Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Kevin Drum writes:

The Washington Monthly: BREMER ON IRAQ....On Dateline last night, Paul Bremer confirmed something that he briefly alluded to last year: we never had enough troops on the ground to keep order in Iraq, and both George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld knew it.

Bremer said he sent a memo to Rumsfeld suggesting that half a million soldiers would be needed, three times the number deployed by the Bush administration.

"I never had any reaction from him," the former diplomat told NBC's Brian Williams on "Dateline."

Although he never heard back from his direct boss, Bremer said he discussed his concerns with Bush, who told him he would seek troops from other countries, but did not mention increasing U.S. forces.

...[T]hat half million number is pretty stunning. It's one thing to tell your boss you need more troops, but it's quite another to tell him you need three times as many as you have. That's the kind of warning that really ought to make someone sit up and listen, and if Bremer is on the level here it means that Rumsfeld and Bush screwed the pooch even worse than we thought -- something I'm not sure I would have thought possible until now.

Kevin: haven't you learned yet that the Bush administration is worse than you imagined, even after taking account of the fact that the Bush administration is worse than you imagined?

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach everyone who has sat at the table in the Roosevelt Room during the George W. Bush administration. Do it now.

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