Am I missing something or is this the first time in history that a military commander announced the details of his battle plan to the enemy before the battle?
Much of President Bush's speech this evening offered a detailed look at the planned strategy of how the troops involved in the "surge deployment" will be used in Baghdad. Bush listed the numbers of American troops involved (20,000), the number of Iraqi brigades that will participate (and, more or less, where), and how they plan to clear out the city, district by district, of terrorists, insurgents and armed militia.…
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26 - MAOZ
"'Tit-for-tat' is just vengeance"
"What is a tat? Where can I get one? And where can I trade it in for that other thing?"
Quoted by somebody or other from somewhere or other. Some SNL shtick, I think.
Anyway, to be more on-topic -- If this really was a reflection of Bush stupidity, I have to say at least he's not alone. Stupid seems to be going around in certain circles these days; cf. Olmert's atomic "slip of the tongue". OTOH, Bird may be onto something in suggesting a feint. If it ultimately turns out to have been a brilliant feint, I'm sure Bush will get no credit for it from the general media.
I recall that during Desert Storm (the '90-'91 Iraq war) Gen. Schwartzkopf suckered Saddam's forces into expecting an amphibious assault....So all their coastal guns were pointed out to sea when the actual attack came by land. Of course, to get Saddam to buy into the idea, Schwartzkopf had to convince CNN et al that he was gonna go amphibious.
I also recall that when the "amphibious assault" ultimately proved to be a feint, the reaction of the media was NOT one of "Hey, what a brilliant feint he pulled! Wow, he even had us really going!" The reaction of the media was basically "Well! The nerve of him! Schwartzkopf lied to us! How dare he?!"
27 - Alec
Bird- Very interesting commentary. I think the short answer to your question is that Bush has telegraphed war plans because, like many conservatives, he suffers under the delusion that American willpower is an irresistible force, so it doesn't matter whether our supposed adversaries know what we want to do.
Sadly, the plain fact is that it doesn't matter what he does. Bush foolishly, tragically, fails to realize that the US is not fighting a war against terror, or against anything, in Iraq. We toppled Saddam and unleashed multiple civil wars, some religious, some territorial, that are totally oblivious to US aims or strategy. The US is simply a midwife to chaos, even as Bush continues to push the fantasy that Iraqi factions jockeying for power give a rat's ass about democracy or "the rule of law" Republican style.
The only real question is what excuses conservatives will come up with down the road to explain the failure of Bush's "surge" strategy. I look forward to the inevitable book by Ann Coulter blaming Bill Clinton for Bush's stupidity.
By the way, I don't see the Democratic Party riding to the rescue anytime soon. Democrats and some so-called progressives suffer their own delusions, the most dangerous being the fantasy that if we pull out of Iraq, the world will magically return to a status quo where America is loved and Islamic radicals either do not exist, or limit their activities to Europe and Israel, but never, never, ever bother spiritually evolved anti-war Americans.
28 - SHARK
BirdO'Paradise: You need to learn the difference between News and Marketing.
whoops! There's not any! Oh, my bad!
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re: wanting something to "chew on" -
If you've got a health card and a food handler's permit, email me; I've got something for you to chew on.
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xxoo
S
29 - SHARK
also ---
WHAT ALEX SAID.
best line: "...The US is simply a midwife to chaos, even as Bush continues to push the fantasy that Iraqi factions jockeying for power give a rat's ass about democracy or "the rule of law" Republican style."
re: "...Democrats and some so-called progressives suffer their own delusions, the most dangerous being the fantasy that if we pull out of Iraq, the world will magically return to a status quo where America is loved..."
I wonder if any of them have read the 9.11 commission recommendations?
I wonder what the world would look like if we'd have spent 3 years and $400 billion on the bulk of those recommendations?
y'know -- instead of invading a country that had nothing to do with 9.11...?
30 - Martin Lav
Zedd,
I think you're right, it's too bad that the majority is silenced by a minority in every case.
I'm proud to say that I marched on Washington in Oct. of 2002 and although I was appalled by the numbers missing, I was more appalled that you couldn't get anywhere near the whitehouse, but BETTER YET, Bush was holed up in Crawford.
Pitiful, but a sign of things to come.
This little advertisement from the other night, reminded me of memo from the desk of any Company CEO. This is what we're going to do, this is how we're gonna do it and this is why. The sad truth is that by his own admission this is now a police action, going from door to door, handing Iraqi's fistfuls of money.
This is the war on terror?
Meanwhile the true terrorists are hiding out in Pakistan and while BUSHCO. rattles the chain of Syria and Iran, his buddy over in Pakistan continues to allow the Taliban and AQ unfettered access to safe havens, weaponry and aid.
Too bad there wasn't huge oil reserves in Afghanistan, then maybe we could really save that nation.
31 - Zedd
Martin, MCH,
Lets hope our children will be more radicalized when insane things like this happen.
I'm Gen X. While we are great about thinking outside of the box, we sort of rolled out eyes to the extreme conservatives and went on our way having one adventure after another. Many of my generation knew nothing about politics. We mastered living for the moment and we get simplicity. For the MANY of us who did keep up with politics, we knew not to express our views less the Ditto Heads (Business School Drones) and Conservative Boomers (greed is good bunch) who were in higher executive positions (VP+) in the work place get wind and make life hellacious for us.
Many of us whispered and used code language, snickered and winked feeling intellectually superior but allowing our country to go down the tubes.
Never again.