By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday that a Democratic plan to set an end date for the war gives "our enemies the victory they desperately want."
<...>
At Bush's invitation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) are due at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the war, particularly a bill funding the military mission through September.
In both the House and Senate, Democrats have attached timelines for withdrawing troops to the bill containing $96 billion in military funding.
Bush says the meeting will be about his nonnegotiable stance on a timeline.
"Instead of approving this funding, Democrats in Congress have spent the past 68 days pushing legislation that would undercut our troops," he said in his weekly radio address. "They passed bills that would impose restrictions on our military commanders and set an arbitrary date for withdrawal from Iraq, giving our enemies the victory they desperately want."
more Bush says "nonnegotiable"? What's he got to negotiate with?
Spin?
Robert Parry
April 13, 2007
It has become a standard part of George W. Bush’s litany for why he will veto a congressional plan for setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq: “Why would you say to the enemy, ‘Here’s a timetable. Just go ahead and wait us out?’”
Well, there’s a logical answer to Bush’s rhetorical question. If a timetable encourages Iraqi insurgents to silence their guns and to stop planting roadside bombs—even temporarily to wait the Americans out—Iraq might get the breathing space it needs to begin healing its sectarian divisions.
Indeed, one could argue that Bush’s “surge” plan and Bush’s fear about letting the enemy “wait us out” offer essentially the same opportunity: to achieve enough peace and quiet in the short term for reconciliation and reconstruction to begin.
But a withdrawal timetable has additional advantages. First, it has the chance of bringing relative peace to the entire country as insurgents pull back anticipating a total American military withdrawal, while the “surge” seeks greater security only for Baghdad.
One of the criticisms of the “surge” is that it amounts to a version of “Whack-a-Mole,” with insurgents disappearing for a while only to pop up in another location vacated by U.S. troops. The “surge” rationale, however, is that even a temporary sense of security in the capital might give the Iraqi government a chance to restore calm.
Another plus for a withdrawal timetable is that it would assure Iraqis that the U.S. military presence will not be open-ended, thus undercutting one of the strongest arguments of the insurgency, that it is a national resistance fighting a foreign occupation.
more The improving situation from his surge?
Saturday April 14, 2007 11:16 PM
AP Photo BAG126, BAG116, BAG110
By LAUREN FRAYER
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD (AP) - A car bomb exploded Saturday near one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines in Karbala, killing at least 37 people and wounding more than 150. At least 16 children were among the dead in the latest horrific assault away from the American-led security crackdown in Baghdad.
A suicide bomber also struck in Baghdad, blowing up his car on a major bridge and killing 10 in the second such attack in 48 hours.
Chaotic arguing erupted in Iraq's legislature, with the parliament speaker shouting for order as lawmakers squabbled over who was to blame for holes in security that allowed a suicide bomber to mingle among them Thursday and kill a Sunni Arab lawmaker.
The political wrangling underlined the continuing weakness of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government despite a more than 2-month-old U.S.-Iraqi military operation intended to pacify Baghdad and give his regime room to function.
The crackdown, which will land 30,000 additional American troops in Iraq by the end of next month, comes as opposition to the strategy grows in Washington and emerges as a central issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
linkHis ability to turn Iraq into a "lunar landscape"?
The looting and destruction of some of the world's most precious archaeological sites, first reported by this newspaper, have continued unabated despite a British pledge to protect them from armed gangs stealing to order for antiquities dealers By Marie Woolf, Political Editor
Published: 15 April 2007
Looters using mechanical diggers and protected by their own private armies are destroying Iraq's ancient archeological sites - shattering priceless artefacts from the dawn of civilisation - despite a pledge by Britain to protect them.
Leading historians say the British Government has backtracked on a promise made four years ago to prevent 5,000-year-old cities such as Umma from being turned into "lunar landscapes" by thieves.
Satellite images show that archaeological sites equivalent in size to 3,000 football pitches have been dug up and plundered by teams of Iraqi looters bussed in by antiquities dealers.
"A country's past is disappearing while we stand and watch," said Professor Roger Matthews, chairman of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. "Archaeological sites including entire ancient cities are being destroyed by illicit digging."
The television historian Michael Wood added: "What has happened is a catastrophe. Umma is one of the great sites. Some of their libraries include law and literature going back to 3000BC. But it has become a vast, pockmarked lunar landscape."
Four years ago Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, promised £15m to protect the ancient sites in what was Mesopotamia, historians claim. They argue the failure to guard the sites flouts the Hague Convention requiring cultural sites of occupied states to be protected. The Department of Culture now says this money was part of general reconstruction funds and no specific pledge to protect ancient sites was made.
link His prowess as Commander in Chief?
By ANN MCFEATTERS
GUEST COLUMNIST
WASHINGTON -- While the nation has been fixated on the fiasco of Don Imus, a virulently self-obsessed radio/TV shock jock who should have been fired long ago for trying to pose as an adult, a much more serious breach of intelligence has occurred:
The Bush White House has been in desperate search of a "war czar."
Four years -- and counting -- into a war that was begun for reasons that have never been explained, with thousands killed, tens of thousands maimed for life and U.S. credibility in shreds, the Bush White House admits that it needs a high-profile overseer to plot the future course of the war in Iraq -- what The Washington Post has dubbed a "war czar."
Never mind that the course of "czars" has never run smoothly in this country, or any other. (Drug czar? Anti-terrorism czar? Education czar? Russian czar?)
What is stunning is that the White House actually is, unbelievably, incredibly, announcing to the world that it doesn't know what it is doing in Iraq and hasn't a clue what to do next, let alone how to get out of the quagmire it created.
moreHis credibility with his retired four star generals?
It says a lot that when the President finally decides to appoint a "War Czar" to get everyone on the same page, the situation in Iraq is so bad, and the Administration's stubborn unwillingness to change course is so persistent, they can't find anyone to take the job.
So far, the Administration has approached three retired four star generals about the position -- Marine General John J. "Jack" Sheehan, Army General Jack Keane, and retired Air Force General Joseph W. Ralston.
All three declined. These were not opponents of the Administration; in fact, they all had established ties to this Administration. Yet none of them would not take the job. Why not? Why would our top military commanders decline such a high level position?
General Sheehan, a 35 year Marine who once served as the top NATO commander, summed it up pretty well when he said: "The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going."
It's long past time for a President who insists that he listens to his generals - and not politicians - to finally heed his own advice, and to end a disgraceful record of ignoring the very military the Administration professes to believe in.
This isn't new. Again and again this Administration has turned its back on the best advice of the uniformed military - and each time they've done so at our peril.
Start with General Shinseki, who we all now agree that he was right that we needed a lot more troops to secure Iraq after the invasion. As the former top operating officer at the Pentagon, a Marine Lieutenant General, put it: "the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results." Instead of listening to General Shinseki, the Administration decided to retire him.
Last year, retired high-ranking military leaders -- many of whom played key combat or planning roles in Afghanistan and Iraq -- came forward publicly to call for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And across the administration, the warnings of those wore the uniform of their country all their lives -- and who, retired or not, did not resign their citizenship in order to serve their country -- were dismissed as acts of disloyalty, or as threats to civilian control of the armed forces.
In the end, it took an election to replace Secretary Rumsfeld - not the advice of the men and women who had seen him nearly break the military they'd served for decades. That was this Administration's choice.
It didn't stop there. Just ask General Casey or General Abizaid, who warned that more US troops would not solve Iraq's security problem - and could actually slow the process of getting Iraqi security forces to assume more responsibility -- and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who unanimously opposed this escalation. What happened to them? General Abizaid was replaced. General Casey was re-assigned. The Joint Chiefs were over-ruled.
And yesterday, we learned that the Pentagon is going to stretch our overextended military even further by extending combat tours and reducing time between rotations to provide the additional troops necessary for the President's misguided escalation. What do our military leaders have to say about that?
Robert Scales, a retired Army two-star general, said that to sustain this deployment while giving soldiers the training and rest they need would require twice as many Army and Marine Corps brigades as we have - and then he warned that the Army is about to be "broken." Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army four-star general who recently returned from another fact-finding trip to Iraq, tells us that combat equipment for both the active and reserve components "is shot." His conclusion was simple: "There is no argument of whether the US Army is rapidly unraveling."
At a time when mistake after mistake is being compounded by the very civilian leadership that ignored expert military advice in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, those who understand the price for each mistake is being paid by our troops, our country, and Iraq itself must be heard.
And the message from the generals who were offered the War Czar position has been crystal clear: if they really thought the Administration had a strategy that could succeed in Iraq, why did they turn down the job?
more 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
