Bush League Strategist
George W. Bush, March 19, 2008:
The surge is working. And as a return on our success in Iraq, we’ve begun bringing some of our troops home.
The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around — it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.
McClatchy’s Washington bureau provides the story on a reality based puncture to the fatuous balloon of Bush’s myopic declaration:
The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.
The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.
It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line.
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The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted “manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers” from “all other efforts in the war on terror” and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.
“Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East,” the report continued.
All of which raises the question: Why does the Pentagon Hate America?
[...] the decision on both sides of the Atlantic to launch the invasion of Iraq, resulting in the “major debacle” with which we currently have to [...]
[...] because it was a stupid, counterproductive, and disastrous framework. As a recent Pentagon study stated: “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a [...]