The President has Spoken - If Wishes were Wings ...

The President's speech was designed (over 2 months in the making) to highlight the "changes" in his Iraq "strategy." If wishes were wings, the president's new policy might be able to get off the ground.

At the outset, you might notice how much of the new policy has the Iraqi Government doing this or that. I assume these things are based on promises of the Maliki government. More on that later.
Here's a thumb-nail sketch of the "new" plan:

-The Iraqi Government will appoint a military commander for Bagdhad to coordinate increasing security.

-The Iraqi government will devote 18 Iraqi Police Brigades to patrol Baghdad.

-More than 20,000 additional U.S. troops, 5 brigades to Baghdad alone.

-The Mission of these additional troops will be to help Iraqis clear and hold neighborhoods

-The U.S. will hold the Iraqis to benchmarks of taking responsibility of security by November, 2006.

-Iraq will pass legislature to share oil revenues.

-Iraq will spend $10 billion of it's own money for reconstruction.

-Iraq will hold more elections.

-The Iraqis will reform De-Baathification Laws and amend their constition to effect reconciliation.

- We will embedding U.S. troops with Iraqis, according to the Iraq's Study Group's recommendations.

-We will double the number of reconstruction teams.

-We will work to stabilize the region by dealing with Iran and Syria.

-We will work with Turkey.

-We will work with allies to ensure that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons.

-The President will send Condi Rice to the region to work out the details.


I honestly don't know how any of this is difference from what we've been trying before. Except this time it will work. Actually, the President did attempt to address why these efforts have failed in the past. The main reasons for past failures were the lack of adequate troops to clear and hold neighborhoods and Iraqi political interference. Well now, we'll have 20,000 (or more, Bush was not specific) and the Iraqis have promised to cooperate.

Wow, that's all that we needed ... 20,000 more troops and the Iraqis to cooperate. Now we have all that we need. Well not exactly. We have been warned to ignore all the death and destruction that we will see on the news. That has no bearing on the success of the new plan.

Finally, and my personal favorite bit of logic from the evening, the President has warned us that if we pull out now, we'll have to stay in Iraq longer than if we follow his plan. Did I miss something?

Seriously, the President has outlined a list of things he'd like to happen. The last year has more than demonstrated that our wishes count for naught in Iraq. If the new plan is to have the Iraqi government really cooperate with us now, we are in deep trouble.

As an aside, I was impressed that there was only one 9/11 reference. And although Bush said that responsibility for past mistakes rested with him, all references to these errors were in the passive voice.

Let the media feeding-frenzy begin!

The President Speaks

Tonight, as we all know, the President will unveil his already well-known "way forward in Iraq." I offered the leaked outlines of the plan last week. I'm sure those details will hold.

The media is in full anticipation and commentary mode *yawn*. I'll be looking at their reactions tomorrow. But tonight, I wanted to debunk some truly bad arguments that's being wafted about.

First, perhaps snidely, I have to comment on a blip I heard this morning. We all know that Bush will attempt the near impossible, convincing the American public that the Iraq debacle can be salvaged AND that 20,000 and a couple of billion will do it nicely. A herculean feat for even the most skilled of wordsmiths. Oh, wait, President Bush isn't that. But not to fear, his press staff say that Bush will be in "education and explanation" mode this evening. So everyone, look forward to being schooled on the nuances of the Iraqi quagmire this evening. Ought to be interesting.

Lastly, I just have to call'em like I see it. When confronted with poll numbers showing that the American public, in vast numbers, do not favor increasing troop levels, the admimistration's line is that "we don't make policy decisions based on polls." But then I hear, almost in the same breath, "we truly believe that the American public wants to win and that they support our policies." Hmm, can't have it both ways. But who after all is really paying attention?!