On the math of the right-wing pundits, it took Cheney-Bush cum Rumsfeld 16 months to react to facts on the ground in Iraq. Tragic.For months prior to the elections last year, President Bush said that he had full confidence in his Secretary of Defense, probably to avoid any hint of doubt or wavering in front of his Republican R-ubberstamp base.
Now, the right-wing punditry, from the AEI's mastermind, Kagan, on down, want the clock to start clicking on 'the surge' from just a few weeks ago. Apart from that nonsense, consider this. The Golden Dome mosque in Samarra was bombed on February 22, 2006 (never mind that the guy who masterminded it was a baathist 'dead ender'). If the surge only got fully implemented by June, 2007, then Bush-Cheney have a lot to answer for, right? Seriously, if Stalin had reacted that slowly to Hitler, the whole of WWII might have gone another way.
It's really breathtaking, for a wartime political party to demand that the populace 'stay the course' with such a failed leadership. Why? Because we have no choice? I guess ... but they do. They could get a new GOP leader, if the old one would just step aside.
IT'S CHEAP, IT'S ALARMING, IT'S TRAGIC
And it's just cheap to start blaming the Dems as captive of moveon.org, when the GOP's R-ubberstamp Senate might have used oversight to push the Administration early on in 2006 to show how they were adapting to changes on the ground, pro actively, to produce their contingency plans.
It's even more alarming, because the civilian leadership continue to suggest that they do contingency planning, when giving ambiguous answers to Hilliary's questions about operational plans (with cost estimates) to phase re-deploy the troops.
If we accept the logic that the surge is just completed now, it would have been sixteen (16) months from when the sectarian ravaging, complete with pre-announcement, began to when Bush's countermeasures were in place.
General David Petreaus, wrongly risking his own reputation and position by getting interviewed by the likes of Hugh Hewitt, gives a damning indictment, unintentionally:
DP: ... In fact, people ask, you know, what are the big changes during the sixteen months that you were gone from Iraq? I left Iraq in September, ’05, returned in February,... And there were two really significant changes. One was the damage done by sectarian violence. It is undeniable, it was tragic, and it has, as I mentioned earlier, ripped the very society, the fabric of Iraqi society. It’s caused very significant fault lines between sects and ethnic groups to harden, and it has created an environment that is much more challenging that before it took place.
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"SPECTACULAR MISTAKES"
aside, from the debate, Orin Hatch, R-ubberstamp, UT, gives his opinion of the legacy of the President, "win" or not in Iraq:
"...a beleaguered Administration beleaguered in part - and let us be honest at a time when generosity would be misplaced – by many of its own spectacular mistakes."
[Is "absquatulation" a hat-tip to Rummyspeak, Mr. Hatch?]
