Between Iraq and a hard place

August 23, 2007

As it turns out, the report the White House is writing for Gen. Petraeus isn’t the only noteworthy official report on Iraq that’s due out soon. A new intelligence assessment, called “Prospects for Iraq’s Stability,” is also poised for release.

“The report says that there’s been little political progress to date, and it’s very gloomy on the chances for political progress in the future,” said one Congressional official with knowledge of its contents.

The new report also concludes that the American military has had success in recent months in tamping down sectarian violence in the country, according to officials who have read it.

The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is “more dire in its assessments” than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

“It doesn’t take a policy position,” one official said. “But it leaves you with the sense that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, but we can’t let up, or it’ll get worse.”

Got that? According to the new intelligence estimate, our principal mission in Iraq — enabling political progress — is going nowhere. Worse, no one seriously believes conditions are going to improve. Military successes are ephemeral without political solutions, of which there are none.

But then there’s the flip side.

The same estimate says, if we leave, Iraq will get worse. So, according to the intelligence, we can stay indefinitely, and get stuck in the middle as Iraq slides deeper into a bloody civil war, or we can leave, and watch Iraq slide deeper into a bloody civil war.

As Kevin Drum put it:

So we can’t stay and we can’t leave. Terrific. What’s worse, we now have a president who’s officially decided to take history lessons from Rambo. Turns out we were this close to winning in Vietnam when the Defeatocrats decided to pull the plug. And with that, yet another longtime conservative fantasy makes its way out of the fever swamps and into the public discourse, where we’ll all be expected to stroke our chins and pretend to take it seriously for the next week or so.

Sometimes, it’s like living in the Twilight Zone.

It is Lihach’s world. A world for frightened men-children.

  • The Twilight Zone is like I Love Lucy compared to the Reich Wing Authoritarian Alternate Reality (RWAAR).

    Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Ah, lest we forget the solution of attacking another sovereign nation –that would be a stroke of pure genius.

  • So we can’t stay and we can’t leave.

    That’s half right. We can’t stay. Despite our currency’s lack of a gold standard, our treasure is finite and our credit is too. We’re spending like there’s no tomorrow in Iraq. Foreign campaigns are exponentially more expensive than local defense. Sun Tzu predicted all of this 2500 years ago.

    history lessons from Rambo

    Rambo had different philosphies in the various movies. In First Blood, he was pissed about losing in Vietnam, but in Rambo III he argued the Mujahideen in Afganistan had a spirit that was impossible to beat.

  • “So, according to the intelligence, we can stay indefinitely, and get stuck in the middle as Iraq slides deeper into a bloody civil war, or we can leave, and watch Iraq slide deeper into a bloody civil war.”

    When Bush gave us our history lesson yesterday, he neglected to mention one of the most striking similarities between Vietnam and Iraq – both wars received Congressional authorization because of lies told by the President of the United States. The alleged Tonkin Gulf Incident started the huge U.S. buildup in Vietnam, and the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction sold Congress on our invasion of Iraq.

    In Vietnam, the Johnson Administration knew very early that we couldn’t “win,” but they decided that we couldn’t leave either. Sound familiar? Nixon and Kissinger knew there was no “victory” to be had there, but they wasted many thousands of American lives there with the charade of “Vietnamization.”

    I have no doubt that in forty years the descendants of today’s Republicans will be saying that we could have won in Iraq if it hadn’t been for the Democrats who undermined the efforts of our noble troops and of our wise and visionary President.

    Another thing that Bush neglected to mention yesterday – the word “quagmire.”

  • In a related story that was posted on news sites last night but has been moved off of the front page with amazing speed, it appears that the post-WMD rationale — democracy promotion — has now also been abandoned.

    Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning, also reflected a less lofty American goal for Iraq’s future.

    “I would describe it as leaving an effective government behind that can provide services to its people, and security. It needs to be an effective and functioning government that is really a partner with the United States and the rest of the world in this fight against the terrorists,” said Mixon, who will not be perturbed if such goals are reached without democracy.

    So now our military openly admits we are going to set up a client state. Apparently Saddam’s only real problem was that he publicly thumbed his nose at a President with really thin skin.

  • OkieFromMuskogee nailed it.

    I would add that president Flight Suit checked a little box back when he could have fought in Nam. It said “No thanks, I’ll stay in Texas”

    “Sometimes, it’s like living in the Twilight Zone”?

    Every day would be more like it. Every fucking day.

    Soon he’ll attack Iran, because they’re running out of stupid things to do.

  • It’s a world designed by the military-industrial-intelligence complex for endless war, and endless profits.

    Without gold, the value of our money is derived from our collective abilty to kill. That’s why Bush announced we’re killing 1500 Iraqis per month yesterday- to stabilize the markets.

  • So, we’re stuck, is that it? That’ll be great for the recruitment effort, won’t it?

    I guess there’s no point in screaming about how you don’t go to war unless you know how you’re going to get out, or how we never had to go in the first place, and how it’s one thing to delude the public about what a cheap and fast war we were going to have, but it’s another to have deluded themselves…because it’s done. We’re there. We’ve already spent billions, and these yahoos are looking us in the eye and telling us there’s no end in sight.

    This is like telling a woman who’s being beaten every night that she can’t leave because her husband might kill her if she does. Of course, he might not, but it’s better to be someone’s daily punching bag than to risk the possibility of death. Of course, he might also kill her if she stays – so does she want to die now, or die later? Even if he doesn’t kill her, she’s still gonna die, just like everyone else, so it comes down to deciding how she wants to live.

    And that’s our choice, too, isn’t it, when all is said and done?

    So there’s an estimate that says things will get worse if we leave. But maybe the estimate is wrong to some degree – it is, after all, an estimate, a forecast of sorts. Do we have any reason to think that National Intelligence Estimates are any more reliable and accurate than weather forecasts? Or economic forecasts? And if they’re not, why are we acting as if they are?

    One thing we know for sure is that we cannot maintain the current force levels much longer, and it is the increased forces which are responsible for what is at best a minimal improvement in the security in some areas – and if we can’t maintain those levels, it’s going to get worse no matter whether we are there or we aren’t there. The only difference is that we know that if we stay, there will be more kids coming home dead or wounded.

    There is no option that will not carry with it significant risk or significant consequences. I think we can and should be doing the work of preparing the region for our withdrawal, so that Iraq does not become either a black hole that sucks all of its neighbors into the quagmire, or a cancer that spreads to the other countries. We should be doing that work anyway, so there is no downside.

    I am convinced that nothing will change as long as Bush is in the Oval office – he’s just not going to be pulling out troops or accepting “defeat” as long as he’s the president.

  • Should I stay or should I go now?
    Should I stay or should I go now?
    If I go there will be trouble
    An if I stay it will be double
    So come on and let me know…

    The Clash
    Combat Rock
    1981, CBS Records

  • “But it leaves you with the sense that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, but we can’t let up, or it’ll get worse.” — Congressional official, 2007

    “And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we’d achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq.” — Cheney, 1992

    Okay, Rice, time for your “no one could have predicted” line. Idiots.

  • Anne wrote: “This is like telling a woman who’s being beaten every night that she can’t leave because her husband might kill her if she does.”

    I think a good metaphor is someone suffering from serious, inevitably fatal, internal bleeding being told, “Well, we could do surgery, but there’s a chance you could die from surgical complications. Let’s just wait around for a miracle.”

  • This is what Wm. Odom has been saying for a while. Leave or stay, it will get worse. He also states that the longer we stay, the worse it will get.

    Bush is just trying to put off the consequences of an unjustified invasion. I guess we’re supposed to forget who started this crap once he heads back to Texas (for good).

  • >So now our military openly admits we are going to set up a client state. Apparently Saddam’s only real problem was that he publicly thumbed his nose at a President with really thin skin.

    I think Zeitgeist nailed it. Had Saddam converted to Christianity (especially whatever flavor that Bush ascribes to), we’d have a “new ally” in our GWOT and related invasion of Syria.

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