Along these lines, there was a post at Lawyers, Guns and Money, which I hope they don't mind if I reproduce:

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/09/instalink.html

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a story at Strategy Page that, if I may summarize, said that things are going great in Iraq and our troops are "mystified" that the media reports otherwise. Setting aside any effort to evaluate that claim, I had to wonder how many times, in the last three years, that Reynolds has linked to a story that was in all essentials identical to this one. I'm not masochistic enough to dig through his archives, but a quick glance at my memory seems to indicate "hundreds of times". I wonder, are there bloggers on the right who do nothing but say "things are fine, and the troops wonder why the media says differently" in new and exciting ways in the hopes of an Instalaunch?

Posted by: Clambone at September 27, 2006 07:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

These two comments ring so true to me. I've spent 18 months in Iraq, and not just the Green Zone.

I last took the airport road in May, believe me every time it's a harrowing experience. From what I hear from friends, mortar attacks are way up now, it's like 2004 again, when we'd take multiple rockets and mortars in the Green Zone every night and sometimes in the daytime.

All you have to know about Rumsfeld is that he has fought expanding the size of the Army. He has never acknowledged that more troops are needed for the commitments we have, even if force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan stay steady.

His happy horseshit is why someone on a 4 year enlistment will do two or even three 15 month tours in theater, with about a year in between.

Believe me, being in Iraq sucks, even as a highly paid contractor who does not go out as a bullet magnet every day.

If you have to go out on fire and IED-drawing patrols
everyday and get paid 20K a year, while they are cutting the VA budget, it REALLY sucks.

I am retired military, so I really felt for those young troops, especially the ones on their second tour.

A reasonable SOD would have recognized that these multiple lengthy tours are an intolerable burden on many if not most soldiers and families.

This is taking care of our troops?

He's the worst kind of fool - the kind convinced of his own brilliance - and one whose foolishness leads to cruelty. The cruelty is against our troops, their families and the Iraqi people as a whole.

Posted by: Green Zone Cafe at September 27, 2006 08:08 PM | Permalink to this comment

I've commented at more length below on Rumsfeld and the workings of the Bush administration, and their intentions with respect to war in general and the Iraq war in particular, but can we be hard on Rumsfeld, in terms of competence, if FAILURE WAS THE PLAN?

I've seen a binary analyis of Rumsfeld, either:

1. Failure in Iraq was preordained, and Rumsfeld (and others) should have foreseen this; or

2. Some kind of victory was possible in Iraq, and post-combat planning and execution was so poor that the US snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

But, as noted, I propose a third alternative to explain Rumsfeld's behavior: Failure was, and is, the plan.

And by failure, I don't mean defeat, or rout, or surrender. I mean the current no-go, quagmire situation of "stay the course."

I listed below several advantages to this "plan." There is of course another, keyed to the Middle East and the presence or absence, and relative influence, of the US and the US military in the Middle East. Congress recently felt compelled to enact a law prohibiting the Administration from establishing "permanent bases" within Iraq. But, if the US is engaged in a permanent war in Iraq, such legislation is fairly futile and irrelevant, is it not?

And it's long been something of a dream of Israeli expansionists to smash Arab nationalism, and reduce Arab nation states into dispersed, small, powerless tribal affiliations. This seems to be happening in Iraq, somewhat less so in Afghanistan (at least for the moment, although an argument can be made that the Taliban represents the best organized political organization that could actually unite Afghanistan under a unitary government).

And if Iraq flies apart into various, shifting tribal and regional power centers, it seems a simple matter for the US to play one off against the other, and to make marriages of convenience over time (bribery, pay-offs, protection, extortion, etc). This has all been done before by Imperialists; it seems it's almost intinctive.

Posted by: MD at September 29, 2006 09:01 PM | Permalink to this comment

Of course, this leaves out the fact, that the airport road, was eventually secured with Iraqi forces, I think Lara Logan, had
a story about it, monthes after it happened, I haven't seen
any reports to the contrary. But let us speak of the other
brilliant path in foreign policy, one so respected by the likes
of Baker, Scowcroft, Powell, and a supporting role by Djerian
Sr. Remember 1991, when the US walked away from the Republican Guard, right around Safwan, after the Marsh Arabs
uprising, how many died because of it, how did this effect the
attitudes of the people of Karbalah and Najaf?. Of course, Scowcroft, Baker et al; say this good, because we would have
faced a five year insurgency in Iraq; heck even Cheney believed
that then. Buck let's look a little further How many of the former
Marsh natives and the Shia crescent in general, were receptive to the Iranian argument ,seriously now, who would have so little
self respect as to trust the US after that. Because of this action,
however, forces had to stay in the Gulf to enforce the no-fly
zones, forcing us to keep a garrison in Saudi Arabia, for seemingly no good reason, rankle the likes of not only Bin Laden, but Sheik Fagih, and Massari. the latter are of course, the more
moderate Saudis who didn't support jihad but understood it ( Let us not speak of the impact on the Kurds of this same policy, but as has pointed out, they known betrayal in '58, 63, 75, and later '94, & 96. It might have made a small portion of them, say the ones
who would form Ansar Al Islam bitter.
Making the Syrians part of this grand coalition, that was a great idea, too right (Don't ask the Lebanese, how well the Taif Agreement, went). Their Baathists, too, and they are deeply supposed to the jihadists, just ask the Jund al Shams, they are so opposed to the Syrians they worked with them to assasinate ... Never mind, Forcing the Israelis to negotiate with the PLO, in good faith, well as far as dealing with the instigator of Munich and it's financier can be considered good faith, that worked out well right. Delivering the frontiers of Israel to the al Husseini kleptocracy; after all, they were the only voice in the region, Hamas and the PIJ thought otherwise; they were taught the way of the shaheed by Hezbollah; who orchestrated the previous offensive against Israel back in '96, it is said the reaction to that incident, helped steer Osama to finally decide to strike America. Banford really bought that line, so did the interrogators of that poor 'dissident' KSM' it saids so, right in the 9/11 report. The one thing, you can believe from him, despite the waterboarding .If you believe that story, you'll believe Saddam and Tariq Ramadan, had no contact with Islamists, and his chief nuclear technician did nothing to reconstitute their nuclear program; Seriously that's part of the NIE, it has to be true, then again, so was " slam dunk" some time ago. Walking way from Afghanistan back in the early 90s, that was a
master stroke , it really worked out, about as well as Union forces leaving South Carolina in 1877 did: that was the considered judgement of many. After all, we were just talking about this loose band of warlords, one group headed by Massoud, the other by Iran's proxy Hekmatyar; one actually did fight the Soviets, the
other slaughtered the ones who survived. no American need die for that, I mean what could go wrong. Apparently folks like Osama misunderstood, because he struck at us, first in Yemen, then in Somalia, when we were delivering food! Wait a minute, that was the crime of the Black Water mercenaries in Fallujah, Spring 2004, (Hey, that's what Kos saids, and he's never wrong) Who cares that we intervened in Bosnia, 800 hundred year of hate, right, and Kosovo, we didn't intervene in Chechnya, a war of choice by a brutal occupying power, which had fouled the Caucasus for 200 years, and Al Midhar and Al Hazmi reproached us for it. Well after listening to Osama's missives, they had no choice but to crash two jets into the towers. But we were warned; the Vinnell station in '95, Khobar Towers in '96, which apparently was a joint venture with Saudi Hezbollah, the Embassy bombings (the important thing is we didn't torture Al Fadl) the Cole etc. Now their are caveats, have we done, everything we should have; venturing into Waziristan, not just Western Afghanistan; although seeing how the British fared in
their trek through the NorthWest Frontier, I have my doubts. Should we have gone after Sadr, more forcefully, probably, although the earlier events would have made it a tough go in
the Shia community, as the late Ambassador Hume Horan;
discovered prior to his death, Sistani would'nt have been able
to muster much support against him, specially if there had
been no de-Baathification, as has been suggested in other
contexts. The fact, that were across the border from the Wahhabist menace and the VEVAK/Pasdaran satrap, now governing Iran,
(which even Time magazine admits is much closer to becoming
a nuclear power, but we can live with that, right) and have done little to curb jihadists there. The fact, that these people, our common enemy, blow up schools, hospitals, power stations, et al fire alternately fire from and blow up mosques; can be chalked up
to some erroneous health policy choice, is obscene, but that's the
considered opinion of Eaton, Baptiste, and the like; we can't improve things, so lets go; if a bomb goes of in New York, or Miami,
or London, we can always blame Bush, if we had only listened to those elder statesman of '91, and '93-01. The world would love
us once more, they wouldn't chher that bad caricature from Conrad's Nostromo, or the Mullah's henchman at the UN. One
forgets their grudges are eternal and impenetrable. To take three
examples from the coffee clatch of Wahhabism, which seems to drive the foreign fighters .The whole Al Quahtani clan, seemingly driven to be shaheeds in Mosul and Al Quaim, by Abu Ghraib? The Baghdad Museum looting, the imprisonment of their kinsman at Gitmo, and Bagram, thankfully one escaped the latter gulag, the former after having been forced to contrive his role as the 20th hijacker, probably faces another kangaroo court, of the kind, proffered for KSM, Zubeydah et al. The Al Ghamdi, and Utaibi clans, have been trying something against us; for some time, the first were part of the Al Mujahiroun's magnificent '19, along with actions in Chechya and elsewhere. One protested Abu Ghraib. de-Baathification policy, an unreasonable favoring of the Kurds? by
blowing himself in a marine mess hall, in Mosul, nearly three years ago. That just seems to be the way of the children of the Saudi
Ambassador to the Sudan, that's the advice they gave the Janjaweed, rest assured, if we were to intervene in Darfur, some
suitable excuse, would be given for our force's immolation there.
Of the Al Utaibi's who despite having been the original leaders of
the siege of the Haramain mosque in '79, found other reason to
be in Afghanistan in the fall of '01, and consequently wound up
dead, thanks to our negligence at the end of a noose, this spring.

Now at this point, you're saying, well those are Saudi, the President's golfing buddy, former investors. future business
partners, what does that have to do with Iraq. It's the majority
of the Iraqis, who we let down in 2003, so much so that they're
forced to build IED's, snipe at us, with RPGs. I mean that's the
only solution; after all Bremer didn't care, firing all those Sunni
tribesman that made the Army commanders, the Mukharabat
section chiefs, ignoring those impartial museum heads, giving
pink slips to the likes of Eagleton and Bodine (they really understood how the Kurds aren't the be all and end all) replacing
them with AEI flacks. The nerve of them, don;t they know these
regimes really understood everything, democracies just a word;
Israel is the problem, if they would only go way, everything would
be fine. Those neocons had to muck it up, stupid Wolfowitz, doesn't
he know what worked in Manila, doesn't work in Baghdad, Besides,
what did we get in Manila, anyways, Marcos was made by the US,
so were his SOA and IMET pretenders, they were the problem anyways; that's the left side of the ledger. As Fukuyama, Iraq
had to be toppled, unless it didn't, doesn;t matter that one has
to mangle a Krauthammer speech to rationalize this. I am sick
and tired, of having to accept the Danish cartoon controversies,
the car flambes in Paris, the bombings in London & Madrid, with
future sequels in Milan, Berlin, maybe Chicago; and blame it on
some policy decision made going nearly a half decade ago, with
the usual suspects like terrorist abetters like CAIR, Al Jazeera,
Reuters et al; following along. I know of people who really aren't
even clear who bombed us on 9/11; and they're a pretty rational
sort ; well some are. How did the whole world, seemingly give
assent to such notions; and why have you decided to give them
a blank check.
.

Posted by: narciso at October 1, 2006 04:11 AM | Permalink to this comment

> I know of people who really aren't
even clear who bombed us on 9/11

It is a constant joke that the US citizens have such poor geographic skill that they think all those 9/11 Saudi Arabian terrorists came from a province called "Saudi Arabia" inside Afghanistan, and then when their clown-in-chief explained to them that "Saudi Arabia" is a province inside Afghanistan, which is a province inside Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was the nasty al-Quaeda leader of that province, that they happily agreed to attack this Iraq province...

Posted by: henry james at October 2, 2006 01:45 AM | Permalink to this comment