The Pentagon goes off message

September 1, 2006

After several days of White House rhetoric about progress in Iraq, the Pentagon released a report to Congress today (Friday afternoon, long weekend) on conditions in Iraq. If there’s any good news in the report, it’s hiding well.

Sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq and the security problems have become more complex than at any time since the U.S. invasion in 2003, the Pentagon said Friday.

In a notably gloomy report to Congress, the Pentagon said illegal militias have become more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of security as well as basic social services.

The report described a rising tide of sectarian violence, fed in part by interference from neighboring Iran and Syria and driven by a “vocal minority” of religious extremists who oppose the idea of a democratic Iraq.

Death squads targeting mainly Iraqi civilians are a growing problem, heightening the risk of civil war, it said.

“Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife,” the report said, adding that the Sunni-led insurgency “remains potent and viable” even as it is overshadowed by the sect-on-sect killing.

As for the civil war that the administration insists will not happen, the 63-page report told lawmakers, “Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months.”

It’s also worth noting that the report only covers the last three months — the period since the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki was seated May 20. It was supposed to be one of the many milestones that represented a “turned corner.” It wasn’t.

“The last quarter, as you know has been rough,” [Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs] said. “The levels of violence are up and the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing.”

This was supposed to be the good quarter, with more U.S. troops, and a specific plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, none of which had the desired effect. Instead, this quarter saw the number of average weekly attacks go up from about 550 per week for the period ending in February to nearly 800 per week for the period ending in mid-August.

Moreover, the number of roadside bombs, sectarian attacks, and daily strikes have all gone up.

The report added that the “security situation is currently at its most complex state” since we launched our invasion in 2003. Raise your hand if you believe the Bush White House appreciates that complexity and has a plan to improve the situation.

“the Pentagon said illegal militias have become more entrenched”

That would be because they are the only ones protecting any Iraqis’ lives. We certainly aren’t.

Because of Rumsfeld’s stupid rejection of years of planning for the invasion of Iraq, we did not have enough troops to take all the weapons depots. Because of Rumsfeld’s about face on our promises to the Iraqi Army that they could remain in uniform, there are tens of thousands of trained Iraqis running around. Because of Rumsfeld’s idiotic management of the training of a new Iraqi Army, thousands of trainees desert at the first opportunity, so there are thousands more trained Iraqis running around. Because of Rumsfeld’s wimp attitude to disarming Iraqis (I suppose he’s courting the NRA) no one takes AK-47’s away from Iraqis (shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, maybe).

What do you get? Armed Militias which the Pentagon has the gall to call ‘illegal’. According to whose law?

Worse – SecDef – Ever

  • Yeah, worst DoD chief ever, serving the worst administration ever. But it’s hard to imagine that Iraq would be any better even if Rumsfeld weren’t the arrogant, know-it-all prick that he is. The invasion was always the worst kind of strategic idiocy; no amount of clever management could have salvaged the damage of the fundamental error.

  • Those pre-9/11 thinkers….. Get on board with newly created reality! No more of that pesky “judicious study of discernible reality” just follow “history’s actors” they will lead the way to truth and enlightment – just make you sure you check your brain and your sanity at the door.

  • From sglover: “But it’s hard to imagine that Iraq would be any better even if Rumsfeld weren’t the arrogant, know-it-all prick that he is. The invasion was always the worst kind of strategic idiocy; no amount of clever management could have salvaged the damage of the fundamental error.”

    I fully agree that the invasion was the worst kind of strategic idiocy, and that GHW Bush’s assessment that going in to Baghdad was liable to create a mess. However, in my opinion, we could have done a much better job with the occupation and come out of it fairly well. The failures of our current Republicans add up to a long list:
    -The Republicans’ failure to plan for anything after the tanks rolled into Bagdad,
    -The failure to secure munitions and explosives at Al Qaqa and elsewhere,
    -The failure to plan and provide for an adequate number of US military personnel,
    -The failure to have enough Arabic speakers on hand, and then getting rid of some of the few because of their sexual orientation,
    -The planned and sanctioned abuse of prisoners starting with the CIA at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, continuing at Guantanamo, and thereafter at Al Ghraib,
    -The failure to secure Iraqi documents, infrastructure, and cultural heritage items after initial military victory,
    -Total disbanding of the Iraqi Army (while understandable, this was in retrospect an error).
    -No-bid contracts to a few giant corporations (and only to American ones: we would have benefitted by bringing in French, Germans, Italians, and so forth at that point),
    -Heavy reliance on private security forces and contractors
    -Putting incompetent Republican ideologues in charge of many endeavors in Iraq and failing to adequately oversee their expenditures and actions.
    -Running programs according to Republican ideology as opposed to standard practices.
    -Civil reconstruction and hearts-and-minds projects should have been one of the three top priorities (along with military victory and subsequent security), carefully and fully thought out, with supply chains almost up to the military front, and with personnel, equipment, funding, and plans all ready to go the instant American forces swept past a region, rather than as a belated and underequipped afterthought.
    -Failure to provide security early on left a vacuum that contributed mightly to the present debacle.

    I could continue, but the problems were foreseeable, and timely and appropriate management could have mitigated them dramatically. It was guaranteed to be a mess, but producing the present disaster took Republican ideology and incompetence.

  • In the meantime, without any kind of redeployment of our troops out of harm’s way, as the Iraqi Civil War warms up, we will no doubt continue to bear witness to our troops being sitting ducks; awaiting Iraq’s version of the Tet Offensive.

    I say balderdash to whomever denies that Iraq is already in the midst of a Civil War. Our MSM needs to shit or get off the pot in regard to Pres. Bush’s failed foreign policy of “pre-emptive war” and occupation of a foreign land built upon faulty and/or manipulated intelligence for what is in deed the benefit for Mr. Bush’s oil friends. -Kevo

  • Raise your hand if you believe the Bush White House appreciates that complexity and has a plan to improve the situation.

    I was thinking of raising a finger instead…

  • Imagine my surprise that this report was released on Friday afternoon of one of the biggest three-day holiday weekends of the year. I cannot believe that the Department of Defense would be allow political considerations to enter in to the timing of the delivery of a report to Congress.

  • “-Total disbanding of the Iraqi Army (while understandable, this was in retrospect an error).” – N. Wells

    We told them it wouldn’t happen. We were warned that it shouldn’t happen. We listened to counsels of fear and not hope and went on to disband the Iraqi Army. This is not a question of hindsight. We got all the warnings we needed about this.

  • Rumsfeld and his masters all have one very big problem. In their delusional philosophy of maintaining power by marginalizing the opposition, they have steadfastly clung to the mantra that their critics are guilty of “pre-911 thinking.” Unfortunately for them, it seems that pre-911 is now being accepted, by many, as “beyond post-911.” The current administration, in this, is now about as meaningful as the center of an Oreo cookie. It is palatable only for a little while; eventually, it becomes either dried out and completely tasteless, or it is consumed, digested, excreted, and flushed down the toilet.

    It is obivious, by the administration’s transparent addiction to its failed policies, that it possesses neither the solution to the problem, nor a clue as to what the problem is. They seek only to blame those who would have the courage to step out of the box and review that problem from all conceivable angles. In lacking the courage to seek newer, and better, solutions, they themselves—from the vitriolic Rove, through the incompetent Rumsfeld and the hack Cheney, up to the predictably-incompetent Herr Bush.. now resort to “the final illusion of delusion,” by trying to marginalize the factual conclusions of their miserably-failed premise. Even they—each and every one of them—know that the end or their tyranny is, by far, closer than the beginning of that tyranny.

    They have cut and run from Truth.

    They have cut and run from Responsibility.

    They have cut and run not only from the Nation; not only from the People; not only from the very Constitution itself—

    —they have cut and run from both Reality, and Themselves.

    They are thus marginalized in a “straw-manning” of their own design, and it fits them extremely well….

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