W's upcoming "New Way Forward" speech

[mburbank]

There is so much about tomorrow nights speech I don't get.

I don't mean I disagree, I do, but I don't get it, either.

The first thing I don't get, is that absolutely everybody now knows everything that's going to be in the speech. It's all been 'leaked' to the press drip by drip until it's a total non event. Why even ask for network time? This is supposed to be the big moment where W shows the doubting public that he is indeed engaged in Iraq, he knows it's not working, but he has a 'New Way Forward'. Why all the delay and leaks, why all the time leaving the media nothing to cover but who thinks the ideas the President has yet to reveal but everybody knows are stupid?

Secondly, what purpose did the Iraq report serve? It's ironic that the only thing he took from it was the Phrase "A New Way Forward", since it isn't the way they suggested. He should call it "Another New Way Forward."

Why were Baker and O'connor willing to participate? Did they have some belief that W. would take up their face saving program, or do they just feel guilty that they are arguably the two people most responsible after katherine Harris for W being President at all?

[kahljorn]

maybe he has some big surprise and the leak was just supposed to set us up for the surprise like tapping on someone's shoulder and as they turn around slapping them in the face and yelling "SURPRISE" into their shocked eyeballs..

[FartinMowler]

I just watched a CNN special report with Kennedy saying he wants the American people to vote on whether or not Bush has the right to put more troops into Iraq. Things get leaked for a reason.

[Abcdxxxx]

Baker's participating because he's double dipping. You're folling yourself if you think he's some whistle blower taking a stand for anything besides his pocket book, his oil interest friends, and his clients after 9/11 - the Saudis.

[mburbank]

I'm not thinking of Baker as anything like a whistle blower. I'm wondering what he stood to gain by agreeing to be on the comission. I'd assumed initially that there had been a request for the Bush family Consiglieri to provide face saving cover for W.

It seems to have been a huge waste of nine months time, and I have to wonder what Baker and to a lesser degree Oconnor thought they'd get out of it.

[Abcdxxxx]

Huh? Baker's dirty. What did he get from representing the Saudis against the 9/11 families? Check the commission report and he's pushing the Saudi's agenda from start to finish, including Israel and Iran. Baker Botts takes in 180-365 million anually from the Saudis. The commission was hand packed with people who had Saudi or at least Arab oil money type connections.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/personnel_is_policy_the_case_o.html


That commission told you what you wanted to hear, or what you wanted to believe was an honest summation. You were hoodwinked.

[Preechr]

There really hasn't been so many leaks as there have been the media buying their own conjecture. I did hear that the speech might contain some long needed presidential illumination of some key concepts in the War on Terror, or whatever he plans on calling it.

That to me is the single most important thing that needs to change: The administration needs to spend more time selling what they are doing to the people that are paying for it. Any debate on the issue is useless since the side with all the actual information generally just smiles and says, "Trust Us." I don't like it. I've never liked, though I have gone along with it so far. At this point, however, that political strategy has failed here at home moreso than any military strategy has in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Just as we have done in our discussions here, Bush needs to be defining the terms used in describing this war. What is the War on Terror? What does winning it or losing it look like? What is peace? To make decisions, his administrations has already had to define the terms. Why not share them? By not doing so, detractors are left to argue against the war using whatever definitions of these key concepts they wish, which makes honest debate impossible.

I hope this serious misunderestimation is rectifidoodled with tomorrow night's addressification, though I've grown pretty damn pessimistic about any hopes I might have had that Bush would ever start actually communicating effectively. When it's all said and done, I suspect I'll be agreeing with Max that it was a waste of air-time.

[mburbank]

I think I'll wait for the text of the speech, the newspaper is bound to give a more lifelike presentation.

Alphaboy... I don't even know what to say to you. I'm pretty sure I write clearly, and yet you always see stuff I'm sure I didn't say.

Hoodwinked? What would make you think I thought Baker was anything but a scumbag? Was it where I called him the Bush Family Consigliere? 'Cause that's not a good thing. That's insulting him.

I thought what Baker was trying to do is what the family has always done for junior, ie. bail him out of a mess he's made. Now I'm sure Baker had other desires as well, and I'm fairly certain none of them were altruistic. Even though Baker and I both want US troops out of Iraq, I doubt we want it for the same reasons. I hardly think Baker has had some sort of Grinch Finding Christmas experience.

Since W seems disinclined to do a single thing Baker recomended, it seems like he wasted his time.

Baker Bad Man. Baker self interested. Baker not get what he want. Why Baker try in first place? Why Baker think he get anywhere with junior? Baker very close to Bush family. Why he invest time on panel if he not think outcome be better for him? It puzzling.

Now you go: "Wow Burbank. I can't belive you think Baker's a good guy. He sure fooled you."

[DehydratedPorkMan]

Why were Baker and O'connor willing to participate? Did they have some belief that W. would take up their face saving program, or do they just feel guilty that they are arguably the two people most responsible after katherine Harris for W being President at all?

Friends stick together. It is quite sad.

And what's this I hear about her wanting to run because of Hillary or is that a big old joke?

[Preechr]

Katherine Harris has absolutely no political capital left to spend. That may have been a rumor at one time, but there's no truth behind that now.

Max, do you remember sometime last year Dubya's dad also saying he felt going into Iraq was a mistake? Junior's on a political island when you look at those not currently involved in government. I think that has something to do with Baker's sentiments too.

[Abcdxxxx]

Burbank...is it Wednesday or something? Is that the day your brain stays at home with the kid?

I recall you thought Baker's findings were on the up and up. You liked the recommendations. You talked about it like it was anything but a smoke screen set up to accomodate Saudi Arabian lobby dollars and promote their voice.

Of course you don't like Baker....he wears the wrong color. You did like the findings and that makes you a rube.

[Sethomas]

Rube:
–noun Informal.
an unsophisticated person from a rural area; hick.

Actually, I think most rubes support Bush because Jesus says they should.

[Abcdxxxx]

Then look up the word "Mark" and it might define how stupid you are. Get some slang.

[Sethomas]

:lol you're cute when you say dumb shit, you know that? Because you're incapable of being wrong, you're now a master of the English informal lexicon. I can't really escape the mental image of you peering over a slang thesaurus in unbridled eagerness for a context to use "rubbernecking". I'm sorry, I forgot that your background qualifies you as an expert on slang. I guess I really do need to go get me some of that.

[Abcdxxxx]

Could someone other then Sethomas repost that. It sounds silly coming from him, and I so wanted to be put in my place. K, thanks.

[kahljorn]

:lol you're cute when you say dumb shit, you know that? Because you're incapable of being wrong, you're now a master of the English informal lexicon. I can't really escape the mental image of you peering over a slang thesaurus in unbridled eagerness for a context to use "rubbernecking". I'm sorry, I forgot that your background qualifies you as an expert on slang. I guess I really do need to go get me some of that

handshakes all around!

[Abcdxxxx]

Good dog.

[kahljorn]

Happy to please, rube.

[Grislygus]

Wow. I was very impressed that he took responsibility for "any mistakes made". Call me naive, but I didn't expect that.

[DehydratedPorkMan]

Wow. I was very impressed that he took responsibility for "any mistakes made". Call me naive, but I didn't expect that.

He doesn't understand responsibility. Remember that. This is all a dream happening. I am a dream. Not really though, nobody would dream about me. I may not even exist. This is going nowhere.

I need waffles.

But in the end, W needs to stop digging himself into this 500 mile-deep hole he's made and stop apologizing and creating Vietnam 2.0.

[mburbank]

How is it I keep forgetting that exchanges of any kind with Alphaboy that have an intent beyond humor are pointless?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Can somebody Cliffs Notes the speech for me?

[DehydratedPorkMan]

Is there by any chance it will be on YouTube?
Seriously, I'm not aiming for humor. I just dislike TV. And Bush.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

It wasn't last night, but maybe by now.

[kahljorn]

They had it on foxnews.com along with a transcript, which is what I read. I was considering posting it here ;/

it was basically, INCREASE TROOPS BECAUSE WE DIDNT HAVE ENOUGH TO SECURE AREAS AND BAD GUSY WOULD COME BACK IN AFTER WE CLEARED THE AREA. GOTO TERRORIST REGION WITH 4,000 TROOPS AND SOME IRAQI GUYS AND FORCE THE TERRORISTS OUT.
HELP TURKEY WITH BORDER STUFF.

[derrida]

Basically, the new strategy is like the "strategic hamlets" one used in Viet Nam, where we set up gated communities with high concentrations of US forces and basically focus on keeping those areas safe and productive. I think it can work, if only on a tactical level, as long as sweeps are frequent enough.

The rhetoric has pretty much shifted away from "the primary goal of US troops is training a new Iraqi army."

[kahljorn]

I think there's still a focus on training iraq troops. It has just gotten to the point where we are securing areas that we have already previously secured and then abandoned to be unsecured; that is being recognized as stupid as far as killing guirella fighters goes.
The new strategy is to secure areas and keep them secure.
The second part of the strategy is that there's a certain region of iraq that started with an R where terrorists are currently "massed" and they are sending 4,000 us troops to help the iraqis move them out.

As for the first part of the strategy my girlfriend made the observation that our previous "strategy" amounted to troops and terrorists running around to benny hill music doing the old switcheroo.

Honestly this war isn't being "Fought" but I guess it's hard to fight terrorist forces. Isn't there any historical precendent for fighting small guirella units?

[Preechr]

Nutshell:

Up until now, apparently the strategy has been to kill terrorists wherever they are found and that's about it. This strategy has been limited by the Iraqis to only certain areas, however, like NOT Sadr City. We go in and shoot or capture some bad guys and then leave. The governing ideology behind the leaving part was that we did not want to be seen as "occupiers." The upshot of this strategy is that we were "liberating" the same areas and neighborhoods over and over, just to have terrorists move back in as soon as we left.

Kahljorn's Benny Hill analogy was pretty apt, I suppose.

Now we have extracted various commitments from the Iraqi government, such as the end of off-limits areas and the beginning of a more pro-active Iraqi presence in the hot-spots. Our "surge" will be met with an approximate ratio of about one of our guys to every five or six Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad. They have also pledged $10 billion of THEIR money to reconstruction.

I heard Rudy yesterday comparing the new plan to his method for reducing crime in Manhattan. Baghdad has 9 zones, each of which will be assigned a commander and each of which will be held to metrics measuring their success. As areas are cleaned, our forces will be sticking around to protect them from re-infestation.

In addition to what was said in the speech, I think it's important to note OPEC's sudden and timely drop in oil prices, which hits Iran right in the wallet, and Egypt's sudden and timely call for Iran to butt out in Iraq, which was totally unexpected, at least by me.

[derrida]

Well preechr, it's not as if this strategy hasn't been tried before. In fact, one of the first places we tried it was Fallujah. We also tried it in Tal Afar, which has been more successful.

Kahljorn: Yes, there is precedent for this kind of war, but not exactly parallel. Blowhards like Victor Davis Hanson (who tends to get some credence around here) like to mention the british counterinsurgency against the maylays in the 50's, but the british (actually their chinese proxies brimming with ethnic hate for the maylays) only had to kill 7,000 guerillas over the course of 10 years. Compare that with American generals placing an estimate of 50,000 insurgents killed so far and then stating that the insurgency is in fact growing.

[Preechr]

It's not just about killing people. It's actually all about providing a secure environment where killing people is counterproductive, no matter why you feel killing somebody might be the best way to accomplish your goals.

Additionally, the only reason VDH might be considered popular around here is because I occasionally post some of his articles, and I regretfully admit right here, right now, that it's been a while since I've checked him out... so I'll go get his most current addition to the blowhardedness and post it separately...

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Don't stress it too much, Preech. To derrida VDH is a "blowhard", yet a crappy article from fucking Alternet is somehow really thought provoking....

[Preechr]

Well, I like derrida... He deserves a decent response.

Maybe I'm not exactly why I like him/her, but I like Derrida...

Y'know...