Rummy: Gone, but not forgotten

At least not as long as we have Stephen Hadley to kick around. Remember when you were in junior high school, and you hadn't read the assigned book, and you sat down with the dictionary instead and came up with six pages of babble, most of it consisting of saying the same thing over and over again using different wording, and you hoped it would sound impressive enough to fool the teacher?

I give you: "The WTF of Stephen Hadley, Assistant to the President For National Security Affairs", from yesterday's press conference:

...while the NIE, the National Intelligence Estimate, which is an effort to bring together all the elements of the intelligence community and come out with a consolidated set of judgments about the situation in Iraq -- this is a new document, the result of the conclusion of that review, but it's not new intelligence. That is to say, the substance of the document is intelligence that we have been provided by the intelligence community for several months, and it is this intelligence and the picture it paints that caused the President to conclude and then develop a new strategy or new approach to Iraq.

in developing that new strategy or new approach, the intelligence community was a participant, and this intelligence, of course, inputted into that process to help us identify, then, and develop the policy that we did. Put another way, the intelligence assessment that is reflected in this NIE is not at war with this new approach or new strategy the President has developed, but I would say, explains why the President concluded that a new approach, a new strategy was required; explains a number of the elements of that strategy, and generally supports it. That is to say that the policy is designed to deal with the challenges that are reflected in this intelligence.

We agree that it is hard. We think that's accurate. We would emphasize the "hard pressed," because we will be pressing them hard, and the Iraqi people will be pressing the government hard, because in the end of the day, we all understand that reconciliation is a key to long-term security and success.

If you go to page three, it talks at the bottom of the page, it talks about a number of identifiable security and political -- what they call political triggering events, things that if they occurred, would severely convulse the Iraqi security environment, and result into a range of bad effects. And the point I would make here -- and they talk about mass sectarian killings, assassination of major religious or political leader, defection of the Sunnis from the government. The point here is, and what the President concluded from this is that the status quo is not stable.

Uh....figure that out all by yourself, Einstein?

Then there's this jaw-droppingly obtuse exchange:

Q Mr. Hadley, the report also says, the term "civil war" accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict. Is the President ready to embrace that term, as well?

MR. HADLEY: One of the things that is helpful -- and this is on page two -- is a statement that the intelligence community judges that the term "civil war" does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq. And we think that is right. And one of the things that's good about the NIE is it describes the complexity. Iraq right now is a number of different conflicts, and it talks in that paragraph about Shia-on-Shia violence, al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces, criminally motivated violence. I would add one more, and I don't think the analysts would object, and that is efforts by al Qaeda not just to attack coalition forces, but to attack Shia civilians in order to provoke them to attack Sunnis and to encourage the sectarian violence that we've seen.

So I think the thing I would say is, we would agree with the description in that paragraph of the realities on the ground. Now, you get to the issue of labels. Labels are difficult. And of course, everyone is looking at the label of "civil war." Let me read to you what Iraqis say. As we've talked about before, Iraqis do not describe it as a civil war. And it's very interesting -- in a recent interview, the Iraqi Prime Minister* [sic], Abd al Madhi, had the following statement, which I thought was an interesting, different perspective on this issue. He said first, "I don't think we are in a civil war. We are in a war on civilians. That's what Abu Musab al Zarqawi was trying to do. That's what the insurgents are trying to do. Otherwise, what is the meaning of a car bomb in a university or market? You're against a society, against civilians. Or when Sunni militias attack, some Shia militias attack in retaliation. They are not attacking as one army against another, but they are attacking civilians from the other community. That's why I say," and this is Abd al Madhi's comment, "we are in a war against civilians, not a civil war."

And finally he says, "Secondly, the government is still powerful, still feared by the population. Whenever it issues a curfew it is respected all over Iraq. No country in a civil war respects the decision of a government. We have to go and decrease the sectarian violence; we have to go and protect people from car bombs and from insurgent acts that target civilians and institutions."

So what I would say -- let me just say, the description in the NIE of the situation on the ground and the variety of these challenges is real. And we agree with that. The issue of the level -- the issue of the label is one we're going to go back and forth on. What the President's job is, in view of that situation on the ground, to develop a policy and a strategy that has the prospect of success. That's what the policy challenge is, and that's what we think we've done.

Q Does it mean that the President does accept that civil war accurately describes key elements -- does he accept that?

MR. HADLEY: I think what the President does is he accepts the description of the key elements -- that is that there's a hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements. The facts are not in dispute, and they are what drove the policy. And the policy seeks to try and respond to those facts and come up with a strategy that will succeed. That's what our task is and that's what we've done.

Later on, ABC News' Martha Raddatz refuses to let the topic of civil war go, and Hadley really goes off into Rumsfeldian nonsense:

Q Mr. Hadley, I want to go back to the term "civil war." The administration has really gone out of its way not to use that term, "civil war," in the same way that Don Rumsfeld wouldn't call it a "guerilla war" when it was, or an "insurgency" when it was. Why do you go out of your way not to use that word? The President goes out of his way, as well. You say labels are difficult, but is it not important -- certainly any military strategist will tell you it's important to know what kind of fight you're in. Can you call it a civil war, and why haven't you?

MR. HADLEY: We know what kind of fight we're in. We know the facts. That is described well in this NIE, and we have a strategy to deal with those facts and to try to succeed.

Q Is it a civil war?

MR. HADLEY: I will tell you what this NIE says.

Q I want to know why you avoid using that term.

MR. HADLEY: Because it's not an adequate description of the situation we find ourselves, as the intelligence community says. Intelligence judges "the term civil war does not adequately capture the complexities of the conflict in Iraq." And what we're doing is saying, if you're going to run policy, and if you're going to explain it to the American people, we need to get across the complexities of the situation we face in Iraq, and what is our strategy to deal with that. And simple labels don't do that. We're going to try and force everybody to get into the facts.

In other words, what's going on is WORSE than civil war.

And in case you thought they had a plan for what happens if the escalation of the war doesn't work; in case you thought "It will work because it has to" was the Crawford Caligula kidding around again, guess again:

Q The President asked for patience to see that his plan will work. The NIE says that unless there's measurable progress in 12 to 18 months, then the security situation could deteriorate. Is that the same time frame that you all are looking at to see if this plan is going to work?

MR. HADLEY: Well, we'd obviously like the plan to work sooner, because the sooner we get the violence down, the sooner the Iraqis can move forward more effectively on the reconciliation, the sooner we can proceed in training the Iraqi security forces. So we would like it to occur as soon as we can. Nonetheless, as you've heard from General Petraeus and from General Casey in their testimony, we've got to be patient, it's going to take some time.

Q But are you not going to reassess the new strategy in 12 to 18 months?

MR. HADLEY: No, no, we're -- one of the advantages about the benchmarks that we have talked about and the President talked about is they are gauges for whether that strategy is succeeding, both narrowly, in terms of the Baghdad security plan, but also more broadly, because, as you know, some of those benchmarks involve the reconciliation effort. So we are going to try and monitor the progress and our response is going to be, if we don't see progress, we're going to be talking to the Iraqis and emphasize the importance that we, and they take the steps that they need to do.

So we're going to be monitoring this along the way. The Congress has made clear that they will be monitoring the situation as we go.

So there you have it, folks: There will be no reassessment of this strategy. Oh, they'll talk to the al-Maliki government, assuming it survives that long, and chastise it soundly. But the REAL strategy is going to be to use the lives of another 20,000 to 40,000 American soldiers to allow Bush to run out the clock -- and then blame Congress.