This morning, retired general William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) under President Ronald Reagan and Senior Fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, was interviewed on National Public Radio's Weekend Edtion about Iraq. The interview is scathing, almost shocking coming from a former Reagan official. It's also one of the clearest arguments I've ever heard for why the invasion of Iraq was - and continues to be - an utter disaster. Here are a few key quotes by Odom, but listen to the whole thing:*"We should get out, carefully, over a period of 3, 4, 5 or 6 months. But, the main reason to get out is that we are now diplomatically and strategically paralyzed by being tied down there."
*"By getting into Iraq, we've inflamed the entire region. Therefore, we have to have a strategy for limiting the damage and bringing some kind of order over the region from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan. We can't do that alone. We need allies. And we will only have the kind of allies we really need to do that and the United Nations after we've withdrawn..."
*"There will be sectarian violence, and we'll just have to live with that...we might have to live with the guilty feeling for having been a perpetrator of it."
*"Going in there did exactly that [encourage sectarian violence and unrest]. The only reason you didn't have that before was that Saddam ruled with an iron hand. As bad as Saddam was, he kept stability in that country..."
*"We now have unleashed forces that are not going to be put back under stability and control for quite some time. What we may be able to do is keep it from spreading into the rest of the region and we may be able to do a number of things to moderate it..."
*"This is one of those situations where you've lost money in the market, sunk costs, you can't get it back by putting more money in. I lived through this in Vietnam..."
*"Well, we've been there, and the sectarian violence has grown. What evidence is there that our being there reduces it. There's a lot of evidence that our being there incites it and makes it greater."
*"It's not stomach to stay a long commitment, it's the wisdom not to continue to allow your enemies to continue to bleed you. By going in we have so enhanced Iranian power in the region it's hard to exaggerate."
*"One of the big losers in a quick U.S. withdrawal will be Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is able to be there only because we're there. They can't operate in Kurdistan now. The Shi'ites have no use for them whatsoever. The Sunnis only tolerate them for tactical convenience in the insurgency."
*"One of the great gainers in our invasion was Osama bin Laden, because he was not able to use this area at all until we opened it up and made it safe for them. It did not realize a real surge in recruitment and ideological excitement until we invaded Iraq."
*"We project this absolutely false image onto Iraq that it is the government versus the insurgents. It's factions in the government versus each other that prevents the political consolidation. Once the political consolidation is achieved, then building an army makes sense..."
*"This was predictable, and that's what's happening there, and the politics is going to be who gets what, when, and how in Iraq and they'll decide that with the gun, not by the vote."
By the way, does Odom's analysis sound just a wee bit like Jim Webb's or what? And is it just my imagination or does Odom disagree almost 180 degrees with George Allen on this? Finally, who do you trust more to deal with Iraq, military men with tremendous national security experience like Jim Webb and William Odom, or people with no clue and no experience on national security like George W. Bush and George Allen? I know who I'd follow, in a heartbeat, and the first name isn't "George."
Lowell Feld is Netroots Coordinator for the Jim Webb for US Senate Campaign. The ideas expressed here belong to Lowell Feld alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Jim Webb, his advisors, staff, or supporters.
U.S. military and Iraqi security forces have begun a massive effort to seal off Baghdad with a ring of reinforced checkpoints, berms, trenches, barriers and fences in an attempt to clamp down on insurgents, officials said Friday.The plans were announced on a day when officials said 52 bound and tortured corpses were found across Baghdad over a 24-hour period. Baghdad's body count has surged in recent days, despite a month-old push by thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces to tame some of the capital's roughest neighborhoods.
Well, that's what you get when you elect a dry drunk to be President.
Oh, wait.
NEW YORK Journalists are in danger everywhere in Iraq these days, making it nearly impossible to report, and it only seems to be getting worse, said New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, speaking Thursday at the offices of the Committee to Protect Journalists in Manhattan. Filkins, who will begin a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University this month and start work on a book, said that 98% of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has now become "off-limits" for Western journalists.Filkins, one of the longest-lasting and most-honored reporters in Iraq, said that many situations lately have become even too dangerous for Iraqi reporters to report on. He described the current climate as "anarchy," and, when asked if the country was already involved in a civil war, he said, "Yeah, sure."
Asked what advice he had for a reporter from a small paper going to Iraq now without the kinds of money and backup that the Times was able to afford him (or previous reporting experience in Iraq), Filkins replied: "Don't go."
The most that Times reporters can do these days, said Filkins, is "very carefully set up an appointment with someone" using back channels and meet with them under tight security. "We can't go to car bombings anymore," he said, describing how even getting out of a vehicle to report would expose a Western journalist to mob attacks and kidnapping. * * *
He estimated that there are probably 50 murders and 20 to 30 kidnappings in Baghdad every day, and said that it had gotten to the point where it was no longer just Sunni-Shiite clashes or insurgent mayhem. "Nobody trusts anybody anymore," he said. "There's no law, and the worst people with guns are in charge."
According to Filkins, the New York Times is burning through money "like jet fuel" simply to securely maintain its operations in the country. In addition to the 70 local reporters and translators, the Times employs 45 full-time Kalashnikov-toting security guards to patrol its two blast-wall-enclosed houses -- and oversee belt-fed machine-guns on the roofs of the buildings. The paper also has three armored cars, and pays a hefty premium each month to insure the five Times reporters working there.
American journalists, he said, spend their days piecing together scraps of information from the Iraqi reporters to construct a picture, albeit incomplete, of what life is like these days in the war-torn country. But he says that the work is slow and difficult, and it is hard in such an atmosphere for reporters to nail down specifics. "Five people doing a run-of-the-mill story takes forever," he said.
Most troubling was Filkins' assessment that the U.S. military may not know much more than the Times does about what life is like on the ground in Iraq. Soldiers barely leave their bases and they don't interact very much with average Iraqis, he said, so it is hard to say who, if anyone, has an accurate picture of the current situation.
"Everyone is kind of groping around in the dark," he said.
Just a few months ago Laura Ingraham was complaining that news people don't get around much in Iraq, implying they were cowards.
I wonder if George Allen gets his Iraqi assessments from Laura Ingraham. Maybe he can ask her at the hoedown.
Here it is: http://www.washingto...
This is as bad as the body armor non-support in my opinion, because remember there was a lot of support for the U.S. when we entered Iraq:
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.***To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.
These are just a few paragraphs from a very long article depicting how corrupt this Administration really is.
In New Orleans we had a much more visible view of the costs of bureacratic incompetence. This CPA example though is yet another case of the Bush administrations unseriousness in matters involving national security and the lives of American soldiers. We'll, never know the exact costs, but it's safe to say that O'Beirne's staff decisions have cost Americans and ordinary Iraqis their lives.
I just got finished watching a little segment about the meeting that was going on down in Havanah--Yes the world hates us and doesn't trust us, and Colin Powell reiterated that too. The United states under the leadership of people like Bush/Allen/Davis has gone from respected to the crap house. And I am outraged about it. I think more and more people are too. Hey, I am not some international expert, but even I knew we were going to open a can of worms in Iraq. Iraq is not and never was going to scratch terrorism.
At his press conference yesterday Bush was in no mood to compromise with those in his party that disagree with him.(A mistake) I am more convinced now that neo cons such as Bush/Allen/Davis will feel the wrath of the voters at the polls on Nov 7th--The only thing that scares me is that the GOP interests own most of the voting machines in this country. ie voter fraud is rappent in this country--slanted the GOP way in a big way--The neo cons like Bush/allen/Davis believe in their cause so much they're will to do anything to stay in power. The Neo Cons have been planning this for years--taking over the gov't and dismantling it--Bush's method of choice is to spend, spend, spend, and put it into bankruptcy. Bush/Allen/Davis do all these things under the radar so the average Joe won't know till it's too late. Okay I am done, more later.
It doesn't make me happy to be able to say "we told you so." But still we have such an overwhelming shrieking from the Bush cabal and the necon echo chamber that the American public still isn't getting the message, especially now there is another election coming.
This is what we should be talking about, not merely in the debates, but over and over again on the campaign trail-- instead of, are Democrats soft on National Security. THAT is not the frame we should worry about. Re-frame the national security problem: the entire question of "fighting terror" has been completely mismanaged and miscast, the entire approach has been wrong from the getgo, and there is no defining, much less achieving, "victory" ever in the present framework. We absolutely must change course, re-define our objectives, our strategy, and our tactics.
It doesn't make me happy to be able to say "we told you so." But still we have such an overwhelming shrieking from the Bush cabal and the necon echo chamber that the American public still isn't getting the message, especially now there is another election coming.
This is what we should be talking about, not merely in the debates, but over and over again on the campaign trail-- instead of, are Democrats soft on National Security. THAT is not the frame we should worry about. Re-frame the national security problem: the entire question of "fighting terror" has been completely mismanaged and miscast, the entire approach has been wrong from the getgo, and there is no defining, much less achieving, "victory" ever in the present framework. We absolutely must change course, re-define our objectives, our strategy, and our tactics.