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New Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), is calling President Bush's invasion of Iraq a "stark blunder" and says that his new scheme to send 21,500 more troops into the mess he created is just digging the hole deeper.
I wonder though.
It seems ever more likely to me that this whole mess was no blunder at all.
People are wont to attribute the whole thing to lack of intelligence on the president's part, and to hubris on the part of his key advisers. I won't argue that the president is a lightweight in the intellect department, nor will I dispute that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and that whole neocon gang have demonstrably lacked the virtues of reflection and humility. But that said, I suspect that the real story of the Iraq War is that Bush and his gang never really cared whether they actually would "win" in Iraq. In fact, arguably, they didn't really want to win.
What they wanted was a war.
If the war they started had ended quickly with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, that would have served their purposes, at least for the short term. Bush would have emerged from a short invasion and conquest a national hero, would have handily won re-election in 2004, and would have gone on to a second term as a landslide victor. But if it went badly, as it has, they figured he would still come out ahead. He would be a wartime president, and he'd make full use of that role, expansively misdefining his "commander in chief" title to imply authority over the Congress and the courts, to grab power heretofore unheard of for a president.
This, I suspect, was the grand strategy underlying the attack on Iraq.
If I'm right, there may have been method to the madness of not building
up enough troops for the invasion to insure that U.S. forces could
occupy a destroyed Iraq and help it rebuild, method to the madness of
allowing looters free sway to destroy the country's remaining
post-invasion infrastructure, method to the madness, even, of allowing
remnant forces of Hussein's to gather up stockpiles of weapons and even
of high-density explosives, so they could mount an effective resistance
and drag out the conflict.
So many apparently stupid
decisions were made by people who should clearly have been too smart to
make them, from leaving hundreds of tons of high explosives unguarded
to cashiering all of Iraq's army and most of the country's civil
service managers, that it boggles the mind to think that these could
have been just dumb ideas or incompetence. (L. Paul Bremer, for
instance, who made the "dumb" decision about dismantelling the Iraqi
army, prior to becoming Iraq's occupation viceroy, had headed the
nation's leading risk assessment consultancy, and surely knew what all
the risks were of his various decisions.)
I mean, we expect a measure of idiocy from or elected leaders and their appointees, but not wholesale idiocy!
This disaster has been so colossal, it almost had to have been orchestrated.
If that's the case, Congress should be taking a hard look at not just
the latest installment of escalation, but at the whole war project,
beginning with the 2002 campaign to get it going. Certainly throwing
21,500 new troops into the fire makes no sense whatever. If 140,000 of
the best-equipped troops in the world can't pacify Iraq, 160,000 aren't
going to be able to do it either. You don't need to be a general to
figure that out. Even a senator or representative ought to be able to
do it. So clearly Congress should kill this plan.
Since it's
not about "winning" the war, it has to be about something else. My
guess would be it's about either dragging things out until the end of
2008, so Bush can leave office without having to say he's sorry. But of
course, it could also be about something even more serious: invading
Iran.
We know Bush is trying mightily to provoke Iran. He has
illegally attacked an Iranian consulate in Iraq (an act of war), taking
six protected consular officials there captive. He is sending a second
aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf, and is setting up
Patriot anti-missile missile bases along Iran's western border. This
buildup has all the earmarks of a pre-invasion. All that's needed now
is a pretext--a real or faked attack on an American ship, perhaps, ala
the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" that launched America into the Vietnam
War.
The way I see it, either way the president is committing
treason, because he is sending American troops off to be killed for no
good reason other than for aggrandizing power he shouldn’t have, and/or
simply covering his own political ass.
Treason is the number
one impeachable crime under the Constitution, and we're at a point
where Congress is going to have to act or go down in history as having
acquiesced in the worst presidential crime in the history of the nation.
Congress' position on Iraq written by a guest,
January 21, 2007
is clearly untenable. The only way they can win an honest debate on the merits of their position is to have no debate.
None of them are talking about Ted Kennedy's sensible proposal to revoke the authorization for the use of force. They claim they're afraid they'll be accused of not supporting the troops in Iraq. And in fact they WILL be accused of refusing to support the troops in Iraq. But that accusation couldn't stick if they bring the troops home at once. Democrats could then say: "Yes, we're refusing to support the troops in Iraq any longer. We're going to bring them home and support them here."
Congress has the power. The only rational excuses they can muster for failing to use their power are cowardice and corruption. Nothing else makes any sense whatever.
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Two points written by a guest,
January 21, 2007
Not a bad effort, but the long war idea of the Busheviks and PNAC is to keep the defense industry dependent (military Keynsianism) economy going through continuous war. Thus should the Iraq War peter out, another will be needed to replace it. This is the purpose of creating a Muslim enemy to replace the communist enemy. The latter also has the advantage justifying war in resource rich countries where American corporations can benefit, and non-favored, non-American corporations can be excluded. In this sense, control of the resources is paramount.
The other point is to undermine the constitution and democracy at home. All administrations since Carter have engaged in this, but the big push has come with this Bush administration. This attack on the constitution and democracy is treasonous. But it supported by both parties, as both expect to benefit from it
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You're Exactly Right, Dave written by a guest,
January 21, 2007
There is no doubt in my mind that you're on the right track...
... and none of this would have been possible without the attacks of 9/11 ...
... which is why they did 9/11
more treason.
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Another Gulf of Tonkin incident mighty soon written by a guest,
January 21, 2007
>:( You're right. It is obvious that there will be a Gulf-of-Tonkin incident within the next couple weeks. The American public must be alerted to this and urged to respond to it in a positive way. It must be anticipated by the vast majority of Americans. :'(
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War = War Profits. Fog of War = Criminal Cover Ups. written by a guest,
January 22, 2007
The war had nothing to do with self defense, and everything to do with defense spending. The war had nothing to do with controlling oil and everything to do with manipulating the oil market and attaching a war risk premium to the price of oil.
The Iraq way had nothing to do with retaliation for 911 and everything to do with diverting the discussion away from the facts of 911. As cabinet level ex Bush administration officials have said, and I quote, ".. they [the neocons] blew the towers to smitherines.". Who blew WTC 7?
Lets not limit our investigations of crimes to Iraq - lets go back to 911 - that was a crime where 3000 Americans paid with their lives so those liable for the "too" big and under "leased" WTC towers would not have to pay 15 Billion dollars to destroy them (condemened several years ago for asbestos). In the WTC7, before it burned, were case documents related to the loss of 2 Trillion dollars by the DoD.
Writings 
New Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), is calling President Bush's invasion of Iraq a "stark blunder" and says that his new scheme to send 21,500 more troops into the mess he created is just digging the hole deeper. 
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None of them are talking about Ted Kennedy's sensible proposal to revoke the authorization for the use of force. They claim they're afraid they'll be accused of not supporting the troops in Iraq. And in fact they WILL be accused of refusing to support the troops in Iraq. But that accusation couldn't stick if they bring the troops home at once. Democrats could then say: "Yes, we're refusing to support the troops in Iraq any longer. We're going to bring them home and support them here."
Congress has the power. The only rational excuses they can muster for failing to use their power are cowardice and corruption. Nothing else makes any sense whatever.