It’s hard to keep up with the latest dysfunctional moves of the Bushco war planning. But, here’s what I’ve gleaned from this morning’s posts and news about the newly minted Bush troop reduction plan, a copyright violation if there ever was one.
As talex comments in Pat Lang’s story below:
Yes and the campaign has already (4.00 / 2)
begun. Check out this article where the WH is co-opting Biden’s speech and op-ed.
“The White House has for the first time claimed ownership of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was “remarkably similar” to its own.
…
Even though President George W. Bush has never publicly issued his own withdrawal plan and criticized calls for an early exit, the White House said many of the ideas expressed by the senator were its own. ..
If I had a dime and his phone number, I’d love to call Joe Biden and get his impressions of this new story. (By the way, we discussed Biden’s op-ed yesterday in Pat Lang’s analysis.)
Then there’s last night’s news from the LA Times, via Crooks & Liars, that:
President Bush will give a major speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in which aides say he is expected to herald the improved readiness of Iraqi troops, which he has identified as the key condition for pulling out U.S. forces…read on
Let’s add up these shape-shifting plans so far:
#1: We’ve got Bush’s co-optation of Joe Biden’s troop pullout plan +
#2: We’re got an Annapolis setting for a PR campaign to tout the abilities of the Iraqi troops.
But we know that the Iraqi troops aren’t ready yet (or so everyone says). So, what will fill the void of U.S. troops on the ground in order to keep the insurgents at bay? Why, good ol’-fashioned American Air Power! Seymour Hersh, on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN program this morning, said:
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, you know, what I was writing about in The New Yorker this week is our plan is to pull out American troops if we start to do that. And I think the president probably will next year. But the war is not going to slow down. We’re going to increase the pace of air operations. There’s going to be more bombing in direct support of Iraqi units now.
Then Hersh exposes how this shell game plan will probably fail, and it’s not a pretty picture:
WOLF BLITZER: ,,, Your concern, specifically, is that American air power, which can be decisive, clearly, is going to be used for untoward, for bad purposes.
HERSH: It’s not my concern. It’s the concern of many senior generals in the air business, you know, in the Air Force. And planners, because they say, this is, you know, the power of American air is enormous. And the idea, it’s, and it’s, this is a skill.
People talk in terms, to me, the Air Force planners, of the exquisite nature of air bombing. The idea that you’re going to turn over this control, this kind of force, to Iraqi units who can be penetrated by the insurgency, that have a lot of internal battles, as I say, many are militias. And they have problems that other people and other militias — who knows what will motivate them?
BLITZER: So your concern is the spotters on the ground, the people who are going to be targeting, finding targets are going to be Iraqis as owe opposed to Americans.HERSH: It’s the concern of a lot of people in the Pentagon. They’ll tell you no, that they’re going to be joint units. The Pentagon will officially say there’s going to be joint units, Iraqi and Americans together. But eventually we know it will evolve into Iraqis calling in targets.
And it’s not just spotting. We use a lot of sophisticated laser guided weapons and you have to have somebody on the ground to actually do a strike or illuminate a target with a laser beam for the plane to come in. And as I’ve had people in the Air Force say to me, what are we going to be bombing? Barracks? Hospitals? You know, who knows who’s going to be telling us what to do?
BLITZER: So what you’re hearing is that the U.S. air power, the U.S. Air Force, they’re getting jittery even thinking about the fact that they may be called in to launch air strikes based on what they’re getting from Iraqis on the ground.
HERSH: It is good to know there is a lot of ethics in the Air Force. There’s a lot of guys that are, that drop the, they know the force of the weapons they have, and they don’t want to be responsible for bombing the wrong targets. They don’t want non-Americans telling them what to do. This is a real doctrinal issue that’s being fought right now in the Pentagon. …
Oy. And this next part will chill you to the bone.
Hersh reported what a confidential source, and former top defense official, told him — and Wolf Blitzer quotes him on air:
‘[Bush] doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances’.”
Isn’t a definition of a sociopath?
Continued below:
BLITZER: In this new article you have in The New Yorker, you also write this about the president: ” ‘The president is more determined than ever to stay the course,’ the former defense official said. ‘He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, “People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.” ‘ He said that the president had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. ‘They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,’ the former defense official said.”
Could you be more specific on this former defense official?
HERSH: Sure, in this day and age, Wolf. No. I mean, that’s — we’re having a war over sourcing right now.
BLITZER: But this is someone who had day to day or contact, direct contact with the president?
HERSH: Suffice to say this, that this president in private, at Camp David with his friends, the people that I’m sure call him George, is very serene about the war. He’s upbeat. He thinks that he’s going to be judged, maybe not in five years or ten years, maybe in 20 years. He’s committed to the course. He believes in democracy.
HERSH: He believes that he’s doing the right thing, and he’s not going to stop until he gets — either until he’s out of office, or he falls apart, or he wins.
BLITZER: But this has become, your suggesting, a religious thing for him?HERSH: Some people think it is. Other people think he’s absolutely committed, as I say, to the idea of democracy. He’s been sold on this notion.
He’s a utopian, you could say, in a world where maybe he doesn’t have all the facts and all the information he needs and isn’t able to change.
I’ll tell you, the people that talk to me now are essentially frightened because they’re not sure how you get to this guy.
We have generals that do not like — anymore — they’re worried about speaking truth to power. You know that. I mean that’s — Murtha in fact, John Murtha, the congressman from Pennsylvania, which most people don’t know, has tremendous contacts with the senior generals of the armies. He’s a ranking old war horse in Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The generals know him and like him. His message to the White House was much more worrisome than maybe to the average person in the public. They know that generals are privately telling him things that they’re not saying to them.
And if you’re a general and you have a disagreement with this war, you cannot get that message into the White House. And that gets people unnerved. …
I know it’s crazy, but some days I almost wish we’d have a military coup. Something! Anything! To put a stop to this! (Well, not “anything” — that’s as crazy as Bush.) But this must all stop. Now.