The Good News—Bush Finally Has a Plan

[Thom Little]

By Fred Kaplan
Slate
Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005


The most remarkable thing about the document President George W. Bush released today, titled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, is that it was released today (and written not much earlier—it's authored by the National Security Council and dated November 2005).

It is symptomatic of everything that's gone wrong with this war that, after two and a half years of fighting it (and four years after starting to plan it), the White House is just now getting around to articulating a strategy for winning it.

To put this in perspective: From December 1941 to August 1945, the U.S. government mobilized an entire nation; manufactured a mighty arsenal; played a huge role in defeating the armies, air forces, and navies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan; and emerged from battle poised to shape the destiny of half the globe. By comparison, from September 2001 to December 2005, the U.S. government has advanced to the point of describing a path to victory in a country the size of California.

.......

But the debate has now shifted—a result of the rising casualties in Iraq, the diminishing support for the war at home, and the growing demand for troop withdrawals from even once-hawkish quarters. Bush, in fact, gave the speech and ordered the report precisely to deal with this shift—and both must be deemed failures, because they don't really deal with it at all.


http://www.slate.com/id/2131262/?nav=tap3

[cliss]

1. This is true.

There was someone commenting on the Al Franken show yesterday. He said that the "report really doesn't give much of a plan. It highlights things that have already been done". I'm assuming here maybe some pipeline projects, or maybe some milestones and statistical figures they were trying to aim for.

I'm going to read the report when I get my hands on it. I have no doubt, it will be worth toilet paper.

[Demeter]

2. Bush Plans: Illegal, Impossible, or Both

Not worth the paper they aren't printed on (in order to protect the guilty).