If the generals in the field didn't come up with it, and the ISG didn't come up with it...

[bridgit]

Where the hell did g.w. bush come up with this 'surge & accelerate' plan? Bill Kristol? Benjamin Netanyahu? Karl Rove? Mary Matalin? Did he just sit-up-bolted from a dead sleep in a cold sweat and start talking in tongues? What? Where?

[The Magistrate]

1. American Enterprise Institute, Ma'am

Would seem to be the ones who have been talking this up....

[raccoon]

2. Why do you say that?

Not saying they're not, but what makes you say that?

[The Magistrate]

8. Please See No. 7 Below, Ma'am

Ms. Clearly has saved us the trouble of hunting up the link. The presentation is an abysmal one: it seems to mistake the methods of motivational speaking for those of military strategy....

[bridgit]

3. oh for crying out loud!!! there something a little less 'american', or enterprising...

about that...organism; and i rather doubt they are a proper institute unless it is we are referring to a repository for the housing of mental instability x(

[Jacobin]

10. Yep...Making 'Think Tanks' official oxymorons

They planned it and named it and invited John McCain and Joe Lieberman to come speak there to talk it up last week.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. He got if from, "Winning Stratergeries" by George Armstrong Custer.

[NNN0LHI]

5. God n/t

[butterfly77]

6. Cheney...

[Philosoraptor]

22. The CEO, big dick

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

7. Here

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25292/pub_detail.asp

[bridgit]

9. Yay! a plan for success in Iraq...

:banghead: :hurts: :argh:

[Marie26]

14. A Powerpoint plan!

If you clik the link, it's just a series of Powerpoint slides, w/bullet points for easy digestion. I remember when the neocons used to produce long, serious, footnoted policy books on their wars. They're not even trying anymore.

[Marie26]

12. PNAC strikes again

The author of that piece, Frederick Kagan, is also a member of PNAC. It's so sickening.




Frederick Kagan, along with father Donald and brother Robert, is a member of a key neoconservative family, second in influence only to the Kristol and Podhoretz clans. Like his father and brother, Frederick favors hawkish foreign policies and extravagant defense budgets. He is also associated with the Project for the New American Century (which his brother cofounded), having participated in the PNAC study group that produced Rebuilding America's Defenses, a 2000 book that served as a blueprint for several Bush administration policies, and contributed a chapter about the U.S. military for the PNAC volume Present Dangers (2000), which was edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1240

No record of any actual military service in that little bio, of course. And Kagan got his BA & PhD in... Soviet history, making him supremely unqualified to be pontificating about anything regarding Middle East policy. THANK YOU for the link - it seems like Bush is still forming his policy from neocon delusions.

[raccoon]

13. Thanks for the link.

My guess is that none of these AEI (ahem) individuals ever served in the military.


From the report:

"Executive Summary

Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion."

Has this bozo ever heard of Vietnam, I wonder?

[cool user name]

11. From Michael Ledeen

The author is suspected of providing the "Yellowcake Forgeries," is a member of the AEI, an editor of NRO, and a student of Italian fascism, and apparantly has Bush's ear. What he writes should alarm you.

Michael Ledeen writes the following:


The Time May Have Come

The Iran We Cannot Avoid

There is no escape from the war Iran is waging against us, the war that started in 1979 and is intensifying with every passing hour. We will shortly learn more about the documents we found accompanying the high-level Iranian terrorist leader we briefly arrested in Hakim's compound in Baghdad some days ago, and what we will learn–what many key American officials have already learned–is stunning. At least to those who thought that Iran was "meddling" in Iraq, but refused to believe that it was total war, on a vast scale.

Several good journalists are working on this story (see, for example, today's article by Eli Like in the NY Sun), and the outlines are pretty clear. First, we had good information that terrorists were in Baghdad, and had gone to the compound. We did not know exactly who they were. We entered the compound and arrested everybody who looked like a usual suspect. One of them told us he was the #3 official of the al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, a particularly vicious group. He was carrying documents, one of which was in essence a wiring diagram of Iranian operations in Iraq. That wiring diagram included both Shi'ite and Sunni terrorist groups, and was of such magnitude that American officials were flabbergasted. It seems that our misnamed Intelligence Community had grossly underestimated the sophistication and the enormity of the Iranian war campaign.

I am told that this information has reached the president, and that it is part of the body of information he is digesting in order to formulate his strategy for Iraq. If he sees clearly what is going on, he must realize that there can be no winning strategy for Iraq alone, since a lot of 'Iraqi' activity—not just lethal materiel such as the latest generation of explosive devices, now powerful enough to penetrate the armor of most of our vehicles—is actually Iranian in origin. We cannot 'solve' the Iraqi problem without regime change in Iran.

Those of you who have borne with me for the last few years will not be surprised to hear this; what's new is the apparently irrefutable evidence that has now providentially fallen into our hands. The policy makers will not like this evidence, because it drives them in a direction they do not wish to go. I am told that, at first, there was a concerted effort, primarily but by no means exclusively from the intel crowd, to sit on the evidence, to prevent it from reaching the highest levels. But the information was too explosive, and it is now circulating throughout the bureaucracy.


< more >

[Avalux]

17. Michael Ledeen was behind the fake Niger documents.

He's a liar and just plain diabolical.

[bridgit]

23. Mr. & Mrs. Ledeen...

now there's a fun couple :(

[TahitiNut]

15. Are we Through the Looking Glass yet?

This approach requires a national commitment to victory in Iraq:

• The ground forces must accept longer tours for several years. National Guard units will have to accept increased deployments during this period.
• Equipment shortages must be overcome by transferring equipment from non-deploying active duty, National Guard, and reserve units to those about to deploy. Military industry must be mobilized to provide replacement equipment sets urgently.
• The president must request a dramatic increase in reconstruction aid for Iraq. Responsibility and accountability for reconstruction must be assigned to established agencies. The president must insist upon the completion of reconstruction projects. The president should also request a dramatic increase in CERP funds.
• The president must request a substantial increase in ground forces end strength. This increase is vital to sustaining the morale of the combat forces by ensuring that relief is on the way. The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this age.

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25292/pub_detail.asp

More money! More money! More bodies! Wargasm! Wargasm!

I can just imagine the MTV Generation flooding into the streets and surging to their local recruiter's office in response to the clarion call of Dear Leader. Yep. Ubetcha.

:eyes:

*CERP = Commander's Emergency Response Program
This is the program, I believe, under which $1 billion in cash was shipped to Iraq - the 'footballs' of shrink-wrapped currency that was tossed to all the wannabe receivers, all without accountability, of course.
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040114-1144.html

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

16. If this is another scam courtesy of the PNAC

then it should be shouted across America. The fact that Bush still hasn't learned his lesson and is still taking his marching orders from the PNAC, a cultish fringe-group should be making front page news. You ask an excellent question that I haven't seen addressed in our so-called independent media.

[Avalux]

18. PNAC lives! Frederick Kagan won't give up, will he?

:grr:

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. Sounds more like

their last desperate attempt to keep control of Iraq's oil and to continue the unrest in the ME, which has been such a profitable enterprise for themselves and their business partners.

[Avalux]

21. Yep, that's it exactly. No matter the cost to us "commodities".

That's what we are - troops, Americans, Iraqis - we are merely commodities to be expended to further the agenda of these maniacs.

[lectrobyte]

20. I think the term you are looking for is "asspull"

[RiverStone]

24. He found it some where in the vacuum that holds...

...what ever is inside his head. I really think he only listens to the voices that randomly speak to him, and no one else.

His willful disregard of reason from almost everyone around him suggests a man mentally incapable of being president of anything