It's June 2005 in Iraq

Your ability to monitor The Corner consistently without being corroded down to a bare skeleton is kind of amazing, Ned. If feel like I've noted that before, but anyway...

No cough syrup involved.

American troops in Iraq have discovered a series of underground bunkers used by insurgents, the US military says.
A spokesman said the complex in an abandoned quarry in the restive province of Anbar covered an area the size of four football pitches.

The bunkers are said to contain a large stockpile of weapons and living areas with air conditioning and showers.

A good job indeed -- as the attacks have been concentrated more on civilians over time, anything to slow them down is crucial. But what I wonder is, how many more of these complexes are there?

The Iraqi government says it is going to double the salaries of university professors as part of a bid to stem the brain drain in the country.
Doctors, teachers and businessmen have left Iraq because they feel unsafe.

No exact figures are available and a government spokesman said there was little in reality that could be done to solve the problem.

It's always interesting to see what they're up to. Often I think they say things they don't mean to.

My problem with having anything useful to say about Iraq at this point is that the situation is so far out of the control of anyone in particular that it's hard to know what to say. What's frustrating about the Bush administration, of course, is their continued refusal to ever acknowledge just how far out of their control everything is. They're sitll pretending it's all just part of some plan. It would be so nice to hear just one of those guys (or women) say things that seemed at least tangentially related to observable events.

A pro-Iraq war US congressman who campaigned for French fries to be renamed "freedom fries" is now calling for US troops to return home from Iraq.

Republican Representative Walter Jones is to introduce legislation demanding a timetable for the withdrawal.

"I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we've done about as much as we can do," Mr Jones said on US network ABC.

"I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there."

He said his change of heart about the war came after he attended the funeral of a US sergeant killed in Nasiriya, Iraq, in April 2003. Mr Jones said he was moved by the soldier's widow who read out her husband's last letter.

"And that really has been on my mind and my heart ever since," he said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1518168,00.html

...This is assuming, of course, that George Bush is fully serious about seeing this effort through the right way. I believe he does which is why I supported him against Kerry who made manifestly clear (to me, at least) his basic lack of interest in securing a democratic outcome in Iraq. Like Kerry, and unlike Bush, I don't think Rumsfeld really gives two shits about securing a truly democratic outcome in Iraq...

IF I WERE AN IRAQI...I would have every reason to assume American troops will be there as long as it takes, since George W. Bush won an incredibly hard-fought election making precisely this case at great potential risk and cost to himself.

How blithe it all sounds, making this one person's struggle. I'm reading the second of Ian Kershaw's two books on Hitler (yeah yeah, Godwin's freakin' law, bear with me), and while it would be idiotic to compare the Russian front with Iraq -- or, frankly, Hitler with Bush to start with -- and what's weirdly telling is how Kershaw's outlining of all that mattered for Hitler *was* the personal crusade through various means gets an echo here through a Bush lickspittle. Foolish fellow...

Anyway, back to Iraq, plz. ;-)

I fight because it is my pleasure...

Wasn't saying it was a long-term solution. Just linking to what I thought was some interesting analysis.

Does anyone even have a credible long-term solution for Iraq?

One problem is that American enthusiasm for fighting to spread democracy around the globe is pretty limited. Bush has to make the case that American security--not just democracy, human rights, etc.--but American security is deeply implicated here. The other problem is that conditions have taken a downturn over the last couple of months. The insurgency and the fight against it is about adjustments--and the fact is that the insurgents have adjusted to our adjustments that had culminated in the success of the elections and the immediate aftermath (check out the Pete Pace quote in this USA Today article). I have very little doubt that Bush is going to stick this out, but he's probably going to have a tough selling-job here at home.

And the flacks like Lowry are about to have it worse! (To Lowry's credit he's pretty much admitting that Derbyshire, increasingly the arch-doubter of much of the BushCo conventional wisdom, was spot on earlier this year.)

This is a pretty hilarious statement, seeing as how it implies that the "case" for invading Iraq ever had to do with democracy or human rights. The whole thing was sold on the basis of American security! They only switched to democracy and human rights as a fallback. But now the democracy stuff is turning out to be too complicated, so I guess it's back to crying wolf.

"[We] have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. [We] have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows... Our unfortunate troops,... under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad." - T.E. Lawrence, Sunday Times of London, August 22, 1920.

BTW, most people remember the early estimates of the numer killed in the WTC, which were quite a bit higher than the final count. OTOH, a great many people totally overlook or forget the death tolls from the Pentagon and the flight that went down in Pennsylvania that day. So, I guess one hand washed the other.

(as far as my initial post goes, I'm thinking of the 3,000+ WTC number. that seems to have the most cultural currency).

"In and around the twin towers there were 2752 deaths, while 189 people died when a plane was flown into the Pentagon. Another 44 were killed when a hijacked jet crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. The official tolls do not include 19 hijackers."

The spring of '04 was a trough before a turnaround. The last few months may yet prove to be the same.

"May" -- not "will."

"That means being careful to avoid unsupportable statements. Vice President Cheney famously said the other day that the insurgency is in its “last throes,” an implausible reading of the situation reminiscent of Secretary Rumsfeld's initial insistence two years ago that there wasn't a guerilla insurgency in Iraq. There is a case for optimism in Iraq, but if it is made in a way that seems untethered from reality... it will be dismissed out of hand."

Ned, I'm glad you have the stomach to keep yr analytical eye on the other side here. For me its all a little too depressing and/or irritating.

(Meanwhile, in a related but not specifically about Iraq piece regarding Bush's declining popularity, Fred Barnes makes the amusing case that his unpopularity shows how correctly-thinking he is. Indeed?)

The Bush Administration has yet to ask the American people –correction, has yet to demand of the American people– the sustained, shared sacrifice it takes to win this long, intricate war of bullets, ballots, and bricks. Bullets go bang, and even CBS understands bullets. Ballots make an impression–in terms of this war’s battlespace, the January Iraqi elections were World War Two’s D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge combined. But the bricks– the building of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the other hard corners where this war is and will be fought– that’s a delicate and decades long challenge. Given the vicious, megalomanical enemy we face, five years, perhaps fifteen years from now occasional bullets and bombs will disrupt the political and economic building. This is the Bush Administration’s biggest strategic mistake– a failure to tap the reservoir of American willingness 9/11 produced. One afternoon in December 2001 my mother –after reading a column of mine in her local paper– called me long-distance. She told me she remembered being a teenager in 1942 and tossing a tin can on a wagon that rolled past the train station in her small Texas hometown. (Plainview– one reason I know Lanc-Corporal Solis’ hometown– it’s my parents birthplace.) Mom said she knew that the can she tossed didn’t add much to the war effort, but she felt that in some, small, token perhaps but very real way, that she was contributing to the battle being waged by our soldiers. “The Bush Administration is going to make a terrible mistake if it does not let the American people get involved in this war. Austin, we need a war bond drive. This matters, because this is what it will take.”

Some interesting and I think erroneous conclusions here -- the biggest one being this lack of 'tapping' the reservoir. Surely that *is* what happened to help produce a vaguely general acceptance of the invasion to begin with (and the point is that the reservoir having now been tapped there's no going back again). But the larger point seems to be a slow burn realization among some corners that poor selling earlier could have greater consequences later.

"I've offered my resignation to the president twice," Rumsfeld shot back, saying that President Bush had decided not to accept it. "That's his call," he said.

hold on, it's the Preznit's call whether Rummy quits or not?

I knew of the one instance where he offered to resign. Still, if the POTUS asks you to serve, most people will stay at their post 'til the end, regardless of the administration or party.

I'm telling you, its a cult.

This one big advantage you gain by never defining what winning the war would look like - you can't lose.

But who wants to bet that the neo-con honchos in the Administration are constantly defining down their measures of success to match whatever we're capable of acomplishing? Any takers?

I'd also bet that these same world-class thinkers privately acknowledge among themselves that the insurgents are successfully building a coherent structure of recruitment and resupply, and have evolved a strategic plan and consistently successful tactics, and that these neo-cons have successfully convinced themselves that by knowing these things exist and writing white papers about them, that they have proved themselves to be 'hardheaded' and 'realistic' and therefore superior to the situation.

This is the usual self-deluding mechanism - that by always having an answer for everything, you soon forget that your last batch of answers were all pretty much worthless.

The public needs to be rallied anew to the task at hand. Bush should likely give a speech to the nation spelling out what the consequences of retreat from Iraq would be. And ask the nation for patience and renewed committment to the war effort. He should neither be too optimistic, nor too pessimistic. But he has to treat his public as having heads on their shoulders--and keep the spin and rosy gloss to a mimimum. I mean, I just saw Cheney in my hotel room in Geneva in a Wolf Blitzer interview actually going on about what the definition of "throes" is when you look it up in the dictionary. Still spinning the "last throes" bit! Message to Veep: This sounds Clintonian and parsy and disingenuous. Only when the American people feel they are getting the real skinny will the country rally again to the task at hand. And so help make the troops under Abizaid's command less concerned about whether the American people support them. They do, still, in the main. But many are increasingly skeptical and disillusioned. Again, I wager this is mostly borne of the over-optimistic prognostications of their leaders. Put differently, let's celebrate the victories when they occur; not before. Honesty is the best policy, still. And the honest truth is success in Iraq, real success (a viable, unitary democratic state with multi-ethnic, integrated security forces), is still years away.

Yeah, but that's bullshit. You "offer to resign" just so it can be refused. It's a way of saying fuck you to the haterz. Rumsfeld has never once seriously contemplated resignation.

Also, I, Criswell, boldly predict that Dubya will make no less than THREE baseless strawman-statements tonight, e.g. "some people say that iraqis can't govern for shit".

At first glance I thought that said primitive or primate.

Baghdad airport has been closed indefinitely in a dispute over payment for security.
The British company that provides security to the airport, Global, has withdrawn its services in what it says is a contractual dispute.

Military flights, however, are not affected.

Travelling out of Baghdad airport is hazardous enough at the best of times but now it is not possible at all, at least on civilian flights.

It is understood that Global has not been paid by the Iraqi government for three months.

It is not clear whether there is any connection but the Iraqi transport ministry is frequently accused of corruption.

US officials in Iraq have had talks with leaders of the anti-US insurgency, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says.

Mr Rumsfeld was commenting on an article in London's Sunday Times newspaper which said two such sessions had taken place north of Baghdad.

Without giving any details, Mr Rumsfeld told Fox News: "The first thing you want to do is split people off and get some people to be supportive."

...

Quoting Iraqi sources, the Sunday Times said insurgent commanders "apparently came face to face" with four American officials during the talks held on 3 and 13 June at a summer villa near Balad, about 40 miles (60km) north of Baghdad.

It said the insurgents included representatives of Ansar al-Sunna, which has carried out numerous suicide bombings, as well as lesser known groups such as Mohammed's Army, the Islamic Army in Iraq and Jaish Mohammed.

Mr Rumsfeld did not confirm any details of the talks - and sought to downplay their significance.

"I would not make a big deal out of it," he told Fox News.

"Meetings go on frequently with people.

"I think the attention to this is overblown."

Not that I disapprove of their talking, but I am a left-coast liberal. This won't play well in Texas, I suspect.

Derbyshire on Rumsfeld on Meet the Press:

Getting flashbacks from my working days. A project is going pear shaped. You call in the project manager to explain himself. Shouldn't he have budgeted for more people? "Well, you know, too many people can just get in each other's way..." When can we expect the next deliverable? "It's really, really hard to put a time frame on this..." Weren't the original time estimates way over optimistic? "I don't myself recall giving eny input to those estimates..." Shouldn't the users be up to speed now with training? "Well, they have their own priorities, we can only lean on them so much..."

That's the meeting right before the one where you dump the project and fire the project manager.

Overall Sunday Times guide to 'Downing Street Memo' documets.

Zakaria thinks this:

The good news is that America has stopped blundering in Iraq. After two and a half years of errors, since late 2004, Washington has been urging political inclusion, speeding up economic reconstruction and building up local forces. But U.S. policy still lacks central direction—and the energy, vision, increased resources and push that such direction would bring. Who is running Iraq policy in Washington?

The intense and bitter interagency squabbles of the past three years—and the disastrous mistakes made by the Defense Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority—have left Iraq something of an orphan. Day to day, Iraq policy is now run by the State Department and the U.S. Army, but those two chains of command never meet.

On the civilian side, for example, the American effort is massively understaffed. Several Army officers in Iraq told me that their jobs would be greatly improved if they had more people from the State Department, USAID and other civilian agencies helping. One said to me last year, "I've had 25-year-old sergeants adjudicating claims between Turkomans and Kurds, when they don't really know how they are different. We could use political officers who could brief them."

The vacuum is being filled by the U.S. Army, which has been building bridges and schools, securing neighborhoods and power plants and, yes, adjudicating claims between Turkomans and Kurds. It is doing these things because someone has to. Secretary Rumsfeld has long argued that American troops should never engage in nation building, leaving that to locals. But while we waited for Iraqis to do it, chaos broke out and terror reigned. So the Army on the ground has ignored Rumsfeld's ideology and has simply made things work. (It's a good rule of thumb for the future.)

But if we want to move beyond coping, we need a full-scale revitalization of Iraq policy, with resources to match it. Muddling along will ensure we don't lose in Iraq, but we won't win either.

And finally the story about negotiations Rumsfeld responded to today.

"We are all about to embark on a life-altering mission that will be a defining period that will influence you the rest of your lives," Norris said. "We enter freely into a country with a distinct history and very deep roots. Iraq is recognized as the birthplace of civilization, the location of the Garden of Eden. ... We go with purpose but also with respect.
"Please take this time on leave to relax and to reflect on what we are about to do on the field of battle. Enjoy this time off with your family, be safe and return with earnest, ready to deploy and most importantly -- unleash hell!"

Full story here. It's well worth reading in general.

172nd to be largest Alaska deployment since Vietnam

An example of these problems lies with improperly protected Humvees, brought up (among other things) at a Congressional hearing (details here). The NY Times has a report with an intro that says it all:

When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year to tour the Abu Ghraib prison camp, military officials did not rely on a government-issued Humvee to transport him safely on the ground. Instead, they turned to Halliburton, the oil services contractor, which lent the Pentagon a rolling fortress of steel called the Rhino Runner.

State Department officials traveling in Iraq use armored vehicles that are built with V-shaped hulls to better deflect bullets and bombs. Members of Congress favor another model, called the M1117, which can endure 12-pound explosives and .50-caliber armor-piercing rounds.

Unlike the Humvee, the Pentagon's vehicle of choice for American troops, the others were designed from scratch to withstand attacks in battlefields like Iraq with no safe zones. Last fall, for instance, a Rhino traveling the treacherous airport road in Baghdad endured a bomb that left a six-foot-wide crater. The passengers walked away unscathed. "I have no doubt should I have been in any other vehicle," wrote an Army captain, the lone military passenger, "the results would have been catastrophically different."

Yet more than two years into the war, efforts by United States military units to obtain large numbers of these stronger vehicles for soldiers have faltered - even as the Pentagon's program to armor Humvees continues to be plagued by delays, an examination by The New York Times has found.

ParaPundit follows this up with further commentary.

Even some of the most armored Humvees are getting totally destroyed by bombs while many Humvees have yet to get up-armored. But the Humvees are obsolete for a war like Iraq where there are no clearly defined front lines. If Congress and the President were serious about protecting American soldiers they'd pass a law authorizing completely different and highly rapid procurement practices for equipment bound for Iraq.

SFTT, meanwhile, as its wont, is frothing mad at Marine highers-up:

If Nyland and Catto truly accepted personal responsibility for a failure of leadership which led to the deaths of their Marines, they had one, and only one, honorable course of action – to walk the plank and resign their commissions. A painful trip that would have meant kissing their generous pensions and juicy revolving-door perqs goodbye.

The silence from Marine Commandant Mike Hagee's office on this matter merely underlines that Nyland and Catto were playing the "take responsibility" ploy with his approval – and a gullible news media once again bought into a Pentagon con that let the perps prevail.

Hagee – who should have been taking responsibility and sitting at the table alongside Nyland and Catto – was instead running around presenting coins to the grieving parents of a Marine being buried at Arlington National Cemetery and a Marine being readied for surgery at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center. Certainly, he had the power to have given these folks something even more meaningful along with the coins – new and competent commanders with the right stuff to prevent other needless casualties.

Belgravia meanwhile queries the general note of contradiction over the last few days from the White House and associates. Roll on the Ft. Bragg speech tomorrow, I guess.

Come anticipate (and then react to) Bush's Iraq speech tonight with me

Free cruises!? I'm outraged!

Its weight? Well, it's well known and often linked to from a variety of usual suspects -- Instapundit, Sullivan, the NRO, etc. I couldn't say what specific weight it carries but it isn't obscure.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again, TPM has plummeted downhill very badly, so badly that I can't even bear to trudge through his new TPM Cafe. A friend of Joshua Marshall named Steve Clemons used to be a pretty great foreign policy read, but he too has descended into a one note, rather shrill pony.

"Sit down with your generals privately – just you and them -- and find out how many troops they really think they need." Translation: Please don't invite Don to this little prospective pow-wow. Why are former Reagan hands writing this? Because they are hearing from the brass that Rummy has tied their hands...

If they tell you they need another 250,000 soldiers and Marines – then fly them over from Korea, Germany or wherever they are stationed just as fast as possible. If we haven’t got them to send – then order a draft. One way or another, put enough troops on the ground in Iraq to secure that country -- fast. And while you’re at it, give the orders to either take out the governments of Syria and Iran or to hit them with so much force that they quit playing footsie with al Queda and the Baathists, because we cannot win in Iraq so long as Syria and Iran are providing support and sanctuary. In short, do whatever is necessary, and do it now.
You need to start fighting in Washington just as hard as you expect our troops to fight in Iraq. And you need to keep fighting until the Potomac flows red with the blood of your political enemies. Personally, I think you’ll win more of your domestic battles than your advisers seem to think you’ll win. But what really matters is that by fighting to the death for your domestic programs, our country’s enemies will get the message that you are a man who will risk everything – everything – to win. And by itself this will markedly increase our chances for victory in Iraq.
Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

Somebody needs to get back on his meds right away.

Oh, yeah, also, invent time travel and redo this whole enterprise from the start, after removing everyone's head from Chalabi's and PNAC's ass. Consider what Shinseki was telling you all along. Read State's assessment of post-war prospects. Do this and then kick some of your political opponents in the balls with 9/11 a few hundred more times.

You are teh most freedom-lovin'est President ever, God bless, and thanks for the time travel!

Love,
HERB.

"By the beard of the Prophet, can nothing shake this man's determination to create Social Security accounts?"
"And see how he battles a recalcitrant Senate for his chosen emissary, he of the Fierce Mustache!"
"Truly, our God quails before such resolve. All is lost!"

Derbyshire in NROland was initially praising but his doubts came back in full this morning; slightly more surprising is Frum's conclusion:

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JUN. 29, 2005: WANTING MORE

It was good to see the president make his case on Iraq. Although the polls tell us good news about American resolve (only 1 in 8 want to give up) and about Americans' long-term strategic sense (a majority agree that the war will enhance American security over the long term), there is no denying that a mood of doubt about the war is spreading, in this country and even more rapidly amongst the coalition allies: Britain, Australia, Italy, and the others. The president's voice is the best reply.

Viewers saw again that intense emotional bond the president has with America's fighting forces. He praised the military calling and the character of the American fighting forces - a well-timed rebuke to those who'd compare American soldiers to Nazis and Communists. He repeated his own resolution and commitment to fighting through to the end.

Is it too much like inside-baseball to worry, though, that the speech itself was neither very good nor very convincing? It's reported this morning that 11 people worked on the speech - and it shows. That all-important conference in Brussels (where potential aid donors "came together to coordinate their efforts") got a mention. So of course did the follow-on meeting in Jordan.

There were generalities about "progress," about road construction and sanitation? But where were the powerful individual stories that help Americans to understand what's being accomplished in Iraq? As NRO readers know, there's a regular monthly compendium posted here. Why the faint praise for Iraqi forces - rather than the powerful anecdotes of courage that the President cited in his State of the Union address?

Or, alternatively, if the president's advisers don't believe the good news - if they think things really are sagging and that the Iraqis are useless - then why not forcefully present that other case that loomed in the background of the speech: why not detail the real consequences of a failure in Iraq, the threat a terrorist victory would pose to the region and the United States?

Instead, one could feel the bureaucratic mind oscillating throughout the speech: don't want to frighten people with the possibility of failure, so we can't discuss that; on the other hand, we don't want to endorse any successes in case something goes wrong later and we get criticized for over-hype - so better just hide ourselves in bland reassurances and generalities ... you never get blamed for those.

So one might think.

Fun with one of the PR photos from Rummy's visit.

The new "they spit on soldiers just back from 'Nam."

Eventually one of many?

Bush Critics Call for More Troops in Iraq

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Congressional critics of President Bush's stay-the-course commitment to the war in Iraq argued Wednesday that the administration lacks sufficient troops on the ground to mount a successful counterinsurgency.

Democrats in particular criticized Bush for again raising the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification for the protracted fight in Iraq after the president proclaimed anew that he plans to keep U.S. forces there as long as necessary to ensure peace...

the entire piece repeatedly equates "critics" with "democrats"(with the exception of McCain) as tho the only people ANYWHERE to say that they needed more folks are people with a partisian agenda. So of course, any such calls are easily dismissed because they could only come from folks with a bone to pick, right? I mean, no MILITARY folks or any congressional Repubs, who of course are all unquestionably in support of the Preznit and the Party agenda, ever voiced anything else, right? (again, excepting McCain)

Almost every person quoted is a Democrat, and you're made SURE that he's a democrat, since the writer takes pains to fully type out the party affliation, whereas the sole Republican only has the "R", and word "Republican" never appears in the piece.

Framing any sort of criticism as yet more partisian bickering is SERIOUSLY disingenious and wrong at this point. But you can always get more column inches out of conflict, even if you have to frame it up yourself.

of course, this AP piece is written by the hack Pickler, who was no shortage of fun stories during the election about how rich Kerry was & how lavish his lifestyle(giving dollar amounts) whereas how the Preznit just lived on a ranch.

"The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document," he said.

"It would be absolutely weird if, when the Iraq issue was on the agenda, you were not constantly raising issues, trying to work them out, get them in the right place," he said.