Powell leads the right in a Bush-whack

I just wish the adminstration would have had a better plan for the rebuilding process. The adminstration should level with the public and say they dropped the ball on the recovery and the way they are going to fix it is (insert policy here). One way to get their credibility back is to hold some of the planners responsible, and that probably means some top officials in the Defense Dept.

Like I said, Howard Dean talking points.

So tell me where I'm wrong, please.

Thanks for the post, makes sense to me.

[ Powell leads the right in a Bush-whack ]

Sullivan is Sooo out of touch he does not know there is NO right wing in the United States.. ZERO, nada..

just wish the adminstration would have had a better plan for the rebuilding process. -Veronica Mars

I'm not one to analyze all the ins and outs, but I would make the following points:

1. Iraq War planning focussed on winning the military victory. Noone could know in advance what the situation on the ground would be when Baghdad fell; for example Saddam might have used chemical weapons or there might have been other dramatic developments.

2. It's a fair point that some contingency planning could have improved things.

3. There's plenty of debate about what if we had more troops, good or bad, not disbanded the Iraqi army, good or bad. Regime change was going to be chaotic. Various people had predicted for years how very difficult it was going to be.

4. Enemies, insurgents, al Qaeda, Baathists, Iran's agents, didn't have much difficulty destabilizing Iraq -- in part because they are savvy about the region compared to occupying forces.

5. It wasn't possible politically to pursue the most effective post-regime-change strategies - our State Dept. was too tilted toward the UN ways. A bunch of feckless moves were made.

6. The "failure" of the recovery is used to beat on the United States and President Bush by many people who want nothing out of it but to hurt him politically. Most could care less whether Saddam was toppled in the bargain.

7. Whoever was in there during the whole difficult mess, like Bremer for example, has since been rotated out. President Bush is not a blame-thrower.

8. A series of things like "no WMDs" and Abu Ghraib have hurt the image of the USA. I think some like William F. Buckley, Jr. monumentally value the USA's prestige. Things shouldn't be such that it looks like the USA cannot get it done. But still, it's in the eye of the beholder. Meanwhile Iraq is not a danger. It's going through some paroxysms, and when those abate, we'll be there to pick up the pieces with mostly Iraqi forces.

9. There's a bunch of things that can be listed as positives in the long view. We've gotten the attention of the violent jihadi movement focussed on Iraq instead of on planning attacks on our homeland. We may be occupying other countries fairly soon. We've learned a lot about how to fight this kind of war. Minimal troop levels is going to be the hallmark of it for a long time to come.