Our Troops Must Stay

[ChumpDumper]

The iraqi's have enough battalions to support their defense.

How many?

And the iraqi people can govern their country

How do you know when that happens?

Again, quit with the ing chicken , nonexistent straw man.

If you don't know the number of battalions or what comprises ability of the Iraqis to govern themselves, quit making yourself look like a a ing fool.

I ask a simple question that should be easy for you to answer -- all i get is the same vague bull .

[gtownspur]

Why does the number of battalions matter. In the end it will all be the army's assesment that matters. What happens if Bush say's a certain number of batallions will do the job and it doesnt? It's pointless. You want Bush to pull out a library of military strategy to prove that there's an exit strategy.

Let me ask you. How many batallions do you want? WHatever number you give the country is the number we'll go by since you are so tuned into military tactics and all.

I'm not using a strawman. You say you want an exit strategy, but what you reall want are dates, and pathetic numbers that wont determine readiness in the end.

I mean what happens if Iraq's readiness won't come in the near future? Am i gonna expect you to commence with a time table?

[SA210]

Bush is a liar.

[ChumpDumper]

Why does the number of battalions matter.

You just said it would.

You want Bush to pull out a library of military strategy to prove that there's an exit strategy.

No I want actual, measurable goals. They can certainly e changed if cir stances warrant.

Let me ask you.

Why should I make up a plan? They say they have the plan. I simply want to know what the plan actually is. What is wrong with that?

I'm not using a strawman. You say you want an exit strategy, but what you reall want are dates, and pathetic numbers that wont determine readiness in the end.

Again with the ing straw man -- you don't even know what one is do you? Tell me what the determines readiness.

I mean what happens if Iraq's readiness won't come in the near future?

I personally don't think it's possible in the near future and that we're going to be there for a long time. What your stupid ass has never comprehended is that I have never called for a withdrawl since the invasion started and have never made a mention of any chicken strawman date.

If measureable progress is being made toward a goal in Iraq, how come the goal itself is not measureable?

[gtownspur]

If measureable progress is being made toward a goal in Iraq, how come the goal itself is not measureable?

Because numbers wont accurately measure readiness. The iraqi people and the US generals who are far more advanced in those areas will at that time. LIke i said. Number of battalions wont determine anything.

[Neuromancer]

What an idiot.

[gtownspur]

What determines readiness are the generals on the ground like bush said. THat will be a complicated issue, and cannot be simplified or dumbdown in a brochure like you'd like it.

THis is a war plan and not a freakin Treadmill instrucion manual.

Get it through your head.

[gtownspur]

Bush is a liar.

Pants.....on....fire...

[ChumpDumper]

So the generals have no strategy and no measureable goals for this readiness?

They aren't working toward anything?

You were the one who threw the number of battalions out there -- why are you backing off of that now?

Are they just going to jump up and say "Surprise! We're ready!" one day?

THis is a war plan and not a freakin Treadmill instrucion manual.

Yes, it's a war plan.Wars have plans and goals. It might be too compicated for your tiny mind to understand, but i'm sure I can handle an overview of some measureable goals.

[SA210]

Pants.....on....fire...

Exactly!!!

[gtownspur]

I backed off the number of batallions, becuase i wasn't sure of whether that was a qualifier.

THe generals do have a strategy, and that's only to deter civil war and rebuild iraqs defense infrastructure. That's their strategy. To make a very specific and detailed goal would do no good because one cannot predict on readiness of the Iraqis by projections. It make take more than what one would expect or less. Who knows.

[ChumpDumper]

To make a very specific and detailed goal would do no good because one cannot predict on readiness of the Iraqis by projections.

That's exactly what they do. Of course they are subject to change, but to think the Pentagon doesn't have very specific and detailed goals already written down is absurd.

Who knows.

You don't, which was my real point.

Hopefully, the underground right wing media will shine some light on this.

All kidding aside I do want to know the preliminary details of this plan. It's no crime if you are curious as well.

[Nbadan]

I backed off the number of batallions, becuase i wasn't sure of whether that was a qualifier.

THe generals do have a strategy, and that's only to deter civil war and rebuild iraqs defense infrastructure. That's their strategy. To make a very specific and detailed goal would do no good because one cannot predict on readiness of the Iraqis by projections. It make take more than what one would expect or less. Who knows.

That's not a strategy, that's more of the same old, same old. Putting lipstick on a pig does little use.

[ChumpDumper]

Well, I got my answer from the White House in the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.

It's "largely classified."

So the surprise theory is reality after all. Wave the flag until further notice.

[Nbadan]

Well, I got my answer from the White House in the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.

It's "largely classified."

So the surprise theory is reality after all. Wave the flag until further notice.

This may come in handy...read it and weap...

The following do ent articulates the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003 and provides an update on our progress as well as the challenges remaining.

"The United States has no intention of determining the precise form of Iraq's new government. That choice belongs to the Iraqi people. Yet, we will ensure that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another. All Iraqis must have a voice in the new government, and all citizens must have their rights protected."

CNN posts do ent: National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (pdf file)

[Nbadan]

The 'terrorists' are desperate...

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi militants attacked a U.S. base and a local government building with mortar rounds and rockets in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on Thursday, before holding ground on several central streets, residents said.

Around 400 heavily armed and masked men were patrolling the main thoroughfares of the city, long a focus of guerrilla activity, and had set up checkpoints at entrance and exit points, residents from across Ramadi told Reuters. snip

"They've taken control of all the main streets and other sections of Ramadi," a reporter for Reuters in the city said. "I've seen about 400 armed men controlling streets, some of which were controlled by Americans before," he said.

Swiss Info

You are in your last throes!! So finish throeing already!

[Nbadan]

Plan: We Win
Published: December 1, 2005

We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.

It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.

Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.

The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout en led "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The do ent, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.

On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.

What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.

Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy do ent defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."

That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Subs ute the Iraqi cons utional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.

A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.

Op. Ed, NY Times

[boutons]

Talking about planning ....

Here we go again, more of this week's "WH War on the Polls" PR puffery.

For $400B/year, EVERY YEAR, the generals are still always fighting the last war.

==================================

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Directive Prioritizes Post-Conflict Stability

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, December 1, 2005

A broad Pentagon directive issued this week orders the U.S. military to be sure, the next time it goes to war, to prepare more thoroughly for picking up the pieces afterward.


More than a year in the making, the directive represents an ambitious attempt to bring about a fundamental, permanent widening in what U.S. troops are trained and equipped to do. Accustomed to focusing primarily on combat operations, U.S. forces under the new order must now give post-conflict stability operations similar priority, which means they must be ready in foreign countries to carry out such tasks as developing political ins utions, establishing judicial systems and reviving economic activities.

"Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support," the directive says. "They shall be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all" Pentagon activities.

The revised policy follows widespread criticism that the Pentagon neglected to plan sufficiently for the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Not only did conditions in the country turn out worse than anticipated -- in the form of a fierce insurgency and mammoth reconstruction challenges -- but early Pentagon hopes of being able to hand off a large share of responsibility to U.S. and foreign civilian organizations and to Iraqis proved overly optimistic.

As a result, the U.S. military in Iraq has been badly stressed to come up with the skills, equipment and troops to ensure security and begin rebuilding the country. The difficult experience has driven home the lesson that U.S. forces cannot always depend on others to step forward and help manage stability tasks.

"Many stability operations are best performed by indigenous, foreign or U.S. civilian professionals," the directive says, reflecting the Pentagon's sentiment still that it need not always lead in this area. "Nonetheless, U.S. military forces shall be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so."

The 11-page directive, signed Monday by acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, assigns long lists of specific responsibilities to the Pentagon's various civilian branches, military services and regional commands.

For instance, it instructs the Pentagon's undersecretary for personnel to develop methods for recruiting people for stability operations and to bolster instruction in foreign languages and cultures. It orders the undersecretary for intelligence to ensure that "suitable" information for stability operations is available. And it directs the undersecretary for policy to create a "stability operations center" and submit a semiannual report to the secretary of defense.

These and other measures appear to go a long way toward addressing shortfalls highlighted in a critical study last year of the Pentagon's approach to stability operations. The study, done by the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, concluded that though U.S. forces are good at winning conventional battles, they have tended to give short shrift to managing the aftermath.

One of the reasons for this, experts inside and outside the Pentagon said, has been the assumption among military planners that U.S. forces could win wars quickly, then withdraw from combat zones.

"In the 1990s, the talk, every time we were going to deploy something, was, 'What's the exit strategy?' " said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The focus in war games, he recalled, was: "How do we get forces to places quickly? It was assumed they wouldn't be there long."

But the Iraq conflict has made clear that a rapid exit is not always possible. Warning that Iraq may not prove an exception, the Defense Science Board recommended that stability operations be made an explicit mission of the Defense Department and treated with the same seriousness as combat operations. That led Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to order the directive, senior aides said.

Craig Fields, who co-chaired the study, expressed satisfaction yesterday with the directive, an unsigned draft of which was reported on last week in the New York Times. "It covers a lot of ground, and it's in the right direction," he said.

At the same time, Fields noted that the release of the directive is only the start of change. Acting on it, he predicted, will "take a lot of effort over a long time."

Some defense scholars have urged the Pentagon to create constabulary units and other specialized forces to handle stability operations, saying that such troops could be kept abroad longer and provide skills not easily developed in conventional troops. But military commanders have considered the idea impractical, and Pentagon officials involved in drafting the new directive rejected it.

"As we looked at that question," said Jeffrey "Jeb" Nadaner, the deputy assistant secretary for stability operations, "we felt it was better to have the skills across the force."

Nadaner said the biggest sticking point during drafting of the do ent came in deciding who should monitor compliance. One option still being given serious consideration as recently as a few months ago involved putting a large committee in charge. But that was ruled out as too bersome, and the job ultimately went to the Pentagon's policy office.

"The idea is to get information frequently and directly to the secretary of defense so he could track the progress of change," Nadaner said. "If it's going through a big committee, there could be a lot of processing and a lot of delay."

Asked how much ins uting the directive will cost, Nadaner said: "It shouldn't cost a whole lot, in the sense that it's not about the procurement of major weapons systems, which generally are your most costly things. It's about reshaping a lot of current activities."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[jochhejaam]

[QUOTE]

And you apparently either can't read or choose not to.

One or the other eh?

I specifically said that I find that some of those who support the President have no principled reasons for their support. I didn't say all and I didn't even say most. I said some. I said that because your suggestion that I relent from my position would require me to assume a place in that parade -- I cannot support the President's actions in the first instance and any attempt to suggest that I could would be an act of mindless following, similar to the behavior of lemmings. Hence, my effort to equate my acquiesence to your point to my joining the parade of lemmings. Got it?

Okay FWD I get the gist of the lemming comment but what's the point of even addressing that group of people? How about if we omit reference to those who aren't capable of articulating their position on any of the issues, they're on both sides of the political spectrum and have no grasp of the issues so it's rather petty to draw them into a discussion in an attempt to strengthen your position. what's the point in contrasting them to you? Strengthen your position with substance not by paralleling it to the weak.
I'll expect better from you in the future.

[spurster]

The 27 million vs. 10 thousand comparison is absurd.

The US has been trying to train Iraqis for over two years with little progress. What is going to change now to make it work?

[101A]

You heard what the MSM wanted to you hear. Here is Murtha's plan from his own congressional site...



Now that hardly sounds to me like a immediate withdrawl plan.

Again I live RIGHT NEXT to Murtha's district, I heard the whole, damned speach. The blubbering, etc....they may have made it more palatible now that they've had time to write it down on their website. But in the original speach he said he wanted an immediate withdrawal.

[FromWayDowntown]

Okay FWD I get the gist of the lemming comment but what's the point of even addressing that group of people? How about if we omit reference to those who aren't capable of articulating their position on any of the issues, they're on both sides of the political spectrum and have no grasp of the issues so it's rather petty to draw them into a discussion in an attempt to strengthen your position. what's the point in contrasting them to you? Strengthen your position with substance not by paralleling it to the weak.

{Game show buzzer sounds}

You still don't understand my point. My effort to explain my comment to you is distracting from the substantive discussion in the thread. I'd try one more time, but that would create two more posts that others would have to skip over to get to the real discussion.

I'll expect better from you in the future.

What are you? The forum's rhetoric monitor? I'll hope to get a gold star from you some time in the future.

[boutons]

101A, under 200 posts, is the emotional/hate temperature taker as well as self-appointed scolder and feel-good pollyanna, which is a lot more fun than posting serious substance.

[2centsworth]

And that belief should be conclusive as to the rest of us? Come on.

You can't really be that arrogant, can you?

I mean, by what virtue does your personal belief as to whether Chump's arguments are subversive lead to an ironclad conclusion that criticisms like his actually undermine the American activities in Iraq?

Are the terrorists going to disappear if Chump or I (or countless others) cease to be critical of the reasons that we're in Iraq in the first place? If you can absolutely guarantee me that result with 100% certainty, you'll win at least my silence on this issue.

It's important that we debate the reasons why we are there because when we're successful in Iraq some will be overly zealous to maybe invade other countries. I just want intellectual honesty from both sides of the table and that's what Lieberman has given us.

[Nbadan]

Time magazine Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware on Morning Sedition this morning:

I and some other journalists had lunch with Senator Joe Lieberman the other day and we listened to him talking about Iraq. Either Senator Lieberman is so divorced from reality that he's completely lost the plot or he knows he's spinning a line. Because one of my colleagues turned to me in the middle of this lunch and said he's not talking about any country I've ever been to and yet he was talking about Iraq, the very country where we were sitting.

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