WP: Bush's Optimism On Iraq Debated (Rosy View Criticized)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/04/AR2005060401506_pf.html

President Bush's portrayal of a wilting insurgency in Iraq at a time of escalating violence and insecurity throughout the country is reviving the debate over the administration's Iraq strategy and the accuracy of its upbeat claims.

While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help. Privately, some administration officials have concluded the violence will not subside through 2005.

The disconnect between Rose Garden optimism and Baghdad pessimism, according to government officials and independent analysts, stems not only from Bush's focus on tentative signs of long-term progress but also from the shrinking range of policy options available to him if he is wrong. Having set out on a course of trying to stand up a new constitutional, elected government with the security firepower to defend itself, Bush finds himself locked into a strategy that, even if it proves successful, forecasts many more deadly months to come first, analysts said.

Military commanders in Iraq privately told a visiting congressional delegation last week that the United States is at least two years away from adequately training a viable Iraqi military but that it is no longer reasonable to consider boosting U.S. troops already strained by the two-year operation, said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.).

[Supersedeas]

1. same Repub on that delegation who claimed troop morale was rosy

[yorkiemommie1]

2. Happy Talk, keep talkin' happy talk

Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do.
You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?

rodgers/hammersteing-south pacific

chatterchatterchatter from the neocon nuts in the WH.

[Roland99]

3. Many people are getting sick and tired of the same ol' soundbites.

The Propagandist didn't even want to have the elections that soon. That's why Jay Garner got the heave-ho. Eventually, he succumbed to pressure from the Iraqis who were clamoring for elections. It's obvious the WH wanted more time to ensconce their puppets to be sure the raping of Iraq was completed according to plan. Only a big problem arose in that they failed to plan for a post-war Iraq and ignored almost every warning of a prolonged resistance.

[Cha]

4. They mean bush and cheney...

LIE!

[wellst0nev0ter]

21. SHHH! Don't Tell The Washington Post That

They've restricted their readership to Bushco a long time ago, remember?

[FloridaPat]

5. 4 years and probably $600 billion to train a military and police force

they had before * invaded and fired everyone? How much of our armed forces will be left by then? you can bet the desertions will go up every month.

[Daphne08]

16. So much money that we must borrow from countries

who do NOT have our best interests at heart. :mad:

Where is my country?

[ninkasi]

6. Ok, here's what I think...

From the first paragraph...

"President Bush's portrayal of a wilting insurgency in Iraq at a time of escalating violence and insecurity throughout the country is reviving the debate over the administration's Iraq strategy and the accuracy of its upbeat claims."

I think we're light years ahead of debating their so-called strategy, which was none, and they've never been accurate about anything before so that takes care of their claims.

Instead, we need to be debating and discussing how to get Smirk impeached, along that Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, and the rest of them. They are all clearly insane or criminal or both. It is beyond belief that our once great country is permitting a sociopath, dry drunk, delusional man ruin us.

Every day when I wake up, I try to make myself believe that the last 4 1/2 years have been a nightmare, and that our country isn't spinning out of control, and into a black hole hell of neocon creation. Alas, it is real, and I find myself in a living, waking nightmare.

I thought that the last presidential election might...just might...be won by the Kerry. It probably was. Regardless, the Chimp squats in the American People's White House, and the majority of us are being ground under the boot of the brown shirts on the neocons.

America will either wake up, and hold the press accountable to doing what they are supposed to do, which is questioning, investigating, and reporting actual news, and our Democratic leaders will grow spines and oppose the Boltons, the tax gifts to the wealthy, and more war, or we will go the way of all of the rest of the empires, toppled from within by the greed and corruption of the few.

I try to retain my optimism, but unless we hold those in power accountable, we will no longer be a country we recognize, or wish to live in.

[KoKo]

24. I agree with you, and think many here feel the same.

"America will either wake up, and hold the press accountable to doing what they are supposed to do, which is questioning, investigating, and reporting actual news, and our Democratic leaders will grow spines and oppose the Boltons, the tax gifts to the wealthy, and more war, or we will go the way of all of the rest of the empires, toppled from within by the greed and corruption of the few.

[gate of the sun]

7. It's hard to debate

someone's optimism, you can debate it's premise but not the action

[AlCzervik]

8. well his rosy outlook is just more of his "Disassembling"

you know according to him thats "Another word for lie" Seriously a man of his position doesn't even know the word is dissemble so can we really expect anything better out of him?

[grytpype]

9. Translation: Bush Suspected to be Nuts

[ogradda]

10. Stark raving loony.

I just can't decide if he says this shit 'cause he's dumber than a pet rock or if he's just so arrogant he thinks we can't do anything about it. Or a combination thereof.

[Wright Patman]

11. Not all Christians,

but the anti-intellectual Christians led by the Southern Baptist Convention, which had its origins in its antebellum championing of the institution of slavery, are to blame for the never-ending continuation of our "faith-based foreign policy."

Electoral fraud aside, I live among these unthinking masses and I know they voted in lockstep in overwhelming numbers for "the man of God" in the White House.

[Pirate Smile]

12. liars

"It is not unusual for a president to put the most positive spin possible on U.S. policy, especially during a time of armed conflict when public support is crucial. But the administration's assertions about Iraq have been a source of controversy since the earliest days of the operation, from the insistence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to Cheney's claim of links between Iraq and al Qaeda to the rosy forecasts about how welcome U.S. troops would be.

A poll conducted last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that only 37 percent of those surveyed approved of Bush's Iraq policy, while the number of people telling pollsters the war was not worth the cost has been rising in recent months."

[understandinglife]

13. "It's dangerous when U.S. officials start to believe their own propaganda,

So very true.

We have all the evidence of mendacity and illegal war-making we need to indict and prosecute Bush, Blair and every other neoconster scum-bag on the planet having any involvement in the Bush's illegal war on Iraq and all the torture and other atrocities that have been committed since August 2002.

Peace.



Emad Hajjaj, Al-Ghad Newspaper, Amman, Jordan

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq, and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."

[Nothing Without Hope]

14. Must-read op/ed on Bush's crazy dissociation from reality:

This article was the subject of a Greatest Thread at DU but I don't have that link handy. Here's the direct link and an excerpt for this amazing op/ed. The language is so much more hard-hitting that most of what we have seen.

Here is the author's email address - [e-mail]

Please consider thanking Mark Morford for telling he truth so powerfully in this article. And do read the entire article.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/06/03/notes060305.DTL&nl=fix

Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child

What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 3, 2005

(snip - I'm skipping over wonderful stuff here)

The U.S. still behaves, when all is said and done, like one of those scared wild monkeys, clinging desperately to a shiny object despite the trap closing in all around us, unable to let go of this old, silly, faux-cowboy mentality of boom boom kill kill God is your daddy now sit down and shut up.

What causes the downfall of empires? What causes the implosion of leadership, the slide of great nations into the deep muck of recession and war and mediocrity and numb irrelevance? That's easy. Stagnation. Refusal to change. Refusal to adapt, to progress. Refusal to grow the hell up, to take responsibility for our shortcomings and failures, as well as our successes.

Indeed, George W. Bush would make a great small-town mayor, somewhere deep in a dusty, forgotten part of Texas. His still-appalling inability to speak with any depth or resonance, coupled with his brand of personable, aww-shucks, none-too-bright simpleton worldview is perfect for some cute, redneck, tiny burg. It really is.

But for a major world power caught in the throes of a desperate need to change and grow and evolve, he is, of course, imminent death, leading us deeper into a regressive ideological tar pit from which we may never emerge.

[oasis]

15. Morford is pulling no punches. great stuff.

[leftchick]

18. Now That....

Is a Masterpiece of work!!! I was thinking these exact thoughts on my walk yesterday. I had read an article last week about bush's "doggedness" like it was a good thing! It was appalling. ack!
This is the perfect antidote.

Thank you for posting it...

~snip~

But here he is, instead, stuck like a pinned bug in the Rose Garden, struggling to answer tricky, multisyllabic questions from the godforsaken press. Go ahead, read the Q&A, linked above. It's sort of staggering. It's also very impressive, in a soul-stabbing, nauseating way.

Bush is, to be sure and in a word, unyielding. Determined. Immovable. Also, deeply confused. Myopic as hell. Frighteningly narrow minded. Weirdly random. Childish in a way that would make any good parent seriously question whether it might be time to get their child some Ritalin and an emetic.

Unlike you or me or any human anywhere who happens to be in possession of humility or subtlety of mind, Bush, to this day, admits zero mistakes. He refuses help, rejects suggestions that everything is not dandy and swell. He is confounded by questions that dare suggest he might be somewhat inept, or failing. And he absolutely insists that America exists in some sort of bizarre utopian vacuum, isolated and virtuous and towering like a mad hobbled king over our enemies and allies alike.

He is, in other words, our downfall.

[Nothing Without Hope]

19. Please consider emailing him your thanks for daring to write it

It's encouraging that it was published at all, even in a relatively progressive paper. The ban against anything but smarmy praise for Our Leader has been both sickening and dangerous.

[cornermouse]

17. We "create our own reality". Remember?

[Hobarticus]

20. He's a BUSH...he's made a living by pigeon-shit management

Flies in, creates a shitstorm, then flits away to leave subordinates to clean up his mess.

If it's a success, he'll bask in the glory. If it flops, he'll backpedal away.

He doesn't have an opinion or concern becasue he doesn't NEED one.

[MadisonProgressive]

22. Keep moving... nothing to see here!

[KoKo]

25. No....it's actually a very good article. Try to read it all.

:shrug:

[MadisonProgressive]

27. Sorry, you misunderstood - I was being facetious

Just parroting the Bushco line...:spank:

[KoKo]

23. "It's dangerous when US officials start to believe...own propaganda,.."

Execellent article, thanks for posting!


Another quote from the article:

"It's dangerous when U.S. officials start to believe their own propaganda," said David L. Phillips, a former State Department consultant who worked on Iraq planning but quit in frustration in 2003 and has written a book called "Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco." "I have no doubt that they genuinely think that Iraq is a smashing success and a milestone in their forward freedom strategy. But if you ask Iraqis, they have a different opinion."

Phillips added that U.S. officials keep pointing to landmarks such as the January elections as turning points but "at no point have any of these milestones proven to be breakthroughs."

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

26. Capt Smith (of the Titanic) says.... Ice? No, that's the light

at the end of the tunnel you see there.