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Saturday, December 9. 2006
The Intervention
“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no
path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved.”
Where to start, where to end with this Iraq Study Group Report. No path that can guarantee success. The little bit of optimism, reflected in phrases like “… the prospects can be improved,” offers little consolation in this conflagration.
The report is 142 pages long, less than 100 pages devoted to the assessment of Iraq and the 79 parts of the solution that everyone on the commission says must be enacted in concert with each other to offer any chance of success.
Already the president has vetoed two key elements of the plan, engaging in diplomacy with Iran
and Syria and setting a timetable to withdraw all troops by January, 2008. In other words, the commission’s recommendations are all but dead. In his press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the president vowed to stay the course — his course — in Iraq to achieve victory.
According to the report, the president’s vision of “victory:” a peaceful, democratic Iraq that is an ally with the U.S. in the fight against terrorism is unattainable. James Baker III, the co-chairman of the ISG, has said he would be satisfied if the region were once again stable, no mention of any Jeffersonian-style democracies.
“The challenges in Iraq are complex. Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. It is fed by a Sunni Arab insurgency, Shiite militias and death squads, al Qaeda, and widespread criminality. Sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability.”
The report pulls no punches, except that it sought, like the 9/11 commission, to avoid placing blame on any individuals or groups for this debacle, was only interested in “the way forward,” not in how we got into this quagmire. It doesn’t address the “cherry-picking” of intelligence to justify the war or the outing of a covert CIA operative to silence an administration critic. All of that has been left for someone else to investigate.
With the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress, we can only hope the hearings they promise will hold those who promoted and started this catastrophe to account for their actions.
While Iraq was burning, the Mainstream media was treating Condoleeza Rice and Karl Rove like rock stars, the vice president as the kindly old master guiding the impressionable young apprentice.
While the Right was rolling out “issues” like school prayer and abortion, same-sex marriage and flag-burning in time to influence the 2004 presidential elections, Iraq was sinking deeper into the black hole it has become today, in no small part because the government “fixed” the information coming from the theater.
They kept telling us we were “winning” in Iraq and the American people would see that if the news media would report the “good” news coming from Iraq, as well as the violence and mayhem; despite the fact that the “good” news was nearly non-existent, a small fraction of the money destined for reconstruction actually used for that purpose, until, in October of this year, we find out that Halliburton subsidiaries, having enriched themselves to the tune of billions of dollars, are pulling out of Iraq without having completed the work for which they were given our tax dollars.
Despite the grim and serious reality of that fleecing of America, it pales in comparison to an assessment from the ISG Report:
“U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals.”
The Bush Administration lied to us on the extent of the violence in Iraq. The ISG points to one day in particular in which 93 acts of violence was reported, as if that number wasn’t high enough, but the actual number of was over 1,100. In one day!
While the president had the majority of us running around displaying the worst of our collective personality — waving flags and chanting “We’re Number One!” — to rally votes to win an election, the situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, the level of violence escalating, the U.S. troops either killed or severely maimed mounting with each passing day. Just a week ago 11 U.S. service personnel were killed in one day.
In a poll of 415 historians conducted by the History News Network, 81% of the historians considered the Bush Administration to be one of the worst in U.S. history, in the same league as Harding, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Of that 81%, 12% said, flat out, Bush was the worst president in our history. I guess I was being kind when I said he was the worst in my lifetime.
The president said that later this month he would announce a new policy for Iraq. If his current rhetoric is any indication, it will be a continuation of his current policy, which everyone with knowledge of the situation — including two who helped start this fiasco (Adelman and Perle) — says isn’t working and will not work.
It appears his daddy’s intervention was to no avail. When the 2008 presidential election season rolls around in about 13 months, the war in Iraq will still be front and center. Maybe by then the Democrat-controlled Congress will have the oversight hearings — that have so far been absent from Congress — well under way.
This is the worst crisis our nation has ever experienced, and it was one our president instigated. As the Iraq Study Group pointed out, it has consequences we will face long after my generation departs this world.
path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved.”
The Iraq Study Group Report
Number One on Amazon.com
Number One on Amazon.com
The report is 142 pages long, less than 100 pages devoted to the assessment of Iraq and the 79 parts of the solution that everyone on the commission says must be enacted in concert with each other to offer any chance of success.
Already the president has vetoed two key elements of the plan, engaging in diplomacy with Iran
Prime Minister Tony Blair
and President Bush
and President Bush
According to the report, the president’s vision of “victory:” a peaceful, democratic Iraq that is an ally with the U.S. in the fight against terrorism is unattainable. James Baker III, the co-chairman of the ISG, has said he would be satisfied if the region were once again stable, no mention of any Jeffersonian-style democracies.
“The challenges in Iraq are complex. Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. It is fed by a Sunni Arab insurgency, Shiite militias and death squads, al Qaeda, and widespread criminality. Sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability.”
The report pulls no punches, except that it sought, like the 9/11 commission, to avoid placing blame on any individuals or groups for this debacle, was only interested in “the way forward,” not in how we got into this quagmire. It doesn’t address the “cherry-picking” of intelligence to justify the war or the outing of a covert CIA operative to silence an administration critic. All of that has been left for someone else to investigate.
With the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress, we can only hope the hearings they promise will hold those who promoted and started this catastrophe to account for their actions.
Condoleeza Rice and Karl Rove
While the Right was rolling out “issues” like school prayer and abortion, same-sex marriage and flag-burning in time to influence the 2004 presidential elections, Iraq was sinking deeper into the black hole it has become today, in no small part because the government “fixed” the information coming from the theater.
They kept telling us we were “winning” in Iraq and the American people would see that if the news media would report the “good” news coming from Iraq, as well as the violence and mayhem; despite the fact that the “good” news was nearly non-existent, a small fraction of the money destined for reconstruction actually used for that purpose, until, in October of this year, we find out that Halliburton subsidiaries, having enriched themselves to the tune of billions of dollars, are pulling out of Iraq without having completed the work for which they were given our tax dollars.
Despite the grim and serious reality of that fleecing of America, it pales in comparison to an assessment from the ISG Report:
“U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration’s policy goals.”
The Bush Administration lied to us on the extent of the violence in Iraq. The ISG points to one day in particular in which 93 acts of violence was reported, as if that number wasn’t high enough, but the actual number of was over 1,100. In one day!
While the president had the majority of us running around displaying the worst of our collective personality — waving flags and chanting “We’re Number One!” — to rally votes to win an election, the situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate, the level of violence escalating, the U.S. troops either killed or severely maimed mounting with each passing day. Just a week ago 11 U.S. service personnel were killed in one day.
In a poll of 415 historians conducted by the History News Network, 81% of the historians considered the Bush Administration to be one of the worst in U.S. history, in the same league as Harding, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. Of that 81%, 12% said, flat out, Bush was the worst president in our history. I guess I was being kind when I said he was the worst in my lifetime.
The president said that later this month he would announce a new policy for Iraq. If his current rhetoric is any indication, it will be a continuation of his current policy, which everyone with knowledge of the situation — including two who helped start this fiasco (Adelman and Perle) — says isn’t working and will not work.
Lee Hamilton and James A. Baker III
co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group
co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group
This is the worst crisis our nation has ever experienced, and it was one our president instigated. As the Iraq Study Group pointed out, it has consequences we will face long after my generation departs this world.
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