Tag: Iraq

Too stupid for words: Until 2002, there was no one more “inside” the Republican foreign policy establishment than Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush. But after Bush II was apppointed president, Scowcroft found himself in bad odor within the cabal of incompetents who were planning the war in Iraq because he dared to warn them that they were about to make a mistake of monumental and historic proportions.

According to the New Yorker, the fact that Scowcroft’s wisdom – and prescience – on Iraq was ignored is even more remarkable in light of the formerly tight relationships he had with the Bush II team:

Scowcroft’s best friend’s son is the President; his friend Dick Cheney is the Vice-President; Condoleezza Rice, who was the national-security adviser, and is now the Secretary of State, was once a Scowcroft protege; and the current national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, is another protege and a former principal at the Scowcroft Group.

In the war-planning stage, George W. Bush and his cronies completely ignored Scowcroft’s predictions that conquering Iraq would lead the United States into a Vietnam-like quagmire, so Scowcroft went public:

[Scowcroft argued in 2002 article in the Wall Street Journal] that an invasion of Iraq would deflect American attention from the war on terrorism, and that it would do nothing to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, which he has long believed is the primary source of unhappiness in the Middle East…”The obsession of the region . . . is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we were seen to be turning our back on that bitter conflict — which the region, rightly or wrongly, perceives to be clearly within our power to resolve — in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us.” Scowcroft went on to say that the United States was capable of defeating Saddam’s military. “But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive — with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy — and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses.”

After the WSJ article appeared, Scowcroft was among the first powerful figures in the Republican Party to learn that criticism of Dear Leader would not be tolerated:

Rice telephoned him, according to several people with knowledge of the call. “She said, ‘How could you do this to us?'” a Scowcroft friend recalled. “What bothered Brent more than Condi yelling at him was the fact that here she is, the national-security adviser, and she’s not interested in hearing what a former national-security adviser had to say.”

Associated Press:

Two rockets and a car bomb hit the Palestine Hotel on Monday, injuring at least one person and causing considerable damage to the building that houses many foreign journalists, Iraqi police said…

The blast shattered windows and caused heavy damage to the south side of the 19-story building, forcing journalists, including those from The Associated Press, to take refuge in the corridor.

Polecat in winter: While the war wears on in Iraq that President Bush started based either on lies or the singularly worst incompetence in the history of American war-making, the president is waiting to hear whether his top cronies are going to be indicted for treasonous behavior.

Now that things are not going his way, the aristocratic Mr. Bush is losing it:

Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.

With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I…

“He’s like the lion in winter,” observed a political friend of Bush. “He’s frustrated…”

Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss’ wrath.

“This is not some manager at McDonald’s chewing out the help,” said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. “This is the President of the United States, and it’s not a pleasant sight.”

The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush’s distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath and Harriet Miers’ bungled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll…

“The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about,” said one Bush insider. “Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share.”

Everyone gets a share of blame except… Mr. Bush himself! See how that works?

Bush is so dismayed that “the only person escaping blame is the President himself,” said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration “illogical.”

Worst. President. Ever.

Cause of war: The best thing about the CIA Leak investigation is that it has forced a topic back into the media that is in dire need of revisiting: What were the real reasons President Bush took the country to war in Iraq.

Today, Frank Rich suggests that because the two men under scrutiny in the investigation, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, were instrumental in creating the fictional causus belli that led us into Iraq, the investigation into whether they leaked a the name of a CIA agent could have the unexpected consequence of unmasking the administration’s true motives.

[There] had to be that “why” for the invasion, the very why that today can seem so elusive that [New Yorker writer George] Packer calls Iraq “the ‘Rashomon’ of wars.” Abstract (and highly debatable) neocon notions of marching to Baghdad to make the Middle East safe for democracy (and more secure for Israel and uninterrupted oil production) would never fly with American voters as a trigger for war or convince them that such a war was relevant to the fight against those who attacked us on 9/11. And though Americans knew Saddam was a despot and mass murderer, that in itself was also insufficient to ignite a popular groundswell for regime change. Polls in the summer of 2002 showed steadily declining support among Americans for going to war in Iraq, especially if we were to go it alone.

For Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by fictional, more salable ones. We wouldn’t be invading Iraq to further Rovian domestic politics or neocon ideology; we’d be doing so instead because there was a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and because Saddam was on the verge of attacking America with nuclear weapons. The facts and intelligence had to be fixed to create these whys; any contradictory evidence had to be dismissed or suppressed.

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“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions [on foreign policy] that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

— Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance: The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross came up with her famous five stages of grief to describe how patients react to the discovery that they are terminally ill, but these phases apply to other traumas too. With regard to the debacle playing out in Iraq, for example, the White House and its die-hard supporters are still in denial, while most of their Democratic critics are stuck at anger. Policy wonks have moved on to the bargaining phase, debating how much of the original mission to sacrifice in return for a way out. Depression is likely to set in as the full extent of the calamity becomes clear; acceptance is a long way off.

– Gideon Rose, reviewing “Welcome to the Occupation: A rueful liberal hawk explores the road to war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath,” by George Packer.

AP is reporting on a cluster of three suicides in Special Forces troops based at Fort Carson, Colo. returning home from Iraq.

The Army says there appears to be no connection between the men’s overseas service and their deaths, and Army investigators found no “common contributing cause” among the three. The fact they were in the same unit is only a coincidence…

The Army says its overall suicide rate in 2003 was 12.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers, while the rate in the general U.S. population was 10.5 per 100,000

Special Forces soldiers specialize in what the Army calls “unconventional warfare” — commando raids, search-and-destroy missions, intelligence gathering. They go through specialized psychological screening. They also undergo rigorous physical training and learn survival techniques and other skills, including foreign languages….

Special Forces officials said the Colorado-based unit experienced heavy combat in Iraq. Two members were killed in the first half of 2004 — one by a roadside bomb, another in a vehicle rollover. Another member, former Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany, was sent home and charged with cowardice when the sight of the mangled body of an Iraqi caused a panic attack and prompted him to ask for psychological help. Charges against Pogany were later dropped, and he received a medical discharge.

Part of the problem is lack of funding for effective prevention. But we already knew taking care of our troops isn’t a big priority for the Bush administration.

The Army says its overall suicide rate in 2003 was 12.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers, while the rate in the general U.S. population was 10.5 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

[Former Army Ranger and veterans’ advocate Steve] Robinson has been pushing military leaders to stop using paper questionnaires to screen for problems among returning soldiers and switch to face-to-face meetings with mental health professionals.

“There have been improvements, but it’s been like pulling teeth from a lion’s mouth to get the Department of Defense to do things they’re not willing to do because of the dollars,” he said.

Support our troops. Bring them home.

Where’s the outrage? How many times will President Bush make speeches that include false assertions, facts and figures before he is exposed to the world as a congenital prevaricator?

Looking to bring back the Fear Factor that worked so well in the 2004 campaign, the president boldly declared that the U.S. and its partners “have disrupted at least ten serious al-Qaida plots since September 11 — including three al-Qaida plots to attack inside the United States. We have stopped at least five more al-Qaida efforts to case targets in the United States or infiltrate operatives into our country.” Holy Moly — that sounds impressive… and effective… and scary.

That is, until the details of exactly which “serious” plots the president was referring to came out. Hours after the speech, the White House released a helpful worksheet… and the experts started scratching their heads. Check out this L.A. Times article and see if you can’t hear the law enforcement officials quoted offering up a collective “Huh?” […]

Off with their heads: Something went terribly wrong during Bush-woman Karen Hughes’ “listening tour” of Islamic countries. Horror of horrors – she actually heard something.

Apparently, the U.S. Embassy in Turkey failed to vet for proper idealogical purity the women it assembled for an audience with Herself:

A group of Turkish female activists confronted Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes yesterday with heated complaints about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, turning a session designed to highlight the empowerment of women into a raw display of anger at U.S. policy in the region.

“This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero,” said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women’s Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation.

At previous meetings, Hughes’ handlers had made sure that the audiences included women from the wealthy and elite of society – or of women who belonged to organizations funded by the United States. At this meeting, somehow (mischief by a career diplomat, perhaps?) some LIBERALS got in:

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