Knife's Edge

Right now we are balanced on a knife's edge. We do not like the Americans, but we also thank God when we see them with the Iraqi Army, because we know we can trust them more than the government forces.

-- Hamid Majeed, a Sunni Muslim in Baghdad, New York Times, 30 June 2009, as US troops withdraw from Iraqi cities

Profound Disappointment

If they adopt the Bush administration position, or some version of it, it is going to be a moment of profound disappointment for everyone in the legal community and Americans generally who believe that the Bush administration has tried to turn the presidency into a monarchy.

-- Brandt Goldstein, professor, New York Law School, on the Obama administration's stance on detainees, New York Times, 3 January 2009

Keys To The Kingdom

He who is able to fix the public utilities holds the keys to the kingdom in terms of winning the support of the Iraqi people and ultimately ending this conflict.

-- Army Sgt. Alex J. Plitsas, on conditions in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, New York Times, 22 April 2008

Stand Up

This vote shows that the Iraqis have figured out how to stand up for themselves, to Iran and to the U.S.

-- Michael O'Hanlon, specialist in Iraq at the Brookings Institution, on the Iraqi cabinet's approval of a security agreement calling for a full withdrawal of American forces by the end of 2011, New York Times, 17 November 2008

Don't Invade

In the Twenty-first Century, nations don't invade other nations.

-- Presidential candidate Senator John McCain, 13 August 2008, on Russia's invasion of Georgia

16 Months

Obama's remarks that -- if he takes office -- in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq. Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.

-- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki, New York Times, 19 July 2008

As President

As president, I will order an immediate review of our overseas deployments - in dozens of countries. The longstanding commitments we have made to our allies are the strong foundation of our current peace. I will keep these pledges to defend friends from aggression. The problem comes with open-ended deployments and unclear military missions. In these cases we will ask, "What is our goal, can it be met, and when do we leave?" As I've said before, I will work hard to find political solutions that allow an orderly and timely withdrawal from places like Kosovo and Bosnia. We will encourage our allies to take a broader role. We will not be hasty. But we will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties. This is not our strength or our calling.

-- Candidate George W. Bush, Thursday, September 23, 1999

Windshield Vs. Bug

Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug.

-- Captain Phillip Ash, commander, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, Ramadi, Iraq, New York Times, 23 October 2005

Habeas

The test for determining the scope of this provision must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain.

-- From the Supreme Court's decision restoring the writ of habeas corpus to prisoners at Gitmo

Worst?

The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.

-- John McCain, NBC 13 June 2008, regarding the recent "Habeas" ruling by SCOTUS

Cheaper Oil

The greatest thing to come out of [the Iraq War] for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in the any country.

-- Rupert Murdoch, Guardian newspaper, 11 February 2003, when oil sold for $34.53 per barrel (it's $134.31 today)

The Truth Was So Implausible

In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible.

-- Former CIA Director George Tenet, regarding Saddam Hussein possessing unconventional weapons; cited in Scott Shane & Mark Mazzetti "Ex-CIA Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq" (New York Times, 27 April 2007)

Wars Begin Where You Will

Wars begin where you will, but do not end where you please.

-- Machiavelli; cited in Patrick Goldstein, "Rocky Road Paves Path to Iraq Drama" Los Angeles Times, 12 December 2006

Aghast

I walked through the World Trade Center 20 minutes before the attack; saw the buildings burning; breathed the poisonous dust; wept for my country. Now Blackwater. Torture. An unprovoked, botched war. I am aghast, revolted. And ashamed.

-- Paul Nadler, Metuchen, N.J., Letter to the Editor, New York Times, October 4, 2007

Sanchez

After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism.

-- Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, retired former top commander of American forces in Iraq, New York Times, 10/13/2007

Stupid Things

We have 1,000 guys out in the field. People make mistakes; they do stupid things sometimes.

-- Erik D. Prince, chief executive of Blackwater USA, which is under scrutiny for shootings by its employees in Iraq, Congressional hearing, 2 October 2007

Counsel Of Our Fears

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell: What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?

I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there\u2014ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists.

Interviewer: So you think we are getting too hunkered down and scared?

Powell: Yes! We are taking too much counsel of our fears.

This doesn't mean there isn't a terrorist threat. There is a threat. And we should send in military forces when we have a target to deal with. We should also secure our airports, if that makes us safer. But let's welcome every foreign student we can get our hands on. Let's make sure that foreigners come to the Mayo Clinic here, and not the Mayo facility in Dubai or somewhere else. Let's make sure people come to Disney World and not throw them up against the wall in Orlando simply because they have a Muslim name. Let's also remember that this country was created by immigrants and thrives as a result of immigration, and we need a sound immigration policy.

Let's show the world a face of openness and what a democratic system can do. That's why I want to see Guantanamo closed. It's so harmful to what we stand for. We literally bang ourselves in the head by having that place. What are we doing this to ourselves for? Because we're worried about the 380 guys there? Bring them here! Give them lawyers and habeas corpus. We can deal with them. We are paying a price when the rest of the world sees an America that seems to be afraid and is not the America they remember.

-- Colin Powell in GQ Magazine, October 2007

What Everyone Knows

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.

-- Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan; cited in Katrina Vanden Heuvel, "Greenspan, Iraq & Oil" (Nation, September 15, 2007)

Planet Bush

The president can make things true simply by solemnly pronouncing them from the Oval Office. He can reach out to his critics just by saying he is doing so. And people believe him. But over here in the real world, things are different. Iraq is mostly ruled by armed gangs, not a central government. American troops are dying in the crossfire as the country continues to violently disintegrate along ethnic and sectarian lines. We're in it pretty much alone. There's no end in sight. And the real al Qaeda is regrouping in Pakistan.

-- Dan Froomkin, "It Came From Planet Bush", Washington Post, September 14, 2007

Front, Back

If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian. If it went through the front, it's criminal.

-- An intelligence analyst, regarding the violence in Iraq; cited in Paul Krugman, "Time to Take a Stand" (New York Times, September 7, 2007)

Occupied

If someone occupied my hometown in the same manner Americans occupy Iraq, I'd be killing them any way I could.

-- Marine Scott Ritter, "Reporting from Baghdad" (TruthDig, September 7, 2007)

Air Power

If I hear one more lawyer with no military experience explain to me how air power alone really can do it this time, I'm going to kill him.

-- An active-duty US Army officer; cited in "We Don't Need Another Fight Right Now" (Swedish Meatballs Confidential, August 31, 2007)

Miracles

This [war] is an endless story unless a miracle takes place in a time when miracles do not take place any more.

-- Waleed al-Ubaydi, a political analyst at Baghdad University, August 2007

One Word

If there is one word I would use to sum up the atmosphere in Iraq -- on the streets, in the countryside, in the neighborhoods, and at the national level -- that word would be fear.

-- Ryan C. Crocker, American ambassador to Iraq, New York Times, July 20, 2007

Your Tax $s At Work, Killing People

A new estimate of the financial cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars shows expenditures of about $12B per month. If 90% of that cost is incurred in Iraq, that works out to an average of $250,000 per minute for our efforts there.

Petraeus On Progress In Iraq

18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.

The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously in the face of an enemy that has shown a willingness to do anything to disrupt the establishment of the new Iraq. ...

Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.

Most important, Iraqi security forces are in the fight.

-- General David H. Petraeus, "Battling for Iraq," washingtonpost.com, September 26, 2004

Presidential Scholars

We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants.

-- Excerpt from a letter signed by 50 Presidential Scholars, presented to President George W. Bush, June 25, 2007

Romney Is An Idiot

As I slowly winnow away at the list of candidates, Romney makes it easy to elminate him from contention ... here's an excerpt from an article about the June 5 candidates' debate --


At the Republican candidates' debate on June 5, White House contender Mitt Romney remarkably claimed that weapons inspectors were barred from entering Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But Romney's error was little noted by the mainstream media.

Asked if he thought it was "a mistake for us to invade Iraq," Romney declared the question a "null set," and explained:

"If you're saying let's turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be in the conflict we're in. But he didn't do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in."

Romney's suggestion that weapons inspectors were not permitted into Iraq before the war started is, of course, incorrect. Weapons inspectors from UNMOVIC (the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) returned to Iraq on November 18, 2002. Led by Hans Blix, the inspectors spent months in Iraq, issuing reports on Iraqi compliance that were a crucial part of the debate over whether to invade Iraq.

-- From "Romney's Iraq Gaffe Ignored, GOP contender's bizarre pre-war history" 6/8/07, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3112

If We Quit Vietnam

If we quit Vietnam, tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco.

-- President Lyndon Johnson, quoted by Ron Hutcheson in "Some See Troubling Parallels Between Iraq and Vietnam" (Common Dreams, September 18, 2003)

Tragedy For The World

I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.

-- Former President Jimmy Carter, BBC Radio, May 19, 2007

War Czar

We believe at some point, in order to break this dependence on the ... coalition, you simply have to back off and let the Iraqis step forward. You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country.

... I will tell you this, as the operation officer of Centcom, if a year from now I've got to call on all those army troops that General Schoomaker [US army chief of staff, who said his office was planning so troop levels could be maintained until 2009] is prepared to provide, I won't feel real good about myself.

-- Maj Gen Douglas Lute, newly-appointed War Czar, then-director of operations at US Central Command, Financial Times, August 24, 2005

Mistakes We Didn't Make

War is war. We made a lot of mistakes, I'm sure of it. But there are a lot of mistakes we didn't make, too.

-- Secretary of State Condolezza Rice; cited in Joe Conason, "Condi Rice never looks back" (Salon, May 4, 2007)

Plan B

Plan B is to make plan A work.

-- President George W. Bush, in response to a question by Charlie Rose on what would happen if the "surge" in Baghdad didn't work; cited in Dan Froomkin, "No One Suffers More Than the President" (washingtonpost.com, April 25, 2007)

OBL

I think it was Osama bin Laden's.

-- Presidential adviser Karl Rove, replying to the question of whose idea it was to start a preemptive war in Iraq; cited in Dan Froomkin, "Rove Watch; Bush Challenged on Iraq" (washingtonpost.com, April 19, 2007)

Tenet Disses Bush, Cheney

There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.

-- George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, in his new book, New York Times, April 27, 2007

Blood Is Flowing

In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war.

-- King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Wednesday 3/28/07, at an Arab League meeting in Riyadh

Stray The Course

So the Bush administration appears to be doing some things right, like talking to Iran & Syria, as suggested by the Baker-Hamilton Commission. Is this an actual change in strategy (pushed by Condi?) or is there something else happening here?

I thought Bush would go with the commission's report as a CYA approach to dealing with inevitable failure. However, Bush instead chose his "stay the course" troop buildup, providing what is perhaps too few troops to accomplish "victory" (whatever that is defined as, now), though apparently with the intention of producing a positive outcome.

Those who think he irrevocably screwed up the Iraq war 3 or 4 years ago would argue that victory is no longer possible. Bush appears to think otherwise, as I don't see much advantage for him in simply drawing things out prior to accepting ultimate failure.

So, is this a strategic shift? Is Condi behind it? Is there an ulterior motive in either talking to Iran/Syria or the troop buildup? Is Bush pursuing something other than ill-defined victory in Iraq? Comments?

You Never Know

Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

-- George F. Kennan (February 16, 1904 - March 17, 2005), American diplomat and historian, September 6, 2002

Cheney '91

Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it ... it's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the ... military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?

-- Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking in 1991; cited in George F. Will, "Dubya's Disaster" (New York Post, November 12, 2006)

A Huge Debt

I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.

-- President George W. Bush; cited in Derrick Z. Jackson, "Amid Bloodshed, Bush Wants a 'Thank You'" (Boston Globe, Janaury 18, 2007)

Even If It Fails

Even if it fails, the policy will be worth it. At a minimum it will damp down the charge that we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own.

-- Advice given by McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson in a memo dated February 7, 1965, concerning an escalation plan for Vietnam that Bundy thought might have as little as a twenty-five-per-cent chance of success; cited in Steve Coll, "The Planner" (New Yorker, January 15, 2007)

How Paranoid Is This?

How paranoid is this scenario?

First, add 20K troops to Iraq. It'll take a while to get any results, so this automatically extends the status quo by several months. During this interlude, provoke Iran, or trigger/claim provocations on the part of Iran.

Next, expand the Iraq war into Iran (and Syria?). This ensures that the neocons get to attack Iran, which they've always wanted to do. Perhaps more importantly, from the President's perspective, this ensures no withdrawal from Iraq during the current term (since the expanded war will last into the next administration). Withdrawing from Iraq is unacceptable because it is an acknowledgement of failure in Iraq. Establishing a legacy of success is a prime motivator. If the Iraq War can be pushed into the next administration, and the next administration withdraws (and Iraq fails), then it will be the next administration's fault.

Having Israel launch an early assault against Iran would be another easy way to expand the war (with essentially the same results), without the need for manufactured provocations vs. the US.

War On Terror

Cal Thomas: With what you know now, what might you have done differently in Iraq?

Donald Rumsfeld: I don't think I would have called it the "war on terror." I don't mean to be critical of those who have. Certainly, I have used the phrase frequently. Why do I say that? Because the word "war" conjures up World War II more than it does the Cold War. It creates a level of expectation of victory and an ending within 30 or 60 minutes of a soap opera. It isn't going to happen that way. Furthermore, it is not a war on terror. Terror is a weapon of choice for extremists who are trying to destabilize regimes and, [through] a small group of clerics, impose their dark vision on all the people they can control. So "war on terror" is a problem for me.

-- Chicago Tribune, December 12, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0612120277dec12,0,206705.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed

Clear And Hold

We could not clear and hold.

-- Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security adviser, on Iraq strategy. New York Times, January 2, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/washington/02war.html?th&emc=th

Iraqi NSA

The nature of the American military is that they won't let go. I understand it because they do it much better than we do. But we have to stand alone. We have to wean ourselves off the coalition and make our own mistakes and learn from our own mistakes.

-- Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's National Security Adviser, New York Times, December 13, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/world/middleeast/13troops.html?th&emc=th

Powell Surge

I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work. We have to be very, very careful in this instance not just to grab a number out of the air.

-- Colin Powell, 12/17/06

Easier To Get In

It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.

-- Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, writing in the 1970s; cited in James Mann, "Rumsfeld versus Rumsfeld" (Los Angeles Times, May 3, 2006)

The Long War

Yesterday, the Iraq conflict marked its 1,349th day, surpassing the length of World War II and its 1,348 days.

Finger Pointing 101

James Baker of the Iraq Study Group is Bush I's go-to guy when W gets in real trouble (as in Florida 2000).

I imagine he sees his mandate as preserving the Bush legacy. That being the case, we now have Rumsfeld as the absent scapegoat for the current situation. Baker & the ISG will come up with a plan (doesn't matter what the plan is); Congress will be quick to endorse it, because otherwise they'd have to come up with their own plan, which would entail responsibility for its efficacy (something they *really* don't want).

Bush then will be able to say that the ISG & Congress have shown him the only politically practical way forward, and if that plan then fails, it won't be his fault, it will be the fault of the ISG & Congress. I'm sure W and his handlers already blame the electorate for being too weak-minded to support his proper plan of staying the course.

Does that secure the Bush legacy? Does it harm the newly-Democrat controlled Congress, or are they protected in the same way as Bush (i.e., if the plan fails, it's the ISG's fault)?