Cordesman has his head up his @$$!!!
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.
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
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.
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.
When does terrorism degrade from a domestic insurgency to mere hate crime?
Cordesman has his head up his @$$!!!
Mr. Vice President, I'm going to make a prediction that has a 100% chance of materializing versus yours that has a 100% chance of failure.
I predict that the children of our troops in Iraq today will be serving there when they are of age to serve. That hell hole is going to bleed our treasury and the lives of our youths.