Retired General Is Going to Iraq for Full Review

[Jacobin]

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/07/international/middleeast/07military.html?hp&ex=1105074000&en=6a2a432b8e8415e8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 - The Pentagon is sending a highly regarded retired four-star general to Iraq next week to conduct an unusual "open-ended" review of the military's entire Iraq policy, including troop levels, training programs for Iraqi security forces and the strategy for fighting the insurgency, senior Defense Department officials said Thursday.


The extraordinary leeway given to the officer, Gen. Gary E. Luck, a former head of American forces in South Korea and currently a senior adviser to the military's Joint Forces Command, underscores the deep concern by senior Pentagon officials and top American commanders over the direction that the operation in Iraq is taking, and its broad ramifications for the military, said members of Congress and military analysts reached for comment.

In another sign that the Iraq campaign is forcing reassessments of Pentagon policies, Army officials are now considering whether to request that the temporary increase of 30,000 soldiers approved by Congress be made permanent. One senior Army official said Thursday that the increase is likely to be needed on a permanent basis if the service is to meet its global commitments - despite the additional cost of $3 billion per year.

But everything in Iraq is going swell, so stop saying its not.

(And I thought Rumsfeld was a genius. Is someone going over his head?)

[Dickie Flatt]

1. After the election, of course.

[saltpoint]

2. Good post.

I don't know General Luck, but I hope his recommendations can provide some sort of clarity where there's so little right now.

[asjr]

6. I have never heard of him, but I would bet

he was handpicked to get the info the administration wants.

[saltpoint]

17. Sad to say, I fear you're right --

-- especially given this administration's track record.

I was thinking of the soldiers and also the Iraqi civilians who are so much the victims.

I wish you were wrong on this, but I feel you may well be right.

Thanks.

[bluestateguy]

3. Will he recommend a draft?

Could this be how the Administration opens the door to a draft?

I don't know.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Either that or leave Iraq. Thats the only 2 sane options left at this point

We shall see.

Don

[saigon68]

16. It will be a DRAFT !!!!!! WE said it here 18 months ago

They can't fill the body bags fast enough.

[NYC Liberal]

4. How about we send someone to the WHITE HOUSE

for a "full review"?

[Jacobin]

7. Oh, no. Musn't really get to the bottom of this fiasco

Must find others who were doing what they were told to do by the WH to blame for the inevitable outcome of naive, ridiculous and inane policies.

:shrug:

[Gloria]

5. For a brief moment, I thought it was Wes Clark....I wonder

who this guy is. Luck. must research

[Gloria]

8. Luck is on (as of 2004) the Military Committee of the Center for

Security Policy, which is headed by Frank Gaffney, who I just saw on TV last night, yet again.....


This is their Annual Report....scroll to the Military Committee...
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:NmqxwETxIE8J:www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/Center2003AR.pdf+Gen.+Gary+E.+Luck+and+Wesley+Clark&hl=en


Check out the "Message from the President" (Gaffney) on page 3....

[NNN0LHI]

10. Good old "the Iraqis will be dancing in the streets" Frank Gaffney

Yep. Thats the guy.

Don

[Jacobin]

11. Oh, my. Him??

they must really want to "get to the bottom of why this attempt to conquer, vanquish and occupy a muslim nation to steal its resources" is not going as swimmingly as they dreamed.

[teryang]

13. Gaffney is an advocate of a domestic urban warfare mission

...for DOD. This was his pet brainchild before they came up with the "war on terror" and premptive fraudulent invasions for idle general officers and a defense industry with nothing to do.

I'm sure that he was coming in his pants during the Falluja campaign fantacizing as to how these tactics could be used at home in America in event of civil disturbances caused by economic and social unrest.

There is no fix in Iraq.

[leftchick]

19. Frank Gaffney?? THIS Frank Gaffney?...

:puke:

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/gaffney/gaffney.php

<snip>
Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official who cut his teeth working under Richard Perle when the “prince of darkness” was an adviser to Sen. “Scoop” Jackson in the 1970s, is one of the key heavy-lifters of the neoconservative-hawk policy institute world. From his perch at the Center for Security Policy (CSP), Gaffney routinely excoriates any and all arms control agreements, stridently defends U.S. intervention in places such as Iraq, and defends the hardline policies of Israel’s Likud Party.

Writes journalist Jason Vest: “While CSP boasts an impressive advisory list of hawkish luminaries, its star is Frank Gaffney, its founder, president and CEO. A protégé of Perle going back to their days as staffers for the late Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (a k a the Senator from Boeing, and the Senate's most zealous champion of Israel in his day), Gaffney later joined Perle at the Pentagon, only to be shown the door by Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci in 1987, not long after Perle left. Gaffney then reconstituted the latest incarnation of the Committee on the Present Danger. Beyond compiling an A-list of influential conservative hawks, Gaffney has been prolific over the past fifteen years, churning out a constant stream of reports (as well as regular columns for the Washington Times) making the case that the gravest threats to U.S. national security are China, Iraq, still-undeveloped ballistic missiles launched by rogue states, and the passage of or adherence to virtually any form of arms control treaty. Gaffney and CSP's prescriptions for national security have been fairly simple: Gut all arms control treaties, push ahead with weapons systems virtually everyone agrees should be killed (such as the V-22 Osprey), give no quarter to the Palestinians and, most important, go full steam ahead on just about every national missile defense program. (CSP was heavily represented on the late-1990s Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which was instrumental in keeping the program alive during the Clinton years.)” (5)

<snip>

His prognostications regarding the war in Iraq: “I believe that when you find, as you will I hope shortly, that the Iraqi people welcome the end of this horrible regime, even if it comes at some further expense to themselves, knowing as they do that the alternative is more of the horror that they've lived under for the past two or three decades. Ah you'll see I think an outpouring of appreciation for their liberation that will make what we saw in Afghanistan recently pale by comparison. You'll see, moreover, evidence in the files and the bunkers that become available to our military, evidence not only of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs and his future ambitions for their use perhaps and for aggression against his neighbors, but also I would be willing to bet evidence of his past complicity with acts of terror against the west, perhaps more generally but certainly against the United States which in turn I think will further vindicate the course of action that this president is courageously embarked upon.” (7)

[daleo]

12. Good luck, Luck

You'll need it.

[wtmusic]

14. WAHHH! Our invasion isn't going the way we PLANNED!

1) They were sposta throw FLOWERS & CANDY! WAHHHH!
2) They weren't sposta blow us up with IEDs! WAHHHH!
3) They were sposta do the opposite of what any rational being on the planet would do and NOT defend their COUNTRY!

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! :cry:

[benddem]

15. that witch Michelle Malkin

is on their board. That doesn't bode well for their opinions.

[wtmusic]

18. Sure glad we have a JOURNALIST with over TEN YEARS EXPERIENCE,

a BACHELOR'S DEGREE from Oberlin, and guest appearances on the FOX NEWS CHANNEL on the Pentagon's advisory board. No one can say we're not bringing in the best! :eyes:

[NYC]

20. Weird, isn't it?

But I guess she is their propaganda expert?

[bemildred]

21. The General did not get where he is by rocking the boat.

This is intended to support a "we're getting it right now" and
"we must stay the course" PR campaign. Various "reforms" will be
made, having no real effect, and the occupation will go on, or at
least that is the intent here.