Thread: Commentary: B u s h still refuses to admit he was wrong

McClatchy Washington Bureau Posted on Fri, Sep. 14, 2007

Commentary: Bush still refuses to admit he was wrong
Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: September 14, 2007 07:44:56 AM

Well, now we’ve heard from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and President George W. Bush, and it appears that the Surge has succeeded — succeeded in guaranteeing that the Iraq War will drag on for the last 16 months of the Bush presidency at a cost of another 1,600 American dead and $13 billion a month.

Extending the war, kicking that can down the road, was President Bush’s only strategic objective last January when he came up with the idea of escalating the number of American troops in Iraq from 130,000 to today’s 170,000. Put simply, the Decider wants to hand off the decision to pull the plug on his unwinnable war to someone else, anyone else.

Four and a half years after this president ordered the invasion of Iraq in a gross act of arrogance and ignorance based on faulty, bogus and politically twisted intelligence — and after repeatedly changing the rationales and objectives of the war as each has failed in turn — we’re going to continue this war because George W. Bush is incapable of admitting that he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Leaving aside all the happy talk we heard this week about how much better the security picture is in Baghdad, the fact is that the escalation or surge has failed utterly. The stated purpose of this exercise was to buy breathing room for the faltering government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and the paralyzed Iraqi parliament to make progress toward national reconciliation.

The Iraqi government’s job was to use this breathing room, bought at the cost of American lives and American treasure, to step back from sectarian murder and civil war, which it’s failed to do, may be totally incapable of doing and may not even be interested in doing.

Every American commander in Iraq has stated the obvious from Day One: This war cannot be won militarily. It cannot be won by American troops. It cannot be won by wishful thinking. It can only be won by the Iraqis themselves, and their definition of victory is built on dreams of bloody revenge and the slaughter of innocents.

When our president talks of peace returning to the streets of Baghdad, he mistakes the silence of empty, abandoned homes and sectarian cleansing for progress. He confuses the segregation of Shia and Sunni, each in their own ghettos behind tall concrete walls, for progress. More than 3 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes and neighborhoods into exile, internal or external, and this he calls success.

He and the two yes-men, Petraeus and Crocker, crowed about victory in Anbar province as though American tactics and strategy had something to do with a revolutionary turnaround among Sunni tribal sheiks who, long after even the U.S. Marines were admitting defeat in Anbar, acted in their own self-interest and struck against the al Qaeda in Iraq operatives who were killing their people, their own children.

This week, one of the key authors of that change, a man President Bush singled out on his secret fly-by-night visit to Anbar, was blown apart by the enemy near his own home.

All the while, Prime Minister Maliki and his majority Shia government grit their teeth at the spectacle of their American allies supporting and financing and even recruiting the hated Sunnis into the army and police forces, thus making them a harder nut to crack when the night of the long knives, the dark night of Shia revenge, eventually arrives.

The president announced that he was taking Gen. Petraeus’ advice and ordering the beginning of 10-month gradual drawdown of the extra 30,000 troops of the surge — a drawdown that everyone knew was inevitable simply because our Army and Marine Corps cannot sustain that level of troops in Iraq beyond next March.

On the schedule the president laid down this week, we’ll still have some 138,000 troops on the ground in Iraq next July, and 100,000 on January 20, 2009, when Bush’s successor will take office, and he made it clear that he hopes to have agreements in place to ensure an American military presence there for many years to come.

Will Bush get away with this? From all the evidence at hand, the answer, sadly, is yes. Only the Democrats in Congress stand in his way, and they have yet to find their spines, or a semblance of moral courage, or even a sufficient understanding of the Constitution and its clauses on war making and war-financing, to override The Decider.

It’s a long journey from now to January 20, 2009, and the blood of many Americans and even more Iraqis will flow freely and stain the hands of those who allow this insane war to continue at the behest of a stubborn, unseeing, unthinking man from Crawford, Texas.

2007 McClatchy Newspapers
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 09/14/2007 | Commentary: Bush still refuses to admit he was wrong

This war could be stopped today, but there isn't enough courage in congress to do what they say they believe is right. We are in the most dangerous "season" now with the preening of politicians thinking about elections.

Ron Paul would pull us out of there immediately. Obviously I favor a phased withdrawal, but at least he says what he beleives.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

Ron Paul would pull us out of there immediately. Obviously I favor a phased withdrawal, but at least he says what he beleives.

He'll never get the chance to act, both parties would see to that.

Originally Posted by Migi e!

He'll never get the chance to act, both parties would see to that.

Your probably right. The CIA will probably whack him if he gets elected, since he wants to do the same thing to it that Kennedy wanted to do...

In politics and diplomacy *no one* from the vegetable grocer or the President himself will *ever* make an 'extreme' statement. It's a fact of this PR business really. Besides, it Saddam who gave an impression of being in command of WMDs to intimidate the coalition that prompted it all anyways. We all just forget how many times the inspectors were sent home *and* that there was a Security Council consideration prior to the invasion.

It might have been a UN affair after some time anyway.

Originally Posted by Desidude666

In politics and diplomacy *no one* from the vegetable grocer or the President himself will *ever* make an 'extreme' statement. It's a fact of this PR business really. Besides, it Saddam who gave an impression of being in command of WMDs to intimidate the coalition that prompted it all anyways. We all just forget how many times the inspectors were sent home *and* that there was a Security Council consideration prior to the invasion.

It might have been a UN affair after some time anyway.

The inspectors had to leave because of our invasion.

The US had no right to invade Iraq, they had not threatened us, were no threat to us and had not threatened their neighbors. We used the UN resolutions as our reasoning behind the need for the use of the military to remove Saddam, even though our invasion violated the UN Resolutions and the Joint Resolution.

If I were Saddam surronded by the neighbors he was surrounded by with no real army since the USofA had destroyed my military in 1991, I would be bullshiting my way too.

The reasons for war were a bunch of lies and we had no moral or legal right to invade. And now look at the mess we have made.

Originally Posted by Vortex

The inspectors had to leave because of our invasion.

The US had no right to invade Iraq, they had not threatened us, were no threat to us and had not threatened their neighbors. We used the UN resolutions as our reasoning behind the need for the use of the military to remove Saddam, even though our invasion violated the UN Resolutions and the Joint Resolution.

If I were Saddam surronded by the neighbors he was surrounded by with no real army since the USofA had destroyed my military in 1991, I would be bullshiting my way too.

The reasons for war were a bunch of lies and we had no moral or legal right to invade. And now look at the mess we have made.

He opened his doors in the last minute after the ultimatum. They were playing ping pong as if he were hiding something hence retaining some form of psychological influence in diplomacy. It's obvious that his stance was projected bigger than it actually was, you may agree. And this is normal in politics or marketing even.

Technically some analysts believe that Iraq would have fallen sooner or later since his sons were scheming to topple him and there were conflicts within the Baath. I could add that the added threat of loosing control of oil prices completely complicated the situation. Iraq was a North Korea in my view if they didn't have oil, Bush administration doesn't even talk to it. My guess is that it was a major mistake, not a pre-meditated or orchestrated Illuminati scheme or whatever.

Donald Rumsfeld, for all his mistakes as Sectretary of Defence, was one of the most experienced politicians in office. And if Condi Rice takes over on the issues of defense, as media reports suggest, it's obvious that his jurisdiction was being over-ridden. In that sense, he left and that was a major loss for the administration in my view, since Rumsfeld, though he made mistakes, was a very good conservative brand on the side of the administration.

Again Iraq fell further down the gallows as things went out of control, especially since reports surfaced of al Qaeda was instigating Shia-Sunni unrest in Fallujah, according to some media reports. So, can I add taht we and the media might have over-responded to the missing WMDs? I mean those guys were really in there and have some tribal strongholds around the country.

The Democrats have failed at their gambit to force a troop withdrawl. They had hoped that by forcing it they could recreate the gennocide that occured after Democrats yanked support from Viet Nam. Their ultimate goal was to create such a stain on GWB and the Republicans so as to control the political landscape for a generation.

It is all about power...they could care less about the soldiers or the Iraqis.

But now they have failed....there will be no pullout...and if Hillary is elected she will not pull out and allow the genocide to occur while she is President, because she will be blamed.

You had better start gettiing your arms around victory...because that is the only way out.

Originally Posted by conservative

The Democrats have failed at their gambit to force a troop withdrawl. They had hoped that by forcing it they could recreate the gennocide that occured after Democrats yanked support from Viet Nam. Their ultimate goal was to create such a stain on GWB and the Republicans so as to control the political landscape for a generation.

It is all about power...they could care less about the soldiers or the Iraqis.

But now they have failed....there will be no pullout...and if Hillary is elected she will not pull out and allow the genocide to occur while she is President, because she will be blamed.

You had better start gettiing your arms around victory...because that is the only way out.

I disagree con. I see the president's insistance that the troops remain as just his using the troops as a shield to protect himself from impeachment. I mean, after all, how could we impeach a sitting president during a time of war, how could we interfere with the commander-n-chief's job while we have troops in harms way?

The dems do care about the troops, con. They want them out of danger, out of a war with no end. That is why they struggle with the funding concerns (if they cut off the funds, GWB wouldn't pull them, he would just force them to fight with no pay and inadequate equipment). They don't want them without while they are in harms way, they don't want them in harms way.

It is all about power for GWB and greed, that damned oil and that damn legacy.

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