Bush Rhetoric and Rice Fantasy , The Guardian

[TexasLawyer]

A scathing and wide-ranging rant from Mr. Blumenthal.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=58169&d=28&m=1&y=2005

Bush Rhetoric and Rice Fantasy Miss Iraq’s Facts
Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian

WASHINGTON, 28 January 2005 — The most penetrating critique of the realism informing President Bush’s second inaugural address, a trumpet call of imperial ambition, was made one month before it was delivered, by Lt. Gen. James Helmly, chief of the US Army Reserve. In an internal memorandum, he described “the Army Reserve’s inability under current policies, procedures and practices ... to meet mission requirements associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. The Army Reserve is additionally in grave danger of being unable to meet other operational requirements and is rapidly degenerating into a broken force”.

These “dysfunctional” policies are producing a crisis “more acute and hurtful”, as the Reserve’s ability to mobilize troops is “eroding daily”. The US force in Iraq of about 150,000 troops is composed of a “volunteer” army that came into being with the end of military conscription during the Vietnam War. More than 40 percent are National Guard and Reserves, most having completed second tours of duty and being sent out again. The force level has been maintained by the Pentagon only by “stop-loss” orders that coerce soldiers to remain in service after their enlistment expires — a back-door draft. Re-enlistment is collapsing, by 30 percent last year.

The Pentagon justified this de facto conscription by telling Congress that it is merely a short-term solution that would not be necessary as Iraq quickly stabilizes and an Iraqi security force fills the vacuum. But this week the Pentagon announced that the US force level would remain unchanged through 2006. “I don’t know where these troops are coming from. It’s mystifying,” Representative Ellen Tauscher, a ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told me. “There’s no policy to deal with the fact we have a military in extremis.”

Bush’s speech calling for “ending tyranny in all the world” was of consistent abstraction uninflected by anything as specific as the actual condition of the military that would presumably be sent scurrying on various global missions. But the speech was aflame with images of destruction and vengeance. The neoconservatives were ecstatic. Of course, the White House briefed reporters, Bush didn’t mean his rhetoric to suggest any change in strategy. Unfortunately for Condoleezza Rice, such levels of empty abstraction could not glide her through her Senate confirmation as secretary of state without abrasion.

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— Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars.

[indepat]

1. Either the plethora of sources proffering estatic praise of the inaugural

address are way out there in la-la land or Blumenthal is dishing up sour grapes.