State of Denial
Posted by on September 29, 2006 at 12:33 PM
In the open thread this morning I excerpted from a story in the Daily News. Now there is more from The New York Times:
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.
The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.
As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.
...
It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.
...
Vice President Cheney is described as a man so determined to find proof that his claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was accurate that, in the summer of 2003, his aides were calling the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, with specific satellite coordinates as the sites of possible caches. None resulted in any finds.
There's even more from The Washington Post. Not surprisingly, the book is currently #1 on Amazon.
Comments (11) «
"The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author."
Problem #1 which precedes this, they didn't even think to try and secure the borders of Iraq until after the insurgency was full blown. This would have required many more troops than what was requested just to quell the insurgency. The borders of Iraq are wide open and to my knowledge no attempt is being made to secure them. IMHO, as long as the insurgents, IED's and weapons can get across from Iran and Syria, things will continue to get worse. Interestingly, enough I'd bet money that the rockets that Hezbollah used against the Isrealis actually passed through Iraq on thier way to Syria...
I guess securing Iran's borders now really doesn't matter, because securing the borders of Iraq and indeed Iraq itself is probably a lost cause. I mean, we can't even secure our own borders over here, so how would we do it there?
This is the kind of oversight that the Bush administration is famous for, but I guess it makes sense if you go by what Bush says "let's fight them there so we don't have to fight them here". Bush has presented the Islamofascists with an easier target; namely, our military forces. But that could have been limited to Afghanistan.
A military blunder. Bush made the same mistake as Hitler did. He bit off more than he could chew. The evidence to support this is by our backslide in Afghanistan. We should have "stayed the course" there which would have required many years and a lot of patience. Our Government could have taken it's time and built stronger alliances with Europe and others. All the while we would have been building support worldwide and not creating even more terrorists.
The bad thing is that as soon as we leave Iraq, there will be-
A: Full blown Civil War. Which will be influenced by other countries (Iran, Syria).
B: Probable invasion by another country, most likely Iran.
The following results wil vary in amount and quality, but you can be sure that thousands will die. There will be mass exodus, refugee situations, human suffering and human rights violations, genocides, etc...and world leaders will petition the UN to intervene and we know how effective they are, so the situatuion will drag on and on, and probably end up with a totalitarian Gov't run by Islamofascists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamofascism
Speaking of a state of denial, why didn't this party make an active stand against the Torture law that was just passed in Congress? I'm very disappointed in this party.
The GOP has a Katrina Foreign Policy!
My God! Why aren't you people seizing on all the bad news coming the Republicans' way? Please--show some guts! Talk about Katrina like how they talk about 9-11 -- show how Katrina exemplified how the GOP, not the Dems, can't protect us!!!! Do something!!!
And why aren't you jumping on this (see below)---the House leadership was involved in the Foley cover-up, and basically sponsored it--this is criminal:
The page worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., who said Friday that when he learned of the e-mail exchanges 10 to 11 months ago, he called the teen's parents. Alexander told the Ruston Daily Leader, "We also notified the House leadership that there might be a potential problem."
House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Friday he had asked the chairman of the House's page board, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., to investigate the page system. "We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.
This is a very sad day in our history. We Democrats are falling for the oldest trick. This new books is just a bunch of lies to get us of track. It is us who are still in denial.
In 1996 Bin Laden formally declare war on America and we just sat on our butts. It was Bill Clinton who screwed up in not capturing or killing Bin Laden when we had several opportunites. Several times we were offered Bin Laden on a silver platter, but did nothing.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html
This was the third time that Bill Clinton ignored the warnings. The second time was Oklahoma Bombing. http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_901.shtml
In 1985, when we the Democrats had control of Congress, Oliver North warned us about Bin Laden and told us that we would pay a high price we did not take care of Bin Laden, assasination plan and a plan to capture, were in place but never implemented by Democrat contolled congress. Again we the Democrats did nothing.
At least Bush was willing to take the war front from being on our American soil (New York, DC, Seattle, Oklahoma City) to their doorsteps. This excuse that Iraq War is breeding new terrorist in bogus. How can one breed new terrorist if the War starting in 1996? This war has been going on since 1985, technically.
When will we learn to wake up and face the music? When will we learn to defend ourselves?
When will we understand that Bin Laden and his cronies will never stop?
Signing,
A disappointed Democrat.
Rice,Powell,Bush,Chaney and Rumsfelt have always received what they wanted and thus : We Go To War In Iraq!
If they wrote about this Administration they would be marked as Playing Politics!
The Dems. cannot sit idle to the constant aggressions of the Rep. party. To sit idle is to appear weak. Without rebuttal the American people believe what they hear. Without rebuttal the American people believe what the Republican party accuses. They must take a stance and have a plan on every issue, including IRAQ!
The problem is that Dean has his own long-term ambition to "win in every state, every county, and every precinct” without tightly coordinating the national congress election as a short-term milestone. Dean must know that he is the organizer of the entire party instead of using DNC's resource according to his own way.
Dean is right.
That was his platform for chairmanship.
If you don't like it, get rid of him.
You will have to get rid of every state party chairman to do it.
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