Reinforce Baghdad (girlymen not happy with Bush)

WashPost ^ | 9/12/06 | Billie Kristol and Richie Lowry

[Dave S]

How about General Abazaid, General Casey, and Gen Pace. Are they all cowards, afraid of Rummy and Bush, afraid to ask for more troops

Cowards no, but you dont get to the top ranks of today's military by being General Patton types. The generals know what the civilian authorities want and unless they are going to be driven into the sea, they are loath to cross them. Its not just the officers in the Clinton administration that are politically minded, they all are at that level. They would be stupid not to be politically aware.

[pissant]

He's Washington Post's "iraq is a quagmire" specialist, from which all the leftists take their talking points. Published the phony, selective leaks from a USMC intel officer report yesterday. Author of Fiasco.

[nathanbedford]

Evidently someone has leaked a report to the Washington Post and The New York Times which could not be more pessimistic. According to these sources, the report says:

The Washington Post reported that officials who have seen a study by the Marines' top intelligence officer in Iraq say he described the situation in the province as lost. Iraq's Shi'ite-led government holds no sway there and the strongest political movement is the Iraq branch of al Qaeda, it concluded .... It said the report had concluded an additional division, some 16,000 troops, would be needed to back up the 30,000 in the province to prevent the situation from getting even worse.

Otherwise "there is nothing (the Marine command) can do to influence the motivation of the Sunni to wage an insurgency," the paper quoted the report as saying.

The report also says:

The Post said it was the first time a senior U.S. officer had filed such a pessimistic assessment from Iraq, and described it as having had an impact among policymakers in Washington.

I wonder if Mr. William Kristol saw a leaked copy of this report and this is what prompted him to make this up and call for more troops. This column like the situation seems to be getting more and more desperate. We need a plan B.,new way of thinking that is outside the box, we need some solutions, and we need them pronto.

The report also goes on to say that the senior brass deny the implications of the report. I infer from some posts on this thread that Mr. ricks, author of "FIASCO," is one of the authors of this story. He is also the author of the number one best-selling nonfiction book on the New York Times best-selling list.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1699964/posts

[Rokke]

It will never cease to amaze me how people smart enough to find this site still managed to be sucked in by the likes of the Washington Post, the NYT's and the pompus know nothings posing as "journalists" who write for them. The simple fact is...if a person reads ANYTHING from the MSM and believes it reflects reality...that person is not even worth communicating with. It is an incredible irony that you suggest people allow our military commanders run the war, and that prompts people to accuse you of being an armchair general. Meanwhile, those same folks gain their insight through the distorted kaleidescope of media spin and somehow think their suggestions on how the war should be fought are worth something more than warm spit. Post 21 of this thread Marines Deny Losing Iraq's Biggest Province is worth a library sized collection of anything written by the ever mewling and whining Bill Krystol. Yet, some people still want to believe they are getting the truth from the MSM. Incredible.

[pissant]

You should know better than to trust Ricks or the NY Times bullshit spin on this leaked. For starters, how many pentagon leakers go to the Post and Times to with classified info to butress the Bush Administrations positions??? *crickets*

Try this instead.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1699964/posts

[pissant]

Well said. Many have bought into the MSM's meme of "bush is stupid". I have no use for such "conservatives".

[nathanbedford]

You should know better than to rebuke a poster and presume to correct him with the very same citation he earlier posted in the very same post about which you complain. To wit:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1699964/posts

[pissant]

Got news for you. If you post a non-clickable URL, very few are going to take the time to cut and paste it into the address bar to see what you tried to link.

OTOH, if you think Tom Ricks is anything other than a grade A defeatist & propagandist, and think Maj. General Zilmer is a liar for refuting Ricks, then you have some learnin to do.

[Darkwolf377]

The report also goes on to say that the senior brass deny the implications of the report. I infer from some posts on this thread that Mr. ricks, author of "FIASCO," is one of the authors of this story. He is also the author of the number one best-selling nonfiction book on the New York Times best-selling list. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1699964/posts

Seeing how both Michael Moore and Joe Wilson had NYT bestsellers, that's not much of a recommendation.

I appreciate the opposing view, though. I'm not convinced of the disaster you and some others believe is occuring, but I'm trying to educate myself, so I appreciate the comment.

[nathanbedford]

Next time before you make a utter fool of yourself you might cut and paste, it will improve your disposition as well as your reputation.

Here is another URL for you to practice on, it will sober you up fast:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001204_2.htmlSituation

Called Dire in West Iraq

Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says

By Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post Staff Writer

"From what I understand, it is very candid, very unvarnished," said retired Marine Col. G. I. Wilson. "It says the emperor has no clothes."

You might point out (and pretend I did not- or say it did not count because it was not placed in bold) that this is the only individual quoted for attribution. But unless you think Ricks created a forged report like Dan Rather, you had better start thinking about what it means if Ricks is right and you are wrong. You might start thinking about plan B. I am sure every other thinking reader of this thread who reads Ricks' article is asking, what is plan B? We are losing (the generals say we have lost the war in the triangle)the war there and "stay the course" simply will not sell anymore when the Army itself does not believe it.

[pissant]

You apparently think Ricks is a straight shooter, huh? He's as reliably accurate as a Reuters cameraman in Lebanon. You can pretend he's telling you the truth all you want.

He quoted a RETIRED marine GI Wilson, who says "from what I hear..."

Now just what are the chances that this retired Marine is a buddy of Ricks? Why would Ricks go to a retired Marine for a quote? Why not Ollie North who has spent far more time with boots on the ground in Anbar and elsewhere in Iraq than any other retired Marine.

And we are not losing. No generals say we have lost the war in Anbar or anywhere else. You are sniffing liberal farts.

[nathanbedford]

Let's look at all the transparent lies that Ricks has made up confident that he will never be found out and lose his reputation which includes a Pulitzer:

1. The name of the Marine intelligence officer, Devlin, who could never be contacted by anyone and confirm that he wrote or did not write such a report and deny that it said what has been alleged that it says. Of course Ricks could always rely on the fact that the government has a policy of not commenting on intelligence reports or classified matters, but he also might be a little bit nervous that the government might just have Devlin say, "I don't know what Ricks is talking about, I never wrote any such report." Ricks certainly has big cajones to take such a big chance.

2. The name of the retired Marine officer, Lieutenant Col. G. I. Wilson, who is under no such compulsion not to comment on these matters. This lie is a whopper for Ricks to have told and very foolhardy if he thinks it will not be repudiated.

3. Jeffrey White who is quoted the article as follows:

"In the analytical world, there is a real pall of gloom descending," said Jeffrey White, a former analyst of Middle Eastern militaries for the Defense Intelligence Agency, who also had been told about the pessimistic Marine report.

Ricks is certainly a damn fool to have quoted him when the quotation can be so easily debunked. I wonder why Ricks did that ?

For those who are readers of this thread and who are interested, you can see an hour long interview Of Mr. Ricks in the archive section of C-SPAN's book TV and you can make judgments for yourself based on what you see of Mr. Ricks rather than relying on hysterical slanders you read here which are presented without even a tissue of factual justification.

[Darkwolf377]

I'm not knowledgable enough to comment one way or the other, but I must say that when one's bona fides include NYT bestsellers and Pulitzer prizes, that doesn't add one bit of credibility.

I don't have a dog in this fight and am open to reading his material, though, and I do appreciate you mentioning him in this context.

[pissant]

Go to Hugh Hewitt.com for a long interview with Ricks. He's a petulant Bush hater. Better yet, I'll find it since I posted it awhile back on FR.

If you think Ricks is a straight shooter and not a anti-bush liberal you are either stupid or ignorant of his history. I shall assume the latter.

Here is straightshooter Ricks talking to WaPosts Howie Kurtz:

On Sunday’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN, the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks actually stated with a straight face that Israel is intentionally not destroying all of Hezbollah’s rockets so that some can continue to rain down on Israel killing innocent civilians. This, in Ricks’ view, “helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.” I kid you not.

Host Howard Kurtz was rather shocked by Ricks’ assertion, and responded almost incredulously: “Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?”

Ricks responded, “Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.”

http://newsbusters.org/node/6830

[nathanbedford]

That is all I ask, that you maintain an open mind and have enough intellectual honesty to read what the man has to say.

You'll note from my previous long post that I think our strategy in Iraq is failing because it is rendering us incapable of preventing Iran from getting the bomb. I regard this to be a potential catastrophe. Since writing that, I became aware of Ricks' article referring to the Marine officers' grimly pessimistic intelligence report which allegedly states flatly that we have lost the war in the Sunni triangle. This report intensifies and reinforces my original opinion but did not generate it.

If you disregard Ricks'off the record sources entirely and merely concentrate on what General Abizaid said in rebuttal, I think you will conclude that the general's comments actually reinforce my original long post.

[nathanbedford]

Correction: It was General Zilner who issued the semi rebuttal. But General Abazaid's testimony in another context goes to my point as well.

[pissant]

You mischaracterized Abazaids testimony before the Senate oversight committee. He was confident while at the same time explicit in the amount of work still needing to be done. I watched the entire hearing on CSPAN. Rummy, Pace and Abazaid made the senators look like fools with their defeatism/quagmirism.

[Steel Wolf]

More U.S. troops in Iraq would improve our chances of winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment.

Why is this a bad idea? I would like to know from those FReepers who have some military background. Is this a good or a bad idea?

More troops would have been good earlier on, when it was still felt by Iraqis to be a liberation and not an occupation. If we had committed to immediately training (or retraining) large numbers of Iraqi troops right off the bat, while providing some interim security in the meantime, that would have been the ideal solution.

However, given the state of Iraq, 2006, we'd either have to go a lot heavier, or a lot lighter. The force level we're at right now is pretty much the worst of both worlds, and could be termed 'as high as politically feasable'. We're trying to conduct a large mission with a medium sized force. We should either turn this into a real occupation, with real occupation numbers, or turn it into a counterinsurgency support effort, with a solid presence of special operations and support troops, and leave the day to day security to the Iraqis.

[Steel Wolf]

Seems to me that if Bush wanted more, he'd send them, and there would be support for that across the board if he said it would help speed up the process.

We simply can't sustain larger numbers of troops without increasing rotation durations, or increasing the size of the military overall.

The latter is apparently not under serious consideration, and it would take years to actually train and integrate new major units. We'd needed to have been on that already.

The former risks pushing manpower and machines beyond their service life and burning them out. It's getting harder to keep family men in the military, doing back to back 15 month rotations. What if they turn into 24 month rotations? That's a hard thing to ask of such a small segment of our population, especially if there's no end in sight. Even for the single folks, the Yossarian-like "How many missions is enough?" feeling sets in.

The fundemental problem is that we're living on a fixed income, as far as troops numbers go. The 'conditions on the ground' line is a shell game. Any major increase in force levels we send is like going to a payday check cashing service, where they charge 35% interest. It's a very dangerous way to juggle numbers, and if you do it for too long, it can come around and bite you in the ass.

[nathanbedford]

You mischaracterized Abazaids testimony before the Senate oversight committee. He was confident while at the same time explicit in the amount of work still needing to be done. I watched the entire hearing on CSPAN. Rummy, Pace and Abazaid made the senators look like fools with their defeatism/quagmirism.

ABIZAID: I believe that the sectarian violence is probably is as bad as I’ve seen it in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war.

Pissant: My point is that while we are stopping(on not stoppiing) the worst violence our guy in Iraq has ever seen to avoid civil war, the Iranians are building themselves the bomb. That means that while we are shovelling flies in Bagdad, the bad guys are fixin to blow up Pittsburg.