Posted on 06/25/2005 8:08:08 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Many of us have said the same thing. This is going to take years, not a few months. However, my conclusion is that the U.S. must see it through.
Did he really say that? Wow. I hope they're not actually operating as if that's true..
"Center for Strategic and International Studies"
Isn't that a liberal think tank?
No mention of Cordesman's expert strategic recommendations to fix President Bush's "flawed" strategy to stay on mission. I wonder why?
This should be the headline, not Cordesman's perrenially dour predictions.
It's bipartisan. The trustees include Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Woolsey, and Brent Scowcroft.
I thought CNS was a conservative news site. Why are they printing a guy who slams President Bush's strategy? And is this Cordesman guy a leftist? It seems like the whole world has gone wobbly.
I served here as a soldier, and returning as a writer in part explains the change in perspective. This trip, my job is assessment and analysis, not action. Even with a fast-paced itinerary that takes us to Fallujah, Tal Afar and Kirkuk, there is more time to reflect.
Today, the summer heat is just as hard as it was a year ago, the sand haze in the air just as thick. But the Baghdad of June 2005 is not the Baghdad I left in September 2004.
"Metrics" is the military buzzword how do we measure progress or regress in Iraq? The piles of bricks around Iraqi homes is a positive. Downtown cranes sprout over city-block-sized construction projects. The negatives are all too familiar terror bombs and the slaughter of Iraqi citizens.
Last year on July 2, I recall I saw six Iraqi guardsmen manning a position beneath a freeway overpass. It was the first time I saw independently deployed Iraqi forces.
Now I see senior Iraqi officers in the hallways of Faw Palace, conducting operational liaison with U.S. and coalition forces. I hear reports of the Iraqi army conducting independent street-clearing and neighborhood-search operations. Brig. Gen. Karl Horst of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division told me about an Iraqi battalion's success on perennially challenging Haifa Street.
In February, under the direction of an Iraqi colonel who is rapidly earning a reputation as Iraq's Rudy Giuliani, the battalion drove terrorists from this key Baghdad drag. Last year, Haifa Street was a combat zone where U.S. and Iraqi security forces showed up in Robo-Cop garb helmets, armor, Bradleys, armored Humvees. Horst told me that he and his Iraqi counterpart now have tea in a sidewalk cafe along the once-notorious boulevard. Of course, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's suicide bombers haunt this fragile calm
Thank you. Haven't James Woolsey and Brent Scowcroft been against the Iraq war all along?
It may just be me, but I don't see this as analysis. It seems like just another Bush-whacking attack.
To say the "lack of adequate planning will result in an Iraqi insurgency that will last at least several more years" is a way of blaming Bush, not an honest attempt to predict the future.
If Bush erred at all in this war, it's in the P.R. department. They've allowed so many outright lies to stand, and others have been only weakly countered. They did well during the "shock and awe" phase--they need to keep up the pace. Even Fox, these days, concentrates on all the bad news. The victories over there are scarcely covered.
It will take years the kid glove way the military is going about smashing the insurgency. We are fighting with hands tied behind our backs because of our own crippling policital correctness. If we fought WWII like this, the axis would be victorious..
James Woolsey was advocating war against Iraq even on 9/11.. I know Brent Scowcroft was critical during the lead up (as of August 2002) but I can't recall what he was criticizing.
Bingo! I have to wonder if we'd still be seeing that, if Karen Hughes had stayed on board at the White House. I don't blame her for leaving, to go raise her kids in Texas, but she left a hole that has simply not been filled.
Sorta like taking an etiquette book to a gunfight....
They toppled the saddam regime all right, the aftermath was a mess, too much winning the hearts and minds nonsense going on. Why can't the Iraquis in the military stand up to the ragtag Iraquis in the insurgency? Does the other side have the superiour human beings? If not, its a lack of leadership...
His negative statements are getting a lot of mileage, naturally. It's a good way to get your name in the papers:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-43,GGLD:en&q=Anthony+Cordesman
I have heard the name, but I'm not sure where he usually stands. He appears to be known as a "security analyst," but I can't find any other positions he has held.
CSIS President and CEO; John J. Hamre
Before joining CSIS, he served as U.S. deputy secretary of defense (1997-1999) and under secretary of defense (comptroller) (1993-1997).Distinguished Alumni
Madeleine Albright - We know about her
William L. Allen - He currently serves on the boards of the National Geographic Society, National Geographic Educational Foundation, National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Institute on Nautical Archeology, and World Wildlife Fund.
Stephen R. Sestanovich - Dr. Sestanovich was sworn in as ambassador at large and special adviser to the secretary of state for the Newly Independent States (NIS) on September 19, 1997 ~~ He has also been a member of the State Department's policy planning staff, worked as senior legislative assistant for foreign policy to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
There's some token conservatives too, like Al Haig, but I found mostly Democrats, One World Globalists and Ivory Tower professor types. Wait... that's all the same thing.
Bush runs the show.
Cordesman would do well to follow his own advice and stop "talking down" to his Commander-in-Chief.
But: Let's cut the crap.
Cordesman is just a spokes-monkey for the utterly clueless Democrat party.
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