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POPSHow to control public opinion on the war MoJo interviews Rick Scavetta, an officer formerly working in Army media relations in Afghanistan, who talks about the ways the war is "marketed" to civilians (for example: no one's really looking for Osama any more).
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POPSDivide Iraq in to Three States? As far as fresh ideas go, this one's pretty good! Federalization works in theory, it's really a question of how much autonomy to give to each of the states. It also begs the question, what happens when one of the states tries to secede? With things as they currently are I imagine the situation would devolve back in to a civil war. In a way I see this as putting off the inevitable, but perhaps the country will be better prepared for a more federal-centric government ten- twenty- or thirty- years down the road when/if the issue comes to a head.
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POPSLt. Gen. Gregory Newbold: Replace Rumsfeld. So what is to be done? We need fresh ideas and fresh faces. That means, as a first step, replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach. The troops in the Middle East have performed their duty. Now we need people in Washington who can construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it. It is time for senior military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure that the President hears them clearly. And that we won't be fooled again. Slate said it best, "Newbold resigned his position in late 2002—quite a gesture, since he was widely regarded as a candidate for the next Marine Corps commandant. His fellow officers knew he resigned over the coming war in Iraq. The public and the president did not."( 1 )
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POPSLawrence Wilkerson (Powell's Chief of Staff) criticizes Iraq intelligence & planning for the war.
Here's what the plan was: The plan devised principally in Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office, and I have to believe, if Rumsfeld is the controller, the leader he says he is, that he was fully cognizant of this, and I don't think he would have been cognizant of it without the blessings of the vice president either. The plan was to put Jay Garner, General Jay Garner, in his organization, called ORHA, on the ground in Iraq for maybe 90 to 120 days, install Ahmed Chalabi and his INC colleagues, or some other look-alike, in control, and then leave, withdrawing most of the major military force in the process, if not all of it, in a very short period of time. This is ineptitude and incompetence of the first order. Ever since that plan failed, we've been in a pickup game and now we've transmogrified the mission from imminent threat and WMD into spreading democracy. The full transcript can be found here .
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POPSAndrew Card & Laura Bush try to convince the President to replace Rumsfeld For those of you not keeping count, all the people listed below have either suggested, called for, or supported removing Rumsfeld: Andrew Card, Laura Bush, Gen. Shinseki , Gen. Tony Zinni , Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold , Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton , Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste , Col. Thomas Hammes , Army Sec. Thomas White , Col. Lawrence Wilkerson , Stephen Herbits , Gen. William Odom , Gen. Wesley Clark , Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper And, Powell may be joining the list. For more on this read here .
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POPSMaj. Gen. Paul Eaton: Iraq Plan Flawed. Mr. Rumsfeld came in to transform the US military. To turn the Army into a lighter, more lethal armed force. In fact, Rumsfeld's vision is a force designed to meet a Warsaw Pact type force more effectively - but we are not fighting the Warsaw Pact. We are fighting an insurgency: a distributed low-tech, high-concept war that demands greater numbers of ground forces, not fewer. Mr. Rumsfeld won't acknowledge this fact. And he has failed to adapt to the current situation. He has tried and continues to fight this war on the cheap. I wrote the op-ed piece in March of this year after I read the QDR. The QDR reads like a new more potent counter Warsaw pact force. It does not read like the force we need today to prosecute the foreign policy embarked upon by this administration. The President is not well served by this Secretary of Defense, a man history will not treat kindly. So what to do? Replace the Secretary of Defense with a proven leader who has a visi...
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POPSMaj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste rips Rumsfeld apart. Here's a transcript from the beginning of the speech, I left the military on principle on Nov 1, 2005, after more than 31 years of service. I walked away from promotion and a promising future serving our country. I hung up my uniform because I came to the gut wrenching realization that I could do more good for my soldiers and their families out of uniform. I'm a Westpoint graduate, the son and son-in-law of veteran career infantry soldiers, a two time combat veteran with extensive service in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq and a life-long Republican. Bottom line, our nation is in peril. Our Defense Departments leadership is extraordinarily bad and our congress is only today, five years in to the war, beginning to exercise its oversight responsibilities. This is all about accountability and setting our nation up for victory. There is no substitute for victory, and I believe we must complete what we started in Iraq and Afghanistan. Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent war time leader." [
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POPSRumsfeld's Personal Aide attacks his Post War Planning Stephen Herbits, a lawyer and longtime Rumsfeld friend going back to 1967. Herbits had been one of Rumsfeld's civilian special assistants during his first Pentagon tour. Rumsfeld made him a consultant with a license to analyze current problems, and he functioned as a management fix-it man, somewhat as Karl Rove did for Bush.
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POPSGraph of US Fatalities in Iraq by Mont ____ Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep 2006 - 62, 55, 31, 76, 69, 61, 43, 65, 73 = 535 2005 - 107, 58, 35, 52, 80, 78, 54, 85, 49 = 598 2004 - 47, 20, 52, 135, 80, 42, 54, 66, 80 = 576 It's sobering to see that the numbers aren't coming down by that much. Here's another good resource that tracks the number of people that have been wounded as well as the death toll of all all allied forces.
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POPSRumsfeld says he won't resign The defense secretary and Bush have faced growing criticism for their handling of the Iraq war as violence there has escalated, U.S. casualties have mounted and public support for the conflict has declined. Fueling the debate in recent days was the release of a classified intelligence report that concluded that the Iraq war has helped fuel a new generation of extremists and increased the overall terrorist threat.
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POPSThis is What Waterboarding Looks Like. If the United States is going to continue to claim we're getting good intel using "torture-lite" techniques, maybe the President should declassify some of the findings to show us how it's actionably helped the war on terror.
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POPSUS intelligence Reports: Iraq War fuels global terror threat. At the end of the article the author reports, "McCain told CBS that the United States needs to prevail in Iraq, saying that failure in that country would only further complicate problems." In this instance, I agree. If we quit now I have little doubt that neighboring countries would openly and/or covertly vie for Iraqi controlled soil. The region is too resource rich to go uncontested. I just wish we had had the foresight to realize that invading Iraq would leave the United States militarily over-committed. Right now the President can’t outright threaten Iran or its nuclear program, because we don’t have the military might to oppose them. And what’s worse Iran knows it. In effect we’ve diminished our place at the bargaining table, because our military is stretched so thin that we could barely muster an effective counter-attack even in a worst-case scenario – like North Korea launching an ICBM.
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POPSUS military, targeting civilian women & children?! My jaw just hit the floor. After listening to Jessie speak I can't believe Bush had the nerve to say THIS , at the Rose Garden News Conference just five days days ago. "BUSH: If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic. I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective, Terry" ( 1 )
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POPSThe Bush Family Doctrine: The Panama-Iraq Connection If there's a connection to be made between the way George Sr. ran his Presidency and how Dubya is following in his father's footsteps -- it's made in this film. The tactics and outcome of the military operation in Panama are being replayed in Iraq. Watching this was an eye-opener.
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POPSRumsfeld believes there should be more positive news about the war in Iraq. The line that really bothers me, "More media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor." I have to ask, does Rumsfeld honestly believe that a Medal of Honor winner is more newsworthy than the United States torturing it's captives and breaking the rules set in place by the Geneva convention? And if so, does Rumsfeld have the perspective needed to address the problems we are now facing as the war heads in to its fourth year? Comments welcomed.
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