Bush's "Mideast democracy" speech

[pantom]

Some actual facts about the occupation, as opposed to wishful thinking.

Fact: in the first 8 days of this month, 34 Americans were killed, for a rate of a little more than 4 per day. That’s the worst period since the occupation began, so by definition that means the cost of the occupation in terms of lives lost for the U.S. is getting worse, not better. Link: http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?0cv=CA00
See this quote: “Their deaths brought to 34 the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq this month.”
Just to drive home the point of just how costly this resistance is becoming, at 4 a day you’re looking at more than 100 soldiers dying per month. Anyone who thinks the American people are going to put up with that kind of attrition with no foreseeable way out for any length of time is NOT living on planet Earth. Bush will be voted out, and the first thing his Democratic replacement will do is what should have been done months ago: bring in the UN, by making whatever concessions are necessary to get them in there.

Fact: To answer Brain Glutton’s question from another angle, the size of the current occupation force can’t be maintained past March 2004, according to an analysis done by the CBO, without seriously degrading the readiness of the Army in other areas or withdrawing from commitments in other parts of the world. Relevant quotes from http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4515&sequence=0

CBO’s base case assumes that the occupation of Iraq would be sustained using only combat brigades from the active Army and employing a policy of unit rotation.(16) The Army would continue to maintain all of its other commitments at their current levels. Under those assumptions, DoD would not be able to sustain the current size of the occupation force in Iraq beyond March 2004. Over the following six to 12 months, the size of that force would begin to decline toward the long-term steady-state levels described below as the pool of active units that had not been deployed within the previous year was exhausted.
Assuming that rotation ratios of 3.2:1 to 4:1 are the ones that are sustainable over the long term, CBO estimates that DoD would be able to maintain an occupation force of 38,000 to 64,000 military personnel in Iraq under the base case–equivalent to 3 to 5¨ø combat brigades. The incremental cost of keeping such a force in Iraq would total between $8 billion and $12 billion a year, CBO estimates. On average, about 26,000 to 37,000 reserve personnel would be mobilized to support that occupation (see Table 3).(17)

The options for increasing the size of the occupation force beyond the CBO Base Case:

Eliminate the Requirement for Army Rapid-Reaction Forces…If the Army did not maintain a dedicated pool of units for rapid reaction, it would be able to increase the size of the occupation that could be sustained in Iraq over the long term by 10,000 to 12,000 military personnel–equivalent to another 1 to 1¨÷ combat brigades.
Employ Army National Guard Brigades…The Secretary of Defense recently stated that DoD is considering a goal of mobilizing reserve units no more than one year out of every six. If the Army employed all National Guard combat brigades in the occupation of Iraq at that level of frequency, it could increase the size of the sustainable occupation force by 8,000 to 11,000 military personnel…
Employ Army Special Forces…If the Army employed SF groups as a regular part of the occupation force in and around Iraq, it would increase the size of the occupation that could be sustained by 2,000 to 3,000 military personnel.
Employ Active Marine Corps Regiments…If the Marine Corps contributed all of its forces not committed to Okinawa or amphibious readiness groups (ARGs) to the occupation of Iraq, the size of the occupation that could be sustained would rise by 6,000 to 12,000 military personnel…
Employ Marine Corps Reserve Regiments. In this option, the Marine Corps would draw on three reserve infantry regiments and other elements of the Marine Corps Reserve for use in the occupation of Iraq. That change would increase DoD’s ability to sustain an occupation over the long term by 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel, equivalent to about one-third of a combat brigade.

Most telling of all is the maximum size of the occupation force, which is not too much larger than what is now in place. Given the increasing effectiveness of the resistance (guerrillas, like everyone else, tend to learn from experience), this is an option that we should at least know about for reference:

Increase Deployment Tempo. Alternatively, the Army and Marine Corps could raise the deployment tempo for active-component units and personnel to high levels. A rotation ratio of, say, 1.3:1 would increase time away from home for active deployable units to levels higher than the all-volunteer force has ever experienced.(27) In that case, if all existing forces were used, the size of the occupation force that could be sustained in Iraq would rise to 283,000 military personnel–equivalent to 27¨ø brigades. The number of reserve personnel mobilized would average 158,000. (That level of mobilization would be necessary to fully support such a large force, but it would exceed the 17 percent mobilization level that CBO assumed elsewhere for reserve personnel.) Such high levels of deployment tempo would mean that no units would be immediately available to deal with other contingencies because all units would be either deployed or recovering after a deployment.

The simple fact is, the occupation is not sustainable for any length of time without running out of both the political will to sustain it at home and the Army’s ability to react to other situations as needed elsewhere. Even a draft isn’t a realistic option, as the CBO points out in this same document that bringing new forces to a state of readiness will take, quite literally, years. We don’t have that long.

So, to conclude: this occupation has already failed. The guerrillas are only going to get better at killing Americans, and that will force us out. Force us out. We will have no other option.
All that’s required now is a leader who is willing to face that fact and come up with a realistic exit strategy. Given that Bush is a Texan in the same mold as his true predecessor in stupid foreign adventures, LBJ, that leader will not be him.

[Desmostylus]

Sam: Which Gallup poll? This one:

Although 62% of Baghdad residents who participated in Gallup’s landmark poll of that city said ousting Saddam Hussein was worth any personal hardships they have endured since the invasion, most are deeply skeptical of the initial rationale the coalition has given for its action.

Or this one:

It wasn’t long after Saddam Hussein’s regime was ousted from Iraq that some vocal Baghdad residents began calling for the prompt withdrawal of coalition forces from the country. Shortly after television crews broadcast live images of the toppling of Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, the words “All Donne (sic) Go Home” were spray-painted on the statue’s base.

Iraqis’ desire for a prompt withdrawal of foreign troops has been tempered, however, by concern about establishing some basic level of security. The invasion ushered in a wave of violent crime that the city’s badly understaffed and underarmed police force has been largely powerless to contain. According to Gallup’s new landmark survey of 1,178 adult residents of Baghdad*, nearly all Baghdadis – 94% – think the city is now a more dangerous place for them to live since the invasion, and 60% said there have been times during the past four weeks when they or their families were afraid to go outside their homes during the day.

Given these findings, is the desire for a prompt withdrawal of foreign forces really the majority sentiment among Baghdad’s citizens today? Only one in four Baghdad residents (26%) told Gallup they would prefer coalition forces to “leave immediately – say, in the next few months.” Seven in 10 (72%) said U.S. and British troops should stay in Iraq for “a longer period of time.”

I think you’re makin’ stuff up.

[Lemur866]

Great idea there, pantom.

Let’s cut and run, tail between our legs, and turn Iraq over to Al Qaida. You do realize that’s what would happen if we were to withdraw right now, right? Either the Baathists would retake Iraq, or some flavor of Al Qaida, or perhaps some sunni Iranian puppets.

Either way would be a disaster of biblical proportions. Think for a second, if you please. What would be the consequences when the US withdraws? A tidal wave of global terrorists, using Iraq as a home base.

Declaring the war lost, because we haven’t won yet, and well…we lost in Vietnam so we are obviously going to lose here. Yeah, we lost in Vietnam. But we won in dozens of other wars just as nasty.

I understand that you all hate George Bush, a defeat in Iraq would be good because it would be bad for Bush. But there’s a little more to it than that. The cold fact of the matter is that if George Bush loses the election in 04, the new president isn’t going to withdraw from Iraq either. The idea that we are on the verge of being forced out of Iraq is simply delusional.

[pantom]

It’ll happen, first of all.
And second of all, I’m not proposing that we cut and run. I’m proposing that we hand it over to the UN, making the necessary concessions to do so. This is a realistic option, indeed the only realistic option, and it’s been there right from the beginning. The only thing standing in the way of it happening is the willful arrogance of Bush & Co.
What everyone who bothers to look at the facts realizes is unrealistic is thinking this occupation can continue indefinitely without getting the UN involved.

[Sam_Stone]

The U.N.? You mean those guys that are cutting and running after their first attack? Yeah, let’s trust the entire future of the middle east to those guys.

Besides, I see no evidence that the U.N. wants the job, or that any other countries are willing to offer up substantially more troops under any terms whatsoever.

Desmostylus: No, I’m not makin’ it up, and your stuff doesn’t contradict mine in any way. Even 80% support would translate into 20% of the people who are opposed to the occupation. More than enough to provide a substantial number of enemies.

[Lemur866]

Desmostylus, I’m not sure how your quote invalidates Sam’s. I have no idea what public opinion is like in Iraq or whether any accurate data can be collected over there, but doesn’t your last cite say: “Seven in 10 (72%) said U.S. and British troops should stay in Iraq for “a longer period of time.”” Isn’t that a pretty large majority believing that the occupation forces should stay?

And Pantom, why would attacks stop if US forces are replaced by UN forces? Both Islamist and Baathist resistance forces would have no reason to cooperate with UN forces. Remember how they attacked the UN and the Red Cross? Whatever the motivation of the resistance fighters, they surely do not want any sort of international presence in Iraq. And even if we got the UN to sign on to peacekeeping, the US surely couldn’t pull out…we’d have to provide the vast majority of the peacekeepers ourselves. Putting blue helmets on our soldiers doesn’t make them less of a target, does it?

[Desmostylus]

*Originally posted by Lemur866 *
Desmostylus, I’m not sure how your quote invalidates Sam’s. I have no idea what public opinion is like in Iraq or whether any accurate data can be collected over there, but doesn’t your last cite say: “Seven in 10 (72%) said U.S. and British troops should stay in Iraq for “a longer period of time.”” Isn’t that a pretty large majority believing that the occupation forces should stay?

When Sam Stone initially posted this:

*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
**They’re wary of the U.S., but over 2/3 of the people want the U.S. to stay at least a year or more. **

I assumed that he was telling the same lie as Cheney, based on a wilful misinterpretation of Zogby’s poll results. But then same says he’s not using Zogby, he’s using Gallup. Gallup says:

Only one in four Baghdad residents (26%) told Gallup they would prefer coalition forces to “leave immediately – say, in the next few months.” Seven in 10 (72%) said U.S. and British troops should stay in Iraq for “a longer period of time.”

The plain reading of that is that 72% don’t want the U.S. to leave “in the next few months”. It’s a lie to claim, based on those poll results, that “over 2/3 of the people want the U.S. to stay at least a year or more”.

So it looks like Sam is telling the same lie as Cheney, but trying to point to a source that hasn’t already repudiated the wilful misinterpretation.

[sailor]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by xtisme *
Are you sure you posted the correct article Sailor?? I don’t see the part you are talking about with 'attacking unspecified targets…" or with American soldiers going into private houses. I’m not digging here, I really don’t see it. Unless you mean this one blurb:

From CNN

U.S. forces Saturday attacked targets in the Tikrit area in what they called a “show of force.”
[/QUOTE

Is that what you meant?? If so, I don’t see how you are drawing the conclusions you are drawing from that short blurb. I don’t see the part about American soldier going into houses either, but I know that this happens. Maybe you posted the wrong link??

-XT]

Man, this is getting ridiculous. I said US forces “are attacking unspecified targets as a show of force” and linked to an article which says (verbatim): U.S. forces Saturday attacked targets in the Tikrit area in what they called a “show of force”.

Is the US attacking targets as a show of force? I believe it is safe to conclude that is what is meant. Are the targets specified in the article? I don’t think so.

Can you please explain to me what is wrong with me saying US forces “are attacking unspecified targets as a show of force”. Because I don’t get it.

[RTFirefly]

I don’t think either cutting and running, or bringing in the UN, are viable options at this point. The problem is, there may be no viable options. Just because the Bushies have spent the past two years making sure we have this problem on our hands, doesn’t mean the problem has a solution.

Cutting and running is out, because it’s hard to believe the result would be an Iraq that’s even an improvement over the bad old days under Saddam. Handing it over to the UN is probably out because I don’t think they’d take it at this point. The time to put the UN in charge passed sometime during the summer.

Nobody we’d like to see temporarily running Iraq wants any part of it; the world sees what’s happening to us, and are saying, “Unh-unh, no thanks, we don’t want a part of that.” And if the American people had had a crystal ball and had seen that this was how it would be, we wouldn’t have wanted any part of it either; at least, that’s how I would bet.

The irritating thing is, anyone with any sense should have been able to foresee a long, drawn-out aftermess as a probable outcome of the invasion; really, the only question was what kind of aftermess. The Bushies lied to the American people to get us into this situation; the likelihood that they lied to each other and themselves doesn’t make it any more palatable.

But we’re here. So, now that we’ve got Iraq, what do we do with it?

First of all, what we’ve got to recognize is that the whole process we’ve set up is wrong. Bremer hand-picked a couple dozen Iraqis and Iraqi exiles - most of whom even now are out of the country most of the time, according to Bremer himself - to write a new constitution. This is top-down, with the Americans and their puppets at the top. That’s not a good foundation for democracy; the process should be from the bottom up.

So:

1. Undo all those big economic decisions we’ve made for them, like the “no limits on foreign investment” decision, the “privatization of publicly-held businesses” decision, the “flat tax” decision, and so forth. This should all be for the Iraqis to decide, not us.

2. Account, in detail, for where the Iraqi oil money is going.

3. Stop giving big contracts to US and other Western firms, except where absolutely necessary. Instead, work directly with Iraqi businesses, so we can find out which ones can do what, and which ones will just pocket the money without really doing anything. Sure, some of that money will be wasted, but it’s already getting wasted, as Halliburton and Bechtel take the contracts, but Iraqis are doing the work as sub-sub-sub-sub-subcontractors as it is, with each American layer taking a chunk of money out, at Western hardship rates.

We want to get capitalism going over there. That means we want to create good work for Iraqis. Let’s do it.

4. Phase out the Iraqi Governing Council, which Bremer’s unhappy with anyway (see the above link), and instead begin a process by which local elections are held, where they haven’t been already, to run local governments. We hand over the authority to the Iraqis to run their own cities and towns, and give them resources, where needed, to make it work. Then the elected locals send representatives to a provisional government, and eventually to a Constitutional convention.

We should remember that we didn’t draft/ratify our Constitution until 6/8 years after Cornwallis surrendered. I’ll let you be the judge of which country - America in 1781, or Iraq in 2003 - was better prepared for that exercise.

5. Let the provisional government actually govern, and intervene in Iraqi affairs only when to fail to do so would likely result in a lack of any sort of viable government.

6. Leave a security force of maybe 30K troops in a self-sufficient base away from the cities, to repel foreign invasions until Iraqis can handle that job themselves.

7. But otherwise, see how the handover to local authority works out.

I’m not saying this will work. It may be that no local authority is capable of running some localities. Like I said, this may be an insoluble problem. But we’ve got to stop making decisions for them that are theirs to make. And having a bunch of Iraqis, hand-picked by Americans, who don’t even live in the country, draft the new Iraqi constitution, will have about zero legitimacy. So we’ve got to find some other way.

[Beagle]

RTF’s Plan B.

But for less troops, which would be disasterous in the near term, I agree. If you point out that we can’t afford the troops necessary, I might agree with that depending on economic and security data I’m not really sure about.

There is no doubt that the [gasp] Europeans are right in principle that the sooner the occupying power gets out the better. The problem is exiting in the face of a horrendous power vacuum of our own creation, with Saddam skulking in the shadows. The possiblility of Iraq forming some kind of functioning self-governance is not a pipe dream if we get serious and quit sniping. Except when that is truly necessary, literally.

The mess we are in should not be understated. I agree that some people in selling the war made absurd claims as to how easy it would be – especially with regards to occupation.

A quick victory on the “field” seemed likely to produce some angry Republican Guard, Fedayeen Militia, Baathist types that might not like their pay cuts and complete loss of power. Furthermore, they would know where all the weapons worth using were kept. Not rounding up the actual Saddam right after the statue is getting people killed, I think.

Usama double-dared us to attack Iraq, and suggested that there might be an alliance of convenience. Did anyone see that bomb factory special forces found in the residential neighborhood (on PBS)? Books with bombs, umbrellas with bombs, etc. This is advanced stuff, IMNEO. (non-expert)

Most important is giving ordinary Iraqis a real say in their own government, from the local to national level. Moreover, using ME resources directly might have scored some diplomatic capital, and would have made more sense than giving Halliburton the lion’s share. I haven’t liked using our hand-picked spokesman (Chalabi) for nearly everything either. He was useful as the Iraqi opposition spokesperson during the Saddam years. Nobody trusts him.

We need to distribute power (political and economic) down as quickly as possible, while building up the Iraqi security forces. Saddam had a lock on all wealth and power. Until we become a better source of those things we will face greater problems. Once there is a new regime and the nation has more to lose, things should improve dramatically. Then, hopefully, we’ll be able to bitch about their HR abuses in pursuit of al Qaeda.

As noted in other threads, overaccelerating the Iraqification of security has its own perils. It could escalate ethnic tensions, among other things. That’s a serious concern.

[pantom]

The U.N.? You mean those guys that are cutting and running after their first attack? Yeah, let’s trust the entire future of the middle east to those guys.

Sam Stone: Quips don’t constitute a valid reply to the research I posted. Try again.

Facts, once again. I’ll just keep repeating them until I get a reply that actually addresses the facts:

• Past March, 2004 it will be very hard to maintain current troop levels, much less increase them as Senator McCain is arguing -correctly - that we should. But those forces can’t be supplied solely by us without seriously degrading our ability to keep our commitments around the world and keep our forces in a good state of readiness, as that CBO link I posted above shows quite well. We have no other choice but to internationalize this. Let me repeat that for emphasis: we have no other choice but to internationalize this.

• To further emphasize this point, let’s get rid of the argument that all of the rebellion is taking place in the Sunni triangle:

The insurgency has been spreading north, however, a trend a senior U.S. commander blamed Sunday on a “marriage of convenience” between members of the former regime, criminals and foreign fighters.
“There are former regime members who want to disrupt the successes achieved here in the north,” Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, said. There are also “criminals … who are willing to be guns for hire,” in addition to “some foreigners who have come in small numbers and have been involved in this as well.”
“There’s a marriage of convenience among all these different bad guys,” Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview in the northern city of Mosul. “They have been able to regroup to a degree.”
U.S. military officials here have said there are signs of cooperation between former regime loyalists and members of Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group believed by the Americans of having links to al-Qaida.

The above is a perfectly predictable consequence of the increasing success the guerrillas are having, and a very worrying development. It will only get worse.

• The quote above comes from this article: Insecurity may slow Iraq constitution, (leadoff: “The deteriorating security situation may delay drafting the country’s new constitution, a key step in the return to Iraqi sovereignty, a senior Iraqi official said Sunday.”), which brings us to our next point: you can’t speed up the process of handing over sovereignty to the Iraqis until you get the security situation under control. Spinning scenarios for giving control to the Iraqis is all well and good, but first you’ve got to secure the country.

• Further on in this article, the following rather interesting statistic pops up:

The security situation in Iraqi began deteriorating last month with an increase in American casualties after weeks of steady decline. Nearly half of the 150 American soldiers killed by hostile fire since the end of major combat have taken place in the past five weeks.

And of course, as I pointed out above, 34 of those have come just in the past eight days.

• Finally, Iraqis who cooperate with us are being killed. Earlier on, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council was assassinated. A lot more of this has been going on around the country, as this article points out:

MSNBC News - Breaking News and News Today | Latest News

The murder of Ahmed Shawkat in Mosul (take note: this is outside the Sunni triangle) last week did not make the American newspapers. An Iraqi intellectual who spent many years in Saddam’s prisons, Shawkat had wasted no time after the dictator’s fall in setting up a lively journal of political and literary debate, “Without Direction,” which advocated a new Iraq based on the kinds of freedoms Americans have come to take for granted. While he had no formal ties with the occupation — and, indeed, was often critical of it — Shawkat was shot dead while making a cellphone call on the roof of his apartment building
…
This week, several prominent judges and politicians connected with the occupation or its Iraqi counterpart, the provisional council, have been murdered. Judge Muhan Jaber Al-Shuwaili, leading an investigation into abuses by Saddam’s regime, was kidnapped in Najaf on Monday along with a prosecutor, and later murdered by assailants who told him just before he died, “Saddam has ordered your execution.” The prosecutor was allowed to live to tell the tale.
Another judge was killed in Mosul, as was a prominent member of a Baghdad neighborhood committee set up by the U.S. authorities.
Iraqi judges told the French news agency, AFP, they feel the coalition is failing them.
“We are losing colleagues,” one told AFP correspondent Nayla Razzouk. “Seven months have already passed since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the Americans still have not fulfilled their promises to give us protection.”

There is no evidence at all that the security situation is getting any better. None.
The occupation has failed. That is simply a fact. It needs to be internationalized because we quite simply do not have the military resources to defend against an effective guerrilla insurgency in a country as large as Iraq all by ourselves. And unless and until the country is secured, nothing else can be accomplished.

[London_Calling]

*Originally posted by Beagle *
**Yes, I want to review CIA operations from the early 1960s to determine the obviously keen relevance to the active military situation in Iraq. :dubious:

That’s so predictable. Because the US opposed Communism back before I was freaking born, I can’t oppose Saddam Hussein now without being a hypocrite. Because I think our troops behave better than Saddam’s henchmen I’m a one dimensional American appartchik. Is this on auto-rewind?

Believe it or not Beagle but it isn’t about what you think, it’s about what they think, you know, those crazy Iraqis, those people that have had to live with decisions made by Imperial westerners for their entire fucked-up lives. Decisions like engineering the rise of the Baath Party and Saddam.

And, as you say in the first post on this page:

*Originally posted by Beagle *
I see Iraqis demonstrating against US troops and think, “man, if they tried that under Saddam, he’d have cut their appendages off and shot them in the head. What nice guys we are compared to that rat bastard.”

And so I repeat, the Iraqi people must really be looking forward to seeing what kind of solution ‘we’ intend to impose on them this time around.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s part of the reason why this occupation isn’t going swimmingly.

And, yep, I do think there has to an arrogance associated with not understanding that, that itself goes to the root of the so-called “terrorist” issue.

[elucidator]

You want quick and dirty? No sweat.

1. Reconstiture the Iarqi Army.
   Gets a whole bunch of weapons trained men off the streets, and under control. Offers a ready supply of ordanance absorption units that aren’t Americans. Doesn’t take a year to train them, they’re already soldiers, of a sort.

Naturally, this will require laundering the reputations of the Officer Corps. Gotta have officers. Experienced officers, of the type that the regular Iraqi grunt is pre-conditioned to obey. Of course, all these men are at least nominally Baathist, and largely drawn from the same ethnic pool of Saddam and his cronies. Gotta have officers. (Josef Stalin is said to have walked around the Kremlin in the dark muttering this to himself for about six months in 1941.)

Set this army to the task of “security”. They will find and kill “insurgents”. A considerable number of insurgents are thier natural political enemies, they will bring home scalps (that it might be best not to examine too closely…) Of course, this will be dangerous work, they will naturally expect to be lavishly armed. By us.

2. Declare the Iraqi government soveriegn, whatever helter-skelter form it may have at the moment. Declare Achmed Chalabi Temporary King Until The Democracy, whatever. Just take what they got, declare victory, pass out the medals and run like hell. With any luck, the troops are home for the late October Victory Parade and Patriotic Rally to re-Elect our Troops and Support Our President.

Stability? You bet. The governing council will be closely guided by the wisdom of its armed protectors. Armed men have enormous rhetorical advantages in political debate. The stability so long craved will be installed, the sacred flow of investment can begin. Iraq will declare itself entirely too busy to invest time in a foreign policy, and will leave those complex matters to her benefactors.

It will be polished, packaged and sold as Victory!

Are we dumb enough to buy it? Sweet Jesus, I hope not.

[Gorsnak]

To get the real picture, you have to look at what the vast majority of Iraqis are saying and doing, not the few fringe elements who are opposed to the liberation.

And the vast majority of Iraqis are lining up to shower praise upon Americans? This American soldier apparently disagrees with you:

“These people hate the Americans,” said Specialist Emily Donaghy, who lives behind high walls on an American base outside town. “It’s going to take generation after generation before these people realize what America has done for them.” cite

Granted, she is speaking of the residents of a specific town, but it is a dangerous game, convincing yourself of a blindly optimistic viewpoint.

Here’s a nice optimistic viewpoint on how the occupation’s going, from the perspective of a CIA liason with the Afghani resistance groups fighting the Soviets:

From my perspective, the Iraqi resistance has taken a page from a sophisticated insurgency playbook in their confrontations with the American-led coalition.

(snip)

These growing attacks against American forces have two clear goals: inflict casualties and force a reaction that alienates the local population. Both are being achieved, as the quick-response raids by coalition troops to seize those behind the attacks fuel Iraqi alienation. cite

And since you seem intent on defending the Bush administration’s credibility, you might be interested in this article. It’s an op-ed by a former member of the Carter administration, but I encourage you to read the arguments presented rather than dismissing it out of hand.

[RedFury]

I’m sure it won’t make the slightest dent in the True Believers® armour – doubt anything could – but the following article illustrates the why the only time one should believe the current Administration is when their mouths are firmly shut.

**Case for war confected, say top US officials
**

**An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair.

A new documentary film beginning to circulate in the United States features one powerful condemnation after another, from the sort of people who usually stay discreetly in the shadows - a former director of the CIA, two former assistant secretaries of defence, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even the man who served as President Bush’s Secretary of the Army until just a few months ago.

Between them, the two dozen interviewees reveal how the pre-war intelligence record on Iraq showed virtually the opposite of the picture the administration painted to Congress, to US voters and to the world. They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.

**

Enjoy.

[Beagle]

Oh crap, now I’m supposed to believe the CIA?!

[elucidator]

Not necessarily. Be a good idea to listen.

[XT]

From elucidator

Not necessarily. Be a good idea to listen.

Especially if they are saying something you want to hear.

-XT

[Beagle]

What I hear is bickering over pre-war justifications that weren’t mine. I wanted to end the sanctions and Saddam. I thought the HR abuses were excessive. My dad always said we should have “finished the job.” I disagreed at the time, and now think I was wrong.

I also hear people scrambling to figure out how every single intelligence agency in the West completely screwed the pooch on what Saddam had, where, and when. The inspectors found those short range rocket warheads which were for chemical weapons. Who knew? Score!!!

I’m really past the whole pre-war intelligence dispute for right now. I’m trying to focus on death-reducing measures that we might take in Iraq. When you have troops in what used to be Saddam’s palaces, getting out seems a lot more important than how you got in. Although, I hear the plumbing is very nice, marble everywhere. Nothing too good for Saddam.

[Mehitabel]

Interesting article here in the politically-all-over-the-map NY Observer:

Most of the people outside Iraq seem to be obsessed with giving the Bush administration what they think it deserves. Most of the people inside Iraq—i.e., the Iraqis—are fixated on getting what they think they deserve. For all too many champions as well as critics of U.S. policy, this is all about American vindication versus American mortification, and Iraq is a car to be stripped down for its rhetorical parts. Some parts make the Americans look good, so the White House and company take those and wave them around. Other parts make the Americans look bad, so the antiwar crowd takes those and waves them around. Still other parts—most of the car, of course—are harder to classify, or are subject to change from one week to the next. These pretty much get junked…

As for the United Nations, many benefits would flow from the decision of countries that didn’t support the war to help with the peace. It is anything but clear, however, that automatically enhanced stability would be one of them. If anything deserved to die in the August car bombing of the U.N. headquarters, it was the assumption that if only the U.N. were in charge, presto, the bad guys would do fewer bad things, the French and Syrians and Canadians would rally round, and the Iraqis would feel all-around less occupied. By resurfacing at the protests—after an attempted second bombing of the U.N. headquarters, but before today’s attack on an international, neutral humanitarian organization—that assumption is proving as resilient as it is ridiculous…

This whole question brings out another strange tendency that is shared by hawks and doves, which is the tendency to see Iraqi affection as a zero-sum game: to reason that Iraqis who hated Saddam will love America for getting rid of him, or that Iraqis who resent being under U.S. occupation will not mind so much being under U.N. occupation. Not so. Even now, the idea that most Iraqis like the U.S. less than they like everybody else is questionable at best. But that’s not even a question worth asking. The truth is, at this point, many Iraqis have no trouble hating the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and the rest of the Arab world…

As anywhere, though, most experiences here are neither epiphanies nor traumas. Most people are neither showering the Americans with praise nor targeting them with grenades. For now, most people will settle for a sign—any real sign—that this place is going to work.