NEWS: Petraeus Gives the Surge a Passing Grade

TedKoppel said:

Couple of issues with this statement. In the first place, people have always, always had an issue with long wars that don't seem to be going well. Even in a much shorter timeframe, The Civil War was famously about ready to be given up on in 1863, until Gettysburg occurred. Suddenly, a major battle was won, and it seemed like victory could be accomplished, and support for the war increased.

Another problem was that, like the War in Iraq, The Civil War was by and large predicted to be a brief war, I think about 90 days or so. Promise people a quick war, and a couple years later, they aren't so thrilled. Unique to this case: we were not only promised a quick war, but we've actually been told several years ago that we accomplished our mission, in those words. It's not that Americans are giving up so quickly; quite the opposite. When this war ran long, America was more patient than I was, anyway, and certainly more patient than I'd give people credit for if asked about the scenario as a hypothetical. In other words, as bean has indicated, the public's impatience is the fault of the architects of the war. That they fucked up really can't be questioned at this point; virtually nothing that was predicted by said architects to happen post Saddam has actually happened.

TedKoppel said: As far as the Petraeus report goes, I frankly am far more trusting of objective sources than I am of subjective sources. Particularly in this case. Bush is the head of the armed forces, ergo he is General Petraeus's boss. If Petraeus went to Congress and reported that this war was a disaster, and nothing good was coming from it, he would have crossed the president. I don't think the president or the White House cabinet would be so crass as to order him to repeat the president's points - they don't need to. Chain of command. It was clear from the outset what his boss's position was, and I'd be shocked if Petraeus's report was not created within the framework of those positions. The man would have to have balls of steel and a death wish for his career in the military if he didn't do that.

oyaji said:

To remotely have a chance at "winning the war" we would have to occupy the country with 500,000 or more troops for at least another 5 years. This would require the reintroduction of compulsory military service. There is no other way to do it.

Even then, the chances that we could stabilize Iraq under optimal circumstances are slim.

So, no, no one is supporting that. Why in the name of Christ should we?

DrStinkypants said:

Well I don't think anyone is actually suggesting that. I don't really care whether you support the war or not. I just think there is some area for opinions in between "don't supposrt the war" and " re-start the draft and deploy half a million soldiers to Iraq indefinately"

DrStinkypants said:
As emotedcreations pointed out, it seems likely for a few reasons that Patraeus, if he had the urge, could easily write a report that contradicted Bush's policies. 1) Bush has thus far shown no hesitation or remorse in going against the advice of the international community, his advisers, congressional reports, independent findings etc. so I see no reason why a negative report from Patraeus would phase Bush at all. And 2) He's already the face of the military in Iraq. He must realize that he's fairly fucked in a career/PR sense whichever way he goes.
To be honest, though, I have no concrete evidence to support that idea, that's just sort of the impression I get

TedKoppel said:
As to emotedcreations's question: the consequences are simply that the general would be branded as disloyal and people would avoid him. Democrats included. Nobody wants someone who will royally fuck a superior officer over policy disagreement. It would be seen as backdooring the president. I don't think men with knives would go after his family or anything, but it would be the end of a career. In my opinion.

You ever see On the Waterfront?

DrStinkypants said:
... No war has ever been as easy or quick as people would hope and public support always fades fairly quickly. That's not to say the course of public opinion is surprising, or "wrong" in any sense, just that it's fairly predictable and not a very good indicator of what should be done and is obviously not reason enough in itself to pull out of a war (imagine if we had in the civil war).

As far as bean's statement about the fuck up of the architects of the war, I wholeheartedly agree. I don't think there is anyone who could honestly say that our entry into Iraq was not horribly mismanaged. However, I think it was terribly naive for anyone to believe that a conflict of this sort in the middle o I don't want to shift the blame unnecessarily away from Bush and Cheney but there is certainly a little bit of "buyer beware" when it comes to the people who supported and voted for the war to begin with.

...

(CBS) There will be no World War III starting with Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared Thursday, and rejected concerns that a war would be a quagmire.

"The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990," he said on an Infinity Radio call-in program.

He said the U.S. military is stronger than it was during the Persian Gulf War, while Iraq's armed forces are weaker.

"Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that," he said. "It won't be a World War III."

Quick campaign

Mr Rumsfeld is in Europe to try to gain backing for possible military action against Iraq.

"It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months," he said, speaking at the American air base at Aviano, in northern Italy.

Bremer said in a press interview on July 31 (2003) that it could take $50 billion to $100 billion to reconstruct Iraq, and a $1.6 billion plan to rehabilitate Iraq's oil industry was agreed to in late June.

February 27, 2003

Wolfowitz tells the U.S. House Budget Committee that oil exports would pay for the reconstruction of post-invasion Iraq. "It's got already, I believe, on the order of $15 billion to $20 billion a year in oil exports, which can finally -- might finally be turned to a good use instead of building Saddam's palaces," he testifies.

March 27, 2003

Wolfowitz again tells Congress that oil should pay for Iraq's reconstruction. "The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. Now, there are a lot of claims on that money, but...We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."[39]

June 25, 2004

In an on-line "Ask the White House" discussion, Wolfowitz continues to tout oil export revenues as Iraq's saving grace, although they are flowing at levels much lower than the "50 to 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years" that he predicted before the invasion.

White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War With Iraq
(January 2, 2003)

By Elisabeth Bumiller
www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 %u2014 The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials.

In a telephone interview today, the official, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, also said there was likely to be a deficit in the fiscal 2004 budget, though he declined to specify how large it would be. The administration is scheduled to present its budget to Congress on Feb. 3.

Mr. Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.

Mr. Daniels cautioned that his budget projections did not mean a war with Iraq was imminent, and that it was impossible to know what any military campaign against Iraq would ultimately cost.

REUTERS
U.S. officials play down Iraq reconstruction needs
Reuters, 04.11.03, 3:41 PM ET

By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration Friday played down the need for a costly reconstruction effort in Iraq, citing limited damage to the country's oil fields and other infrastructure and rapid progress in the war.

The White House has not put a dollar figure on rebuilding Iraq, but officials expressed confidence that the cost to U.S. taxpayers can be offset with increased oil production and financial contributions from U.S. allies.

"There's just no reason that this can't be an affordable endeavor," said White House budget director Mitch Daniels.

emotedcreations said:
Hopefully, they would retain him because he is a good and honest general (in the case he has been entirely frank). One would think that such a person would be a "feather in their cap"** and not a "black eye"**.

TedKoppel said:

It would be, maybe, but the threat of him turning on them remains. Telling the truth, unfiltered, would be a gamble. Because while I am open to the idea that I am wrong about the Iraq war, I can't imagine the unvarnished truth looks very good at least in certain aspects about much of anything.

emotedcreations said:

I get what you're saying, and can see how that'd be a big consideration on the part of a future president. I guess that fact that it could be conceived as a legitimate consideration is what makes me "sad".

Stiles said:

backed up his points with a ton of references

Pip said:

The real problem now, is where do we go from this point? How do we try to make any aspect of this situation better?

The Bush administration, refusing to admit a mistake, is not asking these questions. He is just passing the buck onto the next president. Which to me is criminal.