Hadley: Bush Will Not Accept Mission Change Offered by Warner, Lugar

WASHINGTON — The White House is rejecting as premature a plan by two senior Republican senators to restrict the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq

President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said Sunday the administration has a "very orderly process" set out for reviewing whether its Iraq strategy is working and that should be allowed to play out.

Asked in a broadcast interview whether Bush could live with the plan offered by Sens. John Warner of Virginia and Richard Lugar of Indiana, Hadley said, "No."

Warner and Lugar proposed legislation Friday that would give Bush until mid-October to submit a plan to limit the military mission in Iraq to protecting borders, fighting terrorists, protecting U.S. assets and training Iraqi forces.

Hadley said Bush is sticking to his plan to take stock of progress in Iraq in September and decide on a course of action from there, without conditions.

"They've done a useful service in indicating the kinds of things that we should be thinking about," Hadley said of the senators. "But the time to begin that process is September.

"And the opening shot really ought to be to hear from the commanders on the ground who can make an assessment of where we are in our current strategy."

There was a mission?

Actually, there have been several successive missions. The first was to militarily defeat the Iraqi Republican Guard, which was a matter of a relatively short and by all estimates, well coordinated, military engagement. The next was the capture of Saddam Hussein, and follow-up on neutralizing the remains of the Ba’athist government. A third was to pacify neighborhoods, first by identifying the outside agitators and their local cohorts, then gaining sufficient trust from the locals so they would go out and pinpoint the location of these agitators, a task that proved estraordinarily difficult, partly because of language and cultural barriers, and partly because the enemy was particularly pernicious, ruthlessly exterminating anyone whom they considered an informer.

This required a paradigm shift, in which the Iraqi people were encouraged to form a working government, and as a working government, create their own military and paramilitary functions, much better suited to overcoming the basic distrust the locals had for the US military. At first, these military units were woefully undertrained and not particularly reliable, but after a few bumps, they have begun to rise to the expectations placed upon them. Seeing even a few successes apparently spooked a lot a people in this country, and they once again mistook the pointing finger for the moon. Demands for “withdrawal” and “redeployment”, “let the Iraqis control their own country”, and “we’ve lost, give up”, filled the air in our own legislative body, without regard to where the consequences may lead.

This time, the Islamofascists will follow us home, and in fact, some may already be here, ready to act when the signal comes. And the signal is “wait for loss of American resolve.”

At most, they may need to wait only another year and a half, or so, until the new Administration is seated in the White House. Then, in practically every scenario that can be imagined, the US President, of whichever party that may be, will declare our mission to be over altogether in Iraq.

This is a mistake waiting to happen. So long as US forces are poised on either side of the head of the snake that is Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cannot see an easy way to strike at Israel without the threat of immediate retaliation. And for the Twelfth Imam to return, the destruction of Israel must proceed first. This would take a while, but in the measure of time scale the Muslims employ, they can wait years, decades, generations if necessary. Meanwhile, the firebrands like Ahmadinejad grow old and die.

Trying to change the regime of a nation whose leaders have declared an open hostility is rather like the conundrum that faced the mice, when they hit upon the plan of placing a bell around the cat’s neck, so they would be warned of the approach of the cat and could flee. Who shall place the bell around the cat’s neck?

For sure, the cat has no interest in placing this bell. The mice might be motivated, but once the cat is aware of the plan, it is a simple matter of thwarting the plot, simply by staying vigilant, and utterly destroying the ones who endeavored to carry out the plan. The mice have no ally to turn to, which puts them in even further peril and they remain at the mercy of the cat.

So nothing ever gets done. The only hope lies in managing to reproduce at a rate that assures propagation of the mice, and cat is satiated before the mice are totally wiped out.

Except this cat seems not to be satiated, and keeps on killing mindlessly, or worse, for the sake of its own redemption. The Islamic jihadists seem not to be equipped with any degree of empathy for the plight they force upon those whom they would reduce to subservience or put to death, and only the utmost contempt for those who choose to convert to the Islamic cult rather than die or submit.

Something very psychotic is going on here.

The problem is that the liberals and the media have framed the debate to be about Bush and not about the War On Terror.

Questions our media should be asking the Liberals but never will:

1. Do you really want the Iraqi government to fail?

2. Intel Estimates indicate if we pull our troops from Iraq the existing sectarian violence could lead to a regional civil war, what is your plan to protect the innocent people that will be caught up in this war?

3. Democrat leaders have called the Presidents efforts to protect the country from a terror attack post 911, a bumber sticker campaign, Do you believe that we are in a war with terrorists that are intent on killing innocent Americans? and if you do, what is your plan to ensure that Americans are safe?

4. Almost 3,000 American citizens died on 911, the 911 comission report indicates that it was our failure to imagine the threat and lack of proactive measures that led to the success of this attack, How will you ensure that the government stays one step ahead of the next terror attack?

5. Large portions of the population are upset that Illegals can easily cross our southern border, in view of the existing terror threat from Al-Qaeda and terror groups linked to Al-Qaeda, what is your plan for securing our border?

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