View Full Version : Nominee to Coordinate War Offers Grim Forecast on Iraq



PUGalicious
06-08-2007, 11:30 AM
The administration’s rose-colored glasses are beginning to crack:
(WP (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/07/AR2007060702533.html)) — President Bush’s nominee to be war czar said yesterday that conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly despite the influx of U.S. troops in recent months and predicted that, absent major political reform, violence will continue to rage over the next year.

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, tapped by Bush to serve as a new high-powered White House coordinator of the war, told senators at a confirmation hearing that Iraqi factions “have shown so far very little progress” toward the reconciliation necessary to stem the bloodshed. If that does not change, he said, “we’re not likely to see much difference in the security situation” a year from now.

Lute’s dour assessment mirrored the views of U.S. intelligence officials, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a closed session last month that trends in Iraq remain negative and that the prospect for political movement by the nation’s feuding Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds appears marginal. The secret intelligence conclusions were disclosed during yesterday’s hearing by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and confirmed by a Republican official.

The conclusions largely tracked the findings of the last National Intelligence Estimate, released in January, before Bush announced his decision to send nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq, suggesting that the intelligence community does not think the force buildup has changed the outlook nearly five months later. Bayh quoted a CIA expert on radical Islam as saying that “our presence in Iraq is creating more members of al-Qaeda than we are killing in Iraq”… (more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/07/AR2007060702533.html))
It is refreshing, though, to hear assessments that seem much more representative of the facts on the ground, much more frank and much less tainted by administration’s war marketing message.

MadMonk
06-08-2007, 12:42 PM
It sounds like he's under-promising. Hopefully, he can over-deliver.

Keep in mind that we don't even have all the forces there yet. Here's a snippet from a recent interview with General Petraeus.


...TONY HARRIS, CNN: “General Petraeus, Tony Harris with Heidi Collins in Atlanta. Just want to turn your attention to some of the reporting this week from The New York Times. The suggestion from a number of -- quoting some commanders on the ground, that the troop buildup in Baghdad is not going as well as had been hoped, that the effort to secure the 23 neighborhoods targeted by the troop buildup is going a little more slowly than had been anticipated. What's your response? “

PETRAEUS: “Well, Tony, I think in some cases that's correct. We achieved some early success through the first several months of the effort. The sectarian murder and execution rate was cut by over two-thirds.

“And then we saw it come back a bit during the month of May. This week it seems headed back down again, touch wood. But we clearly have some tough work to do. There have been some neighborhoods where we cleared and we're literally going to have to go back in and do that and we will.

“But I think it's important to remember that we're still a week and a half, two weeks away from having all of the surge forces even on the ground for the first time. We do have some aggressive plans to use those, to go after al Qaeda and some of the sanctuaries in which they've been able to build and dispatch car bombs for some time. That won't be without a fight, but it is something that we must do in the areas around Baghdad to provide better security for the people in Baghdad.”

HARRIS: “So General, just to be clear, you do not have all of your troops on the ground in country in Baghdad yet?”

PETRAEUS: “That is correct. The fifth of the five surge brigades and the marine expeditionary unit and the combat aviation brigade are still positioning themselves in Iraq as we speak, or moving up from Kuwait. And again, they'll all be in position and actually in operations in less than two weeks.”


More in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4d4utuxmk

PUGalicious
06-08-2007, 12:58 PM
It sounds like he's under-promising. Hopefully, he can over-deliver.
Or finally facing reality.



Keep in mind that we don't even have all the forces there yet. Here's a snippet from a recent interview with General Petraeus.
I realize that as well. But it's like throwing more fuel on the fire. We keep sending more troops there and the situation continues to deteriorate.

MadMonk
06-08-2007, 03:33 PM
Or finally facing reality.


I realize that as well. But it's like throwing more fuel on the fire. We keep sending more troops there and the situation continues to deteriorate.
I'm not saying that can't happen, only that we should give it time to be completely implemented; it's been a long war & I know it's tough to be patient. :tiphat:

It seems there are many Iraqis that are realizing that Al Qaeda are not their friend and are turning on them. Hopefully it gets better, but we'll have to be patient either way. At least that's what my "RepubliNaziBushHaliburton" handlers tell me to say. ;)

PUGalicious
06-08-2007, 06:30 PM
Sectarian violence increases in Iraq
Published: June 8, 2007 at 10:01 AM

BAGHDAD, June 8 (UPI (http://washingtontimes.com/upi/20070608-091431-3764)) -- Sectarian violence killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad in the first week of June, the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Friday. Thirty-two bodies with gunshot wounds and signs of torture were found in the capital Thursday, CNN reported. Such wounds are typically signs of violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

In May, 746 bodies were found dumped in Baghdad and civilian deaths increased by 30 percent to 1,949, CNN reported.

U.S. military commander Lt. Gen. David Petraeus told CNN in an interview on Thursday that an increase in American forces in Iraq has made "breathtaking" improvements in some areas, but not in others.



I'm not sure Iraqis can handle much more of these "breathtaking" improvements. While they wait for the U.S. to get its act together, sectarian violence continues to increase.

PUGalicious
06-09-2007, 10:45 AM
I'm not saying that can't happen, only that we should give it time to be completely implemented; it's been a long war & I know it's tough to be patient. :tiphat:

It seems there are many Iraqis that are realizing that Al Qaeda are not their friend and are turning on them. Hopefully it gets better, but we'll have to be patient either way. At least that's what my "RepubliNaziBushHaliburton" handlers tell me to say. ;)
Here's another interest tidbit, offered by The Carpetbagger Report (http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/11069.html):
With Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen replacing Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Wall Street Journal noticed (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118132235217529259.html?mod=home_whats_news_us) an interesting trend among top military officials.
Adm. Mullen, like many of his four-star colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was skeptical of the decision to send additional U.S. troops into Iraq.
This comes on the heels of Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute’s admission (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/06/AR2007060602958.html) that he, too, registered his opposition to the president’s surge policy.
And that came on the heels of Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressing his own opposition (http://www.nysun.com/article/45767) to the surge.

In other words, Bush will have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a “war czar,” and a Pentagon chief — arguably the three most important war-related posts in Washington — filled by officials who are at least skeptical of the central strategy underlying the president’s Iraq policy.

Odd.