Tom Schaller touched on a point today that’s been bugging me for a while. If we’re really lucky, and we ask the media really nicely, maybe there might be some follow up?
During the campaign, Bush repeatedly spoke of the success he saw in training Iraqis for the nation’s security forces. During the first debate, Bush was practically bragging.
“Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job. And that’s what we’re doing. We’ve got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year. That is the best way.”
In a campaign filled with demonstrable falsehoods, this was one of Bush’s more outrageous deceptions. In fact, at the time Bush said this, he was exaggerating to the point of comedy. As Reuters explained:
[Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters] show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training.
Bush was only off by a factor of 12. But he also noted that there’d be 125,000 troops trained by the “end of this year,” meaning 2004. So, how’s Bush doing? Not particularly well.
To help dodge admission of failure, Bush decided to move the goalposts. Instead of the end of 2004, as soon as the U.S. presidential race was over, Bush decided the new deadline for 125,000 trained troops was the end of January.
More recently, Bush’s talking point disappeared altogether and there’s been nary a peep about the administration’s “success” in this area. Perhaps it’s because the Pentagon’s own estimates indicate we won’t see a fully trained Iraqi police force until July 2006.
So, here’s a cheat sheet for reporters at the White House and the Pentagon:
* Why was the president so wildly off the mark during the campaign about the number of trained Iraqis?
* Why did the White House quietly change its own deadline for reaching the 125,000 troop benchmark?
* Does anyone, anywhere, still believe Bush’s new estimate will be met by Jan. 30? If not, why has the president been so wrong, so often?