The Guardian
So do you think that Bush will leave Iraq soon and “turn it over” to Iran and Syria? and if yes, is this a good idea? …
Highly doubtful. Snowballs chance in hell kind of doubtful. Even if this leaked info is real, isn’t made up or a trial balloon to simply test the waters, there is nothing that says Bush et al have to follow the recommendations…nor do I think its likely that they would. Certainly I don’t see turning Iraq over to Iran and Syria…and reading the article I don’t see where you get that from either. THey were saying that we would talk to them and perhaps bring them into the process…not turn everything over to them and bolt.
Its all highly speculative…I’ll await the actual report before drawing any firm conclusions.
Well, as I said, I think you are drawing some wierd conclusions from this one news article…but going with it, no, I wouldn’t think it would be a good idea to bolt, turning things over to Iran and Syria. Sort of like turning over the chicken coop to the fox and the wolf and then leaving the farm behind.
-XT
The Guardian appears to have gotten much of its information from the articles under discussion here: Olberman reports leak of draft Iraq Commission report.
The story made network news last night.
No.
How many times are folks around here going to postulate that Bush will “cut and run”. He thinks what he’s doing is right, and just isn’t going to quit. He’s really only got 2 more years left anyway, and as he said, it’ll be up to “future presidents” to get fully out of Iraq.
Meanwhile, oblivious to James Baker III’s attempts to play, Mr. Fixit, Iraq continues its descent through the circles of hell. Maybe he could ‘fix’ the outcome of Florida in 2000, but some things are simply beyond his, or anyone’s, control:
Our people know of 23 distinct militias operating in Iraq. If there are militias with 50 or so members, the true number is in the hundreds or thousands. Is Baker going to negotiate with each of these? Or is he going to find an Iraqi strongman who can control them? (Maybe he could give Saddam a get-out-of-jail-free card.)
As always, we’re way behind the curve. Iraq’s rapidly descending into Hobbes’ nightmare, the proverbial war of all against all. There’s nobody we can make a deal with, because there are too many armed groups that aren’t really under anyone’s control. It’s probably too late for a partition of Iraq to be a panacea - too many splinter groups on both the Sunni and Shia sides.
Iraq. Is. Fucked. And there’s nothing we can do about it.
Oh, maybe we could slow down the death spiral, if we had a million-man army we could bring over there right now, to guard every street corner. But we don’t - the catalog of things we’ve already done to stretch the army enough to maintain 140,000 troops in country is truly astounding as it is. To put even half that million into Iraq, we’d need a draft, and we’d need people to train the draftees. If Congress authorized a draft tomorrow, we’d be lucky to get a significant number of conscripts over there before 2008, by which point Iraq will be much worse than it already is, but we’d be ready to solve Iraq’s problems as they existed back in what would then be the Good Old Days of late 2006.
We might as well get out, because there’s nothing we can do about the bloodbath we’ve caused. If there were, we’d have already done it. We can go back home now, and hang our heads in shame from a safe distance as Iraq’s downward spiral continues.
Mission Accomplished. Yeah, baby.
I think the basic strategy being deployed by the Repubs is this:
Step 1: Baker and other conservative Republicans suggests that we negotiate with Iraqi insurgents (and apparently with Syria and Iran as well). At this poit the idea of negoiating with insurgents and Iran and Syria is drifting around in the politcal ethers.
Step 2: Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, the Faux News crowd and others tell their audience that this is proof that liberals want to negotiate with Iraqi insurgents and Iran and Syria, and that they must therefore vote Republican.
A word from Riverbend:
And I think you just made that up out of whole cloth.
Exactly - for them, it’s all about domestic politics. Quick - how do we turn Iraq into something to beat the libruls over the head with, like we used to do back in the Olden Days?
Jonah Goldberg had a column this morning that was pretty much all about that. The quick summary: we were wrong (in hindsight only) to invade Iraq, but that of course doesn’t mean The Libruls were right.
Oh yeah - and we can still Finish The Job, which would be good, because then the war wouldn’t be remembered as a mistake.
I won’t remember it as a ‘mistake,’ Jonah, you fat turd, I’ll remember it as the Bush Administration lying to America in order to turn a nation into a living hell, and we still don’t even know why.
Good thing we ‘appeasement idiots,’ as one poster here called us, didn’t have our way. :mad:
If I made it up, I certainly borrowed the cloth from previous Republican propaganda campaigns. Last November, virtually every right-wing chattering head accused the Democrats of wanting to “cut and run”, and in fact Karl Rove labeled the Democrats as the “party of cut and run”. The few who bothered cite any proof at all of this assertion cited House Resolution 572 as proof that the Democrats wanted to withdraw from Iraq. House Resolution 572 was proposed by … the Republicans!
So in this thread, all I’m saying is that Republicans will do the same thing this year as they did last year. So on what grounds to you accuse me of “making this up out of whole cloth”?
Well, to be fair, that resolution wasn’t proposed by Republicans because they supported it, they just wanted to trap Democrats into either voting for or against it. Either way can be spun as a win for the R’s. “Well, you say you’re against the war, but you voted to continue it! Flip-flopper! Flip-flopper!” or “You voted against the troops! Cut and runner! Cut and runner!”.
Next nitpick, James Baker is/was a George HW Bush confidant, but he is not and never was a George W Bush confidant.
If they’re going to do it, they need to be doing it now. Let’s see a cite then.
Could be they will drop the management of Iraq into whatever government exists and move right over to Iran. I am not sure they believe they can take out Iran with Israeli help. Biyt they might try it anyway.
Bush only has 2 years left.He has said he doesnt want to leave Iran for the next admin.
I’ve always wondered over this point. The US armed forces have a total of like 1-1.5 million members in active duty (albeit many in the air force, marines, navy… but those can do a lot too). Why are only 10% in Iraq? Why do we have all these troops all across the world (especially in places like Europe)? Or rather, why is it SO important to have them there when it’s SO important to have them in Iraq?
Cloth? I don’t think that’s the word I’d use. 
I wonder if John Mutha has called up James Baker to say “Hey, I suggested that first!”?
Here’s the story:
-If the Army mobilized every active and reserve soldier, they’d have 600,000 troops.
-200,000 are need elsewhere in the world. That leaves 400,000 available for Iraq.
-Of those, 100,000 are devoted to specialities that aren’t useful for the Iraq war. That leaves 300,000.
-Units have to be rotated into Iraq for about 12 months, then back home to recuperate for about 12 months. Consequently, there’s no possible way to station more than 150,000 troops in Iraq continually. Maintaining the number that we have now is already stressing the Army to its limits.
What does it mean 200k units are needed elsewhere in the world? Are there five wars I do not know about? Afghanistan only has ~15k for the entire country. How many troops does the continent of Europe have? What the hell are they doing there, holding off Russia’s imminent invasion? What about those in South America? Encouraging Hugo Chavez to build up arms?
In the modern world, if we have two-weeks’ warning that it even LOOKS someone is dumb enough to attack us, we can have the entire Armed Forces on the continent waiting for battle. Perhaps that’s not good enough for a couple of places. (Maybe Asia.) But don’t tell me all 200k are sitting in Asia?
But also, what about the Marines, the Air Force, and the Navy? (In order of potential contribution.) Marines know well how to shoot, and the air force has plenty of choppers to rapidly shift troops to make them be as effective as if they were more numerous or to just aimlessly fly around giving the impression of the rule of order (which could actually be pretty useful). Why are all those hundreds of thousands not doing anything?
If anything, why could we not have paid (even in ways that don’t directly cost the government money) other contries to send troops to this humanitarian cause? Would’ve been cheaper to pay China $200 billion to export its 1 million soldiers than to suffer through years upon years of war expense. Extreme example, sure, but gifts and favors to our allies would have made them far more receptive to lending a significant hand.
P.S. What kind of Army specialties aren’t useful for the Iraqi war? What, are you telling me they don’t know how to use a gun? Put them in the more secure areas and free up the actual fighters for more important spots. There is no one who deserves to be in the Amy who is not able to at least substitute a cop. If you say that Iraq is too anarchic at this point for mere cops… well, that wasn’t true two years ago.
You know what I think? I think that Bush doesnt WANT the Iraq war to end or go smoothly. At the least, because it is funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into defense contractors’ pockets (billions just into the Executive Branch’s own Halliberton). At the worst, because the higher oil prices that chaos has caused pour hundreds of billions of dollars into oil companies’ purses (billion just into the Executive Branch’s own oil companies). (It actually wasn’t Blood for Oil any more than OPEC is for oil, it was Blood Against Oil.)
But anyway, i’m putting the cart before the horse. Let’s discuss those armed forces. (I’d hate to believe a conspiracy on false grounds! so I’m honestly very receptive to an effective explanation for why just ~10% of the Armed Forces have been stationed in Iraq.)
btw, I do not believe firm martial law is the full solution. Maybe part of it. The main piece is spending reconstruction money on Roosevelt-style employment projects. If they didn’t feel that employment, wages, and the whole economy had gone to shit maybe they wouldn’t be in the streets trying to destroy the rest of their country. They wouldn’t be so pissed off, and they wouldn’t have the time! It’s like the only positive thing we can actually guarantee we can do for Iraqis. And yeah, I do think it’s the president’s intention for the reconstruction money not be spent. (And in fact, it wasn’t spent. So whose intention was it? And when it is spent, it’s spent on companies like Halliburton, not the Iraqi workforce/economy.)
Man, it’s pretty late and I should be more patient when revising my spelling and grammar. Talk about frothly spewing