Pretty sobering:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that he was discouraged by the departure of the major Sunni Arab bloc from Iraq’s coalition government, and noted that the Bush administration may have misjudged the difficulty of achieving reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian factions.
In one of his bluntest assessments of the progress of the administration’s Iraq strategy, Mr. Gates said: “I think the developments on political side are somewhat discouraging at the national level. And clearly the withdrawal of the Sunnis from the government is discouraging. My hope is that it can all be patched back together.”
But how?
Aaron
“Nobody could have predicted….”
except of course for anyone whose not a moron.
IE: none of the members of the decepticon administration.
Zifnab
What is ‘Things that don’t surprise me in the least?’
Thank you. I’ll take ‘Understatements’ for $200, Alex.
Punchy
Slighly OT…how is this possible?
Am I reading this right? As long as they say nothing, we’ll let you ask questions, but take no notes. But if they say something, we reserve the right to demand they say nothing about anything, even though they’ve already said something about someone once before.
My head is spinning. I cannot WAIT for Hillary to get this power. Hannity’s head will explode.
Ugh
Clearly the Secretary of Defense is undermining the troops and endangering the American people with his negativity.
Doug
To echo Zifnab – Holy Understatements, Batman!
At this point, my question is this: To “misjudge” a thing, does one have to exercise judgment in the first place?
Dennis-SGMM
The collapse of the Iraqi government will be spun as “the growing pains of a young democracy”. Getting it all patched back together will of course require an additional six months in addition to whichever six months is currently in effect.
That should take us right up to the next president who (if a Democrat) will, despite inheriting a broken army and a negative treasury, be responsible for losing the war. If the next president should be a Republican then the loss will be blamed on the defeatist Democrats who suggested that we were losing the war while we were losing the war.
myiq2xu
First we will need:
“All the King’s horses, and all the King’s men”
and then we need everyone to clap.
caustics
Looks like old Bob there is turning into somewhat of a loose cannon. Cheney’s pacemaker must be on the verge of going ‘splody.
Wilfred
Marc Lynch on the Sunni pullout:
Seems almost too obvious to mention, no?
Ripley
Everybody throw your purple fingers in the air
Like you just don’t care!
Another SecDefJam joint… Yo!
myiq2xu
We haven’t seen a military misjudgment this bad since Custer figured kicking Sitting Bull’s ass would be a “cakewalk.”
The time to exercise judgment is BEFORE you whack the hornet’s nest with a stick.
Otto Man
The time to exercise judgment is BEFORE you whack the hornet’s nest with a stick.
But that would’ve taken all the fun out of Operation: He Tried to Kill My Daddy!™
ThymeZone
I guess the litany of bullshit for 4.5 years hasn’t answered that question?
Well then, we must trust Jesus to see us through.
(In this context, I may or may not be talking about my yard man. This is TBD).
Jay
“I think the developments on political side are somewhat discouraging at the national level. And clearly the withdrawal of the Sunnis from the government is discouraging. My hope is that it can all be patched back together.”
I was told once that you can tell when someone’s trying to hoodwink you if they make the hard part sound easy and the easy part sound hard.
This Administration is all about “challenges” and not enough about “solutions”.
myiq2xu
“I think the developments on political side are somewhat discouraging at the national level. And clearly the withdrawal of the Sunnis from the government is discouraging. My hope is that it can all be patched back together.”
The Shia and the Sunni sects of Islam have been fighting with each other for over 1300 years. Maybe if we buy them each an ice cream they’ll sit down and be friends.
What was it Bloody Bill Kristol said about there not being a history of sectarian conflict in Iraq?
Damn you Scott Beauchamp!
Third Eye Open
I find it !almost! humorous that we still can’t discuss the underlying reasons for doing what we have been doing for the past 4.5 years, up in this piece.
Is there anyone out there, with the exception of a few of the more “dedicated” administration enablers, who really think that this whole adventure WASN’T about securing untapped oil fields and a foothold in the heart of the ME energy base?
The political wrangling is irrelevant to anyone who can actually view this less in the immediate, than on a decades-long time-scale. This entire debacle was designed from the begining to allow a “friendly” government to allow for the building of American “security” forces to be placed strategically along the oil route, so when the eventual day comes that the Iraqis begin pumping their black-gold again, that we will have our hand on the switch, boxing out international resource competitors, and effectively placing a leverage point into OPEC’s dyke.
Can we begin to start asserting that we don’t want (relatively) cheap oil in exchange for continuation of the status-quo from our friends in SA and elsewhere, at the expense of our national morals regarding universal respect for the sacredness of freedom (it’s on the march, y’know)…or does this qualify as navel gazing?
canuckistani
I’ll go out on a limb and say it wasn’t *just* about oil, it was also about proving that GWB was a greater President than his old man, or some other twisted Freudian nightmare.
AkaDad
With duct tape…
myiq2xu
Is there anyone out there, with the exception of a few of the more “dedicated” administration enablers, who really think that this whole adventure WASN’T about securing untapped oil fields and a foothold in the heart of the ME energy base?
Well, there’s a flaw or two in that argument.
First of all, if you look at the location of the Iraqi Oil fields, you’ll see that they are right near the borders with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. All three countries are sitting atop the same huge oil deposit.
We already had a”foothold” in two of the three, and could have seized the portion in Iraq at anytime if we really wanted to.
Secondly, assuming we had lifted the embargo what would Saddam have done with that oil? Sold it to the highest bidder, which would have been us.
Third, the ultimate cost of this fiasco will be far higher that the cost of simply buying the oil would have been.
You give the Busheviks too much credit. For this to have been all part of a plan assumes competence. What evidence do you have that these guys are the least bit competent?
Bush & Co. have fucked up everything they have ever done except 4 elections (2 in Texas, 2 national) and they had to cheat on the last 2 in order to win.
Bush has a crappy version of the Midas Touch. Everything he touches turns to shit.
Zifnab
That was kinda the problem leading to the Iraq / US falling out in the 80s. You’ll remember that photo of Rummy shaking hands with Saddam over a giant pile of chemical weapons getting sold off by the Reagan Admin? Saddam’s military incompetence in invading Iran left the Republicans miffed. But then President Hussien had the audacity to refuse Big US Oil Companies the right to walk all over his country like they owned the place. Suddenly, Bush Sr. and company remembered that Saddam was an Evil(R), Bad(C), Horrible Person(TM), who ate babies for breakfast, and they were forced to level sanctions against the villain.
But they still wanted Saddam’s oil, so US Oil Companies started a practice called ‘slant drilling’, in which they built their oil pipes to crawl underground, across the Kuwaitt-Iraq line, and into Saddam’s oil stockpile. So now, Saddam wasn’t allowed to sell the oil he brought up, and the US was going to steal the oil Saddam couldn’t sell. This left the dictator rather miffed himself, so he did to Kuwait what he couldn’t do to Iran – invade and conquer. Then when the US push Saddam back out again, he lite all those pesky slanted oil rigs (and a fair number of non-slanted oil rigs) afire, just to remind the US who they were messing with.
And thus we left Saddam as we found him. For eleven years, he was a petty dictator holed up in his Bagdad Palace, cute off from the world as a Rogue Nation.
And now you know the rest of the story.
They didn’t exactly plan it square on the first two, either.
Aaron
Re: Iraq: Why??
I think the most accurate answer is the ‘confluence of multiple reasons’ theory.
-he tried to kill my daddy,
-war is good,
-killing brown people is good,
-Im a war president,
-War: what is it good for: steering no big contracts to companies and increasing defense spending,
-those dems are week becouse they dont have the stupidity to get american soldiers killed like republicans do,
-Haliburton,
-Theres a war on and the president needs more war power!
-Oil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-how dare you critisize the republicans when theres a war on,
-we need to ‘improve’ our intel capabilities
-we’re at war, its a crisis and republicans must come out and support the party (vote/contribute $$),
–and dems are discouraged and despirited.
A
jake
The Following Things are OUT in Baghdad:
Security.
Parliament.
Lights.
Water.
If a riot breaks out in a war zone will anyone notice?
Well, he sounds ready and rarin’ to tackle this problem, doesn’t he?
sglover
Aw c’mon….. Gates has to express his faith in the fulfillment of the Five Year Plan same as any good Party member.
Look, if we put together 20 million $10,000 bundles and parachute them into Iraq, it’ll only cost us a little more than we typically piss away in a year in that poor country. I say we do that and have done with it. Call it the weregeld approach to “victory”.
Jon H
Clearly we need President Kumbayah to go over there and stage a BBQ-powered nonsectarian intervention and hoedown.
‘Cept you just know he’s serve BBQ pork.
Pug
What was it Bloody Bill Kristol said about there not being a history of sectarian conflict in Iraq?
Here’s the quote from Bloody Bill:
“There’s a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.”
This quote should be repeated endlessly as it succinctly sums up the insight and expertise of Bloody Bill and the Neo-cons.
Wilfred
Surge Tracking: First it was too early to criticize; the surge hadn’t even been implemented. Then, 5 days later, Kimberly Kagan told us the surge was working. Then July American deaths were down: Surge working; Iraqi deaths up: Surge working. Then Sunnis leave government: All part of the surge. Now this:
Deaths down? Deaths up? It’s all part of the surge.
Think it. Feel it. Say it: Surge.
Andrew
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