Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says

[grytpype]

Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/washington/02war.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush’s promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

“We could not clear and hold,” Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, acknowledged in a recent interview, in a frank admission of how American strategy had crumbled....

Wow, Bush's war advisors are just about the most surprised looking motherf*ckers on Earth, aren't they?

[GAspnes]

1. Events overran Bush team's optimism

...would be more like it.

[saigon68]

30. The Chimp shouted a “strategy for victory in Iraq.”

LOL

[marmar]

2. How about chaotic lack-of-a-plan overran Iraq?

They can't even fake being on top of things anymore. They're losing the framing war. BushCo is toast. :nopity:

[badgerpup]

3. Me first! Me first!

"We had no way of predicting....."
:sarcasm:

Epitaph for the Bush occupation of the White House and Oval Office.

edit: Awww...you guys post too fast. :P

[Javaman]

29. Or...

"I don't think anyone could have anticipated chaos..."

[msongs]

4. um, the president is the commander in chief. HE IS TO BLAME for

all of it. especially the parts where he knew what he wanted and went for it without letting such things as facts, experienced advice, and common sense stand in his way. just like a petulant spoiled child who has to be bailed out by his old man or his old man's rich friends all the time.

this article sounds like a planned attempt to take the blame off of bush, does it not? as in, a propaganda piece?

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art

[truthisfreedom]

5. FAILURE-in-Chief.

We can't save the country without impeaching both bush and cheney.

[badgerpup]

6. But...but...Bush is The Decider! He said so! He did!

"...this article sounds like a planned attempt to take the blame off of bush, does it not? as in, a propaganda piece?"

It's going to be interesting watching them trying to spin this...it's going to be almost as believeable as "We've never been about 'Stay the course'." :popcorn: :rofl:

[depakid]

7. This had NOTHING to do with "choas"

What happened was entirely expected (by many knowledgeable analysts) and was the natural (and predicted) consequence of allowing far right ideologues into positions of power in the US- and repeatedly parroting and enabling them.

If the NY Times had a shred of credibility on Iraq, they'd admit that- and stop publishing apologias.

[4nic8em]

8. Bush Team Says:

"Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06". Duh...no shit. What a revelation.

[TomInTib]

9. I guess the "reality" didn't follow the script

What a bunch of chickenshit idiots.

[arewenotdemo]

24. some of that sublime arrogance is MIA

<snip>

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

http://www.ronsuskind.com/articles/000106.html

[C_U_L8R]

10. What plan ????

What plan ?????????

They keep saying they got a plan.... well, what is it ???????

[kskiska]

11. He's not listening to his generals

(snip)

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

(snip)

Mr. Bush came to worry that it was not just his critics and Democrats in Congress who were looking for what he dismissed last month as a strategy of “graceful exit.” Visiting the Pentagon a few weeks ago for a classified briefing on Iraq with his generals, Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”

(another gem)

Mr. Bush still insists on talking about victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it. “It’s a word the American people understand,” he told members of the Iraq Study Group who came to see him at the White House in November, according to two commission members who attended. “And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.”

[Phredicles]

22. "victory, even if his own advisers differ about how to define it."

I still can't remember when any of this bunch have ever even TRIED, at least publicly or on the record.

[arewenotdemo]

25. “It’s a word the American people understand”

Even the slow-witted American public can't absorb what the Chimp means by "victory" in the context of his occupation of Iraq.

And, Jesus, that last line has to be right out of the Three Stooges. The Moron-in-Chief still doesn't realize that he's painted himself into a corner.

[Strelnikov_]

32. Appears To Be The Reverse Of 'Nam (LBJ Era) To Me

Military leadership wants out, (chickenhawk) politicos want to stay.

“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, . . not how we’re going to leave.” really says it all.

[Imagevision]

12. Rumsfeld was a total failure and Bush supported him until he fired him!!

[Olney Blue]

13. Cares more about power and his worthless hide than the troops.

This part of the article illustrates it well:


"This year, decisions on a new strategy were clearly slowed by political calculations. Many of Mr. Bush’s advisers say their timetable for completing an Iraq review had been based in part on a judgment that for Mr. Bush to have voiced doubts about his strategy before the midterm elections in November would have been politically catastrophic."

[Old and In the Way]

14. "No one expected Iraqi's to fight the occupiers of their country."

Condi Rice, testimony in the Congressional Investigations of Iraq, 2007

No Condi, no one could have predicted this...except everyone who were opposed to this illegal and elective war to begin with. Many of us actually paid attention to the lessons learned in VietNa,.

[ckramer]

15. Of course there was a plan!

The plan was to please daddy, which is completely succesffuly!

[madeline_con]

16. "Iraq’s ferocious unraveling,

which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise."

They were told, but NO~! had to do it their way. Hekuva job, Brown Nosers!

[rodeodance]

17. DAH!!

[Phrogman]

18. Than why did they build the permanent bases?

The whole story is bullshit, the administration knew when this started that it would ignite a factional war in the Mid-East.
Its what the Israelis wanted. Arabs killing Arabs.

[Imagevision]

19. Bush's plan for Iraq was in fact, not to exit...ever! Installing bases & US. presence permanently

except Bush never figured the Iraqi's weren't going to give up the oil just for regime change for a US. installed regime.

[superconnected]

20. Iraq, plan?

The plan was to divert hundreds of billions of american tax dollars to bushco and his corporate allies, and through his corporate allies back to bushco. Don't think he didn't get a big chunk. That was the only plan.

[young_at_heart]

21. How must the service men and women feel when they read this?

It gives one a very sick feeling to know that such incompetence is going to continue.

[superconnected]

23. they need to see the truth. The republican view of hiding it from them

for their "moral" but really "bush's ratings", isn't going to stop more kids from joining. Many actually are mislead into believing they should go "protect" america and we're winning, it's a legitimate war, and they aren't playing bushco's death lotto.

[Eurobabe]

26. PLAN?? Since when did these clods ever have a coherent PLAN

for Iraq?? And WHY is the New York Times providing so much cover for these douche bags? Did they buy a seat on the board of directors or something? IS that where Rummy went?

[The Backlash Cometh]

27. Is it possible that the Saudis are financing the chaos so that the

Americans can't leave?

[struggle4progress]

28. And in '05. And in '04. And in '03. Might be a pattern here.

[yellowcanine]

31. Was there a PLAN?

[grytpype]

33. I'm shocked too.

[daleo]

34. Only one plan had a hope of success

That was the "don't invade Iraq" plan. Although millions of political advisers gave that advice while marching in the streets, the chimp ignored it.

[jazzjunkysue]

35. This is mutiny. Short and sweet. Chimpy has to fire him if he's giving

phone interviews against the decider.

He's a patriot.