The tethered goat strategy

[Briar]

The tethered goat strategy

Amid an internal crisis of credibility, Condoleezza Rice has washed her hands of her department

Sidney Blumenthal

Since the Iraqi elections in January, US foreign service officers at the Baghdad embassy have been writing a steady stream of disturbing cables describing drastically worsening conditions. Violence from incipient communal civil war is rapidly rising. Last month there were eight times as many assassinations committed by Shia militias as terrorist murders by Sunni insurgents. The insurgency, according to the reports, also continues to mutate. Meanwhile, President Bush's strategy of training Iraqi police and army to take over from coalition forces - "when they stand up, we'll stand down" - is perversely and portentously accelerating the strife. State department officials in the field are reporting that Shia militias use training as cover to infiltrate key positions. Thus the strategy to create institutions of order and security is fuelling civil war.

Rather than being received as invaluable intelligence, the messages are discarded or, worse, considered signs of disloyalty. Rejecting the facts on the ground apparently requires blaming the messengers. So far, two top attaches at the embassy have been reassigned elsewhere for producing factual reports that are too upsetting.
The Bush administration's preferred response to increasing disintegration is to act as if it has a strategy that is succeeding. "More delusion as a solution in the absence of a solution," said a senior state department official. Under the pretence that Iraq is being pacified, the military is partially withdrawing from hostile towns in the countryside and parts of Baghdad. By reducing the number of soldiers, the administration can claim its policy is working going into the midterm elections. But the jobs the military doesn't want to perform are being sloughed off on state department "provisional reconstruction teams" (PRTs) led by foreign service officers. The rationale is that they will win Iraqi hearts-and-minds by organising civil functions.

The Pentagon has informed the state department it will not provide security for these officials and that mercenaries should be hired for protection instead. Internal state department documents listing the PRT jobs, dated March 30, reveal that the vast majority of them remain unfilled by volunteers. So the professionals are being forced to take the assignments in which "they can't do what they are being asked to do", as a senior department official told me.

...

Amid this internal crisis of credibility, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has washed her hands of her department. Her management skills are minimal. Now she has left coercing people to fill the PRTs to her counsellor, Philip Zelikow, who, by doing the dirty work, is trying to keep her reputation clean.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1747665,00.html

[MADem]

1. The messages are discarded or, worse, considered signs of disloyalty

This BODES ILL!!! You disregard your people in the field AT YOUR DIRE PERIL.

Of course, this is the modus operadi of BushCo. How well does Rummy listen to his Flag and General officers in operational capacities? Answer: He doesn't. He FIRES them.

[sweetheart]

2. "More delusion as a solution in the absence of a solution,"

This is the official position of the state department, that the US people
stand for delusion and lies... it makes me incensed, livid, to discover
that we are being betrayed to criminally.

[Demeter]

3. And This Is Surprising How?

Rice couldn't do anything with the present situation, or any situation--she is the idiot's idiot. Anyone still operating under the delusion that Rice is a competent and powerful political figure may sign up over here for Medicare Part D.