Sorry, success is not possible. Falluja was another moronic move in a moronic policy that will not work.

Tom

You correctly call the Cheney/Bush cabal unrepentant, cynical liars. Then you say that you hope they "succeed" -- at what you do not say. You need to think things through a little more and resolve the inherent conflict.

The Democratic Congress needs to do three things immediately upon assuming power in 2007: (1) Fund the removal of America's military from the territory and airspace of "sovereign" Iraq but no other miltary expenditures until the completion of that removal; (2) revoke the asinine and no-longer (if ever) relevant "authorization" for the use of "force" aginst Iraq; and (3) punish the perpetrators of the illegal and needless invasion and occupation of Iraq. Simple, mid-nineteen seventies political technology will do nicely. Just hope for no more Gerald Fords to come along and pre-emptively pardon the perps -- although how one pardons a person presumed innocent until convicted of a crime completely escapes me.

Your points regarding the change in strategy to support the Shiite over the Sunnis by attacking/decimating Falluja make a lot of sense in understanding how we have arrived at the present situation in Iraq. I don't think any kind of victory with such a strategy would be good for anyone, including the American people.

We have to begin acting in a balanced manner at home and abroad, talking with all sides, finding common ground and providing the resources to reach agreements that address the benefits of people on all sides. I know that is a foreign concept in today's real-politic, but that's what has to change. The strategy of committing war on a people- state - religion is what is failing. At this rate the escalation will never end and look who is driving the process - the military industrial complex aka Cheney.

You hit upon a point which has long bothered me. I think the power to pardon should be modified. A pardon should only be possible after a conviction in court or after pleading guilty to the charge.

I have heard that there is a legal opinion that accepting a pardon is considered an admission of guilt but I would like to see it made clear and unambiguous.

Any more wanton destruction in Iraq and mass killing of Iraqis at the hands of Coalition Forces will result in blowback that will dwarf the OBL blowback we experienced in 2001.  Killing more people will not bring peace, just more killing...

The Dems shouldn't try to defund the war; that leads only to getting tarred with the "you pulled the rug out from under our brave fighting men" brush.

What they should do is pass a new AUMF requiring a timed, phased withdrawal from Iraq, and authorizing force only for force protection. After they pass it, Bush will veto it, and they won't be able to override. But it will put every Republican in Congress on record - and mostly against withdrawal, of course.

Things in Iraq will keep getting worse. Sometime in the next two years, we're going to get our butts kicked out of the Green Zone. When that happens, the GOP Congresspersons who voted to stay in Iraq are going to look mighty stupid. And many of them will lose in 2008. It's not much of a penalty for the sin of having wreaked so much carnage on Iraq, but it's what we can do.

Well yes, exactly so. But I suspect they are rather more interested in playing with their new Wii's, ipods and assorted knick-knacks and thingamabobs. And the playoffs and Stupor Bowl are right around the corner...

Bread and Circuses - come one, come all.

UA

The most peculiar thing about this illegal war is how Bush has talked about human rights and human dignity and freedom.

Anyone with even a cursory understanding of war knows it creates a loss of dignity leads to murder, massacres, torture and other crimes against humanity. Benjamin Ferencz, Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor, has said the first crime is committed by those who start the war.

Nevertheless, living in a Red State Christian neighborhood, I will dodging the falling AK-47 bullets as local folks fire into the air to celebrate Saddam's execution. A lot of them still think it was 'worth it'.

> >What I recall was that Fallujah was in fact teeming with insurgents

Far be it from me to argue with an eyewitness like yourself. "But if there's evidence, I'd be interested in seeing it."

> > The problem is that once it was cleaned out, the military didn't stay with sufficient troops to keep it cleaned out

AH. So THAT was the problem! Insufficient troops, huh? Man, it's almost as if the government had ignored General Shinseki, or something...

Thursday on “Tucker”, hosted by Pat Buchanan, the political analyst Col. Jack Jacobs, Ret. said that if the soldiers who found Saddam had only rolled a grenade into the spider hole “as they are taught to do” that it would have saved a lot of trouble. He repeated it Friday.

The remark was made when talking about Saddam’s coming execution. It passed with no question or comment about using that tactic as standard practice. If questioned I would expect that the Colonel would explain that he would not expect a soldier to expose himself to needless risk in case an enemy combatant was in the hole with a weapon.

Hearing the colonels statement I was reminded of the excellent story by William Langewiesche in the November, 2006 issue of Vanity Fair called “Rules of Engagement“. I thought it received remarkably little attention so I am bringing it up now as we apparently are about to go with the “surge” in Baghdad. The story is about the engagement by Marines with Iraqis in Haditha that resulted in many dead and criminal charges being brought against some of the marines. The story talks about Faluza too and what happened there. The first paragraph, with my emphasis added, follows.

On November 19, 2005, in Haditha, during Kilo Company's third tour of duty in Iraq, a land mine planted by insurgents exploded beneath a Humvee, killing a 20-year-old Marine. What happened next—the slaughter of 24 Iraqi men, women, and children—was not entirely an aberration. These actions were rooted in the very conduct of the war.

I encourage everyone who has not done so to read the story.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/11/haditha200611

On September 16, 2003, James Carroll wrote in the Boston Globe:

"The catastrophe of Fallujah -- ten Iraqi policemen killed by U.S. forces, acting, as one Iraqi said, 'just like Saddam' -- can be the occasion of new recognitions."

Unfortunately for all concerned, no new recognitions took place. In fact, shortly after this killing of Iraqi policemen by U.S. forces, four cowboy mercenaries of the Blackwater carpetbagger corporation got the blowback and wound up as charcoal cinders hanging from a span of bridge. The local U.S. Marines then decided to "avenge" these "Americans," which in turn led to the Marines getting a bloody nose when they ran into more resistance to their vengeance than they anticipated. Then, as you say, Deputy Dubya Bush had to call off the dogs of war for a brief spell so he could get elected before letting the Marines do their V&R (Vengeance and Retribution) Op in earnest. As we all know now, the old Vietnam "destroy the village to save it" mentality prevailed and the Marines essentially depopulated and destroyed a city formerly the home of some 300,000 Iaqi (mostly Sunni) people. I think we need to remain very clear about just what (and who) started and escalated this whole tragedy and not let government Newspeak about "insurgents" blind us to the real motivations here. Anyway, I started writing a poem at the time and finally got around to finishing it early last year. Hence:

"Flowers for Fallujah"

As I've said in the past and keep saying
I have sat through this movie before.
Why, I even was cast as an extra
Before being shown the door.

And I've tried to remember those lessons
That I purchased with so much pain
And not see America do once more
What I now see it doing again.

As the siege of a city begins to take shape
And the killing in earnest begins
I remember those times when the darkness closed `round
And men started repenting their sins.

Now a President's dove in and broken his neck
Jumping head first into a dry pool
And with horrified onlookers gazing in dread
He continues to snarl, spit, and drool.

"I will never get run out of town," he exclaims
Having entered at no one's request.
And having been asked once politely to leave
He behaves like an ill-tempered guest.

"Since I broke it, I own it," he says of Iraq.
But Iraq's not some gift he can give.
It's a country with people who like to pretend
That they know best how they want to live.

See, our President thinks like a pottery shill
And supposes that broken means owned.
But the people he's broken don't like it that much
And suggest that he just go get stoned.

Like those freeloading days back in college
When cheering meant parties and dope.
And nothing but brain cells got wasted and killed
And a people could still keep their hope.

"But I will not feel doubt," he exclaims to himself
And his mirror reflects his resolve.
"I will stand firm," he says as his knees start to quake
And his "courage" begins to dissolve.

See, he'll never admit that he made a mistake
And change policy once it's gone bad.
He would rather be wrong and keep talking with "GAWD"
Than be right and go talk to his dad.

`Cause his dad ain't got strength like "the Lord," don't you know
And he only consults with the best
Like those voices at night that advise him to dream
And leave governing up to the rest.

And George Tenet told Dubya about the "slam dunk"
Which in basketball terms means "a cinch."
Like whenever the FBI measures a mile
And the CIA calls it an inch.

So those weapons we heard of that meant us such harm
Didn't really exist in the fog.
Just because he hung "vicious beast" signs on his gate
Doesn't mean that Saddam had a dog.

Yes, our spies sure know how to keep hidden
All the stuff that nobody should know
So they stamp it TOP SECRET and file it away
In a place where nobody can go.

Thus we keep seeing trees and not forests
And we keep seeing forests, not trees
While the young GI sprawls in the dust of Iraq
With his guts spilling over his knees

And the young GI dies when her tin car explodes
As she drives through a city in strife
Leaving only her unit and family to grieve
At the loss of another young life.

Still, the man in the White House he struts and he frets
With his hour on the stage nearly done.
To this idiot player the tale signifies
That the sound and the fury are one.

"We are here, `cause we're here, `cause we're here, `cause we're here,"
Goes the slogan from Vietnam days.
And we surely can't leave, because leaving would mean
That we'd found our way out of the maze.

Now, the Lord of all Love told young Dubya to smite,
So the boy smote Saddam on the head
But those ingrate Iraqis they smote Dubya back
And now thousands of GIs are dead.

The returns they diminish so quickly
When a billion or more you must pay
To destroy what the "bad guy" rebuilds in an hour
And makes use of the following day.

Like we learned in Vietnam - as some of us did,
How the debt into billions it runs
`Till the good folks at home have to give up their butter
Or else begin eating their guns.

Then the choices arise that no one wants to face
Because somebody's ox will get gored.
Politicians, you see, hate to give up their own
When they'd rather be looting your hoard.

So the tax cuts go draining the money away
`Till the last dollar's taken to flight.
Once again it's the rich ones who've started a war
And then run off to let the poor fight.

And Tom Ridge goes on flashing those color alerts
While the public works mowing the lawn.
"What, another attack of the `credible' type?
You mean `credulous,' don't you?" they yawn.

But the voters can rest in their comfort and ease
And continue like sheep in their flocks.
While the young GI dies in the dirt of Iraq
And comes home in a flag-covered box.

See, the "enemy" lives in that hell of a place
And, in fact, it is all that he owns
So he'll fight there and die there as long as he must
`Till the last flesh has left the last bones.

You can pound all the buildings to rubble.
You can kill all that can't run away.
You can kill and keep killing and then kill some more,
But the hunger for freedom will stay.

In America freedom means bondage.
In America fools run the show.
In America no one knows what the words mean
When the word-magic says, "stop" means "go."

And the Newspeak keeps pouring from out of the mouths
Of the spokesmen for nation and town.
Until sov'reign means slav'ry and choosing means chains
And swimming means freedom to drown.

So then keep them in darkness and feed them on shit
If you wish for your mushrooms to grow
And so shoveling shit's now the plan of the day
In America: last place to know.

But the Truth will come `round in the fullness of time
Like the rough slouching beast at the door.
Who keeps knocking and knocking and won't go away
`Till you've fed it your children, and more.

But the children don't matter, because as we know
The word "children" means "their kids" not ours.
So the "Draft" doesn't scare us because it means "them"
And not us -- so let's just tend our flowers.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2005

The pattern I detect with some here is that they starts out by taking everything the MSM reports as gospel truth. Not only that, but everything that this administration says they takes as gospel truth. So Fallujah was "teeming with insurgents", "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction",...etc...

My point is that in these times it behooves all of us to look at all calims with a skeptical eye. Don't just look at the assertion and the asserter in isolation. Look at the entire "theory" they are presenting. The entire "theory" that the Neocons presented to this country is not based on sound empirical evidence. It is based on wishful thinking. And administration officials themselves said as much. They are not part of the "reality based" community. Fine. We all get the point by now. It is time YOU get the point Brad.
We Expect Tony Snow to dish out bullshit but I hope we can all debate the issues here as part of a REALITY BASED project.
Shalom

I wonder if you'd be in favor of hearings first if you had a kid over there.

Jan Knaus

Instead of the standard partisan bickering and "HateBush" talk (which this site does a fair job of avoiding)this should be a day to let the Iraqis celebrate on behalf of Hussein's past victims and as well as though you may have been future victims of his tyranny.

My other blog on intelligence/security matters is
www.securitywatchtower.com and my site for documenting those who challenge the conventional wisdom on Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism is www.regimeofterror.com

"And how can he, or anyone in this Administration, hope for a good result in 2008 without a military victory by then?" - R. Hundt


Perhaps you toss this out blithely, but it seems to me that everything that has happened in Iraq, and indeed in similar conflicts preceeding it, have shown the futility of making war as a means to political ends. Isn't it clear that "military victory" is utterly outside the realm of possibility in Iraq?

No matter how many troops or how much firepower America brings to bear upon the poor Iraqis, we cannot succeed in forcing them to stop fighting. In fact the outcome of overwhelming military power facing a bedraggled improvising ragtag band of pissed off, nothing to lose men is and always will be stalemate, which to us is failure and to the defenders of their homeland is victory. Israel's recent incursion into Lebanon is a perfect illustration, if, God forbid, the Fallujah debacle escapes your understanding.

This is a structural situation, not subject to troop level or firepower adjustments, or new strategies for a way forward. No matter how many times he shouts it from the rampart walls, George Bush will never achieve victory in Iraq, and never could have no matter what strategy he employed. Victory is an idea that cannot accomodate the complexity of the situation in Iraq. The best we could hope for is a stable stalemate and an orderly withdrawl, but even that is difficult to imagine, especially as the ego-besotted fools like Bush and McCain look for ways to protect American pride rather than American lives and credibility in the world.

-Ted Bucklin

I am 70 years old and I have yet to celebrate someone's death.  I will not start now, nor will I accept that any day is a day for people to celebrate someone's death.  I believe it was John Donne who said, "Every man's death diminishes me.  Ask not for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for thee". 

Hoppy in Sacramento

One more thing.

It is striking to me the GW Bush goes around saying he's considering new strategies in Iraq, as if he had just begun to consider that maybe things aren't going so well and maybe it's time to whip out some new ideas.

I would have thought that a competent strategy (not to say that Bush has ever had anything like that, but perhaps his advisors "on the ground" could be accused of such, at least one would hope) would be constantly updated, including a number of contingency plans ready to implement depending on conditions, but with a full compliment of facts and figures, so that if conditions dictate a change, the commander in chief is fully apprised of options and ready to execute at once.

Is it not another sign of his utter incompetence and his complete failure as a leader that George Bush has to parade around looking pensive, wandering around his ranch followed by his pack of national security lap dogs (God was that a pathetic visual!), before he comes up with a plan?

A real "wartime" (his term, not mine) leader who recognizes the gravity of the life and death situation for which he is responsible, a leader who gives even a modicum of a damn about the troops, for example, doesn't dilly dally around deliberating over what his next move should be. Rather, that leader is so engaged and serious about achieving success that he has his contingencies lined up and ready to deploy, he is attending up to the moment to the reports of his experts and the counsel of his generals and he's ready to decide the next move, and the next and the next. He has an ongoing broad-spectrum set of analyses, not a bunch of high profile politically-oriented study groups presenting momentous opinions for him and the public to weigh and reject as needed.

Bush calls himself Commander in Chief, the Decider, and yet he acts like nothing so much as a little boy who couldn't command a bathtub squadron of rubber duckies. He's the decider who can't decide. A real leader makes informed decisions crisply and with authority, in a timely fashion.

When is this nation going to call an end to Bush's charade of leadership?

-Ted Bucklin

I don't have a kid over there, but I do have close friends. There was a possibility I might go there myself for some civilian infrastructure work.

Yes, I'd want to see hearings first. The process needs to be fixed so that the next macho president doesn't commit the United States without due reflection. LBJ is as guilty of this as GWB, but have we learned?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

The issue isn't violence but the amount of troops necessary to reduce the violence. If you use realtively too few troops compared to the size of the population your are encourage more violence. If you don't have enough troops not are you likely to be attacked but your response is likely to need more violence.

Clear and hold three years ago might have made a difference, as I said above, it might be too late now. However, clear and hold would have brought order, made life even for the Sunnis better and allowed the Shite militias to stay at peace.

I am not sure I understand what is your complaint. Keane and Kagan believe this can still work. It seems doubtful. The desire for vengence seems greater than the desire for a political settlement. It might have worked at Rumsfeld actually been interested in a post Saddem Iraq.
Daniel A. Greenbaum

When Bush the Elder appeared to be preparing to run against Gary Hart, before the episode on the good yacht Monkey Business, it was said "Republican women lose their hearts to Bush. Democratic women do the reverse."

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

J. McCutchen

The issue isn't violence but the amount of troops necessary to reduce the violence. If you use relatively too few troops compared to the size of the population your are encourage more violence. If you don't have enough troops not are you likely to be attacked but your response is likely to need more violence

The issue is violence (as you said the first time and the third too!). The essential difference between "clear and hold" and "search and destroy" counterinsurgency strategies, as I understand the concepts, is tactical. Search and destroy operations are offensive for that reason more violent. Clear and hold applies defensive tactics. Units enter areas and remain. They enter, clear insurgents and they stay. They don't enter, search, destroy whatever they find and move on to attack another neighborhood.

Obviously, fewer areas can be cleared and held than searched and destroyed, but force tactics and training not size are what differentiate. Language skills, cultural competence, community policing v. mobility, overwhelming force at a point, deterrence, destroying enemy in detail, ....the question is not how many troops you have in theater but how many are properly trained ....

Search and destroy" is the US default...Shock troops .....
In the event, the US didn't have sufficient troops, training, or tactics to "clear and hold". "

Ultimately though even with a properly sized,trained, deployed force from the start, success would be highly problematic because the Mission itself was fatally flawed....rich white Americans on Crusade ..still invaders, still occupiers, still Christian still tasked to demolish then rebuild an Arab nation -
We started a war, without good cause, in haste with the army we had on a Mission they most likely could never successfully accomplish.

Our warmongering political leaders and opinion elites were they insane? inept? very high? All 3?

My point is only that hearings can drag on while people are dying. Do you really believe that having hearings before we get out will fix the process "so that the next macho president doesn't commit the United States without due reflection." ? How so?

We've had hearings after hearings -- the 911 Commission didn't even make the President and VP swear an oath to tell the truth. Hell, Bush practically got to sit on Dick's lap for heaven's sake!

I can see people refusing to tell the truth, or claiming that their testimony would imperil (or demoralize) the troops that are still in harms way. To have hearings that criticize the Commander in Chief during a conflict would not produce much truth-telling in my book.

I'm all for hearings as well, but let's just get our troops out of this hell-hole that Bush created, and then let him and his Medal-wearing war-profiteers have to stand up and tell what they know without the cover of "protecting the troops!"

As for a process to keep it from happening again, how about going back to that quaint document, the Constitution, which gives the power to declare war to the Congress, and to Congress alone?

Jan Knaus

While I won’t sing, “Ding-dong the witch is dead…” I agree that this bell doesn’t toll for all of us. I can’t mourn the death of a mass killer even though it was strictly a political lynching. But listening to journalists recounting Saddam’s treacherous biography this morning, I was struck by how the U.S. and CIA machinations of his killing regime were left out. And he was hanged for killing a group of villagers from a village that attacked and attempted to assassinate him.

Without excusing his monstrous rule, how much different is this crime from what GWB perpetrated in Fallujah? Boys as young as twelve were turned back from fleeing Fallujah to be killed. Chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombing were used. The captured insurgent who was gleefully shot in the head because he was “pretending to be dead” was only notable because it was SOP, and except that it was caught on video, would not have even been questioned.

Of course, we are not cold-blooded killers like Saddam. Of course, we do not set out to kill innocent civilians and unlike Saddam, at least speak as if we value all lives equally. Of course we were more discriminate than Saddam in our reactions, but isn’t it just a matter of degree? We are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq. I doubt that their survivors and the people suffering in that hell we’ve created care that our professed intentions are good.

Perhaps an informative digression...during WWII, FDR signed a document "Commander in Chief" on one known occasion and possibly a very few others. The incident was a request, which had been approved by all up through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to use lethal chemicals as part of the pre-invasion bombardment of Iwo Jima. As is being reviewed in the new Clint Eastwood historical movies, the US knew the Japanese had planned both an intelligent and fanatical defense, and casualties were expected to be very heavy. Certain chemical weapons seemed the only way, short of infantry moving from cave to cave, of reducing the garrison.

Roosevelt signed "All prior endorsements disapproved. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Commander-in-Chief."

Roosevelt dealt with momentous decisions on a case-by-case basis, as in approving the decision to ambush and shoot down Admiral Yamamoto. That was a very delicate balance among the concepts of assassination (even when everyone was in uniform) and compromising US cryptanalytic intelligence.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

J. McCutchen

Not only did most of the insurgents leave Fallujah before our assault, they realized that if we had concentrated in Fallujah, we had left openings elsewhere. They took full advantage of those openings. It is perhaps time to ask which side has the better commanders? ....

[Fallujah again drew a glaring contrast between how America fights – by pouring in firepower – and the stated aim of the American invasion of Iraq, liberating the Iraqi people. You cannot liberate people by destroying their homes, their jobs and their cities. If operational art is the art of linking tactical actions to strategic goals, American generals have once again shown the world that they have no operational skill –.... William Lind

In November 2004, US forces launched their second assault on Fallujah just days after the election confirmed Bush's "Iraq mandate" . The first attack, in April, killed nearly 700 civilians. Over the ensuing months, Fallujah was under seige. "Insurgent safe houses were repeatedly bombed. By time the Mandate Offensive had ended, US forces had reduced Fallujah to City of Ghosts.

Reed's estimate is reasonable. Although the US and Iraqis during the first days of the battle held to the line that there were no civilians in Fallujah, only insurgents and refused access to NGO relief teams, once they got in, the Red Crescent reported a civilian body count of about 2500. Even the Iraqi soon conceded there were at 2100 civilian deaths. To these figures add the 650 from April and with the counted bodies accumulated over the 5 months of siege, the Battles of Fallujah probably killed at least 5-6000.

But no one really knows how many actually died and estimates are hard to come by because in the City of Ghosts, even body counters weren't welcome. During FII itself, media reports reflect an intense debate over how many civilians remained to face the destruction. I have seen estimates from 0-100,000. Before its "liberation" from "teaming terrorist cadres" Fallujah was a city of some 300,000 residents As many as 80-100,000 may still be internally displaced A survey of building damage concluded that40% of the city's buildings were destroyed completely. Another 20% or so suffered substantial damage.

These figures aren't what is "interesting" about Fallujah. The destruction of Fallujah, as Reed notes, revealed a fatal weaknesses in US tatics, operational skill, and Bush policy making.

Most significantly of all, Fallujah marked a decisive turning point in the IRaq war. If before the assault, failure was an option, by December 2004 US failure in Iraq was inevitable.

As one observer dubbed it at the time, Fallujah can be fairly called our Little Stalingrad

J. McCutchen

WWGD?

What will George do?

Given the following assumptions: 1. Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq during his term 2. Bush wants to maintain his position in Iraq so that he can continue with his right Wing Zionist allies on the course Baghdad-Jerusalem 3 Bush's first objective is therefore - BUY TIME

The Decider SHOULD, and very well MIGHT have already decided something along these lines:

Surge 50,000 troops

in order to accomplish benchmarks XYZ on the road to a stable, democatic Iraq....blah blah...ally in the war on terror

TIMETABLE
If substantial progress achieved as I expect: 50000 troops withdrawn 9/1; 50 000 12/1.....O - 12/1/09

D's left holding their private parts
For sleeve out of his vest. W buys all the time he needs