NYT frontpage: U.S. Aide in Iraq in Urgent Talks at White House

[DeepModem Mom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/12/politics/12PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=

L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, made a hurried return to Washington on Tuesday as Bush administration officials held an urgent round of meetings to discuss ways of speeding up the transfer of power to Iraqis.

The meetings reflected dissatisfaction with the pace of progress in Iraq and a growing conviction that Mr. Bremer must abandon his methodical plan to move gradually toward the election of an Iraqi government over a year or two, officials said.

As President Bush gave a Veterans Day speech vowing to stabilize Iraq, officials including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, huddled with Mr. Bremer in the White House Situation Room to plot ways of speeding the transfer of sovereignty.


The White House meeting came as the top American military commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, spoke of a "turning point" in the conflict.

General Sanchez outlined a new get-tough approach to combat operations in areas north and west of Baghdad, strongholds for loyalists of Saddam Hussein. Dispensing with euphemisms favored by many officials in the Bush administration in recent months, he described what 130,000 American troops were facing as a "war."


Speaking to reporters outside a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manchester, N.H., Wesley K. Clark, the retired general who is one of the nine candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, said the administration did not have an appropriate plan for how to get Iraq back on its feet after the end of major combat operations. "It's the obligation of any commander to have a success plan and know how to make it work," he said.

[Skidmore]

1. CYA time...

and there is a lot of butt to cover...

It must suck to have a job in this regime. Then again, to have a job in this regime you need to be willing to check your scruples in at the door when you punch the time clock.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. LOL -- a lot to cover! n/t

[leftchick]

3. take note of just who huddled with bremer....

chimpass was not at the pow-wow!

[dbt]

4. And notice how the NYT

seems to have, at last, caught on to the misdirection of this misadministration? Any time Chimpy is out in public, something desperate is going on in private.

Nice going, Times. Where the fuck were you three years ago?

:argh:
dbt

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Main reason I excerpted that part --

W's probably never really "at the pow-wow" -- he makes the speeches, such as they are.

[Don_G]

7. He'll Learn Soon Enough

Dimbo and Bramer are cousins.

[Beetwasher]

9. He Would Have Been A Distraction

It's like having your kid at the office, constantly running around, touching things they're not supposed to etc. You can't get any real work done.

[bushisanidiot]

10. AWOL Too Busy To Play War Games, He's CAMPAIGNING

and posing for his daily photo ops.

[BigBigBear]

6. That sound they hear

is an approaching election.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. Well, now, isn't that just like the whole pattern of this bunch.

Whistleass goes out and gives a speech about how much he's gonna support this, that, or the other thing -- education, environmental protection, democracy in Iraq -- and meantime the real powers that shouldn't be are tearing that very thing to pieces. They defund, gut, axe, or bomb EVERYTHING.

Is Chicago next?


Tansy Gold, who used to live in Chicago and has lots of great memories and just picked that particular city at random but figures the next target of the chimpanazis could be Detroit or Philadelphia or New York or Atlanta or . . . Phoenix . . .



edited for stupid typo

[Cocoa]

11. it's all going to be about the election

politics will be the overriding factor, military will be secondary.

[janx]

12. Bush never does anything that isn't political.

Every breath he takes and every syllable he utters is for politics.

Dead bodies don't matter.

Something is going on over there...Bremer just said on CNN that a "low intensity conflict" is taking place in Iraq, and we've heard cryptic mention in the news about large bombs being dropped over there.