Strategy that is making Iraq safer was snubbed for years

[sabra]

Source: USA Today

<snip>

Efforts to stop IEDs by targeting the insurgent networks that finance, build and plant the bombs showed results only after the Bush administration adopted a broader counterinsurgency strategy this year — and sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq to support it.

But a USA TODAY investigation shows that the strategy now used to defeat the bombmaking networks and stabilize Iraq was ignored or rejected for years by key decision-makers. As early as 2004, when roadside bombs already were killing scores of troops, a top military consultant invited to address two dozen generals offered a "strategic alternative" for beating the insurgency and IEDs.

That plan and others mirroring the counterinsurgency blueprint that the Pentagon now hails as a success were pitched repeatedly in memos and presentations during the following two years, at meetings that included then-Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The core of the strategy: Clear insurgents from key areas and provide security to win over Iraqis, who would respond by helping U.S. forces break IED networks and defeat the insurgency.

Bush administration officials, however, remained wedded to the idea that training the Iraqi army and leaving the country would suffice. Officials, including Cheney, insisted the insurgency was dying. Those pronouncements delayed the Pentagon from embracing new plans to stop IEDs and investing in better armored vehicles that allow troops to patrol more freely, documents and interviews show.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-12-18-iraqstrategy_N.htm?csp=34

[xchrom]

1. the invasion and occupation isn't working no matter what.

all this shows is two things.

bushco is incompetent.

and bushco is not really interested or invested in ''success'' -- what ever that can mean after ''shock and awe''.

the accounting of failure when it comes to bushco and iraq tallies up to an enormous price.

[Rockerdem]

3. Who knows ...

I went to bed last night after posting on the Feingold amendment thread, and thought a lot about this. What had annoyed me was that so many Democrats (a majority of them) essentially ratified keeping the troops in Iraq for all of 2008. People like Carl Levin, who is not a Bushco acolyte. I asked myself why. Why, in an election year when things could go south and make them extremely vulnerable.

I could only conclude that Sen. Levin and the rest have themselves concluded that there is no risk for things escalating in Iraq during the election season. So that they have no fear of being on the wrong side of a hot issue. In fact, they seem to think that Iraq will be lower on the list of hot topics next fall, and that the American consciousness will turn to other things.

I don't know what inspires their confidence. But the body language of the Dems in the Senate is not an anti-war one right now. In fact, it's lopsided in the other direction. Maybe they know something we don't.

[rodeodance]

2. so, the top WH people just allowed our troops to be blown up!!

[Supersedeas]

4. nothing to see here -- feed them more Britney and Holloway updates

[daleo]

5. This assumes that Iraq is safer

And also that the U.S. strategy mentioned here is the cause of that.

I have my doubts on both points. If things have settled down, it is probably because Iraqis have chosen this, for their own good reasons.