Tag: Military

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Bush Caught Lying to Troops about Escalation Plan

Jon Ponder
Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

If I’m lying, you’re dying: Pres. Bush was caught rewriting recent history in a speech he gave Thursday to the troops at Ft. Benning, Georgia, some of whom are preparing for their third deployment to Iraq. Here is the transcript of the president’s load of bull:

“The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we’ve got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .

“The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to — by the way, that’s what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don’t want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won’t work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .

“And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it’s not going to work until — unless we support — provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I’ve committed an additional — a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, the facts are quite different. The strategy of escalating the war came from the West Wing, not the Iraqi leadership or Bush’s generals:

[A Washington Post story Wednesday] made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders — nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.

And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning’s New York Times add to the evidence: “A narrative pieced together from interviews with participants and from public testimony suggests that through much of the process, generals who had been on the ground in Iraq during the past year had favored that the new strategy begin with a substantially smaller force than the one that President Bush announced to the nation on Wednesday night. In the end, it was Mr. Bush who appeared to drive his commanders along to the conclusion that more troops were needed.”

Not only were the Iraqis not involved in creating the plan, they are not happy about it, according to another Times report:

So, not surprisingly: “Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.”

Where was the White House press corps on this? Didn’t anyone in that elite corps of journalists know the facts about the origins of the escalation?

Or maybe the president lies so often, they’re inured to it.

Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

Surge — Send In the Sick Soldiers

Buck Banks

Trauma ward: George Bush’s plan to pour more troops into Iraq will likely mean sending some soldiers who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a recipe for disaster, but can’t be helped because the all-volunteer army ain’t got depth. This is a story the Pentagon does not want you to know:

Between Christmas and New Year’s 2006, five U.S. soldiers committed suicide after being informed they’d been ordered to serve an additional tour in Iraq.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can emerge after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. A person experiencing PTSD can lose touch with reality and believe that the traumatic incident is happening all over again.

Pentagon doctors estimate that 12 percent of the 1.5 million veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD. Newly revised Defence Department guidelines for service-members with “a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance” say they may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a “treatable” problem.

Many believe President George W. Bush’s newly announced plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers to Iraq will involve the redeployment of soldiers suffering from severe trauma. Press reports indicate Bush wants to implement his “surge” by speeding up previously scheduled redeployments and extending the tours of soldiers already in the field of battle.

That reality has increasing numbers of soldiers taking matters into their own hands.

Between Christmas and New Year’s 2006, five U.S. soldiers committed suicide after being informed they’d been ordered to serve an additional tour in Iraq. In Iraq itself, the military announced on Dec. 30 that soldier Michael Crutchfield of Stockton, California killed himself north of the capital, Baghdad.

Olbermann Catalogs Bush’s Flip-Flops and Failures on Iraq

Jon Ponder

Since 2002, when Pres. Bush and his team began “marketing” the war in Iraq, they have floated a string of bogus, often contradictory rationales for invading and occupying Iraq. On Countdown Wednesday night, about a half-hour before the president announced his plan to escalate the war, Keith Olbermann offered a rundown of the president’s failure of leadership, so far:

“[Pres. Bush] has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a threat, because of 9/11, because of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, because of terrorism in general, to liberate Iraq, to spread freedom, to spread democracy, to keep the oil out of the hands of potentially terrorist controlled states, because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.”
— Keith Olbermann

Before Mr. Bush was elected he said he was no nation builder. Nation building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital for America. He said he would never have put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions.

He told us about WMDs, mobile labs, secret sources, aluminum tubing, yellow cake. He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a threat, because of 9/11, because of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, because of terrorism in general, to liberate Iraq, to spread freedom, to spread democracy, to keep the oil out of the hands of potentially terrorist controlled states, because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Moqtada al Sadr, Osama bin Laden. He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi army and deBaathified the government. He short changed Iraqi training. He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence. He sent in troops without life saving equipment, gave job to foreign contractors and not the Iraqis, staffed U.S. positions in Iraq based on partisanship, not professional experience.

We learned that America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throws. He has said that more troops were not necessary and more troops are necessary, and that it‘s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.

He told us of turning points, the fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government, the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam. We would be greeted as liberators with flowers, as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course. We would never stay the course. The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, was terrorist, was Baathists.

The war would pay for itself. It was cost 1.7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars. And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Post-Withdrawal Iraq Could Resemble Bloody Aftermath of First Bush’s Gulf War

Jon Ponder

In 1991, the first Pres. Bush promised military support to Iraqi rebels after Saddam’s surrender. But Bush broke the promise and Saddam’s forces masssacred 30,000 rebels and buried them in unmarked graves.

This is how Pres. George W. Bush’s failed Iraq war will end. When U.S. forces pull out of Iraq — whether it is next week, next month, or, as Pres. Bush now prosposes, 10 years from now, the civil war for control of the country will escalate.

The warring factions will include various sects within the majority Shia communtiy, the Sunni minority and the Kurds seeking secession and independence. There may also be forces of outside fundamentalists militias, including al Qaeda, who move in to fill the vaccuum left by departed American forces.

The battle for control of Iraq could be bloody and long, perhaps comparable to the war in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, George Bush lit the fuse on this bomb in the heart of the Middle East in 2003, when he foolishly ordered the invasion of Iraq. Those of us who opposed the war from the start, and who now favor moving our troops out of harm’s way, should be prepared for the violence and bloodshed that erupt in the aftermath of our retreat.

To get a sense of what Iraq will suffer when the U.S. pulls out, we need look no further back than 1991, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War.

Inmediately after the end of the first Gulf War, Pres. George H.W. Bush promised Iraqi Shiites and Kurds American military support if they would rise up and overthrow the newly defeated Saddam Hussein. In a broadcast to Iraqis via Voice of America on Februrary 15, 1991, then-Pres. Bush said:

There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.

But when the rebellion got underway, Bush and his war council, which included Defense Sec. Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, changed their minds about helping the rebels.

This decision led to the massacre of at least 30,000 rebels who were buried in mass graves. Mr. Bush himself has said that what happened to the Shiites was one of the deepest regrets of his presidency

Details of the uprising and its horrific aftermath below the fold.

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The Mess in the Middle East: Iraq Insurgent, Iran Emergent, and Two Civil Wars Temporarily On Hold

Buck Banks

Muddled East: Given the limited and slanted reporting on the Middle East we get from in the MSM, and our Western lack of understanding of the political forces at work, not to mention our ignorance of the cultural and religious currents driving events in the region, it’s no wonder we don’t understand what’s happening there. A cogent, clear and unflinching assessment of the situation and its position in global politics is provided by a column in the latest edition of Challenge magazine.

Challenge is a bi-monthly leftist magazine written by Arabs and Israelis and published in Tel Aviv. It looks at the Israeli-Palestinian situation and attempts to contextualize it within the region and globally. It’s a good read:

From Challenge # 101, January – February 2007

Two Civil Wars with Brakes On

By Roni Ben Efrat

THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN conflict was once the mother of all problems in the Middle East. Today it is one among many. For this demotion we may largely thank US President George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. Apart from splitting that unhappy country into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish sectors, Bush’s war has changed the geopolitics of the region. The Iraq of Saddam Hussein used to be the area’s major power, but today it is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. Saddam was a secular dictator who represented Arab nationalism; Ahmadinejad represents Shiite fundamentalism — and his country, of course, isn’t Arab.

In Bush’s new Middle East, then, two axes have emerged. There is the American axis, which includes Fouad Siniora in Lebanon and Abu Mazen in Palestine, along with older members: Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Over against them, in the Iranian axis, stand Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria. Does the Iranian axis aim to become America’s global opponent, like the Soviet Union in the Cold War? No. Apart from the central role of Islamic law in Iran, this axis presents no counter-agenda, political, social or ideological. Iran and its allies would prefer to have American and European recognition, but they aren’t willing to change their spots: they aren’t willing, that is, to become American lackeys, eradicating their own identities. They are encouraged in this self-assertion by the weakening of the US as a global power, thanks again to its entanglement in Iraq.

If we want a good example of lackeyism, we may look to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In a recent cabinet meeting, he justified his rejection of Syrian peace overtures, saying that a positive response was forbidden at a time when President Bush, “the most important strategic ally of Israel, opposes any negotiations with Syria.”

The two axes confront each other at three flashpoints: (1) Iran, which opposes the world on the nuclear issue while backing Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Shiites of Iraq.(2) Israel/Palestine, which includes not just the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but now also that between Fatah and Hamas.(3) Lebanon, where the opponents of Syria’s interfering hand are at odds with those who eat from it, namely Hezbollah.
[…]

Dem Leaders to Bush: Escalation of Troops in Iraq Won’t Work

Jon Ponder

Here’s an excerpt from a letter sent to Pres. Bush today by the Democratic leaders of the Congress:

We believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.

In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:

“I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It’s easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future. ”

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.

We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.

Sincerely,

Harry Reid, Majority Leader

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker

Biden: Bush Knows Iraq Is Lost, ‘Surge’ Goal Is to Delay Collapse Until ’08

Jon Ponder
Nothing can stop Bush’s war escalation except public outrage at the obscenity of a president sending troops to die for no other purposes than to burnish his epitaph.

Operation Save My Legacy: As we have been saying in these pages (here and here, for starters), the “surge” President Bush will announce next week has nothing to do with “winning” in Iraq and everything to do with tamping down the violence sufficiently so that Bush and Rove can create a false reality of “victory” before they leave office. Ever the coward, Bush plans to hand off the inevitable U.S. retreat from Iraq, and the bloodbath that will ensue, to the next president.

While this president’s objectives are nakedly obvious from where I sit, 3,000 miles from Capitol Hill, Beltway media and political insiders have been playing dumb about Bush’s audacious double-down in American blood and treasure. That is, until today, when Sen. Joe Biden spoke up:

[Biden]said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will “be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof,” in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

“I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost,” Biden said. “They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy — literally, not figuratively

Biden’s senatorial hemming and hawing is maddening — he has reached a “tentative conclusion” that the Bushies know they have screwed up the war? “Tentative” conclusions can be withdrawn later. Sounds like wiggle room to me.

Even the Republican were occasionally criticial of Bush’s war when they held power. They never took action, of course — and the question now is, what will Joe Biden and the Democrats do to force the president to end the worst military operation in American history, if not in the history of the world.

The answer is, probably not much — not unless the American middle class finally becomes as outraged as they should be that the same president who started this war for no reason other than aristocratic whim is now planning to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more American troops for no other purpose than to burnish his epitaph.

GAO Cites Defense Dept. for Poor Oversight in Iraq – Again!

Buck Banks

Contractor con men: The Government Accountability Office has issued a report that chastizes the Pentagon for failing to provide adequate oversight of private contractors supporting American military operations in Iraq.

The report cites a shortage of front-line managers overseeing contractor support that has led to a lack of accountability or assurance that the military is getting the services it has paid for. Before he “retired,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had assured the GAO that the military would comply with recommendations made in earlier GAO reports. He must have had his fingers crossed at the time.

It appears the Pentagon has basically outsourced the war in Iraq:

The military’s global war on terror has coincided with a massive outsourcing of jobs traditionally performed by uniformed personnel. In Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of private companies provide battlefield support to the troops, supplying them with everything from food and housing to Internet service and intelligence analysis.

While 9,200 contractors supported the 1991 Gulf War, the Army alone estimates that at least 60,000 contractors support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the new report (GAO-07-145).

The Pentagon does not know how many contractors currently are working in Iraq and living on the American bases that have sprung up around the country, GAO noted.

Besides getting bad service, the result is millions of dollars lost each year through waste and abuse. For instance, the Army estimates that $43 million is lost annually due to contractors eating free meals while receiving a per diem allowance for food. Hey,that sounds like good work if you can get it.

[…]

Live Animals Eaten to Show Iraqi Machismo

Trish

As new Secretary of Defense Bob Gates visited Baghdad, a commemoration was held in Najaf province to mark the turnover of control from U.S. troops to Iraqis. To illustrate the potency of the new law enforcers, animals were eaten live. Yes, frogs and bunnies were ripped apart live and munched.

Chewing on live animals is a traditional display of ferocity for elite troops in Iraq and was also observed by special units during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

About 1,500 police officers, soldiers and security personnel staged a parade around an infield of stubby brown grass, in festivities complete with warriors on horseback.

At one point, a small group of soldiers stepped forward with a live rabbit and tore it to pieces. The leader bit out the heart with a yell, then passed around the blood-soaked remains to his comrades, each of whom took a bite. The group also bit the heads off frogs, as some of those in the crowd held their noses from the stench.

Chewing on live animals is a traditional display of ferocity for elite troops in Iraq and was also observed by special units during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Police then steered shiny new cruisers and motorcycles with ribbons and flowers stuck to their windshields around a track ringing the soccer field, which was still littered with fur and discarded frog legs.

“Our soldiers do a lot of things, but I’ve never seen them do anything like that,” said Maj. Gen. Kurt Cichowski, who attended the ceremony.

Our troops do indeed do a lot of things. Charges will be filed today against eight Marines accused of murdering 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November, 2005.

Good Lord. What are we doing in this place?

Rummy’s Parting Shot

Jon Ponder
What remains unclear is whether Rummy was fired because Bush considered the memo to be insubordination, or whether he was let go to appease voters and shift the spotlight off the Democrats’ victory in the midterms.

Someone leaked a memo to the New York Times last week that was written by outgoing Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld just two days before Pres. Bush forced him to resign. In the memo, we learn that Rummy may not have been as stupid about the Iraq Civil War as he appeared to be, or as stubborn as his betters in the West Wing continue to be:

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,” he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ”

“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,” he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics.

We may have to wait for Rumsfeld’s book (and you know there will be one) to find out whether he was fired over the contents of the memo, which Pres. Bush probably viewed as insubordination, or whether, as most people assumed before the memo was leaked, he was thrown overboard to appease voters and to take the spotlight off the Democrats the day after they won control of Congress.