The Charade of Letting The Generals Decide
rudkla - 13. Sep, 22:30
Iraq War - Irak Krieg
Donnerstag, 13. September 2007
The War Party: Democrats Lie to Prolong Iraq; Reporters Go Along
rudkla - 13. Sep, 22:28
No Exit in Sight for Troops in Iraq
rudkla - 13. Sep, 22:21
The General as Salesman
https://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20712196/site/newsweek/page/0/
Informant: Kev Hall
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Michael+Hirsh
Informant: Kev Hall
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Michael+Hirsh
rudkla - 13. Sep, 13:41
The dispensable man
The American Prospect
by Ezra Klein
09/12/07
It’s right there in the name: ‘The Petraeus Report.’ Not ‘The Petraeus Report on Iraq’ or the ‘Military Assessment of the Surge,’ but ‘The Petraeus Report.’ The testimonies, the white papers, the MoveOn ads, and the presidential affirmations — none of them are about Iraq. They are about David Petraeus. This is the White House’s political strategy: Make the continuation of the war a referendum on David Petraeus, and it will continue, because he’s really dreamy. Make it a referendum on the state of the country (blown up), and the status of the political reconciliation (unreconciled), and the war will inch closer to its end...
https://tinyurl.com/2tmlc8
Team Bush’s false optimism
Boston Globe
by H.D.S. Greenway
09/11/07
Nations find it infinitely more difficult to get out of wars and military occupations than to get into them. The British stayed in Palestine trying to bring political reconciliation for years after it was clear that nobody wanted to reconcile. The French clung on to Algeria long after it became hopeless. It took the Americans five years to clear their troops out of Vietnam after they had decided to throw in the towel. Today, President Bush clings to David Petraeus as if the general were the administration’s rabbit foot. ‘Buying time for Iraqis to reconcile,’ was the way Petraeus originally described his mission, and according to that measure there has been no progress at all...
https://tinyurl.com/2qauz8
More false optimism on Iraq
Human Events
by Steve Chapman
09/13/07
Petraeus is, by all accounts, an experienced, capable and intelligent commander. So when he says that ‘the security situation in Iraq is improving,’ the natural impulse is to trust his battle-seasoned judgment. The Bush administration encourages this notion by suggesting that the opinions of military commanders are the only sound guide to policy. But if high-ranking military officers are a good barometer of the future, I have a question: Where are the generals who told Americans when things were about to get worse in Iraq, as they have over and over? Which of them warned that insurgent attacks would steadily proliferate in 2005, after elections that were supposed to quell violence? What guy with stars on his shoulders forecast that Iraqi civilian deaths would double over the course of 2006?
https://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22381
“The war as we saw it”
Salon
by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
(09/12/07)
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)...
https://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2007/09/12/times_soldiers/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=counterinsurgency
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ezra+Klein
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=H.D.S.+Greenway
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Steve+Chapman
by Ezra Klein
09/12/07
It’s right there in the name: ‘The Petraeus Report.’ Not ‘The Petraeus Report on Iraq’ or the ‘Military Assessment of the Surge,’ but ‘The Petraeus Report.’ The testimonies, the white papers, the MoveOn ads, and the presidential affirmations — none of them are about Iraq. They are about David Petraeus. This is the White House’s political strategy: Make the continuation of the war a referendum on David Petraeus, and it will continue, because he’s really dreamy. Make it a referendum on the state of the country (blown up), and the status of the political reconciliation (unreconciled), and the war will inch closer to its end...
https://tinyurl.com/2tmlc8
Team Bush’s false optimism
Boston Globe
by H.D.S. Greenway
09/11/07
Nations find it infinitely more difficult to get out of wars and military occupations than to get into them. The British stayed in Palestine trying to bring political reconciliation for years after it was clear that nobody wanted to reconcile. The French clung on to Algeria long after it became hopeless. It took the Americans five years to clear their troops out of Vietnam after they had decided to throw in the towel. Today, President Bush clings to David Petraeus as if the general were the administration’s rabbit foot. ‘Buying time for Iraqis to reconcile,’ was the way Petraeus originally described his mission, and according to that measure there has been no progress at all...
https://tinyurl.com/2qauz8
More false optimism on Iraq
Human Events
by Steve Chapman
09/13/07
Petraeus is, by all accounts, an experienced, capable and intelligent commander. So when he says that ‘the security situation in Iraq is improving,’ the natural impulse is to trust his battle-seasoned judgment. The Bush administration encourages this notion by suggesting that the opinions of military commanders are the only sound guide to policy. But if high-ranking military officers are a good barometer of the future, I have a question: Where are the generals who told Americans when things were about to get worse in Iraq, as they have over and over? Which of them warned that insurgent attacks would steadily proliferate in 2005, after elections that were supposed to quell violence? What guy with stars on his shoulders forecast that Iraqi civilian deaths would double over the course of 2006?
https://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22381
“The war as we saw it”
Salon
by Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
(09/12/07)
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)...
https://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2007/09/12/times_soldiers/
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=counterinsurgency
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ezra+Klein
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=H.D.S.+Greenway
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Steve+Chapman
rudkla - 13. Sep, 11:47
No exit from Iraq before Bush leaves
AntiWar.Com
by Jim Lobe
09/13/07
After two days of Congressional testimony by Washington’s top two officials in Iraq, prospects for a substantial withdrawal of US military forces there before the end of President George W. Bush’s tenure at the White House look as remote as ever. Bush himself is expected to take to the airwaves Thursday evening to endorse the recommendations made here this week by Gen. David Petraeus, Washington’s commander in Iraq, to reduce US troop levels by some 30,000 — or only about 20 percent — by August next year. That would leave at least 135,000 US soldiers and marines in place — roughly the same number of troops deployed to Iraq before Bush’s ’surge’ strategy was initiated last February — thus passing along to his successor, who will take office in January 2009, the problem of extricating the US from its bloodiest and most costly overseas adventure since the Vietnam War...
https://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=11608
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+withdrawal
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Vietnam
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/lobe
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jim+Lobe
by Jim Lobe
09/13/07
After two days of Congressional testimony by Washington’s top two officials in Iraq, prospects for a substantial withdrawal of US military forces there before the end of President George W. Bush’s tenure at the White House look as remote as ever. Bush himself is expected to take to the airwaves Thursday evening to endorse the recommendations made here this week by Gen. David Petraeus, Washington’s commander in Iraq, to reduce US troop levels by some 30,000 — or only about 20 percent — by August next year. That would leave at least 135,000 US soldiers and marines in place — roughly the same number of troops deployed to Iraq before Bush’s ’surge’ strategy was initiated last February — thus passing along to his successor, who will take office in January 2009, the problem of extricating the US from its bloodiest and most costly overseas adventure since the Vietnam War...
https://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=11608
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+withdrawal
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Vietnam
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/lobe
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jim+Lobe
rudkla - 13. Sep, 11:35
The no-exit strategy
Reason
by Jacob Sullum
09/12/07
One problem with ‘you break it, you own it’ is the ambiguity of the pronoun. As Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) noted in his exchange with Huckabee during the debate, ‘you’ did not invade Iraq; neither did ‘we.’ The president and his men made that disastrous decision, based on a ridiculously broad understanding of self-defense and willful blindness to the inevitability of unintended consequences. Huckabee, who seems to agree the invasion was a mistake, urges us to save ‘the honor of this country’ by trusting the same people who made this mess to clean it up. ‘We can’t leave until we’ve left with honor,’ he insists. And what if that’s not possible? What if all that Bush has left us to choose from is different degrees of dishonor?
https://www.reason.com/news/show/122422.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ron+Paul
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Huckabee
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jacob+Sullum
by Jacob Sullum
09/12/07
One problem with ‘you break it, you own it’ is the ambiguity of the pronoun. As Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) noted in his exchange with Huckabee during the debate, ‘you’ did not invade Iraq; neither did ‘we.’ The president and his men made that disastrous decision, based on a ridiculously broad understanding of self-defense and willful blindness to the inevitability of unintended consequences. Huckabee, who seems to agree the invasion was a mistake, urges us to save ‘the honor of this country’ by trusting the same people who made this mess to clean it up. ‘We can’t leave until we’ve left with honor,’ he insists. And what if that’s not possible? What if all that Bush has left us to choose from is different degrees of dishonor?
https://www.reason.com/news/show/122422.html
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ron+Paul
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Huckabee
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jacob+Sullum
rudkla - 13. Sep, 11:29
Majority Leader Reid Says Iraq Plan Unacceptable
Anne Flaherty of The Associated Press reports: "Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday rejected the call by the top US general in Iraq for a reduction of up to 30,000 US troops in Iraq by next summer, saying it does not go far enough."
https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091207R.shtml
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Harry+Reid
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091207R.shtml
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Harry+Reid
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Petraeus
rudkla - 13. Sep, 11:11
Why failure is the new face of success
It may have been the military that invaded but, with Iraq completely dismantled, the reconstruction was to be the preserve of US corporations ... Thus was born 'disaster capitalism', where oil companies profit from a broken country and private security firms grow rich on political chaos.
https://books.guardian.co.uk/shockdoctrine/story/0,,2167229,00.html
From Information Clearing House
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=disaster+capitalism
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Big+Oil
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Blackwater
https://books.guardian.co.uk/shockdoctrine/story/0,,2167229,00.html
From Information Clearing House
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=disaster+capitalism
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Big+Oil
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Blackwater
rudkla - 13. Sep, 10:11
