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Today's Must Read
Out of all the slides and talk of statistics yesterday, there's one in particular that's stood out. This one:
In it, Gen. Petraeus has helpfully indicated the ambiguity of the timing of future troop reductions with tiny question marks. 2008 or beyond? Who knows?
In an analysis, Paul Richter of The Los Angeles Times says the takeaway is clear:
The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country -- perhaps more than 100,000 troops -- when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009....
But while Petraeus and Crocker made the administration's general goals clear, it left uncertain their thinking on a variety of key issues.
Nothing new was said, for example, on how the administration intends to try to break apart the governmental gridlock in Baghdad, which has obstructed the administration's plan to bring about national reconciliation through agreements by the national government. Does the administration want to try to overhaul the badly balkanized government, or empower the local governments?
Also unanswered was what course the administration will take if it turns out that fewer U.S. forces are unable to maintain the current level of security when the five brigades leave by summer.
Those issues most likely will be left for the next president, whose new job is looking tougher all the time.
Josh
Zachary
The new President's job will be even tougher when the 'stab-in-the-backers' come out of the woodwork every time something goes wrong in Iraq. They are, of course, guaranteed to get bigtime media play.
September 11, 2007 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's always been Bush's plan. It's only now that the VSP's have finally caught on(though far from enough).
September 11, 2007 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't the left hand (vertical) scale weighted to make the initial decreases appear disproportionately large? Just compare the distance from 10 to 20 and the bottom of the bars to 10.
September 11, 2007 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
This chart reminds me of those deficit projections the "what, me worry" crowd issues from time to time. They show a shrinking deficit contingent on a strong economy, budget cuts and tax increases.
This chart assumes a similarly optimistic forecast. The most accurate information in the whole diagram are the question marks???
And please, no "Betray Us" nonsense. Yes, I know, it rhymes, but as a political action it is about as effective as the code pink hysterics at the hearings.
September 11, 2007 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
OF COURSE THIS IS BUSH'S PLAN. It has always been the plan. That is why it was so important for the Democratic Congress to take extreme measures back in February to beging putting the brakes on the Bush administration. They should have kept sending him the same Iraqi supplemental bill and let him veto it over and over again. But they blinked, and subsequently rolled over for other elements of the imperial presidency (like the FISA "fix"), and now they have lost any momentum they might have had and it is too late (politically speaking) to do anything about any of it. Cuz there is an election around the corner, doncha know! All of this will end up in the lap of the next President and the next Congress. And even if there is a Democratic President and Dem majorities in both houses of Congress (and as the Republican party continues to implode, I have to assume there will be), I doubt they will dramatically alter course, because of all the same BS political considerations that have kept the Democratic Congressional leadership from doing ANYTHING at all up to this point.
September 11, 2007 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just to think, the whole show was based in a great, big fraud about WMDs. And, General Petraeus was a key player from the beginning to the bitter end.
See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1780931&mesg_id=1780931
September 11, 2007 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
The chart reminds me of something from Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.
September 11, 2007 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
THank god the dems won congress in 2006!
And I am so proud of our top-two presidential candidates' leadership on Iraq that I want to hug a dead soldier.
September 11, 2007 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
The next President will be left with this mess. And when he goes to the cupboard, he will find it bare. There will be no troops left. There will be no money left. He/she will be left with one option. Withdrawal.
With that option will come the predictable Republican taunts of retreat and surrender. They are setting the table. The next president will be left to wash the dishes.
September 11, 2007 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The next president will be left to wash the dishes."
At least he dems have proven that they are worthy of washing Bush's dishes.
September 11, 2007 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wheres the Iraqi Army?
The other take home message from The Generals report was the number of Iraqi army, police units etc that can stand by themselves (Level 1 fully independent)has actually decreased since January of 2007 (See his slide 13). It appears the more we stand up the more they stand down.
September 11, 2007 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wheres the Iraqi Army?
The other take home message from The Generals report was the number of Iraqi army, police units etc that can stand by themselves (Level 1 fully independent)has actually decreased since January of 2007 (See his slide 13). It appears the more we stand up the more they stand down.
September 11, 2007 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ponies for everyone!
Iraq 4-eva!
(And put down your coffee and check out this revised chart.)
CODE: brain
September 11, 2007 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's the Bush pattern from Arbusto and Harken on. Screw it up. Leave it for someone else to fix. Move on to the next opportunity for a screw-up. Maybe the fantastic Freedom Institute, which will celebrate how Bush took away our freedoms to keep his power.
Send liars, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan.
September 11, 2007 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
The new President's job will be even tougher when the 'stab-in-the-backers' come out of the woodwork every time something goes wrong in Iraq.
Yeah, and boy do they have to look hard for something that's going wrong. I mean, other than
- no oil revenue
- no electricity
- a very strong and growing insurgency
- a dysfunctional Iraqi gov't and security apparatus
- a war with no end in site
- tens of thousands of American casualties (dead or wounded)
- half a trillion dollars spent with nothing to show for it
- a 10-way civil war
- no WMD, or ties to Al Queda
things are going very smoothly.
September 11, 2007 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can't SOMEONE just say NO!!!???!!! Leave this pile of crap for someone else to clean up? I don't think so, Junya. Not this time, Chimpy McFlightSuit. If our gawddayum Democratic Congress can't get the gumption together to cut off the funding and force an end to this, we are in a sorry, sorry state.
September 11, 2007 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are no hard decisions on Iraq. Withdraw and leave it to the Iraqis.
September 11, 2007 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
The French media repeately refers to "W" as "George Bush, Jr."
Vive la France!
September 11, 2007 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
That chart has the strong stink of a Nixonian Secret Plan to end the war. And about as much credibility.
"Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out." Claudius. Robert Graves, I, Claudius.
September 11, 2007 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
We all know Bush hasn't got a clue how to get out of this mess, he's use to his Daddy stepping in to clean up his screw ups. But this one, well it was really more then another one of his botched companies he raped or bankrupt, he's now bankrupt the USA, and basically destroying our military to the point that if we did have any kind of incurrsion, who we gonna send, the Boy Scouts? Bush hasn't sent them over yet! I guess all those good little REPUBS could take out their shot guns and blow the hell outta someone, they seem to get off on that sort of thing. I am wondering though, we have been training Iraq's soldiers and policemen for what over five years now. Our military trainees get between eight and sixteen weeks training?? Are these people dumb, inept or both?
September 11, 2007 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been emailing since the beginning that "the current occupant" had no intention of ever leaving Iraq. Maybe even some of the high-level stooges / whores on the right don't even realize it yet. Don't bother talking troop levels and withdrawals. Remember the PNAC, and the fourteen PERMENANT bases we're building there. Everything The Crime Family says and does is smoke and mirrors. They plan to keep us all distracted so they can steal '08 like they did 2000 and '04, and then keep troops there forever.
He plans to give Iraq's oil to Exxon-Mobil, cell phone monopoly to Verizon, etc. He thinks that will be his legacy and make up for all the dead.
The voting system in several states is totally corrupted. Go to www.blackboxvoting.org Shrub is cocky because he knows the Repugs CANNOT lose. The last two elections were stolen. The evidence is indisputable.
September 11, 2007 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the GOP plan for victory in 2012.
Democrats will "Lyndon Johnson" it through four more years of occupation and, desperate, the US will look to "the other guys" again.
September 11, 2007 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh!
I forgot to mention that the onus of reinstating the draft, you know it's coming, will then be on the Democrats.
September 11, 2007 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh!
I forgot to mention that the onus of reinstating the draft, you know it's coming, will then be on the Democrats.
September 11, 2007 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been listening on-and-off to the NPR broadcasts and two things struck me. Will someone tell Senator Menendez to put a sock in it and let General Petraeus answer the question. Hey, I'm a liberal and this is about the most dumb-a** war I've witnessed in my 50+ years and my studying of world history, but Menendez came off as a petty know-it-all.
The other thing that struck me is that with significant troop reductions slated for next August, why wouldn't the El Presidente just order the returning soldiers to parachute into the Republican National Convention?
September 11, 2007 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink