Tuesday, May 11, 2004 :::
 
And important fact to remember, and then back to the sewers.

The guys over at Powerline raised an interesting and vital point yesterday, and that is that Falujah and Nasra have not gone all to hell. They refer to them as the “crises of the week” of two weeks ago, and there I disagree with them. It is still a serious situation. But the fact is that central and southern Iraq have not fallen apart, and Sadr is taking some losses.

Which is a testimony to the fact that most Iraqis want this thing to turn out well, and many thanks to Powerline for emphasizing it.

And more power to the Iraqis. We should be doing better than we are doing out of respect for them.

Rummy, yet again.

There are two aspects to the “preparation for the post-war administration of Iraq” question. One centers on troop levels, and the other is more complex: what should we have planned for?

We will deal with the first today.

The defenders of Donald Rumsfeld like to quote something he has taken to saying just recently: if his commanders had simply asked him for more troops, he would have sent them.

Case closed.

Oh, really?

We must remember that in the run-up to the war the Administration publicly humiliated and fired two people who simply expressed an opinion about what the liberation of Iraq would cost in money and people, and they were not minor people: the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Army Chief of Staff.

We must also remember that both of them were right, and enthusiasts for Rummy still disparage them nonetheless.

The simple fact is, if the Commander in Chief and the SecDef shoot anyone who dares disagree with them, no one will disagree with them.

It is inconceivable that the commander of Abu Ghraib prison did not communicate to his superiors that he was severely understaffed. And it is very likely that his commander passed it up at least as far as the Division commander, and it probably came back to “the Building.” Where the news probably died because nobody wanted to be told that they “just don’t get it.”

So it is nice of Secretary Rumsfeld to say that now. He should have said that in the Fall of 2002.

And we needed more troops. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that it was sending more prison guards. Great time to close the barn door, guys.

The second question is indeed more vexed, and that is, what should we have planned for?

This is quite enough for today, but we will leave with this thought: the Red Cross is saying that it is Coalition officials who say that 90 percent of the prisoners who have been taken are innocent. In other words, the prosecutors think they have the wrong guys.

Guys who have lost a year of their lives.

Guys who have been stripped naked in front of women, when their religion will not allow them to strip naked in front of other men.

Guys who probably really hate the US right now. And it is hard to blame them.

And with that happy thought, we will take a break for today.


::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 11:42 AM


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