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Anonymous · Posted: Fri December 15, 2006 Post subject: A New Iraq Offensive?

I hope not. Taken from msnbc:

Dec. 13, 2006 - So much for Baker-Hamilton.

George W. Bush is now getting sharply conflicting advice from all sides about what to do in Iraq. This is evidence both that the backlash against the Iraq Study Group report has begun in earnest and that Iraq truly is close to being an unsolvable mess. The announcement this week that Bush's planned pre-Christmas speech on Iraq will be put off until next year shows just how grim the choices are.

But there may be another reason why Bush is waiting a bit to speak to the nation. Inside the Pentagon, some experts think he may intend to launch a new offensive in Baghdad, and that he doesn't want to talk about it until it happens. It's a safe bet that, faced with irreconcilable advice, this president will always revert to his default position, which is to do whatever makes him look leaderlike and tough. In this case that could mean a temporary surge of 20,000 U.S. troops or so into the "grave and deteriorating" civil war in Baghdad, which is what the Joint Chiefs of Staff are considering, according to one source close to the Pentagon.

As predicted, the Baker-Hamilton report is fast fading into irrelevance. At least four of the five experts called into the White House Monday to advise Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, political adviser Karl Rove and National Security Council deputies J. D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan advised him not to adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendation that U.S. advisers be quadrupled, with a goal of withdrawing combat brigades by the first quarter of 2008. One of the experts, retired general Jack Keane, counseled that the administration rush in many more U.S. troops to "win the battle of Baghdad."

Two other retired generals, Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing, advised Bush that current U.S. combat brigades be retained indefinitely, though the total troop size should be reduced gradually, according to interviews with several of the participants. Cheney took copious notes, McCaffrey said, and the president "did not push back" against their advice.

The recommendation to dramatically increase the number of embedded U.S. advisers was one of the more credible and broadly supported ones in the Baker-Hamilton report. Most of the other recommendations, like reaching out in a new way to Iran and Syria, have already been rejected. (One exception could be the adoption of an economic reconstruction and jobs program, though we have yet to see the money for it.)

But there may be another reason why Bush is waiting a bit to speak to the nation. Inside the Pentagon, some experts think he may intend to launch a new offensive in Baghdad, and that he doesn't want to talk about it until it happens. It's a safe bet that, faced with irreconcilable advice, this president will always revert to his default position, which is to do whatever makes him look leaderlike and tough. In this case that could mean a temporary surge of 20,000 U.S. troops or so into the "grave and deteriorating" civil war in Baghdad, which is what the Joint Chiefs of Staff are considering, according to one source close to the Pentagon.

As predicted, the Baker-Hamilton report is fast fading into irrelevance. At least four of the five experts called into the White House Monday to advise Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, political adviser Karl Rove and National Security Council deputies J. D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan advised him not to adopt the Iraq Study Group recommendation that U.S. advisers be quadrupled, with a goal of withdrawing combat brigades by the first quarter of 2008. One of the experts, retired general Jack Keane, counseled that the administration rush in many more U.S. troops to "win the battle of Baghdad."

Two other retired generals, Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing, advised Bush that current U.S. combat brigades be retained indefinitely, though the total troop size should be reduced gradually, according to interviews with several of the participants. Cheney took copious notes, McCaffrey said, and the president "did not push back" against their advice.

The recommendation to dramatically increase the number of embedded U.S. advisers was one of the more credible and broadly supported ones in the Baker-Hamilton report. Most of the other recommendations, like reaching out in a new way to Iran and Syria, have already been rejected. (One exception could be the adoption of an economic reconstruction and jobs program, though we have yet to see the money for it.)

Bush's biggest problem right now is that most of what he is considering has been tried before. And that includes a new offensive. In early August, Operation Forward Together—the deployment of about 8,000 more U.S. troops into Baghdad—was also supposed to produce secure areas of the capital. But by late October, after weeks of spouting statistics about lowered murder rates, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell conceded that the operation "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence."

Indeed, it was the failure of this program that led the Iraq Study Group to conclude that the only solution was a rapid drawdown of U.S. combat brigades, in order to pressure the fence-sitting government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to take action itself. "In many ways, the failure [of Forward Together] confirmed our worst fears," said Panetta. McCaffrey, for one, is dreading the prospect of a new surge of troops into Baghdad. "I don't think we ought to be fighting an urban counterinsurgency campaign," he said. "There's a civil war going on in Baghdad." Some Democrats now point out that the announcement in recent days that Maliki's government might be close to a crucial deal on sharing oil revenues, coming after a swirl of talk in Washington about withdrawal, is proof that pressure works.

But if Bush is about to launch a new, bigger Operation Forward Together, that will allow Maliki to relax again. It will put off training the Iraqi Army and further delay the day we can leave. And that will mean, in some distant month, a whole new round of advice will begin in Washington.

Hobo · Posted: Sat December 16, 2006 Post subject:

Too bad he needs about 20 million troops, instead of 20,000. A new US offensive would just be more needless killing of both US troops and Iraqi civilians. Talk about terrorism, this president is pretty much committing murder on the grandest scale.

Anonymous · Posted: Sat December 16, 2006 Post subject:

He doesn't know how to handle money much better than an alcoholic in a bar.