Bush's Speech
hippiemom
Posts: 3,326
I'm kind of surprised to find that there's not already a thread about this. There was a time when it would have been pages long by now, but I guess those days are gone.
I was tempted to pick it apart line by line, but instead I'm going to focus on the thing that struck me most ... and that's that Bush himself doesn't seem to believe in this plan of his. Look at this language: "this plan can work," "even if our new strategy works exactly as planned." Throughout the entire speech he looked tentative, and it was carefully crafted to leave a lot of wiggle room for when the whole thing goes awry.
This speech was not inspiring in the slightest. This was not a confident leader speaking, this was the gasp of a politician who knows he has the backing of about 15% of the public. There was not one vigorous assertion that we WILL succeed, we WILL prevail.
Obviously, I have never liked the guy. I've never had the slightest respect for his abilities, his intelligence, or anything else about him. But I will grant him this much ... when he got all fired up, he could give a decent speech. I have to think that he truly believed at least some of what he said. I didn't see that tonight. What I saw was a guy who knows he's blown it and can't quite bring himself to admit it yet.
I was tempted to pick it apart line by line, but instead I'm going to focus on the thing that struck me most ... and that's that Bush himself doesn't seem to believe in this plan of his. Look at this language: "this plan can work," "even if our new strategy works exactly as planned." Throughout the entire speech he looked tentative, and it was carefully crafted to leave a lot of wiggle room for when the whole thing goes awry.
This speech was not inspiring in the slightest. This was not a confident leader speaking, this was the gasp of a politician who knows he has the backing of about 15% of the public. There was not one vigorous assertion that we WILL succeed, we WILL prevail.
Obviously, I have never liked the guy. I've never had the slightest respect for his abilities, his intelligence, or anything else about him. But I will grant him this much ... when he got all fired up, he could give a decent speech. I have to think that he truly believed at least some of what he said. I didn't see that tonight. What I saw was a guy who knows he's blown it and can't quite bring himself to admit it yet.
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
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from my window to yours
However... I am willing to give this one last try. I believe that a failed Iraq is a threat to the world and will create almost irreparable damage to America's standing in this world. Many people believe that Reagan alone brought down the Soviet Union... but it was Afghanistan that played a great hand in their downfall. They were never the same after that and it destroyed them from within. We didn't explode them... they imploded from deep divisions as their troops came home in boxes or missing one or more limbs.
I have always felt that there were several keys we needed to do to clear up this mess in 2003. The President has to take ownership of his decisions... his mistakes. He has FINALLY done that.. although I think he should have opened his address with this line... "My fellow Americans... I am a tool."
We NEED to get the Arab nations to buy into our plan. They have knowledge of Middle Eastern culture, customs, religion and language. To omit them from the 'Coalition of the Coerced and Bribed' was a huge mistake. At least, he is saying he will try to bring them into the fold... although it will cost us as taxpayers. Getting the NATO Allies into the mix is also a vital part of getting Iraq on track as it provided quality boots on the ground, other than U.S. troops. That is where the 'You're either with us... or against us' completely blew up in his face. NATO partner Turkey would be an ideal place to set-up quality trainning of Iraq soldiers.
And you all know I am a firm believe in the 'Powell Doctrine'. It was forged from the failures of Viet Nam and designed to never repeat that fiasco. OVERWHELMING force... not 20,000, but 120,000 to go over there. The 'Job' has always been the excuse for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush supporters... well, get the 'Job Done' by providing the proper tools and manpower it requires. The 'Whack A Mole' tactics we have employed has only hardened the resolve of insurgents and sectarian fighters. I am more along the thinking of Powell and Swartzkopf... Whack ALL The Moles.
And finally... blamng the Iraqis. That is weak. We blew up their shit.. we need to rebuild or pay for it. As Powell stated, 'We broke it... We bought it'. Now, we own a fucked up pile of shit that stinks of vengence and payback. All that shit is courtesy of this Administration and they are the ones who should be shouldering all of the responsibility. Yeah... the Iraqis should want peace and unity... but, they don't. Why shouldn't the Shi'ite exact vengence on the ones who dragged their relatives into the darkness of the night and dump their bodies in mass graves after putting a bullet in their ears? Shi'ites have the guns now and someone is going to pay. To not see that as a real probability means maybe you shouldn't be the ones making the big decisions. You know that many Americans... especially the Bush War supporters would do the same thing if it were their fathers and brothers murdered for their religious beliefs.
But.. as I said... I really, really hope this last ditch effort is successful. And if this doesn't work... and you are NOT willing to send in sufficient forces to 'Git 'Er Done'... then get the fuck out of there
Hail, Hail!!!
The video of his beheading will end up on YouTube. That is Shi'ite Diplomacy... ask Muqtada al Sadr.
Hail, Hail!!!
"When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation."
Ok, now when the hell did they do that? There was an election, but Sunnis voted for Sunnis, Shiites voted for Shiites, Kurds voted not to have anything to do with either of them. Nobody voted for anything that anyone in the west would recognize as "a democratic nation."
As always with this president, I'm left wondering if he actually believes half the shit that comes out of his mouth, or if he's just hoping we'll believe it.
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Have you not seen the British news report about the Iraqi oil reserves?
Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
Published: 07 January 2007
Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company
Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.
Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.
Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132569.ece
San Antonio 04/03, Raleigh 04/03, Dallas 06/03, Gorge 09/05, Vancouver 09/05, LA II 07/06, Tampa 06/08, Chicago II 08/09, ACL 10/09, Vedder solo 1&2 10/12, Dallas 11/13, ACL 10/14 1&2, OKC 2022, ATX 9/23 1&2
-Enoch Powell
http://www.attytood.com/2007/01/eday_it_was_40_years_ago_today.html
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
I'm with you, Cosmo. The proposed increase in troops is ESSENTIAL is quelling the violence and putting an end to the insurgency. Troop levels have NEVER been even close to the initial Iraq plans thanks to ole Rummy's extremely ignorant decision to dismiss the ENTIRE Iraqi military/police apparatus. From that point on, violence has increased.
If the security had been in place since day 1 of the invasion, we would not be where we are today. Kudos to whoever has finally forced Bush to make this move.
Sammi: Wanna just break up?
Don't get me started on that 'Spreading Democracy' bullshit. Bush and his supporters are always harping about how they hate us and want to destroy us. If people who hate us get to vote for their leaders... who do you think they will vote into power?
Hint: His name starts with Muqtada and his middle name is 'AL'.
...
If Democracy spreads to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait... look for similar election results like those in Iraq, Lebannon and Gaza... Shi'ites (aligned with Iran), Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively.
Hail, Hail!!!
I hope it works out.. but, I believe this is way too little, way too late. The Al Sadr militias are not going to just lay down their arms and hug the nearest Sunni.
And the Iraqi Security Force is littered with sectarian fighters who hate the other side. I don't trust those fuckers and I don't want them armed and covering the back of our Rangers and Marines. I wouldn't trust them in ammo depots or posting guard duty over our sleeping soldiers. We don't know who those fuckers are and where their alligences lie.
Put those 320,000 Iraqis that Bush and Rumsfeld bragged about in the fight and have our guy covering their backs.
Hail, Hail!!!
Fuck the middle east. I don't want one more American dying in that shithole.
-Enoch Powell
Shit I actually agree with barroomhero, sorry CorporateWhore. Many generals including Gen. John Abizade and even some member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have stated that more troops is not the answer. I hate to say it because I know that the majority of Iraqies are probably good people who want nothing to do with all of the shit happening there but if the Iraqi Government is unwilling to put an end to the militias and death squads and corruption then we pull the hell out. I would say that if by the end of summer there is no noticble progress by the Iraqi government we pack up and leave.
On a different point. I was waqtching the speech last night but was also in the middle of doing some work. I thought I heard the President state that we should give this new direction 2 years to see if it will work, if he didn't please correct me. I thought to myself how fucking convenient. Let's give it two more years and if it doesn't work not his problem because he is out of office by then. If I am correct that he did mention this, isn't he just passing the buck to the next administration.
* If he gave this speech in 2004 I might go for it, but not now. I don't know how anyone can be confident that the al-Maliki can actually convince and control the Iraqi army, and what is left of the police to help secure and hold cities.
* Bush is sending these troops over there to prolong the inevidible. If we leave now, the capital city will collapse almost immediately. If we send in 20,000 troops to sweep the areas of the city (again), then hand them off to Iraqis, then the collapse might take a little longer, but it WILL happen. I think he is buying time so that he is gone before all hell breaks loose over there. I keep thinking of him as the boy with his finger in the dike.
* Who are we fighting over there? When we go after the Sunni death squads, we are taking the same side as Iran and pissing off the Saudis... When we go after the Shi'a insurgency, we are pissing off the majority ethnic group over there. We can't win, no matter what we do.
* The victory will not come in the form of a surrenderr ceremony on a battle ship line? WTF? Even he's admitting that we can't "win" this war. What exactly is victory Mr. President?
* The Iran comment? Before he leaves in 2009, thanks to continued pressure from our friends in Israel, we will attack Iran in some form or another. We are scraping together to get 20,000 troops, how are we going to open a third front on this war? He is leaving one HUGE bag of shit for the next president. We fucked that part of the world up for decades to come.
* Dick Durban's response was harsher then I expected, and pretty much right on mark. Now lets wait and see if they actually do anything besides non-binding resolutions and whining to the media.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Once he is out of office and even if the other party wins. Are things really going to change?
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I think the doubt comes from a lack of belief that the local Iraqi Government can do anything by itself without collapsing almost immediately. Essentially he knows if he doesn't commit more troops, this is his Vietnam, because the government they have in place is in name only and they don't have the troops on the ground to provide any semblence of order. The doubt comes from his realization that he may have bit off more than he can chew there (4 years late). He realizes that the control is no longer up to him or US troops, it's up to the Iraqi government and that's not very reassuring. One gets the feeling he assumed this would be easier.
As a non american I find it extremely difficult to understand the mindset that agrees with the mistakes currently being made in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. I can comprehend the aspect of the viewpoint that you have to finish what was started but all i can say really is god ( or whoever one prays to) help those poor 20,000 young men and women who are going to a possible slaughter ......... I wonder how many more young working class kids have to die to help George Bush and his wayward adminstration.
Bush's way forward may be sensible. But his face showed fear—and that's no way to rally a war-weary nation.
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Updated: 10:43 p.m. CT Jan 10, 2007
Jan. 10, 2007 - George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
The president may well be right that we cannot afford to leave or lose in Iraq . He makes profound sense when he observes that a collapse of Iraq would mean the rise of a giant version of the Taliban's Afghanistan—with a million times the oil in the ground.
But if he was trying to assure the country that he had confidence in his own plan to prevent that collapse, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the words themselves weren't that assuring either. Does anyone in America or Iraq , or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won't be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?
George Bush had the look of a man who knew he had made a royal hash of things in reaching for what most enlightened people would say was a noble goal: a stable, antiterrorist Iraq.******
In his televised address about Iraq, the president used the book-lined backdrop of the library in the White House to evoke the midwar FDR. This was supposed to be the kind of matter-of-fact, detail-filled radio address that the Old Man gave each week through the course of the last Good War.
Problem was, Bush had long since forfeited the political credibility that FDR was able to maintain through his presidency. Roosevelt made huge mistakes, and the rules of the times allowed him to hold back much information. But the public believed him in his role as a leader of the Western World. Luckily for Roosevelt, he was on the radio for the most part.
Bush's political problem is not so much that he has lied to the American people—though he may well have done so—but that he seems for years to have been lying to himself.
What the voters saw on TV just now was a man struggling to come to grips with his own unwillingness to face facts. It's still a struggle. His acknowledgement of mistakes was oblique and not as brave as it sounded at first blush. Mistakes were made, and he said. "The responsibility rests with me," he said. What he meant to convey was that others had made the mistakes, but that he was stepped up to take the hit. Hoo-aw! He said that he had "consulted" congressional leaders of both parties before he came to a decision on sending more than 20,000 additional troops. He didn't really consult with members of Congress, and certainly not with Democrats, unless you consider Sen. Joe Lieberman a Democrat.
Forty years ago, another president from Texas escalated an unpopular war. A famous Washington columnist, James Reston, described Lyndon Johnson's leadership as "war by tantrum."
This Texas president doesn't operate through tantrums, and this wasn't a tantrum. This is an expression of grim determination, based on a moral vision, a worthy if perhaps unrealistic goal, and a fierce hatred of being branded a loser. I could tell you lots of stories about just how much Bush hates to lose, and always has.
The president's chances of success, such as they are, now rest with the reasonableness and details of his plan. Will it work? His says that his generals "report" that it will. Do the American people believe that it will?
I'm not sure that they are really listening, but if they were watching, they can't have been reassured by the man they saw in the basement of the White House.
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
I agree...the dems are now in a shitty position, they either support bush and his "new plan" or they resist it, and face the "why didn't you support our troops" cry...
either way, we and the Iraqis are fucked..and we have the war-machine and those who support it to blame...
also, the Iraqi Gov't doesn't support a surge in troops...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/10/news/iraq.php
Iraq wants no part of more U.S. soldiers
By Sabrina Tavernise
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
BAGHDAD
As President George W. Bush challenges public opinion at home by committing more soldiers to Iraq, he is confronted by an essential paradox: An Iraqi government that does not really want them.
The Shiite-led government here has not opposed more troops. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said as much in a videoconference with Bush on Saturday. But the government is skeptical of American intentions and is determined to push back the reach of Washington's authority to run the war the way it wants.
Haidar al-Abadi, a member of Parliament who is a close associate of Maliki's, said: "The government believes there is no need for extra troops from the American side. The existing troops can do the job."
That opinion is broadly held throughout the ranks of the Shiite political elite, which after two years in power is stretching its wings and trying to stamp its authority on a chaotic capital. A long-oppressed majority, they are acting out of a deep-seated fear that power could be taken away at any moment.
The Shiites rose to power for the first time in Iraq's history on the back of the American invasion, and they were amenable to American strategies in the early years. But as the vicious attacks by Sunni militants increased, the government became impatient with what it called Washington's cautious military action and its increased scrutiny of Shiite militias.
"You can't solve the problem by adding more troops," said Redha Jawad Tahi, a Shiite member of Parliament. "The security should be in the hands of the Iraqis. The U.S. should be in a supporting role."
Even as the extra troops are readied — more than 20,000, Bush was expected to propose — the Iraqis are drawing up their own plans.
Abadi and other Shiites spoke Wednesday of creating a new office — of the commander in chief — where Iraq's military commanders would meet and report directly to Maliki, cutting out the Defense Ministry, for example, which is beholden to the United States.
The office would have a commander for four portions of Baghdad and would coordinate the security work by dividing the capital into 9 districts and the greater metropolitan area into 15.
The central issue in the new plan is operation control. Iraqis insist that they be given full control of all operations within Baghdad, a control that U.S. commanders — concerned that Iraqi forces will serve as a tool on one side of a civil war — have been reluctant to hand over.
"Iraqi commanders will be in charge of all operations," Abadi said.
Some of Iraq's most prominent Shiite leaders traveled to the southern city of Najaf on Wednesday to get a blessing for the plan from Iraq's highest Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
"We are working on a major operation to clear the places the terrorists hang around, as you witnessed what happened in Haifa Street," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, who attended the Najaf meeting.
Rubaie was referring to an offensive in recent days by American and Iraqi Army troops against Sunni Arab militants in central Baghdad.
The Iraqi government wants the American military to help in areas of strong Sunni resistance but wants to handle Shiite stronghold areas itself.
The Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, reported that 60 bodies were found in Baghdad on Wednesday.
In other violence, unidentified men opened fire on two buses of pilgrims returning to the Shiite city of Karbala from Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, killing 8 people and wounding 14, Reuters reported, citing police officials. Iraqiya state television said the attack killed 12 and wounded 18.
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I couldn't agree more!
So much for feeling good about a thread where every post is intelligent and isn't spewing with hatred.