The Blame Game, Blind President

George W. Bush does not accept real responsibility. He plays a buck passing blame game. He doesn't listen to expert advice or seek timely intelligence estimates. George W. Bush is like Rush Limbaugh. He is working with half his brain tied behind his back while the other half is in the trash can.

Bush never seriously considered any other strategy in dealing with Iraq than what HE personally wants to do. Bush is his same old badass self, but it isn't his personal ass that is getting stomped in Iraq. Bush is The Decider. Other Americans follow his lame orders and die in ever increasing numbers.

William Arkin writes that David Petraeus is over-rated. Raymond Odierno's reputation for brutality precedes him. Counter-insurgency isn't pretty. The United States will not prevail in Iraq because our war there is unjust. Aggressors are always repulsed. Too bad we have to go through this stupid and mean as hell drill. Korea and Vietnam should have made us more mature. We have not learned our historical lessons. Bush, Cheney, and Rice are bad students of history. They just don't care.

The Commander-in-Chief is already disputing Gen. George Casey's assertion that the surge of troops into Iraq will begin a drawdown in late summer if it is successful. President Bush says no timetable will be set, but he has exactly two years left in office. That is a timetable, by God, whether Bush likes it or not. I think Casey's chances of becoming Army chief of staff are virtually nil in the face of Bush's contradicting him as well as McCain and Lindsey Graham questioning whether he should be confirmed. In other words, Casey is a scapegoat plain and simple. Now the onus is on two badass counterinsurgency generals, David Petraeus and Ray Odierno.

Bush rejects timetable for pullout from Iraq

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by Maxim Kniazkov
AFP 4:00 am EST Mon 22 Jan 2007

US President George W. Bush has distanced himself from predictions US troops could begin leaving Iraq by late summer, stating bluntly he would accept no timetable for such a pullout.

"We don't set timetables in this administration because an enemy will adjust their tactics based upon perceived action by the United States," Bush told the USA Today newspaper.

~~~snip~~~

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We don't need no stinkin' National Intelligence Report!

Talking Points Memo

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(January 21, 2007 -- 11:59 PM EDT)

Remember the long-delayed National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that the Bush Administration managed to push off completing until after the election? Well, the Administration has slow-rolled completion of the NIE past the introduction of the surge and the State of the Union address, according to Ken Silverstein at Harper's:

The situation came to a head last week, during a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This committee expected to be briefed on the long-awaited NIE by an official from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates NIEs by gathering input from all of the nation's various intelligence agencies. But the NIC official turned up empty-handed and told the committee that the intelligence community hadn't been able to complete the NIE because of the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq. He then said that not all of the relevant agencies had offered input into the NIE process, and thus it had proven impossible to put together a finished product.

Why, yes, of course. They were too busy rolling out what they're calling a new Iraq policy to prepare the NIE which should inform creation of that new policy. That tells you everything you need to know about the surge.

-- David Kurtz

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3 alarming news stories

I find the following 3 news stories alarming - each in its own right. Bush overides the decision of the democratically elected Prime Minister of a nominally "sovereign" Iraq in the first story. The second news story below alarms because freedom of expression is curtailed when the Secret Service wastes its time tracking down the writer of a letter to the editor which indirectly implied that George W. Bush should have been hanged instead of Saddam Hussein or for writing that Americans should rise up in civil war to unseat Bush. The third news story is part of an orchestrated effort to blame U.S. military leaders for Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush's and his Secretary of War - I mean Defense - Donald Rumfeld's decision to try to pull off the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq on the cheap without sufficient forces. I think top military brass should have resigned in protest rather than follow Bush's order to launch an illegal war, but I oppose efforts to make Gen. George Custer - I mean Casey - or anybody else a scapegoat or fall guy. The disasterous decision to go to war in the manner we did rests squarely on the shoulders of the Commander-in-Chief and no one else.

Iraqi PM told Bush to withdraw US troops from Baghdad

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AFP 3:30 pm EST Sun 21 Jan 2007

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki proposed to President George W. Bush in November to withdraw US troops from Baghdad and let the Iraqi government take over security in the capital, a US newspaper reported.

Citing interviews with several unnamed administration officials, the Washington Post wrote that Maliki made the suggestion in a presentation to Bush on November 30 in Amman, Jordan.

But soon after, Bush rejected the idea, the paper said.

Instead, the president opted for a strategy announced this month to deploy an additional 21,500 US troops to Iraq, focusing on quelling sectarian violence in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province.

~~~snip~~~

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Pa. man's letter brings Secret Service

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AP 2:52 pm EST Sun 21 Jan 2007

An elderly man who wrote in a letter to the editor about Saddam Hussein's execution that "they hanged the wrong man" got a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening President Bush.

The letter by Dan Tilli, 81, was published in Monday's edition of The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. It ended with the line, "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."

Tilli said the statement was not a threat. "I didn't say who — I could've meant (Osama) bin Laden," he said Friday.

Two Secret Service agents questioned Tilli at his Bethlehem apartment Thursday, briefly searching the place and taking pictures of him, he said.

The Secret Service confirmed the encounter. Bob Slama, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Philadelphia office, said it was the agency's duty to investigate.

The agents almost immediately decided Tilli was not a threat, Slama said

"We have no further interest in Dan," he said.

Tilli said the agents appeared more relaxed when he dug out a scrapbook containing more than 200 letters that he has written over the years, almost all on political topics.

"He said, 'Keep writing, but just don't make no threats,'" Tilli said of one of the agents.

It wasn't Tilli's first run-in with the federal government over his letter writing. Two FBI agents from Allentown showed up at his home last year about a letter he wrote advocating a civil war to unseat Bush, he said.

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McCain casts doubt on Gen. Casey as U.S. Army head

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By Donna Smith
Reuters 3:09 pm EST Sun 21 Jan 2007

Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain on Sunday said he might vote against Gen. George W. Casey's nomination as Army chief of staff, saying he had "serious concerns" about the man who has overseen the Iraq war since 2004.

"I have very serious concerns about General Casey's nomination," McCain said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I'm concerned about failed leadership, the message that sends to the rest of the military," he added.

McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and 2008 presidential hopeful, is a major advocate of President George W. Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq to try to quell the sectarian violence there, an idea that had been resisted by Casey.

Bush named Lt. Gen. David Petraeus to take over in Iraq and nominated Casey to become Army chief of staff.

The Armed Services Committee is expected to hold a hearing on Petraeus this week. Petraeus enjoys strong congressional support and McCain said he fully backs him.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told CNN's "Late Edition" that he thought Casey would be confirmed by the Senate, but Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Casey will face tough scrutiny.

~~~snip~~~

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Faire l'amour, pas la guerre
Make love not war

Bush scapegoates General Casey

The Iraq Study Group recommends that the United States gradually withdraw from Iraq. So does the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But our self-declared "Wartime President" and Commander-in-Chief is having none of that.

President George W. Bush ordered AS A MATTER OF CHOICE the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq. We cannot win because all the reasons Bush gave for going to war were wrong or gone. There were no WMD. Now Saddam Hussein and his two evil sons are dead. Regime change has been effected in Iraq.

So why is the demand for "victory" still coming from George W. Bush's mouth? If our goal was liberation and not domination, why can't the United States declare "job done" and leave Iraq? Iraq has a constitution and has held elections.

It is worth noting that now both Sunnis and Shi'ites are angry with the United States. Sunnis are angry over the U.S. role in the "lynching" of Saddam Hussein. Shi'ites feel betrayed by the the U.S. because we have not allowed them to take over Iraq (see second link below).

George W. Bush blames everyone but his flawed decision to go to war in Iraq for the failure of the U.S. to win "victory" in Iraq. Bush blames Iraqis, Bush blamed his Secretary of Defense, and now Bush is blaming his "top commanders" including Gen. George Casey (see NY Times article below). It is time for the blame gaming and the buck passing to stop. George W. Bush and no one else is ultimately responsible for the ungoing U.S. FIASCO in Iraq.

George W. Bush is President. George W. Bush is Commander-in-Chief. George W. Bush, against expert advice, ordered the U.S. to wage war on Iraq. George W. Bush refuses to heed expert policitical advice from the Iraq Study Group. George W. Bush refuses to heed expert military advice from the Joint Chief of Staff.

Instead the neocon American Enterprise Institute is formulating military policy. Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush will order a "SURGE AND SUSTAIN" ESCALATION of his failed war. George W. Bush has nobody but himself to blame. When will Americans unite against our arrogant and reckless President who blames everyone but himself? Say, NO, to George W. Bush!

Bushco blames others:

Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says

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January 2, 2007

By DAVID E. SANGER, MICHAEL R. GORDON and JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

“We could not clear and hold,” Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, acknowledged in a recent interview, in a frank admission of how American strategy had crumbled. “Iraqi forces were not able to hold neighborhoods, and the effort to build did not show up. The sectarian violence continued to mount, so we did not make the progress on security we had hoped. We did not bring the moderate Sunnis off the fence, as we had hoped. The Shia lost patience, and began to see the militias as their protectors.”

Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

Now, having ousted Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush sees a chance to bring in a new commander as he announces a new strategy, senior military officials say. General Casey was scheduled to shift out of Iraq in the summer. But now it appears that it may happen in February or March.

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For Iraq's Shiites, a Dream Deferred Breeds Mistrust of U.S. By Sudarsan Raghavan - Washington Post Foreign Service - Tuesday, January 2, 2007; Page A01

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Faire l'amour, pas la guerre
Make love not war