23 August 2005
Spectator
The View From Here
State Department memo shows flawed planning for post-war Iraq
The Washington Post recently reported on a State Department memo in the runup to the war in Iraq that revealed "serious planning gaps for post-conflict public security and humanitarian assistance." So it looks like that (in Rumsfeld's phrase) you not only go to war with the army you have (ready or not), but Bush goes to war with the plan he has whether it has gaps or not. The official position in the Bush Administration dismisses the memo as "containing nothing new." If that sounds familiar it's because that was the media response to the British memos revealing that the decision to go to war had been set in stone way before the public was told and that pre-war intelligence had been molded to fit the aim of justifying war.
The memo might not contain anything new for the wonks inside the Beltway but it sure as hell is news for us civilians in the hinterlands. Apparently, the Bush plan for post-conflict Iraq was to leave everything in the hands of Cheney and Halliburton and God would take care of the rest. Daily, if you listen to NPR and not to Fox, you hear reports about electricity on only eight hours a day and running water not always available in the Iraqi cities. It is inconceivable to me that you can instill faith and confidence in a government that can't keep the lights on. As the protectors of the fragile democratic movement in Iraq, we have the responsibility to provide the kind of infrastructure reconstruction that would show that the government, puppet or not, is indeed capable of caring for its citizens. Halliburton pocketed $2 billion in a no-bid deal ramrodded by Cheney. What has been the return on that investment?
We have come to realize that nothing has gone as planned in Iraq but this new revelation indicates we had a flawed plan to begin with; a plan that didn't adequately involve what would happen after the shooting stopped. The Bush Administration was so heavily invested in the fallacious notions of a pack of Iraqis who lie more often and better than Karl Rove that they stopped planning for the worst and adopted a Pollyanna view of what the post shock and awe stage of the war would be like. As a result, the troops are under-armed and equipped. The Iraqis are unprotected. The lies about Iraqi readiness to assume their own secure proliferate. Americans die but we all have our tax cuts. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?
We're from the private sector and we know how to run a government
Any similarity between the way the Bush Administration is being run and sound business principles is purely coincidental. Can you imagine anyone keeping a job in private industry after mismanaging a major project the way Donald Rumsfeld and Company have mismanaged the war? Rumsfeld has gotten it all wrong - from the number of troops needed to the delays in training Iraqi forces to the piss-poor equipment we have given our troops. A Marine general in charge of procurement was confronted with a study two months ago that showed Marines in Iraq lacked machine guns! His response to a congressional hearing when confronted with this information? He said he "took his eye off the ball." A Marine general! How fast would his ass be in the unemployment line if he did that in business? But all of this is tolerated in the Bush Administration for two important reasons: first, they are never wrong, and second, when confronted with unpleasant data, they attack the source of the data. When the Army Chief of Staff said there would be more troops needed in Iraq than the Administration said were needed, he got fired. When the budget cruncher said the war would cost more than $200 billion, he got fired. When John Kerry called all the mismanagement into question, a bunch of mercenary "veterans" were trotted out to discredit him. When Dan Rather was on the track of the president's lies and duplicity about his National Guard record, Rather was made the issue and was forced to retire.
This government is such a shameful sham.
Returning troops will need more PTSD treatment. How does the administration respond? Cut benefits paid to afflicted vets!
A recent Boston Globe editorial noted the anticipated increase in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among soldiers returning from Iraq. Martin Meehan is a senior member of the House Armed Service Committee and is convinced that the treatment of PTSD will be a major challenge for the veterans health care system in years to come. To meet that challenge, Meehan has proposed that the $3 billion currently budgeted in the VA for PTSD treatment be doubled. Meehan and those like him are to be commended for recognizing how war is going to be impacting our citizen-soldiers for all time. They are also going to be surprised at how the Bush Administration is responding to PTSD disabilities in veterans of other wars.
Bush and his buddies Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastrert have already been embarrassed by the low-balling they did on the number of Iraqi soldiers who would require post-war VA care. When their duplicity was pointed out by Republicans in the House, the White House and its lackeys responded true to form: they fired the messengers, dumping them from committee leadership and membership. Now, with PTSD looming large on the veterans health care horizon, the Bush-ites are responding again true to form. They have ordered a review of all existing PTSD payments being made to veterans of other wars. If you think this "review" is going to result in increased payments to veterans then you probably still believe in the myth of weapons of mass destruction. This is a thinly veiled campaign to cut the VA benefits being paid to deserving vets to pay for the treatment of the new generation of veterans. Perhaps if any of these charlatans had served in combat themselves, they wouldn't treat vets as welfare recipients.It's easier putting it in than getting it out
The bloodiest week since the beginning of Bush's War is ending with the incongruity of a general in Iraq insisting that troop withdrawals can begin next summer and Dubbyah the Dumb interrupting his five week vacation to give us his best John Wayne imitation: "We will stay in Iraq until the job is done." What's behind this seeming contradiction? Well, the suitability of the indigenous forces to protect its government is not. That's for certain. What's driving the talk of "bring the boys home" is simple politics. The Republicans who have been thumping the war drums for three years are facing election campaigns next summer. And no matter how supportive those Republicans were of Bush's War then, they can see the war weariness of the American people being written across the face of the nation now. No one sees any light at the end of the tunnel. They just want to get out of the tunnel. No candidate is going to want to run on support for a never-ending war that was built on lies, fueled by falsehoods, latticed with Rumsfeld's insouciance, and propagated by mindless platitudes like "stay the course." At least, no candidates in their right mind would. Let's hope Rick Santorum remains insane and finds his way out of the Senate and into concupiscence with Fox News.
Defending what country?
The Spectator read an incredible article in USA Today last week that talked about "Bush's America." Prominent in the article was the commentary of a man in Lexington KY who lost his son in Iraq but who said he still supported the president. He explained his position by saying that "my son died doing what he wanted to do." The young Kentuckian, the article explained, enlisted after Sept. 11, at age 17. the father signed the enlistment papers because he was proud his son wanted to "defend our country." Therein lies the rub and the efficacy of the great lie that is George W. Bush. No one fighting, bleeding or dying in Iraq is "defending our country." They are fighting an elective war. They are fighting for stated causes now debunked and causes re-thought, restated, and regurgitated by an Administration with such a slight familiarity with the truth that the, most likely, don't even know what the truth is anymore. So when Marines and soldiers die, the president looks suitably solemn and says "millions of Americans pray for our lost heroes" and touts their "noble cause" knowing that the people dying couldn't be trusted with knowing what the real cause was. Instead they were fed a political pablum of patriotism, bombast, and lies. Anyone disagreeing with the Administration was fired, slandered, libeled, and relentlessly attacked. Peace was deemed unpatriotic. War was ennobled to the point that when a boy dies in Kentucky his father has to buy into the notion of noble cause rather than feel himself duped. That's George Bush's War and that's George Bush's America.
Keeping Judy company
Speaking of lying, Harper's Magazine recently ran a piece about how the election in Ohio was stolen last year. The more you know, the more it looks like Bush did it again. How come we didn't see any of the media giants, local and national, who jumped to the defense of Judith Miller, talking about how the media walked away from the Ohio election last year without telling the truth? The Spectator can think of a lot of suitable cellmates for Judith Miller.
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