One Utah

Recently, Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) said at a town hall meeting, “General Petraeus tells me we have a one in four chance that Bush’s plan will work.” [Thanks to Talking Points Memo for flagging this.] Meanwhile a group of governors was told at a White House briefing that there is no backup strategy for Iraq. Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a simple way of summarizing the administration’s position, Governor Phil Bredesen (D-TN) recalled. “Plan B was to make Plan A work.”

Everyone in Washington knows that the only possible Plan B is withdrawal, but most are afraid to say so even though the much-heralded Baghdad security plan is failing already in the early stages of implementation.

Juan Cole, writing in Salon, offers this analysis:

The U.S. strategy assumes that if violence can be dramatically reduced in Baghdad and Anbar, that will give the al-Maliki government breathing room and allow it to assert itself more forcefully. But so far the government hasn’t been afforded much relief from the horrific attacks that daily undermine its credibility with the public and provoke destabilizing tribal and religious feuds. That matters, because if Iraqis do not feel that their government can protect them from violence, they will turn again to guerrillas and militiamen. These paramilitary forces, based in the neighborhoods, in turn carry out ethnic cleansing and attacks on police, and further undermine the authority of the central government.

Sadly, the Democrats on Capitol Hill have ditched the popular plan offered by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and have gone to their own Plan B at the insistence of “Blue Dog” Dems like Rep. Jim Matheson. The Democrats’ new compromise plan fails to address the fact that there is nothing more the USA can accomplish militarily in Iraq, as Murtha pointed out more than 15 months ago. It also allows President Bush to waive critical standards for training and equipping units prior to deployment. More than three years ago, Bush asserted the right to violate these Pentagon rules in a signing statement attached to the FY 2004 Defense Authorization Act.

Speaking for the Democratic Progressive Caucus, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) expressed skepticism of the watered-down legislation offered today by Speaker Pelosi:

“No more chances. No more waivers. No phony certifications. No more sending billions of dollars to send our children into the meat grinder that is Iraq,” she said. “It is time to spend the money to keep them safe and bring them home.”

About 70 House Democrats refuse to let Bush stay the course. They support the alternative “Lee Amendment,” named after author and Progressive Caucus co-chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), that calls for the “continued protection of members of the Armed Forces … and Department of Defense contractor personnel” and fully funding “the safe and complete withdrawal from Iraq of all members of the Armed Forces and contractor personnel … not later than December 31, 2007.” It’s not “cut and run” but “fund and run.”

UPDATE: Greg Sargent on TPM has some reportage on behind-the-scenes tensions yesterday in the Democratic caucus. Mother Jones has an excellent feature on the human and dollar costs of multiple tours of duty in Iraq. IraqSlogger reports on the findings of the Center for American Progress: “the active Army today is recklessly stretched far beyond recommended use, ultimately hurting our troops and dangerously depriving our country of the strategic reserves necessary to respond to true crises.”

This entry was posted Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Disaster, George W. Bush, Iraq, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.