The U.S. military is weighing new directions in Iraq, including an even bigger troop buildup if President Bush thinks his “surge” strategy needs a further boost, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace revealed that he and the chiefs of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force are developing their own assessment of the situation in Iraq, to be presented to Bush in September. That will be separate from the highly anticipated report to Congress that month by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander for Iraq.
The Joint Chiefs are considering a range of actions, including another troop buildup, Pace said without making any predictions. He called it prudent planning to enable the services to be ready for Bush’s decision.
The military must “be prepared for whatever it’s going to look like two months from now,” Pace said in an interview with two reporters traveling with him to Iraq from Washington.
“That way, if we need to plus up or come down” in numbers of troops in Iraq, the details will have been studied, he said.
“That way, if we need to plus up or come down”
Say what? Is General Pace also an Episcopal senior priest or bishop in disguise?
This is a non starter. Bush is a lame duck with a very hostile Congress to deal with. Its not gonna happen. Not a chance. Much as the Dems would like to force an immediate withdrawal that is not gonna happen either. They don’t have a veto-proof majority. But they can and I believe will block funds for any further military adventurism over there.
#1
Typical military jargon. Though “plus up or draw down” would be more typical. At least from an Army perspective. Please don’t insult General Pace by comparing him to a TEC charlatan (I assume you were referring to a reappraiser priest or bishop!).
The surge should have come earlier. Maybe four years earlier?
LibraryJim,
Or maybe two years ago we should have taken out Iran’s one and only oil refinery with the warning: more to follow if you keep sending bombs and people into Iraq. Would have, should have is always easy from the sidelines …
Maryland Brian
MD Brian,
Such an action would anger the Iraqi Shi’ites who invited the Iranians in. The Sunni provinces are quite enough for our military to handle at this point.
MD Brian,
Yes, hindsight IS 20/20.
it would have been wonderful to have folks other than the Bush Regime at the leadership during this critical time in the war with radical Islam – the fool’s errand in Iraq has set us back years
Bob,
Oh please. Where else would you like to have fought radical Islam? Yes, Iraq is functioning like a magnet for them. You’d rather we leave them alone? There’s a reason Congress’ approval rating is half of Bush’s. The American people aren’t that stupid. They wish the war was over, but they also know that running away and leaving the place to Iran or radical Islam is hardly the answer.
I guess maybe, from your perspective, it would have made sense to have just left the dictator in place. He would have just gassed all of them and be done with it.
MD Brian
Brian, how about we start with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where radical Islam has gained in prominence during the Bush Regime’s mis-management of Iraq.
MD Brian,
If Iraq tips over into “radical Islam,” it will be because the US deposed a largely secular Sunni regime in favor of a fundamentalist, Iranian-allied Shi’ite regime.
To put it another way, what Iraq needs right now is a largely secular Sunni dictator to keep a lid on Shi’ite fundamentalism, to stop Kurdish secession that is very troubling to Turkey, a valuable US ally, and to counter Iranian meddling. Unfortunately, they executed the best man for the job.
Reactionary,
Well, you’ve certainly picked a good name … and I appreciate your honesty. You prefer dictatorships over democratic republics. A little frightening, but at least honest.
BTW, if Iraq tips over into radical Islam it will happen because the Congress will demand we abandon those who took the risk of attempting a freely elected government in a part of the world that hasn’t experienced a whole lot it.
MD Brian
MD Brian, if Iraq tips back to radical Islam, the pathetic planning & execution of the Bush Regime will be to blame. They had no plan when they entered, they have no plan now – they have consistently gone their own way, so the blame is theirs & theirs alone.
Brian,
If Iraq has a democratically elected government, then its shift to Shi’ite fundamentalism is simply a matter of majority rule. If, in fact, the “democratically elected government” would be promptly overthrown once we left, then I question whether that government was, in fact, democratically elected.
There are many brutal governments in this world. Feel free to fight them on your own dime.
Bob,
No plan survives contact with the enemy. That’s a fairly old, but useful understanding of what’s going on in Iraq these days. Did anyone anticipate Iran’s involvement? Insurgencies, in order to thrive MUST have external support.
BTW, I appreciate your willingness to debate the merits of the problem, but when either you or mr. reactionary use patronizing terms like “regime” or question the risk the average Iraq has taken and continues to take (their police and armed forces are paying a much higher price than our own people), I have to question the depth of your compassion toward your fellow human beings.
MD Brian
Iran’s involvement ? According to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers, about 45% of all foreign militants “targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia.” Only 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa.
I use the term regime, just as this site uses re-asserters & re-appraisers to describe women & men of good character who struggle to follow God in a Jesus way. The term regime is used to describe any government who changed their countries’ systems radically in a relatively recent window of time. In my POV, and that of countless historians & legal experts, capture what Mr. Cheney & Mr. Bush, with their neo-con experiemnts, have accomplished.
As to the risk the average Iraq has taken and continues to take – I admire this a great deal. Where have I ever questioned this ? Or are you using a trademark Bill O-Reilly technique – what do you hate your country ?
MD Brian,
“Regime” is a political science term of art. Don’t get all squishy on me.
Again, there are people fighting and dying all over the world. The US government has no mandate to relieve the suffering of non-citizens on the other side of the Earth. For that matter, the US cannot even defend its own territorial integrity, so pardon me if I am skeptical of the US mission in an Islamic Arabic region on the other side of the globe.
What would have worked? How about diplomacy? Remember Kahtami had offered the US a deal. We refused, at which point he lost the election in Iran, and we now have more radicalism. The only way to mitigate your ememies is to negotiate with them, and let them take care of their own extremists. The good vs evil world view invites us only into a world of perpetual war. Which is exactly what Jesus reminds us of, perpetually.
Amazing how easily we discard Jesus when we are at war. n the end, we forget that war creates innocent victims, because we choose to see them as threats. As did everyone see Jesus, so they nailed him to a cross.
Diplomacy? Like 17 ignored U.N. resolutions? Or bribing U.N. officials in the food for oil program scandal?
What would diplomacy have done after 9/11 that hadn’t been accomplished in the 12 years previously?
Heh – I’m not sure what’s been accomplished in the previous 6 years. A few hundred thousand Iraqi deaths, lots of hatred in the Islamic world, more terrorism in Europe, and a war that is incredibly costly. If you think that the previous 12 were better than the previous 6, then, alright. I don’t know how to evaluate the claim, but plenty of Iraqis are these days wondering if they got the wrong end of the deal. Lets just say, our war has worked just as well as our diplomacy, and the economic cost has been far greater. Just in dollars, if you want criteria. I don’t think we would agree on the criteria, but if you have some, I’d like to learn.
I’d much prefer a few broken resolutions, some bribery – to the number of lives lost and the economic cost of the war. We could have cured a few diseases, offered clean drinking water to poor children in Africa, created quality universal health care in this country instead. This is familiar ground, however. Diplomacy doesn’t just mean with Iraq, but with all the neighbors, the careful cultivation of friends and allies, and the mitigation of enemies.
After 9/11 we had an opportunity which we spent – horribly. Given what we’ve lost since then, and the now invitation to a perpetual war, I think diplomacy, with its errors and failures, is far preferable to dreaming for the perfect end you hope that war brings.
The number of lives lost under Saddam’s genocide policies makes the losses of Iraqis (not in the hundreds of thousands, by the way, although if you can provide proof from a credible source, I will accept that) from the war and the following current military action pale in comparison.
We might disagree on what a credible source is. The Johns Hopkins School of Public health, for example, is credible in my book.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1842559.ece
From the article:
[i]The study, published by The Lancet, was based on a survey of 1,849 households at 47 random locations in Iraq this summer. A team of Iraqi doctors asked heads of households how many members had lost their lives in the year before the invasion in March 2003 and then in the three subsequent years.[/i]
So how accurate is this? How credible? I don’t trust it, myself.
The [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html] Washington Post[/url] evidentally doubts it too:
[i]”The methods that they used are certainly prone to inflation due to overcounting,” said Marc E. Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights Watch, which investigated the number of civilian deaths that occurred during the invasion. “These numbers seem to be inflated.”
The paper was “extensively peer-reviewed, revised, edited” and rushed into print “because of its importance to the evolving security situation in Iraq”, Richard Horton, the journal’s editor, wrote in an accompanying editorial.
But Garlasco of Human Rights Watch said it is extremely difficult to estimate civilian casualties, especially based on relatively small numbers. “I certainly think that 100,000 is a reach,” Garlasco said.
[/i]
A [url=http://www.iraqbodycount.net/] closer figure[/url] may be between 62,000 and 75,000. Still a lot, but nowhere near the ‘survey’ numbers.