London Times: Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator?
Andrew Sullivan
The news was buried in a New York Times story last week but it confirmed what others in the Washington chattering classes have been observing lately.
The context is that the White House has been inviting outsiders in to the Oval Office to discuss strategy in Iraq. The new chief of staff Josh Bolten has apparently been trying to pierce the intellectual cocoon in which the president comfortably resides. Bush family consigliere James Baker has already been asked to rescue the president’s failed Iraq policy.
But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert” attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”...
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This conservative caucus never liked the neocon argument for removing Saddam. They didn’t like nation building and didn’t believe that Iraqis were capable of democracy. They wanted to remove a WMD threat but, most of all, they wanted to strike terror into the heart of the enemy by showing what US military might could do.
Depose Saddam, remove the weapons, install a client dictator and leave as much rubble behind: that was the game plan. It would deter the Iranians and leave a light military footprint....If the Republicans are to recover by November 2008, let alone November 2006, they have to get Iraq behind them. They have to show progress or provide some credible strategy for victory that is not simply more of the gruelling same....Before too long a compliant US-backed dictator may not seem like such a bad option in Mesopotamia. And I feel Rumsfeld will be telling himself he knew it all along.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2320091,00.html