Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, September 15, 2004 at 6:17:56 PM     Some interesting developments. Bush's Lost Year at http://www.cpe-sf.com/ruthgroup/downloads/FallowsAtlantic.htm By deciding to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration decided not to do many other things: not to reconstruct Afghanistan, not to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, and not to wage an effective war on terror. An inventory of opportunities lost by James Fallows ..... remember distinctly the way 2002 began in Washington. New Year's Day was below freezing and blustery. The next day was worse. That day, January 2, I trudged several hundred yards across the vast parking lots of the Pentagon. I was being pulled apart by the wind and was ready to feel sorry for myself, until I was shamed by the sight of miserable, frozen Army sentries at the numerous outdoor security posts that had been manned non-stop since the September 11 attacks. I was going for an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. At the time, Wolfowitz's name and face were not yet familiar worldwide. He was known in Washington for offering big-picture explanations of the Administration's foreign-policy goals—a task for which the President was unsuited, the Vice President was unavailable, and most other senior Administration officials were, for various reasons, inappropriate. The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was still playing a background role; the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was mainly dealing with immediate operational questions in his daily briefings about the war in Afghanistan; the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was already known to be on the losing side of most internal policy struggles. After the interview I wrote a short article about Wolfowitz and his views for the March 2002 issue of this magazine. In some ways the outlook and choices he described then still fit the world situation two and a half years later. Even at the time, the possibility that the Administration's next move in the war on terror would be against Iraq, whether or not Iraq proved to be involved in the 9/11 hijackings, was under active discussion. When talking with me Wolfowitz touched briefly on the case for removing Saddam Hussein, in the context of the general need to reduce tyranny in the Arab-Islamic world. more on fallows at http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/cl-ca-shaw12sep12.column and more at WHAT IF WE HAD NOT GONE INTO IRAQ? Mon Sep 13,12:08 PM ET By Richard Reeves http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&;cid=123&u=/ucrr/20040913/cm_ucrr/whatifwehadnotgoneintoiraq&printer=1 WASHINGTON -- I have thought for a long time that communism would have collapsed in the 1970s rather than at the end of the 1980s if the United States had not chosen to go to war in Vietnam. We squandered years of moral, political, financial and military capital in jungles and rice paddies we could not name, much less "conquer" or "liberate." and some explicit advice Time to Leave Iraq September 13, 2004 The U.S. media momentarily focused on Iraq when the toll of Americans killed passed 1,000, but that only means that they won’t pay attention again until it reached 2,000. Meanwhile, Iraqis continue to die by the thousands. Time to leave. The Chicago Tribune says that 1,000 Iraqis, many of them civilians, died in the battle of Najaf: “Three weeks of urban warfare killed at least 1,000 Iraqi rebels and civilians, the governor of this battle-weary city said Saturday in his first estimate of the death toll since the standoff ended two weeks ago.” and Time to consider Iraq withdrawal Published: September 10 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 10 2004 03:00 http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/ft6.htm This week a macabre milestone was passed in Iraq. More than 1,000 American soldiers have now been killed since the US-led invasion of the country began nearly 18 months ago. The overwhelming majority lost their lives after President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over in his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-opportunity in May last year. In that time, an unknown number of mostly civilian Iraqis, certainly not less than 10,000 and possibly three times that number, have perished, and hundreds more are dying each week. After an invasion and occupation that promised them freedom, Iraqis have seen their security evaporate, their state smashed and their country fragment into a lawless archipelago ruled by militias, bandits and kidnappers.   ********