On Iraq, U.S. Turns to Onetime Dissenters

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007

Timothy M. Carney went to Baghdad in April 2003 to run Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals. Unlike many of his compatriots in the Green Zone, the rangy, retired American ambassador wasn't fazed by chaos. He'd been in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, Phnom Penh as it was falling to the Khmer Rouge and Mogadishu in the throes of Somalia's civil war. Once he received his Halliburton-issued Chevrolet Suburban, he disregarded security edicts and drove around Baghdad without a military escort. His mission, as he put it, "was to listen to the Iraqis and work with them."
    He left after two months, disgusted and disillusioned. The U.S. occupation administration in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), placed ideology over pragmatism, he believed. His boss, viceroy L. Paul Bremer, refused to pay for repairs needed to reopen many looted state-owned factories, even though they had employed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Carney spent his days screening workers for ties to the Baath Party.

"Planning was bad," he wrote in his diary on May 8, "but implementation is worse."       WaPo Article

    So now the Bush administration is going to try to play nice with all of the groups that were disbanded after the United States raided Iraq. This should be an interesting deal for the U.S. because you can bet that the disbanded groups are going to have their respective hands out with the "What have you done for me lately?" words on their lips when Bushco comes to town.

   Do we actually pay Bush real currency for this crap? If so, we need a refund!

 

Technorati tags: Iraq, U.S.

 

The Build Up To War With Iran

   Oh yes! How the plot thickens!

   It looks as if the White House is going all out to get the American public convinced that we have to do something with Iran. This attack on Iran will be done because they "put our people at risk."  I am assuming that the White House is referring to our troops in Iraq.

    National Security adviser Stephen Hadley said,"We are going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq."

    Vice President Dick Cheney:"Iran is fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq.We do not want them doing what they can to destabilize the situation inside Iraq"

Stephen Hadley: "We know there are jihadists moving from Syria into Iraq. ... We know also that Iran is supplying elements in Iraq that are attacking Iraqis and attacking our forces.

What the president made very clear is these are activities that are going on in Iraq that are unacceptable. They put our people at risk. He said very clearly that we will take action against those. We will interdict their operations, we will disrupt their supply lines, we will disrupt these attacks."

    More

    Hadley was on "This Week" on ABC while Cheney was on "Fox News Sunday."

    Though it is always possible, if not probable, that the spin doctors at the White House are right about Iran, I question their intelligence. We have heard many times before from the Bush gang that we needed to go on the defensive before terrorist strike and of course we all know about the claims concerning Iraq. None of those claims were true. I would take any reports from the White House with a grain of salt at this point in time.

 

Technorati tags: War, Iran, Bush