Gates contradicts Rice on the possibility of a Plan B

February 6, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a couple of interesting comments today while answering questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee. (thanks to S.W. for the tip)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates held out hope Tuesday that U.S. forces might be able to start leaving Iraq before the end of the year, if daunting conditions including subdued violence and political reconciliation are met.

Gates told lawmakers the current buildup of forces by 21,500 troops is “not the last chance” to succeed in Iraq and conceded that he’s considering what steps to take if it doesn’t work.

“I would be irresponsible if I weren’t thinking about what the alternatives might be,” Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Really? Less than a month ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told senators the exact opposite — that it would be irresponsible to think about the alternatives. Asked by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what the administration has in mind if the escalation fails to be effective, Rice said, “It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.”

Maybe the administration can hash it out behind the scenes and let us know later whether planning for possibility of failure is responsible or not.

As for Gates’ assertion that the escalation is “not the last chance,” this, also, runs counter to war supporters’ line.

In order to help sell the so-called “surge” policy to the public, it’s been characterized as the final bet. The Hail Mary pass. “Double down.” The last-ditch hope to somehow pull this nightmare off. It’s a short-term gamble that the only thing standing between chaos and success is 21,500 troops.

Gates’ comments this morning suggest what most of us have always believed is still true: if Bush’s escalation tactics are as effective this time as they were before — which is to say, not at all — war supporters won’t give up; they’ll just call for another surge later this year.

Of course, Gates wants us to believe this won’t be necessary.

“It seems to me that if the plan to quiet Baghdad is successful and the Iraqis step up” by providing promised forces of their own and move toward resolving the country’s bitter political disputes, Gates said, “I would hope that we would be able to begin drawing down our troops later this year.”

Stop it. Just, stop it. Sure, if the plan is “successful” we can begin drawing down troops. The exact same observation has been repeated for four years — if everything in Iraq goes exactly the way we want it to, then we won’t need to keep 150,000 troops there.

But such rhetoric is not only obvious and insulting, it’s also irresponsible. To hear Gates tell it, we “hope” to get those troops out of there fairly soon. All we need is for Iraq to stop imploding, for the civil war to end, and for the U.S. to kill all the terrorists the troops can find.

Please. Can’t the administration at least pretend to understand how to communicate with the public about the war?

“It seems to me that if the plan to quiet Baghdad is successful and the Iraqis step up…”

we all get a pony. right?

  • someone has forgotten to give gates the script to read from. while i may disagree with many of his observations, it is refreshing to have someone who actually says something other that what bush/cheney/rove are trying to feed to them….

  • Why isn’t Rice married? Does she have a boyfriend or girlfriend? Is she totally asexual? Does she sleep with prositutes? What’s her deal?

    Rice has a life at some undisclosed location.

  • My apologies to R.K. –

    Take up the Bush man’s burden-
    Send forth the best ye breed-
    Go bind your sons (and daughters) to exile
    To serve your Iraqi oil’s need . . .

    To this timely balderdash, Americans said no on November 7th, 2006. At least Gates can deviate a bit from the koolaid dogma the blokes over at the WH have been imbibing for far too long now. Redeployment of our troops, diplomatic recognition of Iran and Syria while working with our allies Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and a willingness to truly isolate al qaeda are the policy paths we need to take now, not later when Mr. Bush’s policies have led to more chaos. -Kevo

  • Have they even defined what “success” would entail?

    I say we need to press for immediate withdrawal (as Obama just did), and eventually the Republicrooks will join us, because the American people have been wanting that for quite awhile now.

    The trick will be to make sure the Republicrook rats go down with Bush on the USS Quagmire. They will try to get on the lifeboats, but we’ll need to keep the oars handy.

    wham!

  • Russ Feingold’s latest salvo:

    I am really troubled by the attempt of not only Republicans but leading Democrats to essentially finesse the situation we’re in right now. This is not a time to finesse the situation, this not a time to slow-walk. This almost reminds me a little bit of the way Democrats behaved in October of 2002 which was trying to play it safe, trying to use words such as, “well, we’re going to vote for this resolution but what it really means is that the president should go to the U.N.” That stuff doesn’t fly. And this kind of an attempt to go a little bit of the way just to show you’re on the other side of the President doesn’t fly either.

    What we need now is a strong position to get out of this situation. That’s what I have proposed in a bill and we have also offered an amendment to this item that is in theory before the Senate now, which would basically strike the provisions that I just talked about, that were harmful. It’s already been cosponsored by two of the most distinguished and senior members of the Senate – Senator Leahy and Senator Dodd. So the three of us have introduced this amendment that says, look, you can’t have language in this Warner thing that says you can’t start withdrawing troops. It says you can’t have language that talks about a surge in Al Anbar province, and you can’t have language that says we can’t consider reducing the funding. So this is an important moment to see if we’re really going to try to end this war and frankly I’m disappointed that democrats are playing it too safe on this.

    http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/02/06/because-russ-asked-you-to/#more-7052

    AMEN.

  • Iraqis, ignorant non-Christian savages that they are, can read as well as anyone else. They know this is the last roll of the dice, and beyond lie failure and defeat. What continues to astound me is that Bush actually SOLICITED SUPPORT for this staggering, doomed-to-failure splurge. Why didn’t he simply order the deployment, as he’s used to doing? It’s like he WANTS somebody to shoot this one out of the saddle, so he can later blame them for the crashing and burning of the military campaign.

  • Gates is the new head coach that took over after the last one was fired and is now promising to win the Super Bowl next year. He’s on the “we can still win this bandwagon,” and given his position I can’t blame him for saying what he said.

    It’s Condi’s quote that is inexcusable.“It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.” No, you make the plan work by figuring out how it could fail and make adjustments for that. There may be a rule that if you wish on a falling star and then change your wish it won’t happen, but that proposition doesn’t apply to running a war.

    For those that haven’t read it, Atrios (http://atrios.blogspot.com/) has a great post about the new Obama/ Thompson/ Murphy de-escalation legislation. Very powerful stuf.

  • “If you’re not for victory in Iraq, you’re for failure,” Boehner said. “The consequences of failure are immense. I think it destabilizes the entire Middle East, encourages Iran and on top of that it’s pretty clear that the terrorists will just follow us home.”

    Boner strikes again.

  • Rice said, “It’s bad policy to speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.”

    Wait a minute, in what reality is it a bad idea to have a back-up plan? Seems to me that developing a back up plan is just common sense. “No, this is going to be an outdoor wedding, rain is just unthinkable”, “Life boats, who needs life boats, only a defeatist would entertain the possibily that this great ship might not complete its ocean crossing”, “Of course they’ll welcome us with flowers and candy – would else could they possibly do if we invade them?”

    Complete morons, the lot of them.

  • ***Gates told lawmakers the current buildup of forces by 21,500 troops is “not the last chance” to succeed in Iraq***

    Those four little words—“not the last chance”—are the first indication that if this escalation fails, Bush will finally see reason, and start bringing the troops home. It also speaks volumes to the fact that this administration lacks not only an exit strategy, but also a functional policy with which to prosecute this war.

    I’m curious—what will “the next chance” be? Am I the only one looking at all those carrier groups steaming ever-closer toward the ME?

  • “I would be irresponsible if I weren’t thinking about what the alternatives might be,” Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    Why yes, Mr Gates, you would. So tell me: are you thinking about alternatives?

  • I’d be the last to defend Rice, but the way I read her remark is “it would be irresponsible to publicly speculate on what you’ll do if a plan fails when you’re trying to make a plan work.”

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