quote:

---

> War of Nerves
> The politicians say we're winning. The generals aren't so sure. How Bush
> hopes to persuade a wary nation to stay the course.
> By John Barry, Richard Wolffe and Evan Thomas
> Newsweek
>
>
> July 4 issue - Generals must always speak truth to civilian power. That is
> the conclusion of a book considered to be required reading by many senior
> officers in the Pentagon. "Dereliction of Duty," by Maj. (now Col.) H. R.
> McMaster, argues that the Joint Chiefs of Staff failed to do their duty by
> failing to level with the president, the Congress and the American people
> about the true costs and requirements of fighting the Vietnam War.
> McMaster, who is now commanding the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment in
> Iraq, has briefed at least one gathering of four-star generals. "You need
> to hear this," former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry
> Shelton told McMaster's audience, America's top 17 four-stars, over a
> breakfast in January 1998. The message these senior officers were supposed
> to take away is to be honest about foreign interventions like Iraq-to
> always tell the hard realities to their civilian masters.
> But do they? Almost every week, President George W. Bush holds a regularly
> scheduled video teleconference with Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of
> U.S. troops in the Middle East, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top
> commander in Iraq. Presumably, this would be the time for some
> truth-telling. Indeed, White House aides say that it is. "The president
> interrupts a lot and asks questions," a White House spokesman told
> NEWSWEEK.
> How, then, to explain the very different versions of reality in Iraq that
> come out of the mouths of top Bush administration officials and of senior
> generals on the ground in Iraq? On Memorial Day, Vice President Dick
> Cheney declared that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes." Yet
> last week, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General
> Abizaid said that, actually, the insurgency has not grown weaker over the
> last six months and that the number of foreign terrorists infiltrating
> Iraq has increased. Pressed by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a California
> Democrat, to choose between the general and the vice president, General
> Casey seemed to struggle. "There's a long way to go here," he testified.
> "Things in Iraq are hard." He said that the allied forces had weakened the
> insurgency-but acknowledged that the number of attacks has remained
> steady.
> No wonder the American public is confused, unsure what to believe, and
> that support for the war is down to 42 percent in the latest Gallup poll.
> What is the reality? And why can't the president and his generals seem to
> agree? The answer lies in the culture of the military, the character of
> the president and his men and the inherent unpredictability of the Iraq
> war. It may be that the conflict is going both well and badly (that the
> Iraqis are making some progress toward democratic self-rule, even as the
> car bombs burst around them) and that the real question is one of time:
> how long will the American people put up with a war that in the first two
> years cost $200 billion and 1,700 American lives-and seems sure to claim
> many more?
> Bush has talked about noble sacrifice and staying the course-and he will
> some more this week when he delivers a nationwide address intended to
> shore up flagging public support. "It's hard work," Bush is fond of
> saying, and when he sees the families of the dead and maimed, as he often
> does on unpublicized visits, he becomes emotional. But he has never really
> laid the groundwork for a long and bitter struggle in Iraq. Accustomed in
> the post-Vietnam era to quickie wars or quick exits (Somalia, the Balkans,
> Afghanistan, the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq), most Americans are
> insulated, except when they look up and see another horrific image on TV.
> Meanwhile, the men and women of the armed services wearily wonder how long
> a badly stretched volunteer Army, Reserves and National Guard can maintain
> 140,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely.
> Is the government honest with itself? Those weekly teleconferences between
> the generals and the president are secret, and it is difficult to know
> with any assurance what has been said there. But according to a retired
> general who has spoken to Abizaid, the conversations do not involve much
> give and take. (The source declined to be identified because he is a
> friend of Abizaid's.) The president is generous with his praise and
> support for the generals, who by and large return his salute. Tom
> Donnelly, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute who is
> well connected to the Joint Chiefs, says, "There isn't much dialogue. It's
> 'These are the 14 things we are doing this week.' 'Great job.' 'Thank you,
> Mr. President'."
> Despite all the brave talk from generals who have read "Dereliction of
> Duty," it would be unrealistic to expect a more confrontational
> atmosphere. The military tends to be an optimistic institution, and
> generals do not win stars without being gung-ho and can-do. On split
> screen at these teleconferences is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
> who has repeatedly said that his generals do not need-and have not asked
> for-any more troops and that the military is winning the war. The generals
> report to Rumsfeld, and he decides their next job. Also often present at
> the teleconference is Cheney, who has been equally outspoken about the
> war's progress. The generals may think they are being reasonably
> forthcoming about the problems on the ground. But Rumsfeld and Cheney, as
> well as the president himself, may have a tendency to hear what they wish
> to hear.
> Still, the administration is not politically deaf. Bush and his advisers
> can hear the rumblings of concern in the public and within their party's
> own ranks, and last week they began taking steps to shore up support for
> the war. In the view of the White House, the public is periodically upset
> by the violent images on its TVs and so the president must, from time to
> time, speak up. The model for the president's speech this week was his
> address to the U.S. Army War college in Carlisle, Pa., last year. At that
> time, the public was badly rattled by the gruesome images of guards
> abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison. In the War college speech, the
> president laid out some markers for the Iraqis on the way to achieving
> "democracy and freedom"-and allowing American troops to go home. Two of
> those mileposts have been passed: the turnover of sovereignty a year ago
> and January's elections in Iraq. The next fixed points will be the writing
> of an Iraqi constitution, elections for a full-term government and,
> ultimately, the training of Iraqi forces to secure the country. The
> president will deliver a fairly upbeat progress report on these steps, but
> he will be careful not to set a timetable for success-or for American
> withdrawal.
> As long as the American people "understand the trajectory, they are going
> to have a considerable tolerance for sacrifice," said a senior White House
> aide, who did not wish to be identified. That may be true, but it's not
> clear that Bush's speeches serve to inspire. According to the Gallup poll,
> support for the war in Iraq went up 1 percentage point after his War
> college speech last year. Public confidence seems to more closely track
> the ebbs and flows in violence. It went up as the killing went down
> briefly last summer, dipped when the violence flared before the election
> and has stayed below 50 percent since then.
> The enemy understands this. Last week, at a military briefing at the White
> House, Abizaid told Bush that training manuals on jihadist Web sites
> taught their followers how to use car bombings and kidnappings to
> influence public opinion. The day before, a car bomb seemed intentionally
> aimed at a convoy of female Marines who run checkpoints in Fallujah. At
> least four were dead (including one female), and 11 of the 13 wounded were
> female, the Pentagon said. The attack undermined a claim by Rumsfeld,
> uttered that same day, that "terrorists can no longer take advantage of
> sanctuaries like Fallujah."
> Rumsfeld, in particular, sees the Iraq war as a test of wills and draws
> comparisons with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968, when the Viet Cong
> managed to convince the American people, through suicide attacks, that the
> war was not worth the cost. Privately, Bush acknowledges that public
> opinion in America will always be weaker than the terrorists'
> determination. "He told me the other day that the fundamental difference
> between us and them is that we hurt when people die and they don't," said
> the senior aide.
> But Bush rejects one critical Vietnam analogy. That war, he points out in
> conversation with his advisers, was a widespread popular uprising against
> the Saigon regime. The Iraqi elections show that the Iraqi people support
> the political process underway in Iraq and oppose the insurgents. One
> lesson Bush has learned from Vietnam is not to interfere with his military
> commanders on the ground. He doesn't want to repeat the mistake of Lyndon
> Johnson, who used to pick bombing targets. (Bush's hands-off approach may
> help explain the lack of real debate in those weekly teleconferences with
> his ground commanders; Bush may ask "a lot of questions," but, according
> to the White House aide, he does not second-guess.) The historical analogy
> that is truly burned into Bush's brain-though he has not talked about it
> much publicly-is Somalia. Bush has told aides that America's hasty exit
> from Somalia after 18 soldiers died in the 1993 raid made famous in the
> movie "Black Hawk Down" emboldened America's terrorist enemies.
> Bush's role, he believes, is to prop up the fledgling government in Iraq
> and public support at home. To that end, he appeared last week at a press
> conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Bush's political
> adviser, Karl Rove, indulged in some cynical base-building. Speaking to
> conservatives in New York, Rove castigated "liberals" who, after 9/11,
> "wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our
> attackers." Democrats immediately howled that Rove was smearing them.
> Basic rule of politics: when rallying people to the flag, it's always
> useful to warn of the "enemy within."
> Bush's base may need a little restoring in Congress. Three weeks ago, Rep.
> Walter Jones, the North Carolina Republican who was once avidly pro-war
> (he was the one who wanted to call the french fries in the House dining
> room "freedom fries"), introduced legislation requiring the administration
> to set specific goals for troop withdrawals. Other congressmen from states
> and districts with military bases have warned that their constituents are
> losing confidence. But so far, the Bush administration has not seen any
> really meaningful defections. "Is the Republican caucus nervous? Sure,"
> says Sen. John McCain, a strong hawk. "But I haven't detected any real
> erosion in support for the policy. Because the senators know that we can't
> afford to fail in Iraq."
> That will come as good news to a group of Iraqi officials who dined two
> weeks ago with a NEWSWEEK reporter in Baghdad. Told that American opinion
> was souring on the war, the officials became very quiet. One tried to
> brighten the room by reporting that on a recent trip he took to
> Washington, Bush administration officials had given him a "consistent
> message, saying, 'You have our support'." But then the conversation turned
> to the congressional resolutions nudging the administration to find an
> exit. The Iraqi seemed unsure what to believe.
> Although they never announce it publicly, senior commanders in Iraq have
> recently written a "phased deliberate draw-down"- a plan to get out,
> according to a senior U.S. military official who asked not to be named
> because he is not authorized to speak publicly. The military makes lots of
> plans, so this exercise is just another option, not evidence of a change
> of policy. But military commanders interviewed by NEWSWEEK all concede
> that eliminating the Iraqi insurgency by military means is probably
> impossible. The goal is to train enough Iraqis to replace U.S. troops,
> while the insurgency is pacified by political means. Given the infighting
> and weakness of the Iraqi government, that day will not come soon. A few
> elite Iraqi units are effective, but American GIs training Iraqi soldiers
> complain that their charges sometimes close their eyes and fire "death
> blossoms"-GI parlance for random rounds of bullets.
> On the ground in Iraq, Colonel McMaster, the author of "Dereliction of
> Duty," is practicing what he preached. His regiment is up on the Syrian
> border trying to shut down the flow of jihadists into Iraq across 10,000
> square miles of desert. McMaster gave his officers permission to speak
> with brutal frankness. One of them told a reporter from the Knight Ridder
> newspaper chain, "There's simply not enough forces here." A hard truth,
> which the American people need to hear.
> With Howard Fineman and Holly Bailey in Washington and Melinda Liu and
> Scott Johnson in Iraq
> © 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
> © 2005 MSNBC.com
> URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8359694/site/newsweek/
>

quote:

---

> Are you that XXXXing stupid.. We already knew you are but why do you
> insist on cementing the fact...
>
> The Supreme Court raped America and the hard working citizen this week and
> this is all you can come up with? LOSER!

quote:

---

>
> You being such a XXXXed up little retard this is exactly what you want.
> Youre too much of a loser to ever own home anyway so why not make the hard
> working citizens share what theyve earned with losers like you and your
> ilk.
>
>
>
>
>
> "leadfoot" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:DWwve.2470$4o.2077@fed1read06...
>
>