John Kerry announces his plan to deal with Al Qaeda

[Venturi]

No the military Bush used to crush the Taliban and Iraq was debilitated under Clinton. Not only did Clinton draw down the size of the military considerably, he also increased it's deployment tempo dramatically. Lots of useful programs, like the XM-8 AGS, were canceled because the money went instead to deployments.

Tark,

The XM8 AGS was designed to fight in the low desert plains of Southern Asia, not in the hot cramped cities of the Middle East. Although I do agree that a more effective HTLD needs to be developed ASAP.

While it is clear that its termination happened under Clinton’s watch, I’m not sure if the fault is entirely his. When the Army submitted its proposed fiscal 1997 budget, Defense Secretary Perry instructed the service to plan for an additional cut of 20,000 troops to pay for weapons modernization. Rather than accept a cut from 495,000 to 475,000 troops, Army leaders argued they could obtain the necessary modernization funds through acquisition reforms and operating efficiencies. The fiscal 1997 Defense budget contained no further troop cuts, but the Army cut the AGS program in an attempt to save money for other modernization efforts. The decision was made by the Army as part of an assessment of the warfighting value of the armored gun system compared with alternatives and how they could do it by spending less funds. The total program cost, including development, was estimated to be $1.3 billion. The Army had planned to procure 26 low-rate initial production vehicles with 1996 funding of $142.8 million. Termination liability was funded from research and development appropriations because the program was under an engineering and manufacturing development contract. The Armored Gun System is an example of a program in which manpower and personnel integration [MANPRINT] considerations were purposely rejected. It is not a coincidence that the Army canceled the program.

I am extremely concerned about current M1 and LAV effectiveness in close urban combat scenarios. There has been evidence of RPGs taking out M1s at the armpit, where the turret meets the chassis. Whether or not this rumor is cogent, it is certain that this slow-moving juggernaut with a heavy up-front armor concentration can easily get picked off by multiple RPG-7s on overhead rooftops or by one well-timed heavy mine.

The advantage of something faster is necessary. I just don’t see the point of a 105mm cannon like the M8 was going to use. This just sounds like more of the same.

We need something fast like a Humvee, capable of transporting infantry like a BMP or Merkava 3, armored like the heavy M8 (a modest 25 tons), while possessing multiple .50 cal emplacements firing anti-personnel shrapnel rounds. Doesn’t this sound more apropos? Is my dream machine out there and I’m just not aware of it?

Granted what matters most over there is better intel and maybe few extra hundred snipers. I’d also posit for better propaganda, but I think that cause is pretty much lost (with the exception of our loyal Kurds).

So I guess I vote for sound military strategy. So far, we haven't taken the gloves off in Fallujah because of the upcoming election. I would also like to note that Kerry’s solution to bringing new allies (more like very old and extremely uninterested ones) seems foolhardy.

I’m for whomever can provide more AC-130s, A-10s, STA snipers, sneaky nanotech (like piezoelectric mechanical mosquitoes that can infiltrate terrorist safe houses), and the aforementioned urban HTLD dream machine.


Oh yeah….where can I see those FBI files on Kerry visiting Hanoi?

[Tarkan]

I was under the impression that the downsizing of the US mil began under Bush Snr?

It did. And would've proceeded had he won the 92 election. I'm not condemning Clinton for taking advantage of the peace dividend by downsizing the military. That in itself wasn't bad.

It was the increased operational tempo combined with the relative starving of funds. And then you had the increased politicization of the military that went along with a generally anti-military administration.

[Tarkan]

While it is clear that its termination happened under Clinton’s watch, I’m not sure if the fault is entirely his.

My understanding was that the XM-8 was a casualty of the Bosnia deployment. In other words, the funding that was allocated to the acquisition of the XM-8 went to funding the Bosnia deployment instead.

I am extremely concerned about current M1 and LAV effectiveness in close urban combat scenarios. There has been evidence of RPGs taking out M1s at the armpit, where the turret meets the chassis. Whether or not this rumor is cogent, it is certain that this slow-moving juggernaut with a heavy up-front armor concentration can easily get picked off by multiple RPG-7s on overhead rooftops or by one well-timed heavy mine.

The M1 is still doing very well on crew survivability. As far as I know, there haven't been very many M1 crew fatalities.

The advantage of something faster is necessary. I just don’t see the point of a 105mm cannon like the M8 was going to use. This just sounds like more of the same.

Well, arguably the 105 HE is more effective of an anti-personnel round than the 120 HEAT round is. The 105 comes with a greater ammo selection including beehive and WP. And it's also more than capable of taking down any potential armor threats in a low-intensity conflict.

We need something fast like a Humvee, capable of transporting infantry like a BMP or Merkava 3, armored like the heavy M8 (a modest 25 tons), while possessing multiple .50 cal emplacements firing anti-personnel shrapnel rounds. Doesn’t this sound more apropos? Is my dream machine out there and I’m just not aware of it?

The Stryker has done surprisingly well in Iraq. A lot of military pundits were predicting miserable failure, but the Strykers have pretty fucking durable. There was a roadside bomb video out recently that showed a very large roadside car bomb detonating as a Stryker passed by. Flipped it one and a half times. All the crew and passengers survived, and once it was uprighted, it was able to drive off on it's own power. It did not look like a very survivable detonation.

So I guess I vote for sound military strategy. So far, we haven't taken the gloves off in Fallujah because of the upcoming election. I would also like to note that Kerry’s solution to bringing new allies (more like very old and extremely uninterested ones) seems foolhardy.

Well, the French would probably be giving weapons to the insurgents. They probably would be already if Iraq wasn't already one big munitions dump.

Oh yeah….where can I see those FBI files on Kerry visiting Hanoi?

Don't think he ever went to Hanoi. He just met with delegations from Hanoi. Documented and admitted to it in Paris, and supposedly several other times as well. Kerry has to authorize the release of his FBI files...he hasn't done so for some strange reason.

[Tarkan]

Also says something for the 2 1/2 year build-up and refit Bush and company did prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Tarkan, the machine that killed Iraq wasn't built in 2 1/2 years. If you believe that then you simply don't know what you're talking about.

Prodigal, me thinks you dost protest too much. The US military was still the best in the world in 2000. I'm not doubting that. But it was significantly degraded in capability compared to the 1991 military. In a few limited areas, it had improved. In some cases, those areas represented significant force multipliers.

BTW, Rumsfeld was right to butt heads with the JCS on procurement. They are/were still interested in re-fighting the cold war. We don't need the Crusader, and by the time we do need something like the Crusader, the next generation will already be out. Better just to skip generations. But that's a topic for another day.

[Renard]

Well, the French would probably be giving weapons to the insurgents. They probably would be already if Iraq wasn't already one big munitions dump.

Precisely. The Americans let the 350 metric tons of explosives go missing to sabotage any French attempts to give arms to the insurgents. It's a basic question of supply and demand.

Plus, securing that munitions dump would contravene the US Constitution's 2nd amendment, which is now applicable to Iraqi law while under US occupation.

[ROB]

Plus, securing that munitions dump would contravene the US Constitution's 2nd amendment, which is now applicable to Iraqi law while under US occupation.

Does that mean that Iraqis can't eat roadkill either?

[Tarkan]

Well, the French would probably be giving weapons to the insurgents. They probably would be already if Iraq wasn't already one big munitions dump.

Precisely. The Americans let the 350 metric tons of explosives go missing to sabotage any French attempts to give arms to the insurgents. It's a basic question of supply and demand.

1) This story most likely isn't true.
2) The US has recovered over 300,000 tons of explosives and munitions.
3) The story most likely isn't true.

[Kasca]

Tarkan, put away your Karl Rove manuel and look at history, and also look at the attempts to destroy every American war hero, like John McCain, Max Cleeland, John Kerry, Bob Kerry. General Clark, General Zinni, General Shinseki--this administration is so frickin' anti-military.

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His military commission was for 6 years (1966-1972), so for him to be meeting with the enemy in 1971 in any unofficial capacity was a serious breach of the UMCJ.

>>>>You have to go by the facts. Kerry flew over there, met with people, flew back and was _NOT_ arrested, even though Nixon had targeted him
-specifically- and would have _leaped_ on any illegal activities.

Would he have taken a chance on violating the military code of justice if he knew that on his return he would be arrested and charged with treason since he was so high profile at the time? And he was meeting with people who were seeking -peace-, not intent on furthering the war.

Of course the FBI has files on him; Nixon was out to get him. Nixon was out to get Ralph Nader. too. Too bad George Bush wasn't on the FBI list; we wouldn't have had to spend ten years trying to find out where he was during that time.
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when the only "committee" he was on was the Veterans Against the War

>>>He was on the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs and never quit working to have all the POW's released.

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What the navy has confirmed was that the medals Kerry he received were legit.

>>>>They confirmed a lot more than that, but that was the biggest charge made by the Swift Boat vets. Who have been ENTIRELY discredited. John O'Neill didn't serve with Kerry; he didn't get to Viet Nam until 11 months after Kerry had left. Kerry was considered a brilliant leader until O'Neill and the Republican operatives rounded up two hundred and fifty who said they would be part of the book; thousands of Swift Boat veterans turned him down.


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Kerry didn't receive his honorable discharge until March of 2001.


>>>>I would take anything from the NY Sun with a HUGE grain of salt. It is nothing but a right wing rag and several steps below Fox News on the credibility scale. I haven't heard anything about this one yet and can't imagine if it were true that it wouldn't be all over the mainstream news. If there were any kind of dark marks against Kerry's record it would have not slipped under the radar this long what with all the intense scrutiny he has received. It could be an attempt to pull attention away from Bush's records, which are still seeping out.

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Lying before Congress is NOT the "right thing". Coercing fellow veterans to lie before Congress is NOT the "right thing".

>>>>I guess you haven't read Kerry's speech. He didn't lie, he didn't accuse the soldiers only the government and he _only_ quoted the Winter Soldiers, who admitted to some of the things they had done when they were there. A lot fo Viet Nam soldiers have admitted to the atrocities and a lot are still in denial.


***JOHN KERRY, SPEECH AGAINST VIETNAM WAR, "Vietname Vets Against the War*** (FLASHBACK 1971)
Modern History SourceBook ^ | Apr. 23, 1971 | John Kerry


Modern History Sourcebook: Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement, 1971

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry, 1971 to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations April 23, 1971

I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....

In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.



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[Kasca]

Rumsfeld was right

>>>If you are saying Rumsfeld is right then you don't agree with the Powell Doctrine, which repaired and recreated the military which had been so decimated by Viet Nam, enough to win the first Gulf War.

Under the Powell Doctrine we went into the first Gulf War with overwhelming force; it was one of the principles of it. And Rumsfeld took apart the Powell Doctrine, against the advice of almost every mitlary expert, and had intitally planned on going into the war with only 50,000 troops, which horrified all miltary experts, everywhere.

Rummy's time as a corporate downsizer made him think he could conduct a war on the cheap. Which has cost lives on both sides, and why there was no manpower to protect the museum and the weapons caches, and why there's been all the rioting and why the insurgency is growing every day. If they had gone in with 500,000 troops this wouldn't have happened.

[Kasca]

) This story most likely isn't true.
2) The US has recovered over 300,000 tons of explosives and munitions.
3) The story most likely isn't true.

>>More likely they were on some of those thousands of trucks which poured into Jordan. They were warned over and over by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association) about this site and six other sites which were under their protection. There's no excuse for it.

[Tarkan]

Rumsfeld was right

>>>If you are saying Rumsfeld is right then you don't agree with the Powell Doctrine, which repaired and recreated the military which had been so decimated by Viet Nam, enough to win the first Gulf War.

No, I perfectly understand the Powell doctrine. And the "Powell" doctrine is more appropriately named the Powell-Cheney doctrine, but I digress.

What Rumsfeld was feuding with the JCS initially had nothing to do with the "Powell doctrine".

Rumsfeld's argument was that the US was on the verge of another RMA - revolution in military affairs that would dramatically alter the way warfighting was done (cheap precision guided munitions for example). At the same time, the various services were on the verge of another new program procurement cycle that was centered around old technology geared for a foe that no longer existed, and never would (ie, the massed mechanized forces of the USSR). The Crusader is one such system, as is arguably the F-22 Raptor (which uses, among other things, a bunch of 80286 processors for it's computational tasks - 2nd generation PC processors when current technology is on around the 7th generation technology, ie, 10 Mhz vs 4000 Mhz).

The Powell doctrine states simply to go into a conflict with popular support at home, well defined military and political objectives and with overwhelming force. It's a policy that was applied to the first Gulf War, and was chucked aside and never used again.
Somalia (Bush 41/Clinton)- nope.
Haiti (Clinton) - nope.
Bosnia (Clinton) - nope.
Kosovo (Clinton) - nope.
Afghanistan (Bush 43) - nope.
Iraq (Bush 43) - nope.

[Tarkan]

) This story most likely isn't true.
2) The US has recovered over 300,000 tons of explosives and munitions.
3) The story most likely isn't true.

>>More likely they were on some of those thousands of trucks which poured into Jordan. They were warned over and over by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association) about this site and six other sites which were under their protection. There's no excuse for it.

You mean no excuse that you'll accept. Anything less than perfection from the opposition is unacceptable, and even then you wouldn't vote for them. Strangely, you don't hold your own candidates to the same standard of performance. Over 99% of Iraq's explosives have either been destroyed or neutralized. Warfare isn't a 6-sigma operation.

[Kasca]

"What Rumsfeld was feuding with the JCS initially had nothing to do with the "Powell doctrine""


>>>>Oops, Tarkan, Wrong -AGAIN-!

APRIL 26, 204

Commentary: It's Time To Shelve The Rumsfeld Doctrine
Too few soldiers and no exit plan have led to upheaval in Iraq


Denial is rampant in Washington. There is denial that intelligence mistakes were made in the months and years before September 11. There is denial that foreign policy mistakes were made in the runup to the war in Iraq. There is denial that the Shiite revolts mark a turning point in the postwar occupation. And most importantly, there is denial that the military strategy going into Iraq, the Rumsfeld Doctrine, is a failure.

*****The best hope left of establishing a stable Iraqi democracy is to replace that doctrine, which emphasizes small, light, and fast military operations, with its rival, the Powell Doctrine, devised by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. The Powell Doctrine calls for overwhelming force shaped by very clear political goals and a specific exit strategy, two things lacking today in Iraq.******

The failure of the Rumsfeld Doctrine in Iraq is all too clear -- too few boots on the ground, too little legitimacy for America and its handpicked Governing Council, too many shifting goals, and no clear exit strategy. The result in recent weeks has been a cycle of kidnappings, ambushes, counterstrikes, death, and destruction that increasingly echoes the disaster in Vietnam. The silent majority of Iraqis who in polls just weeks ago said that life was better today than under Saddam Hussein is being radicalized. Moderate Shiite leaders who tolerated the U.S. occupation are turning increasingly impatient and anti-American. The goodwill among the majority of Iraqis that America gained in overthrowing Saddam is being squandered. There is still an opportunity for the Bush Administration to set Iraq onto a political path leading to representative democracy. But it needs to acknowledge mistakes and move on.

*****Here's why: The Rumsfeld Doctrine promised that a high-tech military could easily win battles anywhere around the world with relatively small numbers of soldiers on the ground. It argued that the power and accuracy of the latest weapons more than compensated for fewer troops, releasing the U.S. from the constraints of needing allies to help supply large numbers of soldiers. It allowed the U.S. to bypass the U.N. and NATO in projecting power overseas. In effect, the Rumsfeld Doctrine provided the military rationale for the Administration's foreign policy of unilateral preemption that was anti-European (Old Europe -- France and Germany) and anti-U.N. Prior to the Persian Gulf War, George H.W. Bush spent months negotiating with dozens of countries to assemble a huge coalition of European and Middle Eastern armies to overwhelm Saddam. Bush I played by the rules of the Powell Doctrine. Bush II took the U.S. in basically alone, with real help only from the British.

The deficiencies appeared in the first days of the Iraq war. American troops were dazzling in their dash across the deserts of Iraq to take Baghdad, and the country, in mere weeks. Yet the relative paucity of troops, one-third of the total used in the Gulf War, meant that many cities were simply bypassed in the invasion, especially in the Sunni heartland, Saddam's source of power. The Sunnis, the 20% minority who have dominated Iraq for centuries, were never conquered. Months passed before U.S. troops entered Fallujah and other towns.

The failure to establish security in Iraq immediately after the downfall of Saddam also led to a loss of legitimacy that is felt today. Not only were Saddam's armed henchmen left to roam free but looters and criminals soon dominated Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. The U.S. military wasn't able -- or willing -- to stop the crime wave. Armed militias coalesced in this vacuum to offer protection to Iraqis, including one overseen by radical fundamentalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who led the recent rebellion. By disbanding the 400,000-strong Iraqi army, the U.S. made the power vacuum worse. Efforts to build a new army and police force didn't work, either. In the recent fighting, the army mutinied and many police joined the rebels.

In the end, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki was right when he said that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed to conquer, occupy, and provide security to the people of Iraq. But that would have required support from Europe and the U.N. Belatedly, the military is asking for roughly 10,000 more ground soldiers, but far more may be needed to provide security to Iraqis.

A SHOT AT STABILITY
The bypassing of the U.N. contributed to Washington's failure to build a credible interim government. In Bosnia and Afghanistan, the U.S. asked the U.N. to play a leading role in setting up democratic political systems. But not in Iraq. Instead, the Bush Administration installed exiles led by Ahmed Chalabi, who had virtually no support inside Iraq. Those Iraqis with real power demanded that the U.N. play a central role in shaping the new political process. The man with perhaps the most authority in Iraq, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, said from the start of the occupation that he would not negotiate directly with the U.S. but would deal with the U.N. Sistani is a natural ally of the U.S. He is a moderate, calling for Iraqi clerics to stay out of government and to avoid fighting with the Americans. His son is negotiating directly with al-Sadr to end the rebellion. He is also talking with U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on setting up a new transitional government. Yet L. Paul Bremer III, the chief U.S. administrator in Baghdad, has consistently ignored Sistani.

What is to be done now? A return to the Powell Doctrine would accomplish a number of key goals. Significantly higher troop levels would crush, finally, Baathist resistance and provide more security to Iraqis. The U.S. may have to bring back the divisions it sent home. Accepting a key U.N. role in shaping the political process would bring in moderate Iraqi clerics and promote the best chance of creating a stable government. It is the only way to get support from European and Asian allies.

The realpolitik of the Powell Doctrine would also force Washington to limit its goals and make its exit strategy clear. Is the goal of the U.S. to set up a stable Iraqi government that balances Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite interests? That might take three or four years of military and financial help. But if the goal is to build a genuine Iraqi democracy that protects women's rights, that could take decades. What is truly feasible?

Facts on the ground in Iraq are already pushing the Administration to change course. The military is asking for a lot more troops. Washington is giving the U.N. carte blanche to negotiate directly with Sistani and other Iraqi moderates on the composition of the next transitional Iraqi government, key details of the new Iraqi constitution, and the rules of the national election that will occur in 2005. In his Apr. 13 speech on Iraq, President Bush expressly welcomed the growing role of the U.N. in Iraq and suggested a role for NATO there as well. Washington is finally acknowledging that it can't do it alone.

There is a certain Kafkaesque quality to Washington these days. Congressional hearings are held and speeches are made about September 11 and the Iraq war in which people deny obvious past realities. The bloody events of recent weeks in Iraq are forcing the U.S. to acknowledge a new set of present realities. The Bush Administration needs the help of the U.N., NATO, and its allies. It's crunch time in Iraq. Let's be honest about it.

By Bruce Nussbaum




Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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[kilroy]

Over 99% of Iraq's explosives have either been destroyed or neutralized.

usa intelligence has been, uh, more than a little less than perfect regarding what weapons and how much of them are in iraq. how do we know what 99% is and how do you know that they've been destroyed of neutralized?

[Kasca]

You mean no excuse that you'll accept. Anything less than perfection from the opposition is unacceptable,

>>>Not perfection, just standard operating procedures.


Over 99% of Iraq's explosives have either been destroyed or neutralized.

>>>>Yes, they were effectively destroyed BEFORE this war by President Clinton, in Operation Desert Fox, in 1998, when the UN withdrew the inspectors and Clinton bombed whatever was left from the Gulf War.

-Bill Clinton- disarmed Saddam.