<p>In fairness, I watched all of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon briefings leading up to, and throughout the course of, the invasion of Iraq. He was very measured in his expectations, as he has been on the whole timeline of fighting Islamic terrorism. He, of all people, knew that you never get a “clean” victory in these situations.</p>
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<p>That is taken out of context. Rumsfeld would have been referring to length of time for the invasion force to control Baghad (in a military sense) and topple the Hussein government. That phase came in pretty close to his most optimistic projection, if I recall. As for the aftermath, I assumed that our intention all along was to have a permanent occupying force.</p>
<p>It is also unfair, IMO, to suggest that the majority of Iraqis are sorry to see Sadaam Huissein forced out of power.</p>
<p>Mini talks of destabilizing Iran. But, I doubt that there are many Iranians who are upset to see Sadaam rotting in a prison cell. I’m actually a little surprised that the Iranian government hasn’t been more mischievous. I actually think the relative lack of obstruction from both Iran and Syria throughout the war in Iraq has been been surprising.</p>
<p>Nor, am I as pessimistic about the prospects of reform in Iran as Mini. I believe those forces are inevitable for two reasons: the Iranian people are very sophisticated/educated and the Ayatollahs have run the Iranian economy into the dumpster for the last quarter century.</p>
<p>The things that I am angry about are:</p>
<p>a) the lack of preparation for a post-invasion transition</p>
<p>b) the continued failure of our intelligence agencies.</p>
<p>c) the inability of our President to present a coherent rationale to the American people. He has failed miserably in that kind of leadership since the morning of 9/11, IMO.</p>
<p>ID, thanks for your balanced perspective. As to what angers you, here are my thoughts:</p>
<p>a) post invasion transition: I agree that the insurgency was probably not anticipated and therefore not properly planned for. One has to wonder if the war plan, which called for the 4th ID to attack from the north, was allowed to have been followed, whether the additional troops and the suppression of the Sunni territory would have made a difference in quelling the looting. The widespread looting created a feeling of anarchy which then fed the development of the insurgency.</p>
<p>b) Clearly the intelligence is not perfect, but I tend to think that it is not as bad as it is stereotyped to be. Look at the number of cells in the US that have been broken up; look at the number of al Qaeda leaders that have been apprehended or killed; look at the fact that we have not had an attack in 4 years. There’s always room for improvement, but I think they deserve at least a B for their activities in the past couple of years.</p>
<p>c) I agree that the communication coming from the White House has been spotty (but think that the immediate post-9/11 and Afghanistan war was well communicated.) Unfortunately, to get the complete rationale, one has to look beyond the WH to what others have said. John McCain distilled it quite well at the RNC.</p>
<p>Its amazing that the government can get the intelligence so wrong and hey, its okay. And yet, a reporter use a piece of paper that, while the facts in the paper are correct, the actual piece of paper is fake, and people want that journalist fired. Where is the accountability for those that made such huge errors in facts with regard to taking us to war, fightint the war, changing the reasons we go to war?</p>
<p>Oh, well the intelligence was flawed is acceptable from one group, who are trained in interpretation, trained in gathering, trained is seeing all sides, but, whatever.</p>
<p>And how in the world could the insurgency been not anticipated? </p>
<p>Regarding what the WHite House has said, the story has changed alot, depending on how the wind blows.</p>
<p>And, why is it acceptable to hear the facts from one Senator, and when other Senators ask questions, they are called liberal traitors? If you agree wholeheartedly with Bush, you are a Patriot, if you wonder what the facts really are and ask for information, you are weak. </p>
<p>Why are we in Iraq? And, if maor fighting was over a year ago, why are we still there? </p>
<p>Where is the money going? Why was the intelligence so bad? Why did they not anticipate the insurgence? What are the end goals? And why can the leaders of this country make so many mistakes, and its okay, while a few reporter makes a mistake and he is pillared?</p>
<p>Never said anything of the kind. On the contrary, what I said was that our so-called efforts at “stabilizing Iraq” had effect of putting a halt on internal reforms within Iran, and with very good reason. In a democracy, even a flawed one, people make very real choices, and in Iran, they have made them. The former Pres. who lost had in fact been President for 8 years, and with a bellicose enemy on their borders, the people logically chose to go in another direction.</p>
<p>Regardless, as regards Iraq, Ayotallah Sistani will end up running the country whether the U.S. stays or leaves. We could have cut a deal with him 18 months ago, or we could cut one tomorrow. But the result will be the same in either case. </p>
<p>Cut and run would be the patriotic thing to do.</p>
<p>ID, I don’t think my quote is out of context. The Bush Administration did not expect the resistance they have met after the “war was won.” Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush all predicted the people of Iraq would rejoice at seeing American troops. Their history with this war from the beginning has been deceptive and misleading. After Afghanistan, Bush took advantage of America’s patriotic mood and attacked his families nemisis. If we really wanted to go after a nation with mass destruction capacity we could have picked Korea, but Korea doesn’t have any oil contracts.
The story is now that we are establishing democracy and freedom, but that is because most Americans wouldn’t fund or fight for the control of oil contracts.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I think there is a relationship between Iraq and the World Trade Center. Attempts to blow it up seem to have started after we invaded Iraq under President Bush (dad.) Some moslems didn’t like American’s blowing up Arab cities. I believe that war could have been avoided if the Bush Administration had been quicker and clearer in their messages before the invasion of Kuwait. Some speculate the Bush administration wanted that war to let the oil nations know we mean business.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if President Bush acknowledges any mistakes he has made, or if he, like Rumsfeld, continues to deny or make light of their mistakes.</p>
<p>Are you sure you want to go there regarding relationships with China? Remember the illegal campaign contributions and access to the WH and allegations of technology transfer that tainted Clinton and Kerry? At least the purchase of an oil company is legal.</p>
<p>I assume that we did cut a deal with Sistani. Otherwise, it is highly unlikely that a government could have been formed. I think the relative stability in the Shiite-controlled regions of Iraq has been an encouraging sign. The biggest risk going in was facing an all-out popular fundamentalist uprising. That would have been ugly. As that has not happened, I assume that Sistani has played a positive role and found at least some area of common ground with the occupying force (although I am certainly under no illusions about that. I understand that Iraq could end up as a fundamentalist regime).</p>
<p>As is the case throughout the region, publicly announcing such “deals” wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest. I assume that one of Sistani’s conditions would have been a gag order. That’s pretty standard throughout the region, “We’ll work with you, but it will have to be kept quiet…”</p>
<p>I’m also skeptical when I hear a 15 second soundbyte on the news about the newly elected President of Iran being a “hardliner”. Our soundbyte-driven news must paint everybody as wearing a white hat or a black hat, which surely doesn’t fit the reality of Iranian politics, notwithstanding campaign rhetoric. He could be a hardliner or he could end up being a great reformer. I don’t feel like I have any valid information to even hazard a guess. For an example closer to home, who would have ever guessed in a million years that Richard Nixon would unfreeze relations with China? And we think we know what the ex-mayor of Tehran will do? </p>
<p>Long-term, continued reform in Iran is as inevitable as the fall of the Berlin Wall. You can build walls. You can censor the media. But, in the days of satellite dishes, cell phones, and internet communication, you can’t keep images of freedom out.</p>
<p>Yes, China has apparently performed a great under-the-radar military buildup that’s been going on for at least 10 years. I view this Unocal deal as a real problem. Their fuel supply is the missing link in their strategy.</p>
<p>A Swarthmore Linguistics professor travelled to Iran this spring on a book tour (one of her children’s books had just been published in Farsi) and posted a wonderful recap of her experience here:</p>
<p>And I do find it interesting that often when a Bush policy, inaction, actiion is questioned, Clinton is brought up…why?</p>
<p>This is right now, under Bush’s watch…he needs to deal with it. And if you want to discuss illiegal campaigning, well, that is just to easy to talk about Bush and his merry band.</p>
<p>He could be a hardliner or he could end up being a great reformer.</p>
<p>Mahmoud Ahmadindeja, according to friends and family in Iran, is very unlikely to be a reformer. Nixon was a relatively mainstream politician, Ahmadindeja is a scary demagogue.
My mother-in-law just returned to Tehran a week before the election (she lives with us half of the yearshes an orthodox Muslim) and my sister-in-law (secular/religious) who lives in Ottawa 9 months out of the year for the sake of her children is returning in two days. They are both afraid of what this will mean. I hope they are wrong, but Ahmadindeja has all the earmarks of an intolerant demagogue. </p>
<p>Moin was the choice of both of them with Rafsanjani in the wings. Had Rafsanjani won my brother-in-law would have had a deputy position in the ministry that oversees the airlines and Tehran airport.</p>
<p>I also think too much is being made of Bush’s comments on the election. The Iranians are not so knee-jerk as to elect their leader based on the comments of an American President…they have much bigger issues at stake: first and foremost the economy.</p>
<p>I can say, from comments here in L.A., home to the largest Iranian community outside of Iran, Ahmadindeja is indeed bad news.</p>
<p>IDad, if you can get a link to today’s LA TIMES, there’s a lengthy article about Basra. Very stable. Also very hard core Islamic fundamentalist controlled, by the Badr corps, the pro-Iranian militia. The militia have been folded into the police and now essentially they <em>are</em> the police.</p>
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<p>This is one of the favorite current lines of defense among the dwindling numbes of True Believers and they don’t have that many lines of defense left to fall back to but this particular one has already been overrun. If it were a military position, enemy tanks would be camped out on the airfield. </p>
<p>The length of time that the Sunni-dominated territory would have come under control would not have been appreciably shorter. The number of troops in country was so devastatingly insufficient (see also, Gen. Shinseki was right) that weapons and munitions sites were wide open and being looted more than six months after "Mission Accomplished.'</p>
<p>Even today, by the military’s own admissions, the number of troops in Al Anbar province (western Iraq and along the Syrian border, fanning out from Ramadi), some 10,000 in all, is grossly insufficient. As the frustrated U.S. company grade officers report, the enemy just goes wherever they aren’t. The U.S. forces also don’t trust their much vaunted Iraqi counterparts and with good reason: insurgent sympathizers so thoroughly riddle the structure that the U.S. can’t afford to plan a mission using Iraqi forces before hand. Mutual contempt most often captures the mood between U.S. and Iraqi forces in the field.</p>
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<p>In one of the few parallels with Vietnam that holds up, the “body count” mistake of confusing tactical success with strategic progress. [Side note: after the war with over, one American general told a Vietnamese counter part that the NVA had never beaten the U.S. in the field. The Vietnamese replied, “This is true but irrelevant.”]</p>
<p>The only part of Iraq that whole-heartedly supports the American presence is in the north, the Kurdish-controlled sector. The Sunnis are virtually unaninmous in opposition and the Shiites are split. (See also, Colin Powell was right: you break it, you own it.) Killing 100 insurgents a week will have a negligible effect; the conditions that produce and motivate them are such that there are plenty more where they come from. The True Believers assured us a year ago that it was only a few “dead-enders” that were causing problems. Before that it was “only a few foreign fighters.” A year from now, some of us will be looking back and chuckled at Dick Cheney’s “last throes” comment the way we now look at “Mission Accomplished”…or not. </p>
<p>Stable, pro-American, democratic…the future of Iraq is any two. Step on up, gents, and place your bets. The <em>best</em> we can hope for is a Shiite-controlled Iraq where women are kept under wraps, alcohol sales proscribed under threat of death, nightclubs are not allowed, and the local religious-oriented militia enforces social law. American’s are going to look at that result and say, “We fought and died for <em>this</em>?”</p>
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<p>Hoo-whee! The Afghan war was largely bungled too but most Americans don’t realize it yet. Karzai has just enough authority to blow his nose without needing a counter-signature from either Americans or the warlords. Opium production is up to very high levels, much of the country is a “no go” area except for heavy convoys with helicopter and air support, etc. In common with Iraq, the so-called planners of this administration looked at the problem only in narrow military terms, ignoring the cultural, tribal/ethnic, religious, and economic dimensions.
To a carpenter with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.</p>
<p>CGM, per bringing up Clinton as a deflection shield:</p>
<p>How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to change a light bulb?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>one to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed,</p></li>
<li><p>one to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed,</p></li>
<li><p>one to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb,</p></li>
<li><p>one to tell the nations of the world that they are either responsible
for changing the light bulb or for darkness,</p></li>
<li><p>one to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Haliburton for the new
light bulb,</p></li>
<li><p>one to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Lightbulb Change Accomplished,</p></li>
<li><p>one administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in
detail how Bush was literally in the dark,</p></li>
<li><p>one to viciously smear #7,</p></li>
<li><p>one surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along,</p></li>
<li><p>and finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between
screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Fundingfather said "look at the fact that we have not had an attack in 4 years. "</p>
<p>In 1997, we had not been attacked for 4 years either. In fact, we were not attacked for another 4 years. Does that mean all Republicans who blamed Clinton for 9/11 hereby apologize? </p>
<p>I don’t know if that is the best we can hope for. But, if that’s what the people of Iraq want, then it would be OK.</p>
<p>To me, the absolute best presentation of the terrorism issues I’ve heard came from a blend of opinions offered by several panels of Islamic experts during some of the early 9/11 hearings. The experts differed in many ways, but seem to agree on the importance of a two-pronged approach:</p>
<p>1) Bring the fight relentlessly to the terrorists and terrorist-supporting states.</p>
<p>2) Work to be an agent of economic growth for the masses in the middle east. Where there is hope for the future, there is less chance of the youth in these countries becoming terrorists. By and large, people with hope don’t strap bombs to themselves.</p>
<p>I think we’ve done a pretty effective job at the first prong. There are fewer terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Sadam is no longer using his Oil-For-Food UN/French money to curry favors with leading terrorist financiers. The presence of signficant armed forces on both of Iran’s borders appears to have put at least some damper on the biggest nation-state patron of terrorism. And, while I don’t trust our “allies” in the region (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.) as far as I can throw them, I do think that they are paying stronger lip service to the fight against terrorism.</p>
<p>I do not think that the administration deserves high marks for the second prong. Their policy statements and leadership have been so muddled that I’m not even sure they understand the importance of this prong. I would like to see a little more of “that vision thing” from Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Cheney. Ironcially, Rumsfeld seems to be the only one who can articulate the importance of economic hope for average guy in the street.</p>
<p>However, there has been so little reporting on economic progress in Afghanistan and Iraq that it is difficult to really evaluate. I think it would be easy to have overly rosy expectations. Afghanistan had no real base for economic growth and Iraq, which does have a base for economic growth, had been bleed dry by Sadaam. There are no quick fixes in either country.</p>
<p>FF: “Kitty Kelly gets 3 days on the Today Show plus countless other TV appearances, Klein gets ostracized.”</p>
<p>Actually, I tended to agree with you on that. Then I turned on Lou Dobbs on CNN last night, and he had a whole segment on Klein’s book, including lengthy interview with Klein.</p>