War Council
If you haven’t already read Pat Lang on Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq today, do so now. For whatever PR value BushCo is trying to milk out of this visit (here’s C&L with coverage), Lang is persuasive that the chief reason for the visit is to bring his war cheerleaders together to develop a game plan for the next few weeks.
I note that the president’s travel party to AssadAir base in Anbar Province includes; Gates, Rice, Pace, Fallon, Lute,Hadley. There, he will, of course, see Petraeus and Crocker as well. Anyone else of note? Any AEIers? Sounds like a council of war to me. Nice and isolated, minimal press interference and possibility ofoperational security planning breach. Well thought out. This will bea good place to get everyone "on board" and to coordinate tactics forthe Petraeus/Crocker show to come.
I’d love to know the answer to the questions Lang lays out. Learning who else attended this meeting would tell us a lot about ongoing strategy. Did they really have this meeting without anyone from OVP? For the record, I’m not entirely sure Hadley attended, though he could be considered an OVP mole if he did. And the WaPo quoted Ed Gillespie speaking on AF1, so he may have attended, too.
David Cloud of the NYT suggests there may be more to things:
Though Mr. Bush and General Petraeus had met as recently as last weekby video hookup, the seemingly last-minute nature of the trip and thearray of top officials from both governments who attended did not meanthere were deep disagreements among President Bush’s top advisers aboutstrategy in Iraq, they said.
And if there was a disagreement–either between Maliki and the Administration, or those who attended, it makes the attendance list all the more interesting.
emptywheel,
even George Bush realizes that it is show time.
Which of the following wars will they be discussing? The one they lost, the one they won and are turning into a loss, or the one they are about to start?
From the article: â€This is an opportunity for the president to meet with his commander on the ground and his ambassador on the ground while they are in fact all on the ground together,†Ms. Perino said.
I think she said it while floating above the ground.
If I was the OVP, I would want a meeting in which the OVP was manifestly, visibly, not involved. And just keep running the government from off-stage.
â€Less eminence, more griseâ€, is, since Cheney’s accession, the motto of the OVP.
I wonder why Cheney even bothers with the show since he gets what he wants without even having to pull any strings.
Reid and Durbin are apparently ready to fund whatever Cheney wants – who cares if its $200 billion or another $500 billion – the Petraeus song & dance will be given a standing ovation and everyone will click their heels and goosestep in unison.
While Hillary and Obama try to outdo Joementum as to who is more rabidly anti-Iran while amplifying the Iran as terrorist central meme.
Elections have consequences – its War Party(R) or War Party (D)!
And as Pat Lang states the train has already left the station. Sit back and enjoy the kabuki before the next shock & awe coming to a screen near you with the sound of trumpets and flags flying and that good ol American patriotic fervor..
Deadeye was probably video-
bloggingchairing the meeting from his bunker. Why travel when you can ride the Toobz?Shorter Deadeye: â€Pass the peanuts Scooter. Now where’s my joystick?â€
I guess they’re just gonna skip providing a rationale this time…not relevant anyway when you’re the Dictator, er Decider Guy.
BTW, they took N. Korea off the terrorist list.
About the only one missing from that council is Dick Cheney, and I’m sure he’ll be on video phone from whatever bunker he’s cowering in at the moment.
Maybe Dick sent the kids out of town so he could get some real work done. Something’s definately fishy.
OVP isn’t needed because OVP is 100% on board. You bring the people who are wavering. And I agree with you that Hadley is a likely mole. Also, for every VIP identified I would assume that there are a number of junior lackeys, and I would more than expect that some of those junior lackeys have been captured by OVP.
pontificator
Good point about the wavering ones.
And, as was pointed out over at dKos, he didn’t have to fly into Baghdad airport (under fire) and caravan into the Green Zone (under fire).
Of course, if he had done that, he’d have needed a second plane for the underwear. [/snark]
This is the same airstrip that is to be used by the Israeli F-16’s to refuel, after their strike on Iraq.
All the Iraq war analysis and dissection of Bush’s phony dog and pony show with General Betray-US (who is really a poltical hack from the collossal failure of Condi does State) is interesting. As Paul Krugman wrote today in the NYT â€Snow Job in the Desertâ€
General Betrayus is the same political hack who wrote a totally stupid endorsement of the success of the Iraq war 6 months before the 2004 election from his perch in Condi’s nest. Condi has been such a collosal failure at State–arguably one of the deadliest and most eggretiously pathetic failures in the history of the US that there is a groundswell now of professors who don’t want her destructive ass back on the Stanford campus.
â€The administration, this time relying on Gen. David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the “surge†is succeeding.â€
To cut to the chase, although an infinite amount of interesting analytical ink will be expended here, on countless blogs, and other media outlets one thing is certain:
The American pubilc is entirely apathetic. Most of them are clearly and intently focused on getting the biggest, shiniest, SUV they can to spew out the maximum amount of CO2 so future summer days can average 115 degrees, and the best set of Blahnicks in their closets. Iraq is something on TV for the vast majority of white suburbanites who are damn certain their kids aren’t going there when the armored vehicles that prevent IEDs from blowing them to bits aren’t funded.
The only thing (and it’s years away) that is going to stop the financial hemorrhage, the coffins at Dover, and the significant medical disability from increasing exponentially is a DRAFT.
In the next few weeks, readers of this blog will helplessly watch as the Puppy Dog Democrats in Congress and the lap dog Republicans give Bush $50 billion more to continue his jerkoff-fest in Iraq. This brings the total to about $777 Billion that we know of, at the clip of $3 Billion per week. This breaks down to:
Bush wants: (Billions for Iraq)–50 now;147 already supp. budget; 120 on 5/07; 460 next year=$777 Bill or 3 Billion/week.!!
I noticed in the tradition of democracy with the backdrop of Commander Chicken and his posse making a quick visit to a Marine Base which was surrounded by hundreds of troops on the perimeter, that an increasing number of Democratic blogs and sites are forbidden to soldieers in Iraq, and that a serious research study labled as significant by the CDC on fatigue in soldiers serving in Iraq was shut down with the study creators already punished or fired and under further â€investigation.â€
Colonel Demoted for Stress Study; Army Hides it as one more State Secret
Again, the only thing that is going to significantly reduce the â€war†American shoppers watch on TV whose talking heads make sure their kids aren’t going is a DRAFT. Nothing else will make a dent, but the ink will keep a flowin’ in Apathetic America.
The headline that jumped out at me from this little dog & pony show was something to the effect that â€Bush finds security improved in Iraq, so he feels he can draw down troops.â€
Still kabuki, but with a slightly better ending.
One point Paul Krugman and others have made but not one single superficial TV talking head including Colonel this and General that (far be it for Tweetie Bird Mathews to get a head ache thinking in these terms) is that the real reason that some towns and villages actually have a lower or significantly reduced body count currently (to the extent that those can be accurage with the skewed reporting) is that the Shiites may have already completed their ethnic cleansing of said town, so there simply are no more people for them to kill in those particular towns.
You sure as hell won’t hear Katie Couric along with the million dollar security army to protect the working mom raise this point. All the â€surge is working†posse have not one substantive detail to back up their contention that it’s working–and it’s failed miserably.
My nomination for the quickest barf inducing talking head has to be Mary Matlin. Every time I see her jibberish, I want to ask â€And the Carville girls will be enthusiastically shipping out to Iraq in a few years since you say it’s a generational struggle right?â€
Most towns actually have a higher overall civilian death rate for every month this year.
And it blows me away that the stupid media won’t take this ridiculous catatonic chorus of Bush â€If we fight ’em over there, and keep them back on their heels we won’t have to fight them over here.†I’d hardly call nearly 4000 deaths of American GIs and 32,000 significant life crippling injuries keeping them on their heels.
Bush and Verizon and ATT are using the State Secrets crap to wire tap you to the gills and Bush pretends there aren’t scores of cells â€over here†ready to blow up numerous US targets as if it has something to do with the setting up of American troops to be blown up like fish in a barrel.
It is just amazing (or maybe not) that Apathetic America and its airhead mainstream media doesn’t press Bush-Cheney for the details on a â€victory†in the middle of several factions assassinating each other. Victory over whom? And this Bush concept ignores the fact that no Iraqi government is even close to forming a political concensus on about 18 major contentious points for many years to come.
I also wish I had a nickle for every time a right wing talking head commentariat clone or Bushie administration official–all on the same email circuit–characterized any military problem or threat to the troops in Iraq as Al Qaeda when in fact above 90% of the IEDs (that are currently the cause of death of 80% of US troops) are launched by other than Al Qaeda.
The Robert Draper book Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush book tour has officially started with his appearance on Hardball with Tweetie Bird Mathews, and the contents of that book will display even more of the Bush idiocy in achieving the iraq fiasco, or as the American people like to characterize it â€the Iraq.â€
I saw striking similarity of the North Carolina Miss Teen USA beauty contestant and Bush at his press conferences and the quotes in the Draper book.
How about those permanant bases in Iraq that are sure exponentially to promote peace and Arab affection for the government of the U.S. and the plans to continue to arm more Sunni Arab insurgents which will strengthen the polarity and the intensity of the building Civil War and the so-called US movement to circumvent Maliki and the Iraq central government, i.e. the Bush initiative to out fiasco the fiasco discussed in Bush Is Said to Approve More Aid to Iraqi Sunnis Battling Extremist Groups(NYT).