air war against Iran.</p>

<p>Fallon will have Shock 'n Awe 2.0 stacked up, ready to go against Tehran, just waiting for the necessary provocation.</p>

[conyat]

<p>Where does your state fit? Per capita casualties in Iraq.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.statemaster.com/graph/mil_ira_war_cas_percap-iraqi-war-casualties-per-capita[/url]”>http://www.statemaster.com/graph/mil_ira_war_cas_percap-iraqi-war-casualties-per-capita&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<h1>1 American Samoa: 8.638 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>2 Northern Mariana Islands: 3.733 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>3 US Virgin Islands: 2.76 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>4 Vermont: 2.568 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>5 South Dakota: 2.191 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>6 Guam: 1.78 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>7 North Dakota: 1.728 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>8 Delaware: 1.423 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>9 Alaska: 1.356 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>10 Nebraska: 1.308 per 100,000 people</h1>

<h1>11 Louisiana: 1.26 per 100,000 people</h1>

<p>Mine’s #11. The median (of the 56 states and territories on the list) is less than .945.</p>

<p>I can’t find a more recent source, but as of 2005, Louisiana also bore a disproportionate share of the National Guard and Reservists mobilizations.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/daily/graphics/vermontnatguard_020805.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/daily/graphics/vermontnatguard_020805.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Snake_Plissken]

<p>

So far, the terrorists have killed 3000 Americans. We are responsible for the deaths of over 3000 more Americans, for sending them into this immoral war.

Wow. I had not realized the depth of the pathology that pervades the Parent’s Cafe until I read that comment…breadth of the pathology provided by all the other helpful enablers here. Amazing.</p>

[drb]

<p>Some of us believe the “enablers” were those that supported this unjustified and immoral war.</p>

[Snake_Plissken]

<p>

Some of us believe the “enablers” were those that supported this unjustified and immoral war.

With “believe” being the important operative word. I wonder if some of you realize the extent to which this portion of this site comes across as some kind of weird quasi-religion when you multi-thousand poster people get into politics, at least to those of us who just happen along.</p>

[mini]

<p>So what exactly should we rooting for now - that the U.S. set up permanent military bases? that we control the oil pipeline? that there is enough relative peace in Baghdad that a pro-Iranian democratically elected government supported by an overwhelmingly Shia population kicks us out? that the 1.8 million refugees experience new lives in the United States, now that they can’t return? That Al-Qaeda and the insurgents have a place in the new government? That the Kurds achieve independence and are attacked by the Turks? </p>

<p>Stablization?</p>

[Snake_Plissken]

<p>

So what exactly should we rooting for now

</p>

<p>Pax Americana would be fine. Of course, that requires the change of ROE that has apparently been implemented. I hope it works…do you?</p>

[mini]

<p>I have no problem with a pro-Iranian Shia government being permanently installed in Baghdad (provided we do the right thing, and take in the refugees).</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>What I would have liked to have seen (assuming the decision to take out Sadaam was made):</p>

<p>a) Rapid support for a Sistani influenced Shia government and massive reconstruction efforts.</p>

<p>b) In exchange for that assistance, guarantees from Sistani for a pluralistic government and basic rights for Sunni and Kurds.</p>

<p>c) Leverage our support for a Shia theocratic influenced Iraqi state into a major diplomatic initiative with Iran. Conditions would have been ideal for an approach to both the moderate selecular elements and the Allatollahs in Iran.</p>

<p>Obviously, we blew that opportunity.</p>

<p>I’m still mulling over where we could or should go for an end-game in Iraq. It’s a comprehensive mess and all of the options are ugly. I see three broad directions to choose among:</p>

<p>a) The Kurth “let 'em go at it” plan: Get out entirely. Let the Iraqis go at it. If Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey want to dive in, stand back and let them go at it, too. After all, why fight Islamists in the US when we can just sit on the porch and watch them kill each other in the Middle East?</p>

<p>b) The Brookings plan: Pull back and let the Iraqis go at it for as long as it takes for them to get tired of killing each other. But, build catch basin refugee camps on the borders to mitigate the humanitarian catastrophe. Pursue an aggressive diplomatic effort, including a re-opening of Israeli/Palestinian peace talks, with all countries in the region to limit the outside interference in Iraq.</p>

<p>c) What I think is Bush’s plan. Provoke a shock 'n awe air war with Iran. Use the military to crush the Iraqi Shia militias when then attack in support of Tehran. Install a Sunni strongman puppet dicatator regime in Baghdad. Collect the IOU from the House of Saud in the form of lower oil prices to further cripple Iran’s bombed economy.</p>

<p>My inclinations lie towards the Brookings plan because of the heavy diplomatic component. However, the Kurth plan of just getting the hell out is very compelling. I think the third option is what our goverment is pursuing. Bush is, after all, the Decider – if he can successfully entice Iran into provoking a war in the Straits of Hormuz. He can’t attack Iran pre-emptively. He’d get impeached. The saving grace is that Iran is probably not that stupid.</p>

[hereshoping]

<p>You guys should be listening to John Burns right now on the Tim Russert show (10 pm EST). How refreshing to listen to an honorable man’s opinion.</p>