And whose fault is that Mr. Rumsfeld ?
President Reagan eliminated funding for the US Metric Board in 1982.
Now it’s a new millenium, and we’re left facing the meters, centiliters and kilograms of our foes with nothing but rods, pounds and teaspoons.
An excellent observation. The pundits have studiously avoided this line of reasoning. Bush’s “control” over his administration would seem even more tenuous if it became apparent that his own appointees were involved in a power struggle.
If I may…
"USG [United States Government] has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban "
It seems clear here that the number of “top 55 Iraqis” that we have killed or captured is being used to measure our success in Iraq.
Dirty tricks like whipping up a frenzy of fear over possible biological or chemical weapons attacks on U.S. civilians just prior to invading Iraq ostensibly because the Iraqi regime had stockpiled large quantities of such weapons…
Lie like repeatedly making unfounded connections between the former Iraqi regime and the terrorist (predominantly of Saudi descent) that attacked the WTC and the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001…
Cheat like using obviously forged documentation to “prove” that Iraqi officials had attempted to acquire “yellow-cake” uranium form Niger thus further justifying the war…
Steal …the Bush Administration tax cut…Enough said…
…
Vietnam was a prime example of command being motivated by ‘body count’. Little effort was made to identify and take out key people in the enemy chain of command. Rather, effort was primarily expended in finding and killing your average VC, which ultimately is not very productive.
What we are doing in Iraq looks to be the opposite of the tradtional ‘body count’ motivated action. Going after key personnel in the enemy chain of command is the antithesis of a ‘body count’ motivated action.
The point is that the measure or metric that is being used to determine tactical success of failure in the Iraqi war is a count of the “enemy chain of command” that are captured or killed.
Anyone who supported this damn fool war, when all analysis of the information known to date strongly recommended a go-slow approach with further use of UN inspectors, attempts to find credible evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, and making every attempt to avoid war whenever possible…
Anyone who supported the war, despite all of the above, deserve to be called sheep. After all, they followed the bleating of the neo-cons over the cliff and into a quagmire, and even now refuse to admit they’re been had…
And just how were we supposed to keep 200,000 troops in the Gulf for year and leave Hussein in power?
adaher why don’t you invert that question… why were there already 200,000 troops there ? Why did the buildup happen without previous UN mandate or even Congressional final approval ?
The buildup was the result of Bush thinking he would get his way no matter what... and the buildup was one of the reasons that the UN and the world thought that Bush wanted war no matter what... which seems to have been the case.
(Nope if they wanted to put pressure on the Iraq regime to exile itself or to hearten the opposition… they didnt try those.)
Check out the differences between the CNN Coverage and the BBC Coverage of Rummies “internal” Memo.
CNN seems to be justfying the contents of the memo… while the BBC sees it as a sobering up memo.
Rashak,
Both of those have the same link attached to them
The key sentence Lemur to answer both questions is this Rummy quote:
He doesnt speak of capturing and killing as being the only means of "determining" sucess... but capturing and killing are part of it. Hence the "body count".
As for the Chaosgod’s “vicious cycle” its implied by the question: Is the US “capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists” than “the madrassas and radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”
( Translating: Is the US meat grinder faster than the Islamic Terrorist Factory ? )
He added: “Is our current situation such that the harder we work the behinder we get?”
(Translating: the more terrorists we kill… the more angry they get and the more terrorists will appear.)
I call that a vicious cycle... what do you call it ? Sucess ?Christ… sorry… on the slow track today: (Dont you hate a lack of editing option… )
CNN seems to be justfying the contents of the memo… while the BBC sees it as a sobering up memo.
That argument keeps coming up for some reason, but never gets supported when challenged. Here it is, just for you: Are you asserting that the war was justified on the basis that it would keep the troops from getting bored?
The Rumsfeld memo just supports what many of us were desperately trying to get across before it happened. He couldn’t have suddenly gotten that much smarter or that less ideological, not at his age; the POV in there had to have been present in the deliberations even in the White House. All it does now is undermine the remaining credibility of whatever the warhawks say now - and that includes Bush. He’s got the long knife out, not only for the weak Rice, but the weak Bush himself. This thing is, among others, a suicide note.
Strange evaluation… I would think its a way to “soften” the impact of bad news about terrorism and Iraq. Or at least to play the “i’m a thoughtful hawk” role.
As for the “long knife out” do you think Rummy is trying to get a ticket out of the Bush train maybe ? Something akin to “Republicans we need an alternative candidate.” ? Or is only an internal power struggle ?
:eek: 
Further explanations forthcoming?
Political/career suicide, that is - he’s pretty deeply undermined the President who appointed him and can fire him. He may think he’s going after just Rice and perhaps Powell, but he can’t be unaware of the further consequences, can he? This may well be the basis Rove needs to tell Bush that Rummie’s liabilities have become too great.
What certain people seem to be missing is “we lack metrics” is synonymous with " we have no frigging clue whether this is working or not".
Picture Bush in the state of the union: “We need to invade Iraq because it just might help us in the war on terror, oh but then again it might actually make things worse. Oh what the hell, Congress already gave me permission to go to war. Yeah, yeah I know they wanted assurances that it wouldn’t impede the war on terror, but they didn’t ask for metrics now did they? heh-heh.”
I have to agree with Rashak, that is an unusual interpretation, but a very interesting one. The impression I got of the intent of the memo was to raise the local (CNN/FoxNews) level of expectation for the new Iraq Stabilisation Group, and considering the direction that the Iraqi situation is headed in, this will almost certainly guarantee a local (CNN/FoxNews) interpretation of the failure of this venture and particularly of it’s appointed leader.
Funny, I don’t recall saying everyone was a sheep except me. Please don’t try to put words in my mouth.
It’s quite obvious that the Bush Administration (as with most politicians in the U.S.) thinks that most people are sheep. Otherwise, they wouldn’t spend as much as they do on TV mudslinging campaigns and those stupid, useless flyers that they mail out to everyone where they call their opponent things like “big $pender.” Ooh! He wants to spend my money! I better vote for his opponent. Anyone who makes critical decisions like who to vote for based on these things are sheep, plain and simple.
The OP asked the question, “Why then, is Bush saying that everything is just peachy over there?” I offered an answer.