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
quote:We don't need no stinkin' National Intelligence Report!
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~~~
Talking Points Memo
quote:
(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
