i wish you would stop blaming a failed war across the world on its critics at home.

Bush lost the war, not the left.

Bush lost the House and Seante as well.

Maybe you are backing a loser

Ledeen is a rabid neocon who’s allegiance to Israel may be stronger than to the US. In one of his NRO articles he advocates destabilizing the Middle East as well as the United States. Plain and simple he is a Muslim hater.

Now he claims to have access to highly classified documents from the Iranian detentions in Iraq. Aren’t you the guy that rails on the msm when they publish classified information? He is definitely connected to the administration via his AEI affiliation, but that does not make him an honest broker.

With the neocons all roads lead to war….

Those who really support the troops would not be stating in their next breath that they are human fodder fighting a war for oil that is doomed to failure.

As I have already pointed out several times before, this “war” was lost the moment that the decision was made to invade and occupy Iraq with only about one third of the troops necessary to properly do the job. General Shinseki stated in testimony before Congress that “several hundred thousand” troops would be needed to occupy Iraq. Rumsfeld (who retired as a Captain) and Wolfowitz (no service) publicly disagreed with Shinseki and Shinseki was forced into retirement. The more pliable General Schoomaker was installed to head the Army and the invasion proceeded with the much lighter force that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz wanted.

The decision to invade Iraq in the first place was a poor one, the decision to do so with far fewer forces than were predicted to be needed by the military professionals like Shinseki was abysmally stupid. That decision can be traced right back to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the civilians in charge of the DOD. Despite this fact we have Cheney hailing Rumsfeld as “the greatest SecDef ever” very recently.

On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, USCENTCOM Commanding General John Abizaid said that General Shinseki’s estimate had proved correct. In other words, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were dead wrong.

Now Rumsfeld is out and Gates is in as SecDef. Gates is a CIA spook who basically doesn’t know that much about the military but is well connected with the Bush family. Whether or not Gates will be a good SecDef remains to be seen but it isn’t auspicious that he’ll have to have a lot of on the job training.

The invasion of Iraq has turned out be the mother of all FUBARs, and it is due to the fact that militarily ignorant ideologues were put in places of ultimate power over our military forces.

Don’t you find it at all coincidental that we have a President and Vice President who are both oil men and we have preemptively invaded the country with the second larges proven oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia?

Remember the Powell doctrine? Overwhelming force, clear exit strategy. The Iraq invasion had and has neither.

“I think we’d still be there, we’d be like a dinosaur in a tar pit, we could not have gotten out & we’d still be the occupying power & we’d be paying one hundred percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq.” -Norman Schwarzkopf, 1997 talking about occupying Iraq after the Gulf War

Recall that Dick Cheney was SecDef at the time, he knew very well that Iraq was a tar pit and yet he did nothing to stop this invasion.

The US forces in Iraq are not making things any better and may well be making things worse. I, for one, do not wish to see any more American blood and treasure wasted in this futile and Pyrrhic effort to make over the Middle East in our own image.

The short answer is: I think this occupation was poorly conceived and incredibly stupidly managed and I’m not going to shut up about it.

Regardless of the horrors of war and how the atrocities being committed by all involved are being portrayed in the worldwide media, those we are fighting can only become more emboldened when they see Americans so bitterly divided over US policy.

Those who really support the troops would not be stating in their next breath that they are human fodder fighting a war for oil that is doomed to failure.

Chip

I think I’ll wait on some more reliable news organizations to report this before I celebrate.

I do note that Jamil Hussein seems to have been found.

My understanding is that Rafsanjani has recently been made chairman of The Expediency Council.

The Third “Board” is of course the Guardians’ Council, which vets candidates for election and has become the Smoke-filled Room of Iranian politics.

My bet is on whomever Rafsanjani supports, as he is ascending in a levitation mode back to where he may be the Presidential candidate again in elections moved foreward recently to 2008 to coincide with parliamentary elections.