Beating off the rescue party

[fastpat]

Beating off the rescue party

Just as he ignored accurate intelligence on Iraq, Bush will dismiss the Baker Commission's tough-minded proposals for salvaging his botched war.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Dec. 07, 2006 | The Iraq Study Group's report, released Wednesday, calling the situation in that country "grave and deteriorating" is hardly the first caution that President Bush has received. Two years ago, in December 2004, two frank face-to-face briefings were delivered to him from the field. In the first, the CIA station chief in Baghdad, who had filed an urgent memo the month before titled "The Expanding Insurgency in Iraq," was invited to the White House. The CIA officer had written that the insurgency was becoming more "self-confident" and in Sunni provinces "largely unchallenged." His report concluded: "The ease with which the insurgents move and exist in Baghdad and the Sunni heartland is bolstering their self-confidence further." He predicted that the United States would suffer more than 2,000 dead. Bush's reaction was to remark about the station chief, "What is he, some kind of defeatist?" Less than a week after the briefing, the officer was informed he was being reassigned from his post in Baghdad.

A few days after that briefing, on Dec. 17, 2004, Col. Derek Harvey, the Defense Intelligence Agency's senior intelligence officer for Iraq, was ushered into the Oval Office. Harvey, who had "conversed repeatedly with insurgents, and had developed the belief that the U.S. intelligence effort there was deeply flawed," according to Thomas Ricks in "Fiasco," briefed the president about the insurgency: "It's robust, it's well led, it's diverse. Absent some sort of reconciliation it's going to go on, and that risks a civil war. They have the means to fight this for a long time, and they have a different sense of time than we do, and are willing to fight. They have better intelligence than we do." Harvey also explained that foreign fighters, jihadists and al-Qaida were marginal elements. Ricks reported that after the briefing, Bush in his speeches still "would refer to setbacks only in vague terms."

But there is more to the story. A former high-ranking intelligence officer and close associate of Harvey's told me that during Harvey's briefing the president interrupted, turning to his aides to inquire, "Is this guy a Democrat?" Harvey's warnings, of course, were as thoroughly ignored as those of the CIA station chief.

In the weeks before the delivery of the Iraq Study Group (aka Baker-Hamilton Commission) report, Bush repeatedly insisted that al-Qaida was the principal foe in Iraq. Harvey, meanwhile, served as an advisor to the commission. After two years of Bush's contemptuous disdain for accurate intelligence reports, the commission dryly noted as a basic assumption: "No one can guarantee that any course of action in Iraq at this point will stop sectarian warfare, growing violence or a slide toward chaos. There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq." Upon receipt of the report, Bush responded with perfunctory and dismissive courtesy, "We probably won't agree with every proposal ... We'll act on it in a timely fashion. Thank you very much." Good night, and good luck.

The commission's report, a bipartisan consensus, is a surprisingly tough-minded document, clear in its proposals and cold-eyed about the prospects in Iraq. Bush's disinclination to immediately implement the commission's recommendations reflects his persistent delusion in military victory. It also marks his ultimate rejection of his father's and father's men's efforts to salvage him from his wreckage.

Ever since the commission was announced, Bush's energy has been devoted to beating off the rescue party. "This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever," he said last week in anticipation of the commission's report, mocking the "realism" universally attributed to former Secretary of State James Baker. Then, on Monday, in an interview with Fox News, he held forth on his superior knowledge over his father's. "I love to talk to my dad about things between a father and a son, not policy," he said. "No," he replied, when asked if he consults his father for advice. "He understands what I know, that the level of information I have relative to the level of information most other people have, including himself, is significant and that he trusts me to make decisions ... I am the commander in chief." He is the "decider" and the decider decides that Father does not know best.

Since the midterm elections loss, Bush has conducted a foreign policy intended to counter the Baker-Hamilton Commission. In a sense, his entire foreign policy is a case study in reaction formation. From the start, he was determined to do everything opposite from what President Clinton had done. Bush abandoned the Middle East peace process, cast aside the negotiations with North Korea over its development of nuclear weapons, withdrew from the secret diplomacy with reform-minded Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, and brushed aside concerns about terrorism. Even before Sept. 11, Bush entertained scenarios about invading Iraq. In this he was operating in the shadow of his father, who refused to march to Baghdad in the Gulf War to topple Saddam Hussein. Bush envisioned himself succeeding where he believed his father had failed, thereby exceeding him.

As soon as Baker declared that staying the course was an unacceptable option, Bush furiously initiated rounds of diplomacy guaranteed to disqualify Baker's proposals before they were formally presented. He rejected talks with Iran. He suggested that Syria comply with his demands, which Baker would propose as the proper subject of negotiations, before there could be any direct relations. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was prompted to repackage long-rejected proposals to the Palestinians as the basis for peace talks there. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was sent to the region to engage in predetermined fruitless nondiplomacy in order to suggest the appearance of diplomacy. Thus Bush created a series of false events so that he might claim he had tried Baker's approach but that it had failed.

The leaking of a memo by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley on the weakness of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the New York Times by an unnamed administration official on the eve of President Bush's meeting with Maliki in Amman, Jordan, dramatized the fragility of the Iraqi situation. Hadley described a leader who gave lip service to national aspirations but was really a sectarian. "He impressed me as a leader who wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so," Hadley wrote. "The information he receives is undoubtedly skewed by his small circle of [Islamic] Dawa [Party] advisers, coloring his actions and interpretation of reality. His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shia hierarchy and force positive change. But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."

Hadley added, "Maliki and those around him are naturally inclined to distrust new actors." The solution, Hadley suggested, was to construct "an alternative political base" for him of "moderate" groups that would enable him to cease being sectarian.

On the most obvious level, Hadley revealed the dearth of progress within Iraq, the dominance of sectarian forces that the United States had installed, and the absence of solutions arising within its own system, requiring the national security advisor to engage in an exercise of sheer fantasy.

On an ironic level, Hadley apparently did not recognize that the leader he was describing -- sectarian, bluff but essentially weak, surrounded by fawning advisors who reinforced his skewed sense of reality, ignorant of the facts on the ground, and incapable of reaching out to forge a political center -- was a sharply drawn if unintentional portrait of his own president.
End Excerpt



-- By Sidney Blumenthal
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/salon041.html[/quote]

[Jeff Higgins]

I thought you meant something else.

[TerryH]

Originally posted by Jeff Higgins
I thought you meant something else.

Yeah, I thought Monica got her old job back.

[Drago]

Originally posted by Jeff Higgins
I thought you meant something else.

That's right above your desk at work. Sick bastard. Nice pussy.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

You said "beating off". Huh huh. . .

[fastpat]

Now that "Childish Central" has responded, let's move to adult conversation, shall we.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally posted by fastpat
Now that "Childish Central" has responded, let's move to adult conversation, shall we.

I don't wanna, you can't make me...

[Nostril Cheese]

Had this vision of Pat, the Donner Party, KY.... Scary

Childish Central? You posting this stuff on a car forum of all things...

[5axis]

Note to self

add
latex gloves and hand lotion to the survial kit

and

volunteer for rescue/search help only if SHE is hot

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Nostril Cheese
Had this vision of Pat, the Donner Party, KY.... Scary

Childish Central? You posting this stuff on a car forum of all things...

This isn't a car forum, that's why it's called "Off Topic Discussion", son.

The car fora are on a list, since you've not been able to find that list, here it is:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/

All but the one on the bottom of the list are car fora.

[the]

Now that gives new meaning to "Boy, am I glad to see you guys!"

[jyl]

Getting back to the original topic, I think we'll just have to wait and see how Bush approaches this.

It has been proven that what Bush says he thinks frequently bears no relationship to what he actually does.

For example, when he declares his absolute committment to a member of his government, that's often a sign that said person is just days away from being discarded. From Mike Brown to Harriet Miers to Donald Rumsfeld.

And he spent the mid-term elections bashing Democrats as "cut and run" defeatists for proposing alternatives to the current Iraq policy, while it turns out that he secretly had his staff and Defense Secretary studying alternatives to that same policy.

In other words, what Bush says is often simply posturing - a sort of public negotiation process, where Bush declares that he is absolutely committed to X and then eventually settles for Y.

So it may be that his statements so far are along the same lines. Just more posturing and manuevering.

[bigchillcar]

Now that gives new meaning to "Boy, am I glad to see you guys!"

choke..lol!

[gprsh924]

i just hope that rescue party isnt too big

[widebody911]

Originally posted by fastpat
Beating off the rescue party

Wouldn't a simple 'thank you' note suffice?