WP: U.S. Faces Fears Plan Is on Brink

[kskiska]

Wolfowitz Concedes Errors as Damage Control Continues

Wednesday, May 19, 2004; Page A01

The Bush administration is struggling to counter growing sentiment -- among U.S. lawmakers, Iraqis and even some of its own officials -- that the occupation of Iraq is verging on failure, forcing a top Pentagon official yesterday to concede serious mistakes over the past year.

Under tough questioning from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading administration advocate of the Iraq intervention, acknowledged miscalculating that Iraqis would tolerate a long occupation. A central flaw in planning, he added, was the premise that U.S. forces would be creating a peace, not fighting a war, after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

"We had a plan that anticipated, I think, that we could proceed with an occupation regime for much longer than it turned out the Iraqis would have patience for. We had a plan that assumed we'd have basically more stable security conditions than we've encountered," Wolfowitz told the senators.

The testy hearing reflected growing anxieties with only six weeks left before political power is to be handed over to Iraqis. The United States is now so deeply immersed in damage control -- combating security problems and recriminations from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and making a third attempt at crafting an interim government in Baghdad -- that lawmakers and others say Iraq faces greater uncertainty about the future than it did when the occupation began with great expectations a year ago.

"There are a lot of people across this country who are very, very worried about how this is progressing, what the endgame is, whether or not we are going to achieve even a part of our goals here -- and the growing fear that we may in fact have in some ways a worse situation if we're not careful at the end of all this," warned Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), echoing comments of several committee members.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37745-2004May18.html

[saigon68]

1. No we're winning

If only we had another 200,000 troops and a few more years I'm sure the Iraqi people would love us. Just think if we could have a couple of six flags parks, a petting zoo and free health care for all. </sarcasm>

[ozymandius]

16. Well, what's funny Saigon68

is that the US drafted Iraqi Constitution and President Stupid himself call for free medical care in a true European socialist style system for all Iraqis.

Of course, I think, wouldn't it be nice if the cared so much about the people who are paying for this damned war?

[bemildred]

2. "verging on failure"

Bwaaahhhahhhahahah ...
Pigs will fly before they fix this.
What you have here is a failure of nerve.

[sventvkg]

3. Intelligence services Zinni, and other Military that knew the region

tried to tell the administration what to expect. they DID NOT WANT TO HEAR ANYONE ELSE'S VIEWPOINT. The Neo-cons have their agenda and went in anyway and they knew it would turn out like this. You would have to be brainless, devoid of historical knowledge and completely Misguided to have not known how the Iraqis would react to a long occupation. These people Must ALL BE Forcibly removed if necessary as they endanger out Country.

[shanti]

15. of course they knew it wouldn't ride

but look how much MONEY they are still making. these are common criminals.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

4. The NeoCons just couldn't understand why the Iraqi people would get...

...terribly angry when a foreign country dropped thousands of pounds of bombs on Iraqi population centers killing tens of thousands of innocent women and children. They were expected to take all of this in stride, bury their dead, and greet the conquering heroes with wild acclaim.

If this happened to us, how would WE treat an invader? How long would we fight to get our country back?

The NeoCons were blinded by their own totally misguided beliefs, and now we are going to pay for it for decades.

[Dover]

14. We'll have to pay for decades.......but the Iraqis will have to pay more

Can you imagine going from living under Hussein to U.S. occupation and all it's cruelty? I feel so much for the Iraqis. Such a long, hard existence.

[markses]

19. Not to mention innocent men

Remind me again why 19 year-old conscripts in the Iraqi Army had to die for this imbecile adventure?

[oblivious]

25. Maybe 50,000 of them - it's an obscenity

OK, they were armed combatants, but they were defending their country against an illegal invasion. You can't call them guilty of anything, so I guess that makes them innocent.

[calimary]

5. Ooh-la-la, they're forced to use one of the latest White House buzzwords

wolfowitz CONCEDES...

"...but can't you at least concede that..."

They just wanted to hear what they wanted to hear. Because THEY knew better than ANYBODY. Even the people who really did know better. Shitheads, all.

Hey, wolfowitz - when are YOU going to enlist?

[flowomo]

6. what fools! if history ... and lots of it.... showed anything....

it's that this outcome was predictable to the point of being a lock.

[Geo55]

7. Damn !

"acknowledged miscalculating that Iraqis would tolerate a long occupation"

The freakin' towelheads were supposed to roll over an' play nice while we sucked on the oil tit

[leesa]

8. But what about the WMDs, Oh Murderer Wolfowitz??

Oh, we went there to oust a defanged ruler who wasn't doing a thing to us.

[w13rd0]

9. No WMD, Saddam was a toothless old windbag...

...there are no flowers, the Administration instructed MI to violate the Geneva Convention...hey, we can fix it if we just throw more money and meat at it. Right?

HELL NO, JUST GO!

[opihimoimoi]

10. Saladin...... credited with victory over the infidels comes alive in Iraq

[Dover]

11. Well well well...........finally uttering the "F" word

Can we be gracious and honorable in Failure? That might redeem us....but I doubt.

[shanti]

12. errors, yeah right!!

they've finally been called and exposed on their PNAC bullshyt and they know it! damage control time!

[struggle4progress]

13. Neocon Kristol (Weekly Standard) was on "Fresh Air" tonight ...

lamenting the Administration's "incompetence." He wants Bush to stop campaigning for a while and spend 15 hours a day in the White House, fixing Iraq policy. Apparently, he's never noticed that the President has a short attention span, can barely read, and never spends 15 hours daily working.

My gut says Bush, rather than paying close attention to Iraq, would prefer to start another war to try to divert attention: maybe this explains the WMD accusations directed at Syria last week.

[shanti]

17. kristol is one of the pnac'ers

"lamenting the Administration's 'competence'"....they PLANNED it!!

[markses]

20. The only thing Bush has ever spent 15 hours doing is

Binging on coke, booze and whores.

And everybody knows it. Youthful indiscretions! The same people forgive this shit and think this moron qualified that want to put 11 year olds in prison for life without parole. It makes one's head spin.

[jobendorfer]

22. Kristol's an idiot

In the Terry Gross interview, he stated that he didn't have
a problem with the Bush vision or the policy, just the
incompetent execution of it. A complete failure to recognize
that the strategy is just as screwed up, if not more so, than
the implementation of it. Invading and murdering is okay,
we just need a better invader/murderer.

If Kristol is what passes for intelligentsia on the right,
they're screwed.

J.

[bpilgrim]

26. one of the ' The WordPerfect Warriors' and head of PNAC

ted rall
Mon May 17, 8:01 PM ET

...

Had they stood firmly against the war and Bush, on the right side of history, they might have helped slow or even reverse the rush to war during the winter of 2002-3. Their failure to accurately assess the case for war, coupled with their willful blindness to this Administration's neofascist tendencies, contributed to needless carnage, attacks on individual rights and the creation of dozens of covert CIA (news - web sites) gulags around the world. Every time someone was raped at Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base or Gitmo, Tom Friedman and Christopher Hitchens and Bill O'Reilly and David Brooks were de facto accomplices.

The WordPerfect Warriors' journalistic failings are even more pronounced than their moral ones. On an issue with enormous political and historical ramifications for our country, they got the story wrong. They believed in WMDs at a time when the vintage of the government's evidence (none of it was more recent than 1998) ought to have tripped BS detectors. They trusted the White House's promises to rebuild Iraq despite its dismal record in Afghanistan. They never considered that removing a dictator who had killed all of his major opponents might open up a power vacuum. And they never questioned Bush's original sin, his partisan politicization of 9/11.

They should have known better--lots of us did. Or they did know better and lied about it. Whether their integrity or their intelligence was compromised, they should never again be taken seriously.

The pro-war pundits got the biggest story of their careers dead wrong. Now a lot of people are wrongly dead. The fact that this sorry lot still draw paychecks is a tribute to America's infinite capacity for forgiveness.

source...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/ucru/20040518/cm_ucru/firethewarpimps

peace

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. He left off Judith Miller

Ms. WMD Expert of the Year. That witch is personally responsible for the death of 1000's of innocent Iraqis.

[gasperc]

31. I think he meant 15 hours a week

:)

[donco6]

18. Y'now, I'm no foreign policy expert . . .

. . . but even *I* could have told you how things would progress.

In fact, I told my friends before Shrub rushed into this war, "If I were Saddam, I just wouldn't fight back. I'd tell all my men to hide their weapons and go home. Let the invaders in - they're too powerful for us to resist directly anyway - and then conduct a guerilla war at our leisure."

An I'll be jiggered, but that's what's happened.

Seriously, this wasn't an issue of "mistakes", it was hubris pure and simple.

[hang a left]

27. If my memory serves me right.......

Wasn't there an audio recording supposedly released from Bin Laden right before the invasion that told the Iraqis to do just that?

[donco6]

29. Wouldn't surprise me.

Strategically, it makes a lot of sense.

I hadn't heard about that, though. Anyone else?

[DoYouEverWonder]

35. Yes it was discussed

If this misadministration ever bothered to look at history, they would have known this is how Arabs fight. When it comes to face to face combat they will retreat back into the shadows and wait for a better opportunity. They are much more patient than westerners.

[donco6]

36. History? What's that?

You mean like, reading up on WWI and seeing the similarities between the generals in that war using Napoleonic techniques with non-Napoleonic weapons and wondering why nothing seemed to be working right? Why sending men in swarms across "No Man's Land" didn't seem to be an effective tactic in a war with modern repeater rifles?

Nah. No similarities there. We're not using outdated techniques or equipment and simply relying on our overwhelming might, are we?

pfft.

What really makes no sense is that if a bunch of "13-year olds" can figure out what the problems were going to be, why couldn't our top brass and administrators?

[DoYouEverWonder]

37. Most 13 year olds are good at video games

They understand strategy much better than any neocon.

[gasperc]

32. Iraq will be "the peace from hell"

molly ivins, 2003

[Eloriel]

21. Dammit, Dodd. What was your first friggin' CLUE?

And where you when it mattered -- BEFORE the clusterfuck known as Iraq?

"There are a lot of people across this country who are very, very worried about how this is progressing, what the endgame is, whether or not we are going to achieve even a part of our goals here -- and the growing fear that we may in fact have in some ways a worse situation if we're not careful at the end of all this," warned Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), echoing comments of several committee members.

It ENRAGES me when I read about someone who was in a position to do something about this before the fact finally waking the fuck up. WE WROTE YOU LETTERS; WE CALLED YOUR OFFICE; WE PROTESTED IN WASHINGTON AND IN FACT AROUND THE WORLD TO TRY TO GET YOUR FUCKING ATTENTION. You are NOT absolved just because you finally figure it out that those of us who were against the war before it began were RIGHT!

WE TOLD YOU SO, you dumbfuck.

This war could've been avoided, if they'd only have listened. Of all the sad and sorry things about this whole mess, that's the one that hurts my heart the most. More than the deaths and maimings on both sides? Yes -- because those deaths and maimings wouldn't have happened.

So shut your mouth, Dodd, and go do penance somewhere. You can't bring these people back; you can't put Iraq back together; you can't unring that bell. There are so many decisions that can be changed, but war isn't one of them. DAMN YOU.

[Tinoire]

38. Well Eloriel...

thanks, you saved me the trouble of typing.

My sentiments exactly. They can all go fuck themselves.

All this phony crocodile hand-wringing & wailing is ringing extremely hollow.

[ThoughtCriminal]

23. NeoCons are the Anti-Cassandras

Cassandra was given the power of prophesy - but her curse was that she would only foresee disaster and would never be believed. Most of us here very heavily identify with her.

But NeoCons have the opposite affliction. They predict victory, praise and prosperity. Always wrong, always believed (except by Cassandra, who knew better). Now the residents of Troy are wondering "where have all the flowers gone".

[Aidoneus]

24. The failure of their occupation regime is not to be mourned

The real tragedy is that those like Wolfowitz will not be the ones to suffer for their own sins. That is what the brainwashed cannon fodder is always for, of course.. Hasan al-Sabah was on to something.

[Beetwasher]

28. They're Going Out in a Blaze of Embarrassing, Shameful, Ugly Glory

It's the most obscene and absured "dance" that's ever been...

[gasperc]

30. it only took a FUCKING YEAR

well I feel a slight sense of relief, I was starting to think that the millions that took to the streets last year were being ignored.

wait, they were, my bad

:mad:

[warrior1]

34. we

lost the war against terrorism the day one boot hit the ground the middle east.

[KeepItReal]

39. The MAJORITY of the U.S. didn't vote for Bush or *HIS* plan

Don't get it twisted, Washington Post.

The press needs to better discern stuff initiated by Bush & Co. and things they can label as "American" or "U.S.-backed".