Here is the BBC story Keith Olbermann mentioned in his special comments tonight. Justin Webb of the BBC writes,
US President George W Bush intends to reveal a new Iraq strategy within days, the BBC has learnt.
The speech will reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces. …
…The BBC was told by a senior administration source that the speech setting out changes in Mr Bush’s Iraq policy is likely to come in the middle of next week.
Its central theme will be sacrifice.
The speech, the BBC has been told, involves increasing troop numbers.
The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials, but it is likely to focus on providing security rather than training Iraqi forces.
The proposal, if it comes, will be highly controversial.
Already one senior Republican senator has called it Alice in Wonderland.
Olbermann said that Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News had corroborated the part of the story about extra troops. Other reports say that General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, is about to lose his job because he has said he doesn’t need more troops.
Gerard Baker writes for the Times (UK; emphasis added),
In the coming days he [Pressident Bush] is expected to announce not the beginning of the US disengagement his critics want, but a deepening of the effort to build a stable and democratic nation there.
This likely new approach is not only fraught with military and political risks, but increasingly represents a very lonely furrow for the man in the White House. It is backed perhaps just by Mr Bush and a handful of close advisers, in the face of opposition from senior military commanders, a resurgent Democratic party that takes control of Congress this week, and even from many within his own Republican party.
Those close to the discussions say the President is leaning against the recommendation of the Iraq Study Group, headed by James Baker, his father’s Secretary of State, for a steady drawdown of US troops. Instead, advisers say, he favours a “surge†of American forces of perhaps 30,000 or more troops in addition to the 140,000 there, with the aim of restoring order in Baghdad especially. Senior military commanders have been sceptical. General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, has publicly expressed doubts, and will be stepping down shortly. General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, is also known to be cautious — he too may soon leave his job. So entrenched have been the military doubts that one adviser said that there had been no serious discussion of the “surge†strategy until it was proposed by an outside group of military thinkers about a month ago. Mr Bush will be both bucking the views of senior military and taking a large political risk. …
… Even more problematic for Mr Bush is that growing numbers of senior members of his own Republican party are against a significant troop increase in Iraq. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska senator and a possible Republican presidential candidate, recently returned from Iraq to tell friends he was convinced a surge in US troops would be folly.
Here’s the punchline:
Aides close to Mr Bush say that he is determined not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam.
And Mr Bush has been influenced heavily in his thinking, it seems, by Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State to Mr Ford and Richard Nixon. According to Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial, in 2005 Mr Kissinger sent Mr Bush a copy of his famous 1969 “salted peanut†memo to Mr Nixon. In it the Secretary of State warned against troop withdrawals from Vietnam, saying that they would become to the American people like salted peanuts — “the more US troops come home, the more will be demandedâ€.
Salted peanuts?
I wonder just exactly what W is “sacrificing”?
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There are no words…
bush and co and the rest of us are calling this a surge in troops. what it really is a replacement of the coalition of the willing. he does not have a coalition anymore. all the “willing” have seen the light and left or about to leave.
I like Olbermann. It’s nice to hear someone with the integrity, honesty, and passion to tell it like it is.
Here’s another person who respects those qualities.
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/12/31/News/In_a_bad_year__some_g.shtml
It’s weird how an unknown nobody living in obscurity, like myself, who has no prospects of ever being anybody, can become almost a somebody in my own mind by seeing so clearly that Bush has no possible options to ward off defeat in Iraq. Defeat has already occurred in Iraq…so the natural thing for Bush to do is to escalate so that the American people can be full partakers and co-owners in Bush’s defeat.
Aides close to Mr Bush say that he is determined not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam.
Too late, babe.
Olbermann is so…. so very direct and powerfully articulate. This country is blessed to have at least one media person of his caliber and courage.
from Unclaimed territory: concerning bush’s inability to exit insisting on a ‘win’:
“It’s time to stop proposing magical plans that Bush will never implement. It’s time to stop coming up with ways of providing Bush “political cover” for leaving Iraq; he doesn’t want it. It’s time to start playing hardball. It’s time to start holding hearings and exerting whatever leverage is available to put pressure on the White House. The only way significant change will occur is if Bush finds himself so politically isolated that those around him feel it necessary to stage some sort of intervention.”
Looks like it is time to intervene in this presidency as someone is no longer fit to perform the job.
Salted peanuts? Obviously, the only way to get W’s attention is using references that remind him of his days as a barfly.
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Bush has made the comment that he would remain confident that he is “right” even if Laura & Barney (his dog) are his only supporters. Methinks he has probably reached that point. It’s clear to me that we are not getting out of Iraq and it gets to be a bigger mess by the moment. Wish I had the power to impeach. I don’t have a political career to worry about.
How ’bout a pool on when Bush will hold his first openly drunk presser? (I’ll pick the first week of March, after Barney makes his opposition clear.)
Completely off-topic:
Maha, Stirling’s post http://agonist.org/stirling_newberry/20070102/2007_and_open_source_encyclopedias
got me thinking about top-down vs. bottom-up thinking, and how the Right not only believes in top-down (authority), but is inclined to believe that any threat must also be top-down (conspiracy theories; shadow gov’ts, George Soros…). Anyway, just struck me as something that might pique your interest.
Is it better to be treated like salted peanuts, or like cannon fodder?
Law enforcement should take its responsibility to the nation seriously, and simply walk into the White House and arrest
Bush and Cheney. There is enough evidence available
to warrant it.
In his insane hubris, Bush is determined to repeat all the old Vietnam mistakes. He just doesn’t know it.
Looking for some commentary about George Bush’s role the last time he was involved with executions, when he was the Death Penalty Decider for the state of Texas, I was poking about on the Web and came across an October 2000 piece about Bush published by Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe. It seems remarkably prescient now — especially the title, “Bush’s Death Factory.” Way back then, before the “election,” Jackson was already making Vietnam comparisons — because of Bush’s stubborn hubris.
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