Miscalculation Malady
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One of the worst, sometimes tragic consequences of an action is the “boomerang,” or “backfire” effect: A miscalculation that recoils on its maker.
Iraq is nothing but miscalculation after miscalculation with a lots of boomerang.
Although Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army Iraqi security forces, and now US and UK GIs, have been battling in Basra and Baghdad all this week, issued a statement this morning for his fighters to cease fire: “We announce our disavowal from anyone who carries weapons and targets government institutions, charities and political party offices,” said the statement that was distributed across the country and posted on Web sites linked to his movement.
There was, however, one, big caveat: Sadr demanded the Iraqi central government give his supporters amnesty and to release all those held.
And this, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not do — the boomerang will keep boomeranging.
Yesterday:
BAGHDAD — Anti-American Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers Saturday to defy government orders to surrender their weapons, as U.S. jets struck Shiite extremists near Basra to bolster a faltering Iraqi offensive against gunmen in the city.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash that his offensive, which began Tuesday, provoked in areas of Baghdad and other cities where Shiite militias wield power.
The U.S. Embassy tightened its security measures, ordering all staff to use armored vehicles for all travel in the Green Zone and to sleep in reinforced buildings until further notice after six days of rocket and mortar attacks that left two Americans dead.
British ground troops, who controlled the city until handing it over to the Iraqis last December, also joined the battle for Basra, firing artillery Saturday for the first time in support of Iraqi forces.
…
Gunfire and explosions were heard late Saturday in Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.
…
But a defiant al-Sadr called on his followers Saturday to ignore the order, saying that his Mahdi Army would turn in its weapons only to a government that can “get the occupier out of Iraq,” referring to the Americans.
The order was made public by Haidar al-Jabiri, a member of the influential political commission of the Sadrist movement.
Al-Sadr, in an interview aired Saturday by Al-Jazeera television, said his Mahdi Army was capable of “liberating Iraq” and maintained al-Maliki’s government was as “distant” from the people as Saddam Hussein’s.
If that wasn’t enough:
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said they had received a phone call from Tahseen Sheikhly, the high-profile civilian spokesman for the Baghdad security operation, who was seized by gunmen two days earlier from at his home in a Shiite area of the capital.
An Iraqi-owned satellite television station, Sharqiya, broadcast what it said was a tape of the conversation, in which a man identifying himself as Sheikhly said he was being held “with a group of officers” at an unknown location.
“Our release depends on the withdrawal of al-Maliki from Basra and the easing of the military operations against the Sadrists in all provinces,” he said. “We appeal to the prime minister and the Iraqi government to work with the Sadrist movement, which represents the popular base of society.”
– telegraph.com.uk, (3/28/08)
And Maliki just can’t keep his mouth shut.
“We used to talk about al Qaeda. Unfortunately it seems there are some among us who are worse than al Qaeda,” Maliki said in a televised meeting with tribal leaders in Basra, where he has personally overseen the crackdown since Tuesday.
– Reuters, (3/29/08)
The greatest miscalculations with the greatest boomerang effect has, of course, come from the US:
- “It is unknowable how long that conflict [the war in Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
– Then Secretary of Defense Donal Rumsfeld, February, 2003 - “There has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army—hard to imagine.”
– Then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, House Budget Committee testimony on Iraq, Feb. 27, 2003 - “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
– Vice President Dick Cheney, March 16 2003
And, of course, Decider George:
- “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
– speaking underneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, May 1, 2003 - “My answer is bring them on.”
– on Iraqi insurgents attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003
The biggest miscalculation, however, was by the US voter in November 2004.
Love Means Never Having To say, ‘I’m Sorry’
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In seems so incredulous that with hundreds of thousands dead and entire countries torn to bits, Decider George would apologize for the supposedly unlawful killing of a seller of cigarettes and antiques.
President Bush called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday to apologize for the shooting death of an Egyptian man by security personnel on a U.S. Navy-contracted ship in the Suez Canal.
According to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, Bush pledged the United States would fully investigate the incident, which occurred late Monday. The ship, the Global Patriot, was under a short-term contract with the Navy’s Military Sealift Command and was returning from Kuwait after delivering armored vehicles for U.S.
President Bush expressed his deep regret and sympathies for the incident in the Suez Canal and said the United States would fully investigate this,” Johndroe said to reporters aboard Air Force One, according to a White House transcript.
The Navy has said it will provide compensation to the man’s family.
– Stars and Stripes, Mideast Edition, (3/29/08)
Reportedly, two “warning shots” were fired to the approaching boat, but Muhammad Fouad Afifi, 28, wasn’t given much warning as apparently one of the shells killed him.
And how about a big “I’m sorry” to the Iraqis?
At least we know the exact number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq. Early on, the Pentagon decided that Iraqis killed in the war simply would not be counted. That’s why there are only estimates of Iraqi dead, estimates that go as high as a million. The idea was that since the goal of helping the Iraqi people was considered a noble one, no one should really care how many of them died in the operation. In the minds of U.S. officials, no price was too high in the number of Iraqi deaths to achieve their goal.
In a fascinating use of language, U.S. military officials are still referring to the Iraqis they kill as “terrorists” rather than as “insurgents.” For example, according to a front-page article in today’s New York Times, “American forces on Sunday reported killing ‘12 terrorists’ who had attacked ground troops east of Baquba.”
But what U.S. officials never explain is why a person who is fighting to rid his country of an illegal foreign occupier (a war of aggression was punished as a war crime at Nuremberg) is a “terrorist.” I thought that a terrorist was a person who attacked civilian targets for political ends. Since U.S. occupation forces in Iraq are military personnel, not civilians, why are those Iraqis who are trying to oust the occupiers considered “terrorists?”
– Jacob G. Hornberger, The Future of Freddom Foundation, fff.org/blog/jghblog, (3/24/08)
And in the same line of thought, these actions are still going down. No “I’m sorry” here:
Iraqi police said that earlier in the day (Friday) a U.S. warplane strafed a house and killed eight civilians, including two women and one child. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release the information. The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the report and it was not possible to independently verify it.
…
AP Television News footage showed smoke rising from the home in Basra’s Hananiyah neighborhood where the police said the civilians were killed. Pools of blood and a destroyed pickup truck were seen outside the home hit by the plane.
…
Sheik Nasir Abdul Hussein in Basra said the strikes came after midnight and were followed by gunmen shooting in the air.
“The thunder of the aircraft frightened children,” he said. “The sound smashed glasses, and the area was lighted by aircraft.”
…
Iraq’s Health Ministry, which is close to the Sadrist movement, on Saturday reported at least 75 civilians have been killed and at least 500 others injured in a week of clashes and airstrikes in Sadr City and other eastern Baghdad neighborhoods.
The U.S. military sharply disputes the claims, having said that most of those killed were militia members.
– Associated Press, (3/2908)
Since “most of those killed” were militia, then the rest are just footnotes to the bigger plan.
Decider George should apologize to every living creature on the earth.
‘Into the Abyss’
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An uneasy sense of watching in slo-mo some nasty, cruel shit hitting the fan.
Iraq’s Prime Minister was staring into the abyss today after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen.
With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki’s police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.
Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq’s two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias — who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade — would not stop at mere insurrection.
From his field headquarters inside Basra city, the Prime Minister vowed to press on with his attack, which he said was not targeting the Mahdi Army in particular but all lawless gangs. “We have come to Basra at the invitation of the civilians to do our national duty and protect them from the gangs who have terrified them and stolen the national wealth,” he said. “We promise to face the criminals and gunmen and we will never back off from our promise.”
…
Residents of Basra complained that water and electricity had been turned off in the three main areas besieged by the Iraqi Army, which has an entire division deployed for the battle. They also said that they were running low on food an unable to evacuate their wounded. Estimates of the death toll in Basra reached as high as 200, with hundreds more wounded.
“The battle is not easy without coalition support,” lamented one Basra resident, who had worked as a translator for the British forces. “The police in Basra are useless and helping the Mahdi Army. The militia are hiding among the civilians. This country will never be safe, I want to leave for ever. I don’t know how to get out of this hell.”
– timesonline.co.uk, (3/27/08)
While Decider George was lying his ass off this week about the creeping situation in Iraq, one prominent Republican plucked the truth out of Lewis Carroll:
Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) suggests to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that there is no cause for optimism towards the situation in Iraq, propagated by arrogance, with an ever-growing cost in lives and money, despite a recent speech by President Bush.
“I think this is another episode of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” the Senator says. “What’s up is down, and what’s down is up. What do you mean, ‘stability and security?’ Baghdad, for example, has been over the last year essentially ethnically divided.”
“And,” Hagel adds, “when you look at the casualties the United States has taken since since the so-called ‘military surge,’ over 900 deaths; you look at almost 30,000 wounded, and the money we’ve put in there.
And then, the other point of this is, too: If, in fact, the ‘surge’ has calmed things to a point where the President and others are saying ‘Well, they’ve done a great service, and they’ve achieved some terrific things,’ why, then, is the administration talking about keeping more American troops in Iraq for the remainder of this year than we had before the ‘surge’?”
“This,” the Senator continues, “is still a very unstable, serious, dangerous situation in Iraq.”
– rawstory.com, (3/28/08)
Hagel has always appeared a good guy — despite being a Republican — and has been a vocal critic of Decider George’s disaster in Iraq since before the beginning. When he was first elected to the Senate in 1996, he indicated he was only serve two terms, which he’s done (re-elected in 2002) and he’s going to keep his word: Hagel announced last fall he would not run this year.
One of the best journalists covering the Iraq war (and one of the bravest) is Patrick Cockburn of the London Independent. Since he has been covering the Iraq mess since day one, his dispatches have been really precise. And he seems to be a good writer, too, which is sometimes not the case with reporters.
Cockburn was interviewed on Democracy Now! last Thursday and had some interesting notes from the margin:
Well, you know, they’ve always been very—the US has always been very hostile to Muqtada, and this came from the very beginning of 2003. And then, when Jerry Bremer was US viceroy in Iraq, there was an extraordinary degree of sort of venom and demonization of Muqtada, describing him as Hitler and so forth, and curiously, also an underestimation of him, because while at one time—moment they’d say that he was like Hitler, at another moment Bremer was just trying to arrest him and thinking there would be no reaction. So, there’s always been extreme hostility on the part of the US, mainly, I think, because Muqtada is the most important leader on the Shia side who’s consistently called for an end to the US occupation, for a US withdrawal, and also maybe because he’s a cleric, he wears a black turban. So in many minds of many American politicians, maybe he looks alarmingly like a younger version of Ayatollah Khomeini. But I think the main thing they have against him is that he wants the US to withdraw.
…
You know, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach when I hear things like that. (off a question of is the US “winning,” or the surge, a success?”) And I was in Baghdad when McCain was there. You know, people say to me, “Are things getting better in Iraq?” And, you know, in one sense, you could say they are, because a year ago we were having, as I said earlier, 3,000 civilians slaughtered, tortured to death every month. This month, we’re probably going to have 1,500, 1,600 civilians killed. So, you know, in a sense, things have got better. We’ve gone from 3,000 to 1,600. But, you know, we’ve gone from 100 percent bloodbath to 50 percent bloodbath, but it’s still a bloodbath, so I think it’s really ludicrous for Vice President Cheney or Senator McCain to say, you know, we’re on the verge of victory, things are good.
And then there are, you know, those television—there was famous television of McCain in Shorja market in Baghdad last year saying American people aren’t being told the truth about Iraq. Now, very noticeably, he didn’t go back to Shorja market when he visited a couple of weeks ago, and one of the reasons might be that his security advisers would say, “Don’t go,” because the market is controlled by the Mahdi Army. So, really, this is very deceptive. There’s something of an improvement in security in Baghdad. A lot of this has to do with the fact there are no mixed areas left there, so Sunni and Shia don’t really mix. We have a truce with the Madhi Army. But, you know, it’s still a city which is the most dangerous in the world, and that’s really what should get through to people outside Iraq.”
– democracynow.org, (3/27/08)
Much of the insider news and real truth about the situation in Iraq has come from foreign journalists.
The US media has been either too scared or too lazy, or too close to power.
Al-Maliki and Iraq may not be just staring into the abyss: They and the US might already in its depths.
‘By-product’ Civil War
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Despite wanting to wield a mighty sword, Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki’s central government assault this week on Shia militia in Basra has encountered much difficulty, making no significant gains against the army of Mugtada al-Sadr, and creating a looming lump of problems.
As fighting across Iraq between Shia and Shia continues, the main objective at Basra, to show power from Baghdad’s national government, has failed — as have many things the last five years.
Instead of being a show of strength, the government’s stalled assault is demonstrating its shaky authority over much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. As the situation spins out of Mr Maliki’s control, saboteurs blew up one of the two main oil export pipelines near Basra, cutting by a third crude exports from the oilfields around the city. The international price of oil jumped immediately by $1 a barrel before falling back.
– independent.co.uk, (3/28/08)
Modern war in ancient places still makes for death and destruction. Into the very cradle of the very-first attempt at empire comes horror from the skies — metal, swirling locusts upon the land.
Hilla, Mar 26, (VOI)- More than 60 gunmen were killed on Wednesday evening as U.S. choppers fired rockets against buildings used by gunmen in central Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, Iraqi security source said.
“U.S. copters bombed sites used by gunmen in Hilla’s neighborhoods of al-Askari, Ahmed Nader and Muhaizem, killing more than 60 militants and destroying some houses,” the source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
From his part, Abdellatif Rayan, an MNF-Iraq media adviser who could not give an exact number of the gunmen killed during the airstrike, told VOI that the operation was carried out as Iraqi forces requested an air support while clashing with gunmen in central Hilla.
Hilla, capital city of Babel, has been a scene of clashes that erupted between security forces and fighters of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia.
– aswataliraq.info/look/english, Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq (VOI), (3/28/08)
Reportedly, in pre-Sumerian days Babel was the site of the original gathering together of warlords and brute killers to establish military power — dominance over thy neighbors — the first empire originated from Babel, which grew war-like into Babylon (Babel in Hebrew), and sucked in all the towns around about, then big chunks of land, then big empires of war machines and huge standing armies drifted across history’s landscape — Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Alexander The Little Moron, Eygptian, Romans, British, and now Americans.
Albeit there’s no horses and chariots, but warfare is still a horror, especially to bystanders.
And of course, from Babel comes the word “babble.”
A telling mirror in the modern world as babble bubbles forth from Decider George’s encampment:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a “by-product of the success of the surge.”
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that the Iraqi government and security forces were now confident enough to take the initiative against Shiite extremists in the southern port of Basra.
“Citizens down there have been living in a city of chaos and corruption for some time and they and the prime minister clearly have had enough of it,” he said at a Pentagon press conference.
Morrell, however, disputed suggestions that the fighting showed the risks of drawing down US “surge” forces.
“This has just begun this week,” he said. “But I think at this early stage, it looks as though it is a by-product of the success of the surge,” referring to the sharp hike in US troops in Iraq from earlier last year to quell violence.
He said it was a success “in the sense that the Iraqi government has grown and increased in capability to the point where they now feel confident going after Shia extremists in a part of the country that they had not exerted great influence over.”
– Agence France-Presse, (3/26/08)
A ‘by-product’ of success produces a chaotic, nasty situation on the brink of disaster?
Jeff (Geoff is still just Jeff but spelled too-way-different)) are you on crack?
This week’s violence in Baghdad and Basra followed several days of bloodshed in the Shi’ite city of Kut, some 100 miles southeast of the capital, where Sadr loyalists clashed with police forces largely controlled by their Shi’ite rivals, the Badr Corps militants of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq, and with government troops affiliated with Maliki’s Da’awa party.
“This was expected. It was just a matter of timing,” said Vali Nasr,Tufts University scholar and author of the bestselling book, The Shi’a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future.
“The ceasefire and the surge allowed everyone to regroup and rearm. There is still the Shi’a-Sunni conflict. There is still the Sadr-Badr conflict. The surge and the ceasefire merely kept them apart, but there has never been a real political settlement,” he said. “No, the big battle for Iraq hasn’t been fought yet. The future of Iraq has not been determined.”
Nasr said the question now remains just how deep U.S. forces will get sucked into a Shi’ite civil war.
– Darrin Mortonsen, time.com/time/world, (3/26/08)
In Basra, although Maliki’s government forces have won some sections of the beleagured city, they cannot dislodge the Shia militia. And as the assault there bogs down, fighting continues in Baghdad (and elsewhere) as Sadr’s Mehdi Army displays a strong show of force.
The main bastion of the Sadrist movement is impoverished Sadr City, which has a population of two million and is almost a twin city to Baghdad. The densely packed slum has been sealed off by US troops. “We are trapped in our homes with no water or electricity since yesterday,” said a resident called Mohammed. “We can’t bathe our children or wash our clothes.”
– Patrick Cockburn, independent.co.uk, (3/28/08)
And Sadr City at a glance:
- HISTORY: Sadr City was built in the late 1950s by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim to provide housing for Baghdad’s largely Shiite urban poor, many of whom had migrated from southern Iraq. It was first named Revolution City and became a stronghold of the Iraq Communist party.
It was renamed Saddam City after the late president took power in 1979. After Saddam’s ouster in 2003, it became known as Sadr City in honor of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who was killed, probably by Saddam’s agents, in 1999. His son is Muqtada al-Sadr.
POPULATION: An estimated 2.5 million people live in Sadr City. The vast majority of them are Shiites, many of whom live in abject poverty
AREA: About 13 square miles, making Sadr City one of the most densely packed communities in the Middle East.
LIFE: Sadr City suffers from rampant unemployment and ailing infrastructure, and lacks many basic services. Electricity is available for only about six hours a day, and some streets frequently flood with sewage. Municipal garbage collection service was halted in 2003; it resumed two years later but only on main roads. Sadr City’s main landmark is a giant municipal building commissioned by Saddam, who gave a single speech from its balcony and never returned to the district again.
– Source, Associated Press
Meanwhile, in the very heart and soul of the US presence in Iraq, the once all-clear Green Zone in Baghdad, continues to fall under fire from motors and rockets. Black smoke spewing from the headquarters of the US Army and Iraq’s central government, paints a picture of Saigon from a place far, far away, in a time long, long ago:
WASHINGTON — The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week.
In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets, body armor and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.
“Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times,” it says. “Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons.”
“Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration,” the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment “is mandatory for all outside movements.”
– Matthew Lee, Associated Press, (3/27/08)
And what does Decider George say about all this carnage and chaos?
WASHINGTON — President Bush, saying that “normalcy is returning back to Iraq,” argued Thursday that last year’s U.S. troop “surge” has improved Iraq’s security to the point where political and economic progress are blossoming as well.
Bush coupled his description of the situation in Iraq, meant to lay the groundwork for next month’s report to Congress by U.S. military and diplomatic chiefs, with a forceful slap at war critics.
“Some … seem unwilling to acknowledge that progress is taking place,” Bush said in a speech at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. He accused war opponents of constantly shifting their critique, adding: “No matter what shortcomings these critics diagnose, their prescription is always the same — retreat.”
– McClatchy Newspapers, (3/27/08)
What a spin-master turd!
‘Positive” Iraqi Pause
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A spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, Tahsin al-Sheikhly, was kidnapped from his Baghdad home by armed men on Thursday, security officials told AFP. The officials said Sheikhly, who spoke on civic matters related to the security plan launched in February last year, was abducted from his home in Baghdad’s Al-Amin neighbourhood at around 2:30 pm (1130 GMT).
“Armed men stormed his home at a time when there were clashes in his neighbourhood,” a security official with the interior ministry said.
“They burnt his home and stole two cars and weapons before fleeing with him.”
– Agence France-Presse, (3/27/08)
Unfortunately, the quickening continues in Iraq.
Despite nothing but grim news out of Baghdad since Easter Sunday morning, Decider George continues to put a living-shit spin on everything he says and does, declaring reality to be smoke-and-mirrors choked with a smell of cordite.
Especially sensitive is the situation in Basra, site of a stand-off between Shiite followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi security forces. In a dispatch from brave, UK journalist Patrick Cockburn (and Cockburn has been right about a lot of Iraq shit a long time):
A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.
Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq’s two largest cities and spread to other towns yesterday as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave fighters of the Mehdi Army, led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 72 hours to surrender their weapons.
The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq’s majority Shia community – which replaced Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime – is splitting apart for the first time.
– independent.co.uk, (3/27/08)
Sensitive since the UK withdrew from Basra last fall and are now enclosed within protected bases outside the city. Decider George, in spin worthy of Karl Rove, hailed Maliki’s decision to “respond forcefully” to “criminal elements” in an interview with foreign reporters and declared, “It was a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law.”
In the current run of news is revelant, then that “positive moment” could be fatal. Decider George has, of course, gone complete delusional.
On the eve of an European trip next week, where he will have a final cowboy-strut across the world stage at a NATO summit, he blubbered in that arrognant, “…cold, dead fingers” attitude the glorious war/mess he started in Iraq will last beyond him.
Mr Bush insisted yesterday that decisions would not be made by those who “scream the loudest” in calling for troops to come home.
Instead, in his interview with four international journalists, including The Times, he said: “I understand people here want us to leave, regardless of the situation, but that will not happen so long as I’m Commander-In-Chief.”
…
The President gave a glimpse of some of the resentment felt by Washington towards other NATO allies whom he said needed to be “encouraged” to take obligations in Afghanistan seriously. The definition of the summit’s success, he added, would be to ensure Nato stayed relevant.
But he heaped praise on President Sarkozy of France, who has announced his intention to send another 1,000 troops to the Afghan battlefields.
It was notable, perhaps, that he avoided expressing similar sentiments about Gordon Brown after a period, since Tony Blair’s departure from Downing Street, in which differences of tone, if not substance, have emerged between Britain and the US.
– timesonline.co.uk, (3/27/08)
And what about those grunts on the ground?
Behind the Pentagon’s closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush Wednesday they are worried about the Iraq war’s mounting strain on troops and their families. But they indicated they’d go along with a brief halt in pulling out troops this summer.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff did say senior commanders in Iraq should make more frequent assessments of security conditions, an idea that appeared aimed at increasing pressure for more rapid troop reductions.
The chiefs’ concern is that U.S. forces are being worn thin, compromising the Pentagon’s ability to handle crises elsewhere in the world.
…
Wednesday’s 90-minute Pentagon session, held in a secure conference room known as “the Tank,” was arranged by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to provide Bush an additional set of military views as he prepares to decide how to proceed in Iraq once his troop buildup, which began in 2007, runs its course by July.
“Armed with all that, the president must now decide the way ahead in Iraq,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. The discussion covered not only Iraq but Afghanistan, where violence has spiked, and broader military matters, said Morrell, who briefed reporters without giving details of the discussion. Some specifics were provided by defense officials, commenting on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely.
…
The session was led by Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He presented the consensus view of the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps on Iraq strategy.
Mullen and Gates have said repeatedly that in addition to reducing troop levels in Iraq, they want to shorten tour lengths for soldiers from 15 months to 12 months as soon as possible. A decision to do that is expected, perhaps shortly after Bush reaffirms that the number brigades in Iraq will be cut to 15 by July. The Army calculates that at that point it could drop tours to 12 months and still give units at least 12 months at home to recover, retrain and rearm before deploying again.
Morrell said a decision on shortening tour lengths would be made by Gates in consultation with Bush.
“We are not there yet,” Morrell said.
– Associated Press, (3/26/08)
Hey, Morrell, we thought understatement was so, so UK.
Who, by the way, have caught up with the US in at least one aspect:
Britain is at risk of losing the capability to wage major wars as it reaches a crisis point in resources, senior academics have warned MPs.
The stress of constant operations was also leading to a “massive increase” in marital breakdowns with many troops forced into resigning from the services to save their relationships, the Commons defence committee heard.
During a hearing on the recruitment and retention crises facing the Armed Forces, the committee was told by Prof Hew Strachan, Oxford University’s leading military historian, that Britain had now reached the point at which it had to make a serious choice about its future.
Most chilling and telling was found in the last graph:
The MPs also heard that the troop numbers on operations were unlikely to reduce for at least four years as the next American president was unlikely to abandon Iraq.
– telegraph.co.uk, (3/26/08)
And so it goes.