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.

Friday, January 06, 2006

A post-Iraq-conquest insurgency--a replay in Mesopotamia of what happened after Ariel Sharon's "Peace for Galilee" in Lebanon--was always on the minds of everyone as a possibility. On the minds of everyone, that is, except George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and Paul Bremer. Impeach them all. Do it now.

The Left Coaster: Bremer: We Didn't See The Insurgency Coming: I remembered this story today when I just saw this hit the wires, just in time for the Sunday chatfests:

Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday. Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation.

When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said in a news release.

Really?

Bremer also said he was deeply concerned about fighting insurgents and "became increasingly worried about the Pentagon's push to downsize the number of U.S. forces in Iraq by spring 2004," the network said. Bremer said he raised his concerns about the numbers and quality of forces with President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officials. But he told NBC "there was a tendency by people in the Pentagon to exaggerate the capability of the Iraqi forces and I felt it was not likely we would have professionally trained forces to allow us to withdraw American forces in the spring of 2004."

Asked if he believes he did everything he could do in Iraq, Bremer replied, "I believe I did everything I could do. ... The president, in the end, is responsible for making decisions," the network reported.

Just ignore for a moment the appearance that Bremer is now setting the stage to say "I tried my best, but after I f----- up the first two major decisions I had to make, it really is the president's fault that it all went to hell." Just ignore for a moment that Bremer reported to Rummy, who reported to Bush, and now Bremer wants to sell books by blaming the botched occupation on his superiors solely because he believes that he "did everything (he) could do in Iraq."

Instead, focus on the fact that Bush has already admitted he f----- up when it came to the WMDs, and now Bremer is admitting that the administration f----- up when it came to the occupation. This means that Bush is 0-2, and still trying to tell us that he is the only guy who can see this through to "victory", whatever the hell that means.... [T]he issue of competence has raised its ugly head again with these remarks by Bremer. "We really didn't see the insurgency coming?"... Why should the American people have confidence in an administration that couldn't see the insurgency coming?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home