After Rumsfeld: Bid to Reshape the Brain Trust

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/world/middleeast/10policy.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1163151148-GgzfAnW5XRJJqwGagBGCYQ&pagewanted=print


November 10, 2006
After Rumsfeld: Bid to Reshape the Brain Trust
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s choice to become defense secretary, has sharply criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war and has made it clear that he would seek advice from moderate Republicans who have been largely frozen out of the White House, according to administration officials and Mr. Gates’s close associates.

The administration officials said that Mr. Bush was aware of Mr. Gates’s critique of current policy and understood that Mr. Gates planned to clear the “E Ring” of the Pentagon, where many of Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s senior political appointees have plotted Iraq strategy.

Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said Thursday afternoon that Mr. Bush regarded his choice of Mr. Gates as “a terrific opportunity” to rethink Iraq.

In doing so, Mr. Gates will be drawing on his experience and contacts from the administration of Mr. Bush’s father, including the former security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. “Gates’s world is Brent Scowcroft and Baker and a whole bunch of people who felt the door had been slammed in their face,” one former official who has discussed Iraq at length with Mr. Gates said Thursday. “The door is about to reopen.”

A close friend of Mr. Gates’s described him as having been “clearly distraught over the incompetence of how the Iraq operation had been run.” The friend said Mr. Gates had returned from a recent visit to Baghdad expressing disbelief that Mr. Rumsfeld, whom Mr. Bush ousted Wednesday, had not responded more quickly to the rapid deterioration of security and that the president had not acted sooner to overhaul the management of the war.

[lapfog_1]

1. At this point, its just re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic

There is no way to rescue our "mission" (whatever it was) in Iraq. We don't have the troops and material to send and we ain't getting any from our "allies" (how much DID Tonga contribute, anyway). We can't train their troops because most of them are from some militia group or death squad or other... they show up to get a new gun and some ammo and to get paid for a month or two, then they split and go back to shooting each other and us. We can't rebuild anything because the contractors stole all the money and are now getting out because we can't protect them anywhere but the green zone. Our troops go out on patrol and do their best, but we are getting picked off 3 or 4 every day. The only potential solutions (that lead to some sort of "victory") would be to put 400,000 troops there, but it's too late for that. So... what to do?

Try to negotiate a settlement with all of the factions... or at least enough that the militias can control their own "sectors"... but that's doomed too, it would be an effective partition... and any such partition is going to lead to genocide and civil war, with us in the middle.

We could beg Syria and Iran and Jordan to come in and replace us... but that leads to civil war and partition even faster (and a Turkish assault on the Kurds).

Or we can just leave and hope things work out. But they won't. And we will be blamed. Still, it's the best option. Only there isn't any "victory" here only "cut and run" and Bush won't go for it.

And even if we leave, that doesn't mean the war has ended for us... we will have to leave 100,000 plus army in Kuwait or Qatar or somewhere AND we need to put 150,000 into Afghanistan or we risk losing it too. And losing it is much more serious than losing Iraq, because if we lose Afghanistan, we will lose Pakistan. And then the terrorists (the real ones) will have missiles with nukes. Much better than Dear Leader Kim.

Crap they f'd this up good. Thank you Mr. Bush. You could have just left Saddam alone and put 200,000 into Afghanistan, rounded up the Taliban and arrested Bin Laden. Nobody on the planet, not even the Iranians, would have objected... in fact, everyone would have been cheering us on. Then we could have installed Karzi and built the Unocal pipeline and all that. And Saddam would still be circle jerking in his palaces in Baghdad, a threat to no one but the occasional hapless Iraqi that Saddam chooses to torture (who I do feel sad for, but really, this alternative is much much worse for them, plus it's not like they couldn't plot a revolution and killed the guy themselves).

FU Shrubya. What a fool you have been. How much more dangerous the world is going to be because of you.
I wanted to believe that you had good intentions, but your last few stump speeches, where you admitted that this was all about Iraqi oil, gave you away. And that's the shame of it. Four hundred billion dollars, spent on renewable energy development here or on (god help us) extracting oil from Canadian tar sands or even US oil shale processing would have gotten us just as much energy as we could have possibly hoped to get from Iraq.
Possibly a *lot* more. But that's not the mindset of your partners in crime, Cheney, Condi... no, they are oil people, and traditionalists at oil as well (only the light sweet crude will do). So we got f'cked.

[Amonester]

2. But...but...but... little georgie, the lying king, loves all wars...

especially those in which he can be an AWOL deserter in, and have poppy's 'relations' fix the dirty personal paperworks using grandpoppy's profits illegally acquired from the fascists' concentration camps...

/sarcasm not

[saigon68]

5. ADIOS TO THE THUG AND WAR CRIMINAL

[Amonester]

6. House Judiciary Committee CHAIRMAN John Conyers!! :)))))

:woohoo: :bounce: :applause: :patriot: :pals: :thumbsup:

Conyers - Sheehan Phone Call :loveya:
http://www.johnconyers.com/node/32

[happyslug]

7. When in doubt use a variation of a Classic Cartoon on Politics

In this case the "Dropping the Pilot" Cartoon.


http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=9072
http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/art-14746

Other Bismark Cartoons:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/vintage/directory/b/bismarck.asp

Remember Bismark's Famous Comment made around 1898, "Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great; the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this" ― a prophecy fulfilled almost to the month."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismarck

[saigon68]

10. WOW !!!!! GOOD FIND

Excellent :-) :-)
I learn something new here every day.

[ixion]

3. "seek advice from moderate Republicans"...

how about talking to people on the basis of whether or not they know what they hell they're talking about, rather than on political affiliation, hmmmm? :eyes:

[Xipe Totec]

4. Reshape Brain Trust? Here is Step #1

[tabasco]

8. More like the lack-of-brains trust !

RUMMY WAS A DUMMY !

[rocktivity]

9. the words bush, brain and trust don't belong in the same universe

never mind the same sentence!

:headbang:
rocknation