Bush and Cheney See Iraq "Success"

[TehBorken]

 Unbelievable. A few more "successes" like this and we'll be done for. Maybe they mean "success" as in "how many billions of dollars in profit that Haliburton has sucked out of this insane and pointless war".
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"][nyt_headline version="1.0" type=" "]On Anniversary, Bush and Cheney See Iraq Success [/nyt_headline] [nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "] [/nyt_byline][div class="byline"]By [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_e_sanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by David E. Sanger"]DAVID E. SANGER[/a] and [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/thom_shanker/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Thom Shanker"]THOM SHANKER[/a][/div] WASHINGTON, March 19 — On the third anniversary of a war that they once expected to be over by now, President Bush and senior officials argued Sunday that their strategy was working despite escalating violence in [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Iraq."]Iraq[/a], even as a former Iraqi prime minister once favored by the White House declared that a civil war had already started.[/p] Displaying a carefully calibrated mix of optimism about eventual victory and caution about how long American troops would be involved, the officials who marked the day — including Mr. Bush, Vice President [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/dick_cheney/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Dick Cheney."]Dick Cheney[/a] and Secretary of Defense [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Donald H. Rumsfeld."]Donald H. Rumsfeld[/a] — sounded much as they had on the first anniversary of the invasion. At that time, the rebuilding effort had just begun, the insurgency was far less fierce, and the American occupation had suppressed, temporarily, the sectarian violence scarring Iraq today.[/p] The picture painted by the administration clashed with that of the former interim prime minister, [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/iyad_allawi/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Iyad Allawi."]Ayad Allawi[/a], once hailed by Mr. Bush as the kind of fair-minded leader Iraq needed. He declared in an interview with the BBC that the country was nearing a "point of no return." [/p] "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war," said Mr. Allawi, who served as prime minister after the American invasion and now leads a 25-seat secular alliance of representatives in Iraq's 275-seat National Assembly. "We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more."[/p] "If this is not civil war," he said, "then God knows what civil war is." [/p] Mr. Allawi's assessment was contradicted by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the senior American commander in Iraq, who said on CNN's "Late Edition" that "We're a long way from civil war." [/p] As politicians in Baghdad moved incrementally forward on Sunday on forming a unified government, at least 15 more bodies were discovered around the capital, bringing to more than 200 the number of people believed killed in sectarian violence in the past few weeks. [Page A10.][/p] On CBS News' "Face the Nation," Mr. Cheney sought to place the war in a broader context. "It's not just about Iraq, it's not about just today's situation in Iraq," he said. "It's about where we're going to be 10 years from now in the Middle East and whether or not there's going to be hope and the development of the governments that are responsive to the will of the people, that are not a threat to anyone, that are not safe havens for terror or manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction." [/p] The war has taken more than 2,300 American lives, and those of 33,000 to 37,000 Iraqis, according to the estimates of the Iraq Body Count Project, an independent group that monitors the news media. [/p] Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed calls for withdrawal by comparing the current battle to the two great struggles of his generation: World War II and the cold war. "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," he wrote in an op-ed article published in The Washington Post. "It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination."[/p] Mr. Bush is entering the fourth year of the war able to declare success in the dismantling of [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Saddam Hussein."]Saddam Hussein's[/a] tyrannical government and in providing a framework for democratic elections, though the country has so far failed to put together the institutions to make a democracy work. Mr. Bush's approval rating, which soared in the early days of the invasion as Americans rushed to Baghdad, has sunk to the low-to-mid 30 percent range as the chaos and number of Iraqis meeting violent deaths has escalated.[/p] Mr. Cheney was challenged on "Face the Nation" about his statement three years ago that "we will be greeted as liberators" and his assertion 10 months ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes." [/p] He insisted that in both cases his facts were right, but that the news media had created a different perception with vivid imagery of killing. [/p] "I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," he said. [/p] The administration could take heart this weekend from the relatively small antiwar protests around the country, compared with protests held on the previous anniversaries of the invasion. An estimated 7,000 people demonstrated in Chicago on Saturday and smaller protests were held over the weekend in Boston, San Francisco and other cities. In Times Square, the figure was about 1,000. [/p] Television was the forum where the administration's representatives and opponents marshaled the statistics that they believe made their cases. Mr. Bush argued last week that by year's end, Iraqi forces would control more than half the country; Representative [a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_p_murtha/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about John P. Murtha."]John P. Murtha[/a], the hawkish Pennsylvania Democrat who late last year called for American withdrawal, said Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that the statistic was meaningless.[/p] "I flew for an hour and 15 minutes over desert," he said of a recent trip. "Wasn't a soul. And that's the territory I guess they're talking about." Meanwhile, he noted, unemployment has soared in areas hardest hit by sectarian violence. Oil production, which the administration once said would pay for Iraq's rebuilding, was markedly below last year's levels.[/p] As midterm elections approach, the White House is concerned that support for the war is ebbing fastest among Republicans who supported the war, including some influential conservatives who argue that the job of liberation is done, and American troops should not be left in the crossfire of civil strife.[/p] Mr. Bush talked about the war in a two-minute statement to reporters on Sunday when he returned to the White House from Camp David, urging Iraq to form a unity government, and saying, "I'm encouraged by the progress." Then he entered the White House with his wife, Laura.[/p] He offered no answers to questions about the gap between his expectations three years ago and the realities of Iraq today, seemingly underscoring the problem the White House has faced in explaining the war. Suspicions that Mr. Hussein had unconventional weapons, an original justification for the invasion, have proved unfounded.[/p] Mr. Bush halted eroding support for his Iraq strategy last December, explaining his military, political and economic strategy and admitting some early errors. But that was before images of Shiites fighting Sunnis began a new erosion of support.[/p] On the critical political question — how long American forces will stay — General Casey has said a significant presence will be required for "a couple more years," and "over 2006, we will continue to see a gradual reduction in coalition forces."[/p] When the war was launched, the Pentagon expected a short conflict. Its classified plans called for the withdrawal of the majority of American troops by the fall of 2003. Today there are roughly 133,000 still there. [/p] As of Friday, 2,313 American military personnel and Defense Department civilians had died during the Iraq effort; of those, 1,811 were killed in action and 502 in non-hostile events, like accidents, a Pentagon spokesman said Sunday. The spokesman also cited statistics that 7,912 American military personnel had been wounded so severely in action they could not return to duty, and 9,212 had been wounded in action but could return to duty.[/p] Mr. Rumsfeld, whose refusal to send larger numbers of troops into Iraq after the invasion has made him a lightning rod for critics, said in his published remarks on Sunday that terrorists, not the American-led coalition, are losing in Iraq, a message repeated by Mr. Cheney. [/p] And like Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld insisted the problem was the imagery from a 24-hour news cycle. "Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack," Mr. Rumsfeld wrote. "History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately."   [/p]

[CK]

Exactly, I am sure their stock portfolio is a huge success!

[weird al]

Ronald Dumsfeld said:

  "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," he wrote in an op-ed article published in The Washington Post. "It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination."

   William F Buckley writes:

  "If Hitler had known in June, 1941, what would befall the German army — -and him — in four years, he would not have invaded Russia. Four years! In four years we marched from Pearl Harbor to the heart of what was left of Tokyo and Berlin. In three years we can't yet take a cab from Baghdad to its airport without an armed guard."

  "Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."    

[Sportsdude]

There is so much propoganda one person can take and its showing in the polls. The fact is, is that the admistration figured this would be like ww2 germany. But they forgot that saddam was a dictator who kept these factions in check and that without a force in power its like opening a jack in the box. boing...

Second, they keep one relating this to germany. Sorry differnt religions differnt backgrounds. Iraq is a muslim country, Germany is a christian country. I don't like to get into religion but religion has a big part in this whole mess.

Third, the bush admistration didn't realise that Iraq was a powder keg much like the balkans were during the 80's and 90's and during ww1.

Why did they forget all of this?

Because Bush doesn't look into the past for answers. Didn't look at how Clinton handled the situation and didn't even take the advice of his own father who stopped at the iraqi border in the first gulf war.

[tenkani]

True, Bush didn't think of such things. The difference between Bush and a good president, however, is that a good president is open to advice from the outside world. Most of the major errors of the Iraq war (the destruction of government infrastructure after the war, the dismissal of the entire Iraqi military rather than just the baathists, the prison scandals) were predicted long ahead of time by military and other sources. Those who spoke up, the ones who were willing to take a position different from the Bush ideology, quickly found themselves sidelined or even out of a job.

  This wasn't a matter of a few whistle blowers getting canned. Colin Powell, as well as a number of top military officials found themselves in the position of towing the line or facing the wrath of good old Rummy and pals.

[soapbox]

to effectively wage war against insurgents (if this is the goal of the military presence there,and i think it is) would require bloodshed and dead americans...so instead of direct engagement with the enemy (which was necessary to defeat the nazi's and collaborators of the third reich) they simply avoid actual combat and direct engagement.

  why?  dead bodies are unpopular and indicates to the public there really is a war over there.

  you don't think a couple of heavy american offensives sustained over a period of a couple months wouldn't result in some serious advancements and success? (assuming you are playing the side of the street that supports engagement)

  of course it would. the firepower is there,trust me.the resources are there...but again it will result in real combat deaths and nobody wants to see that...it's bad press.

  indeed allied forces mopped up the nazi's in less than 2 years from landing in the south and less than 1 year from landing in the north.      

[TehBorken]

   soapbox wrote:
of course it would. the firepower is there,trust me.the resources are there...but again it will result in real combat deaths and nobody wants to see that...it's bad press.

No, as someone else pointed out much earlier, this is now a 4GW war, and there ain't no way for us to win one of those. We're stuck; we can't "win" this war without utterly leveling the entire country, and probably not even then.

 
indeed allied forces mopped up the nazi's in less than 2 years from landing in the south and less than 1 year from landing in the north.
 
That was a completely different kind of war. The Nazis weren't insurgents who were integrated into and supported by the populations of the countries they held. WW2 was a classic, large-scale 'stand and fight' war fought with air power and armor on both sides. It's nothing like what we face in Iraq, not even close.

 

[soapbox]

iraq is a different scenerio and is not a vietnam syndrome (a war that cannot be won).

  i agree,very different from direct fighting similar to ww2.

  iraq need not be leveled...even then who would end up paying for reconstruction (yes,you guessed it) but a further comittment to offensives would certainly demoralize the often not seen insurgency.

  remember these guys are not very sophisicated and are basically operating with dirty hit and run tatics.IED are not going to bring down US forces but will contribute to this whole thing dragging on.

  i can't comment too much as i am not a military planner,but can say this...with over 100,000 troops behaving like passive policemen up against 10,000 or less insurgents with very little hard armour and weaponry beyond assult rifles,IED's and the occasional RPG...why the delay in taking these guys out and establishing a serious military presence?    

[tenkani]

You simply assert that Iraq is not a "vietnam syndrome". How about you explain the relevant factors that make it different in any real way. The important issue, of course, is the intractable, tar baby nature of the conflict.

In Vietnam...

1. The enemy enjoyed significant support from the population (5% - 10% support is plenty to maintain an insurgency).
2. The nature of the enemy was that he could blend easily into the local population, making airstrikes and massive assaults essentially useless. Worse than useless, in fact, as every civilian killed by conventional military tactics only aided the recruitment of the insurgents.
3. The U.S. supported government was widely criticized by citizens for not representing their interests and being lapdogs of the occupiers.
4. Chaos prevailed in the streets, making normal government operations nearly impossible.
5. The enemy felt that they were fighting to eject foreigners from their soil, and thus enjoyed an inherent morale advantage to the occupying force, many of whom wondered what the f*ck they were doing halfway across the globe.
6. Various forces within the country waged an armed struggle for control of the political system. Buddhist demonstrations were met with massacres and mass jailings. A widespread insurgency was fueled by the general feeling that change could only come through violence. It was, in essence, a civil war.
7. The occupying force for the most part faced an enemy that operated in small cells using hit and run tactics, ambushes, sabotage and attacks on civilians who cooperated with the occuppiers. The U.S. military was put in a highly reactive stance, putting out fires as they occured and unable to take the fight to the enemy.
8. As the war drew on, the morale and humanity of the occupying force began to wane. Highly publicized massacres, rapes and discipline problems painted U.S. servicemen as ruffians both at home and in Vietnam. At this point, the "hearts and minds campaign" was truly dead, and without support from the citizens of Vietnam, the war could not be won.
8. Unable to quell the insurgency, yet also unable to admit that our vastly superior forces could not crush simple peasants using bolt action rifles and improvised explosives, the war dragged on, each successive administration convincing itself that the insurgency was "on the ropes", heedless of the flood of intelligence stating otherwise.

To me, the similarities are there for anyone willing to see them. The differences between the two conflicts, though present, generally aren't relevant to the question of whether we are now engaged in a strikingly similar quagmire in Iraq.

Remember, the goal of an insurgency is not to defeat the enemy's military forces. As Sun Tzu said, to win, the insurgency simply has to survive. On the flip side, for the occupier to win, he must crush the insurgency completely. According even to U.S. military sources, the insurgency today is more organized, determined and strong than it has ever been. 3 years later and they are as strong as they've ever been. Yet they keep telling us that if we simply wait we can prevail. Sounds very familiar.

Your confusion about why the U.S. military can't prevail over an enemy with "very little hard armour and weaponry beyond assult rifles,IED's and the occasional RPG" demonstrates a lack of understanding of the nature of a guerilla war.

Also, your assertion that the insurgency is made up of 10,000 members is low even according to official Pentagon estimates. The Iraqi intelligence agency recently put the number somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 if I remember correctly, although they stipulated that most likely only 40,000 of those could be classified as "hard-core insurgents". The general rule of thumb is that in order to effectively crush a dug-in insurgency, you should strive for a 10 to 1 force advantage. Even if we go with the low end estimate from the Iraqi intelligence agency (eliminating all but the full-time insurgents), that still implies that we should have roughly 400,000 troops in country to prevail.

Finally, your statement that U.S. troops are acting like passive policemen ignores the recent massive military action, in which we saw larger airstrikes than anytime since the initial ground war and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 troops maneuvering agressively in enemy territory. The problem isn't that U.S. troops are unwilling to attack the enemy; the problem is that in a guerilla war against a wily adversary, you are seldom given the opportunity to use massive force decisively.




>>>>
iraq is a different scenerio and is not a vietnam syndrome (a war that cannot be won).
 
i agree,very different from direct fighting similar to ww2.
 
iraq need not be leveled...even then who would end up paying for reconstruction (yes,you guessed it) but a further comittment to offensives would certainly demoralize the often not seen insurgency.
 
remember these guys are not very sophisicated and are basically operating with dirty hit and run tatics.IED are not going to bring down US forces but will contribute to this whole thing dragging on.
 
i can't comment too much as i am not a military planner,but can say this...with over 100,000 troops behaving like passive policemen up against 10,000 or less insurgents with very little hard armour and weaponry beyond assult rifles,IED's and the occasional RPG...why the delay in taking these guys out and establishing a serious military presence?