The new U.S. military commander in Iraq said on Saturday the country was doomed to continuing sectarian strife if a U.S.-Iraqi offensive under way in Baghdad failed to curb the violence.
“The mission is doable...The prospects for success are good. Failing that, Iraq will be doomed to continuing violence and civil strife and surely that is a prospect all must strive to avoid,” General David Petraeus said.
“The stakes are very high,” he said, speaking at a ceremony at a U.S. base near Baghdad airport where his predecessor General George Casey formally handed over command of 130,000 U.S. troops.
No shit, Sherlock. Figure that out all by yourself? How much are they paying you to come up with that one?
Petraeus, a veteran of two Iraq tours and a counter-insurgency expert, told U.S. senators in January that the situation in Iraq was “dire” but not hopeless.
He has urged that the extra American troops being sent to Iraq for the campaign to be deployed as quickly as possible. Casey had been skeptical of troop increases.
The offensive is expected to build up gradually over the coming weeks and months. Tens of thousands of Iraqi and U.S. soldiers are expected to take part.
U.S. commanders have called for patience, saying that it will be several months before the plan will deliver results.
“It’s very early in the operation. We’re just in the opening days,” Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute, director of operations at the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington on Friday.
About a decade ago, a mortgage company ran ads that showed how OTHER banks handle mortgages. They showed a guy sitting at a desk telling his customers, "Any day now....it'll be approved any day now." That's what this reminded me of.
Of course we knew that "It will work because it has to" was the Bush Doctrine; this is nothing new. But to hear it out of the mouth of the guy who ISN'T a delusional moron, as far as we know, is chilling.
Even more chilling, however, is what looks increasingly like the certain Act II of the Bush Plan to Destroy Everything:
US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.
The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.
Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.
Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."
But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."
He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."
[snip]
Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.
"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."
One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?
You'd better love your children now, folks, because the Bush Administration is making damn sure that if they even live to grow up, they're going to be living in a world that's a lot more like Mad Max than the one you grew up in.
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