It wasn’t really fitting the occasion.

What, even with all the mattress store “sell-a-brations?”

Seriously, though, McGee, I heartily agree. War ain’t glory, and it ain’t entertainment, it’s just something that sometimes has to be done.

And sometimes not, which makes it all the more depressing.

What the hell did you think LaBouchere meant by “radicalize,” anyway?

Christ!

[sigh] Don’t be such a dope. The “two subjects” are conflated, i.e., “fused,” because they are directly related.

Look: the continued occupation of Iraq by American troops– and of course the British contingent of the, uh, “coalition,”– serves to drive more Iraqis to adherence with the Iran-backed militias promoting a hard-line theocratic alternative to the supposed democratic central government, unsurprisingly viewed increasingly as a puppet of those selfsame occupying forces.

This isn’t rocket science, sonny; the failure to understand relationships between superficially unrelated events is the hallmark of this administration, by the way, and further the mark of a lack of higher brain functions, which is why you’re the subject of so much derision here. So don’t whine when you’re called on it; for heaven’s sake, just think harder. People are being killed by the thousands because you’re too lazy to put on your thinking cap.

Start by reading the Lasseter article colorado bob linked to as a backgrounder on this before posting again, please.

In fact, I insist. Tired of crap like this from uninformed loudmouths, you know?

Don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this yet, but I think Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan, the aviator who in the 30′s filed a flight plan to fly from Brooklyn, NY to Long Beach, Calif. and wound up in Ireland, might be the better anology?

Great post, as always! BTW all, read Pat Lang today (Memorial Day) – the Colonel’s on fire!

Link at:

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/05/adventures_in_s.html

And speaking of Memorial Day, am I the only vet who thinks it’s one of the most depressing days of the year?

Now you are conflating two different subjects. Lt. Colonel David LaBouchere was of course not speaking anything about the Iranians consolidating power in Iraq. He was reflecting on the fact that our presence in Iraq is akin to “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. If we leave now, then the insurgents might screw up everything we’ve worked for up until now. If we stay too much longer, we could piss off more and more Iraqis.

Back to the subject of Iran’s influence in Iraq, how will us leaving lead to less consolidation of Iranian power??

Larry didn’t answer it, and you talked about an entirely different subject all together.

Seixon, it may be the case that if you can’t intuitively grasp that our troops’ presence exarcerbates the problem, then perhaps you’ll never get it.

But it might be worth another try, so take it from Lt. Colonel David LaBouchere, commander of british units north of Basra, musing over his possible response to having his base attacked by mortar rounds from suspected miitia members in a nearby town (from the Lasseter article colorado bob linked to above):

“I look at them and say, `Shall I go and clean it up?’ And I think I’m just going to piss them off and drive them away from democracy,” Labouchere said. “Will I have done good for the people of al Majar? Probably not. I will have just radicalized them.”

See how that works?

What sort of actions, Mr. Johnson? Attack Iran? Sorry, I may be deficient in logic, which is perhaps why you’ll have to tell me how it is logical that Iran will consolidate less power in Iraq if we withdraw from there. To me, that sounds like when we leave, the Iranians will be able to do as they please within Iraq without our interference. Perhaps you have come up with a magical solution to prevent Iran from meddling more in Iraq once we are out of there with no way to do anything, which is what I’d like you to elaborate on.

“Seixon, I’m sure your parents wept over the fact that they’ve spent lots of money on your college education and you remain incapable of higher thinking.”

Actually, I’ve been responsible for my own college education and I fail to see how your constant personal attacks against me instead of a reasoned debate reflect a man conducting “higher thinking”.

That we did not make him an immediate ally was a mistake. We wanted our Chalabi business connections. Ahmed’s seizing of Saddam’s INTEL history and comps and documents was played a part of that- Rummy and Feith could not get burned and made concessions.
Sadr is a terrible foe, he’s in place to the point of being made a martyr if we go after him and has say how things run there, has been that way since day one. Blown up mosques may have changed the ability to ever calm the chaos there now.
The country is full of death squads. The Savladoran Solution, redux. Thanks to Negroponte and his usual plausible deniability, things have become a quagmire.
“The bottomline, Iran is consolidating control of critical parts of Iraq through its surrogate, Moqtada al Sadr. The civil war now underway consists largely of surreptitious group murders and retaliatory bombings.”
You have a relative that was wounded in Sadr City, how is he today? From Sadr City to Fallujeh, there was a hub of interethic strife, and local czars battling one another for turf and brag rights. We didn’t side with Sadr, but chose worse allies to try and boost counterinsurgent approach within Shi’ite ranks against our pervceived obstacles. A good bit of the new insurgents were funded with weapons we’ve sent there or lost, while Bush continues to underfund necessities for our troops.

“Since January of this year, the number of daily attacks has surged from 72 a day to 135 per day. Most of this violence is directed against civilians—Shia and Sunni. Yet, U.S. soldiers continue to pay a costly, bitter price. Our men and women are being killed at a rate approaching three per day. The wounded are triple that.”

The effect of this on morale is the only thing worse than its real time impact on our finest. The growing ranks of overstressed and undersupported stop lossers are tired of being treated stop-gap. Combined with later notes it is an enveloping, metastasized crisis.
“Baghdad remains without a consistent supply of electricity, gasoline, and potable water. Electricity production, for example, hovers between two to six hours per day. Friends who have recently returned from Iraq tell me that much of the disruption in the electricity and oil pipelines is actually caused by the Iraqis assigned to repair these systems. In other words, the local Iraqis with a vested financial interest in repairing these systems are also sabotaging them—think of it as a guaranteed jobs program.”
Much of the policy enacted matches the same cause-effect result, facilitation of need and demand. The solution? Throw more dollars down the subcontractor siphon holes cost plus.
“There are two significant dangers for the United States based on our current operations tempo (ops tempo) and force deployment—1) we are degrading the quality of the force, and 2) we are leaving the force vulnerable to a disruption of the logistics supply line if we decide to attack Iran.”

You go to war with the Army you have.George Bush was not about nation building, he said that himself, it was as close as his god-directed insight has come to being prophetically correct.
“The decline of the quality of the U.S.military—the Army, the Marines, and the Navy—is a middle to long term problem. An officer who works in military intelligence recently sent me the following after reading the email exchange between Joe Galloway and DOD press spokesman, Larry Dirita …
‘a military intelligence unit alone hemorrhaged 27 out of 35 O-3s. The community is not large enough for losses like that and thus those of up for promotion soon should not be overly proud they made it to O-4; it is nearly automatic now. The promotion rate is at 80% plus or minus a few points. I respect what Joe Galloway wrote recently. It is unfortunate that the sycophants have the run of the place in the OSD.’
“Military and civilian leaders are trying to solve this personnel loss by offering more money for folks to stay in and lowering standards for those both recruited and promoted.”
This dilutes the effectiveness from the top down, which matches the top-down bungling of the Rumsfeld DoD.
A chain of command is only as strong as its weakest link. That people not fit for promotion get that in droves matches the Bush method as well. This is not a personal criticism, it is one of statistical human analysis, Larry shows grasp of numbers analysis with his alarm. The long range effect will be immeasurable. How can those with equal say and rank that are not matched in skill and apitutde create effecient policy and action? Collateral results will magnify. The promotion pace, matched with the aforementioned impact of increased casualties and stop loss will reach event horizons in real time.

Haditha is the prime example of that. People in command face possible courts martial. Who exactly will replace those as well?
“The United States ability to stay the course in Iraq is threatened by a fragile re-supply line, which runs from Kuwait north to Baghdad. This road runs thru the heart of Shia controlled territory. Everything we need to keep our Army fed and fueled comes up that road.”

Thanks for stating what is well known so it cannot be denied. If you said this on the floor of Congress or submitted such words to Committee notes for testimony it would be classified and you’d be labeled a threat to American security or our goals against terrorists. It is a reality that is not being heeded and the fact we have to gin up runs on one spot lets those we fight gear up in advance.
“We face a dilemma if we decide to attack the neighboring country of Iran because of its nuclear ambitions. Iran is not a passive observer. Iran is providing extensive, covert support to Shia militia in Iraq. U.S. military planners must assume that it is highly likely that insurgents backed by Iran will attack and cut the re-supply line.(A relative who served confirmed as much, although his background in language identification makes him rely upon the words of others in such areas). Truck convoys will be captured and destroyed. (Many of the original reports cited Sauds and Arab sympathizers, this is not the narrative Bush wants for fiscal reasons). Re-opening these roads would require significant military ground forces—forces that are not in the area and probably could not be deployed in any significant numbers for at least several weeks, if not months.”
We’re doing a shell game of contractor armies to enforce this road, it’s a risk to our soldiers who go along to guard it. As you note how pipeline work can create demand by sabotage, the command oversight at DoD can bulk profits cost plus if runs on the road include cost plus abandoned vehicles, not even kept for needed salvage parts.
“Our options in Iraq are shrinking with each passing day. The Shia forces are slowly consolidating their power. These are not secular Shia. They are religious fundamentalists bent on imposing their vision of sharia on Iraq. The secular Iraqis—Shia and Sunni alike—are fleeing Iraq. This brain drain further undermines the ability of Iraq to form an effective, competent Government.”

This does cause alarm. To hedge the Shi’ites could have been possible but failed in practice. Trying to oppose the largest group first created seperation and let hostility increase. All of it was a matter of hard line conversation that pushed the country to polar extremes. Bush was not running for President of Iraq but to hear him everyone was a scion to fit ranks of Liberals that Karl Rove tries to paint the same color. The army was decommissioned and then rebuilt with less of its trained pros in place, unemployment festered and a new hostile Shi’ia led apparatus has been inserted into the puzzle. No other pieces will fit that.

“The Shia backed by Iran are biding their time and moving methodically forward. The challenge for the United States will be to decide what level of support to provide to this emerging government. To the extent we are perceived as facilitating or supporting the Shia consolidation of power, we will also be perceived as an enemy of the Sunnis. While the Sunnis are a minority within Iraq, they have powerful ties to Sunnis in neighboring countries and will retain a robust ability to conduct insurgent operations against Shias (and their allies) for the foreseeable future.”
Well the Sunni and Shi’ia were merged against America until Negroponte stepped into the picture. This is complex interactive model needed to split the Islamic crescent and dilute its focus outside its region of influence.
The Sunni pan-Arabs will side with the Sauds against the developing pan-Persian reunion of Iran and Iraq. The perfume stolen in the embassy where the Niger forgeries reportedly surfaced is a symoblic item of traditional Persian wedding gifts. Chalabi’s union of his homeland spheres of influence grows stronger.
The eventual wedding is going to be with both these spheres to extend beyond the scope of its lands. A powerful person with great respect amongst both Arabs and persians will make that happen. Will Bush’s biggest arch enemy be made the uniter? A de facto ruler by proxy and decree will emerge? pagin Osama, paging Osama, a call for you at the bully pulpit that Sadr controls… Meanwhile we’re pulling back from the Kurds as a concession to Turkey and to stage points towards Iran and Syria. The recent redployment of troops from Kuwait to Iraq(a reported 1,500 plus spike) is going to be key. Watch where they go, near either border it means we’re going pys-ops and starting something, perhaps on memorial Day weekend. Remember the Maine? Who will we blamed and what will happen?
“Memorial Day 2004 was commemorated when almost 1100 American soldiers and sailors had died in Iraq. Two years later the number is rapidly approaching 2600. It is time for the President and the Congress to get serious about how long we will continue to sacrifice our young men and women in a cause that will ultimately strengthen Iran’s control of critical Middle East oil reserves. That, in my view, is not a policy worth dying for.”
No policy is worth dying for in a war of choice. Policy never is placed ahead of persons. Leaders who do so are not good leaders.

Oil reserves can be rendered irrelevant with the use of renewables. Fuel Cells were first available for market in the 80s and fully field deployable in the early to mid 90s.
Reagan helped scale much of that back, as payback on his ascension due to the October Surprise. Others pulled the strings he was just the face for it(James Baker and Bush Sr. in particular). He even pulled solar power panels off the White House roof as a rollback towards Carter’s effeciency vision. Funny how folks claimed a person who captained a Nuclear powered craft had no idea how to develop safer, cleaner energy policy and manage resource. Meanwhile an absent minded actor was made into the ideal Ike-like dream, the Iran-Contra goons who ran his Whitye House amok are in control once more.
Those things bring us where we are today. The Haditha incident is going to expand and unfold. The Saigon Chopper from the embassy rooftop is not far away, leaving Saddam’s old palace…

There’s another solution, involving the new model. It’s about quadrangulation. Start with a predetermined agreement, then tweak two disparate parties to expand the scope of influence, usually along business lines. The Arab-Persian triangulation has a Kurd factor to play in. Our drawback from there probably merges a pan-Turk deal. The old post Ottoman BP alliance of BP in the Kirkuk area. History repeats itself. Watch BP subcontractors on the market, Blair’s visit here was over divvying up what’s left before the bailout.

Reinstitute oil for food or some such, a war repatriations fund. See also the Katrina rebuild. Rove can run both of them for his legal defense! With oil for food comes no fly zone enforcement. We go from the north and south to the west. Look for the bases staged in west Irag to be maintained. Using logisital proxies of the new Iraq and Israel. Tweaking tensions on Syria enough to secure Sharon’s successor in the power void and provide buffer from Iran with our western Iraqi no fly presence. We want Iran to proliferate(see also the Cheney-Rummy subcontract trail from South Africa, North Korea, Pakistan). That makes the Star Wars program of Rummy a necessity. We expect to deploy/extort that in the mideast and asia. There remains a possible Tonkin scenario off the UAE coast…

Meanwhile the gorilla in the room is the big oil money, Saudi nationalists, and loose Russian nukes on the market. Chances are we’ll need Star Wars and a buffer zone for Israel. The concession has been to allow genocide in Africa for the Al Qaeida sympathique from the Saud expansion efforts. The Sauds are expanding across the board still. This war is a distraction from those closest to Al Qaeida and remains the biggest danger to our efforts against terror against them.

SNAFU and FUBAR at the same time.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14677922.htm

Iran is not America’s nemesis.

This subject is too lengthy to explain in a single post, so I will not attempt to do so. Let me quickly say, however, that with respect to the nuclear program, the entire effort is, in my view, geared toward achieving a diplomatic breakout from the isolation Iran has found itself in since 1979. Any kind of negotiated settlement is in Tehran’s view a victory for it establishes a formal procedure/diplomatic structure for Iran to come in from the cold and that, more than any other single event strengthens the country’s international postition. The clerical establishment fully understands the nature of American politics – they are students of our system and have long recognized the veto power particular interests have on particular areas of America’s MidEast politics. Their aim, therefore, is to force an agreement between themselves and DC and in so doing, breakout from it’s diplomatic isolation imposed upon them, as they see it, by those interests in Amreica’s political fabric that are hostile to Iran.

For proof of this, look for a negotiated settlement to the nuclear program. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Their entire effort is a very expensive and elaborate ruse, vut from Tehran’s perspective, one very much worth the trouble.

M

                                                        Emperor Hadrian – “Memoirs of Hadrian”
                                                        – Marguerite Yourcenar, 1954