We could lose this situation (IRAQ) CIA says insurgents now 50,000 strong

We could lose this situation
· CIA says insurgents now 50,000 strong
· Crisis talks over transfer of power
Julian Borger in Washington and Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
The Guardian
Thursday November 13, 2003

The White House yesterday drew up emergency plans to accelerate the transfer of power in Iraq after being shown a devastating CIA report warning that the guerrilla war was in danger of escalating out of US control.
The report, an "appraisal of situation" commissioned by the CIA director, George Tenet, and written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, said that the insurgency was gaining ground among the population, and already numbers in the tens of thousands.

One military intelligence assessment now estimates the insurgents' strength at 50,000. Analysts cautioned that such a figure was speculative, but it does indicate a deep-rooted revolt on a far greater scale than the Pentagon had led the administration to believe.

An intelligence source in Washington familiar with the CIA report described it as a "bleak assessment that the resistance is broad, strong and getting stronger".

"It says we are going to lose the situation unless there is a rapid and dramatic change of course," the source said.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

All the more reason to get our butts out of there now!

I notice you awoke before dawn. Did you put your boots on?

:evilgrin:
dbt

Now I'm back and a quart lighter.

If only we had bombed No Korea off the face of the earth we could have won in Korea, if only the service had their way we could have won in Nam and shall I go on? Well Bush does seem to leave a mess in any thing he gets into. Just who will clean up this mess? The rich friends of his father?He may have gone to far, as the dead do not come back even with money.Who is the kid that always has the dirt coming of him in Snoopy? Pigpen?I think we have found him all grown up and he is ours.

And it ain't us.

'We are all just prisoners here, of our own device'
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast

Checkout time is 11-04 and we ain't leaving.

now even bremmer has to go around OSP and the cheery look from
Rummy and Company?

I can almost see it

Bremmer: We need the President to knwo this, things are going to hell

Advisor: SecDef will not let you Sir

Bremmer: Fine, leak it

We could lose? We are losing. We will lose. Colonialism went out with WWII. The neocons thought they could bring it back like bellbottoms. They were dead wrong. The issue isn't Iraq. That, pre-emptive warfare, and American world dominion were a losing proposition from the start.

The issue is the fraudulent police state in power in the US and the media in the US who spread their continuous propaganda. Boycott mainstream media.

By going in with shock and awe, we lost.

Sadly, all the rest of this is just epilogue,

It really fucking pisses me off too because this was one of the points the anti-war movement was trying to get across. There is simply no way the United States could emerge victorious in this conflict, yet alone with the current bunch of moronic thugs in the White House. Instead of listening to this, a fair amount of Americans just ate up the bullshit and waived their fucking flags.

the chickenhawks who tried to batten down the anti-war people and dissenters by saying "the Iraqis will welcome us as liberators"?

They were warned it probably wasn't going to work that way.

They keep saying that military intelligence is bad in Iraq. What if the number is 100k, 200k, huh? What if the whole Falluja is turning into resistance stronghold and that is 250k people?
Bremer, the victim of self-delusion, his residence gets bombarded twice a day and he says everything is cool, folks? He should take a walk on the streets of Baghdad and we will see who is a hero.

...at the ground level from actual fire-fights, etc. My personal guess is that there is probably AT LEAST another 50,000 to 100,000 that we HAVEN'T identified at all. These guys aren't wearing uniforms and look like any other "pacified" Iraqi during the day, right?

Another thing to think about is the fact that out of a population of 22,000,000, the Iraqis probably have about 4,000,000 combat-age people. How many of those are fighting for the resistance is anybody's guess...but IMHO, whatever that number is now, it will grow over time.

During the Vietnam War we were constantly underestimating the number of troops we were facing, and overestimating the number of enemy killed. There was political pressure to lower the number of live enemy so that people back home would believe victory was "in sight", and to increase the number of dead (by counting each body part as a single enemy dead) so that good "results" could be reported up the chain of command.

It's not just how many of the population can fight us now, but how many will grow up seeing first-hand the damage the US has inflicted and developing a deep-seated hatred of us? We are sowing the seeds of a whole new generation of terrorists who, ironically, wouldn't have existed without our "war on terror" in the first place.

is "not over" "bush has won 2 wars." Never in my wildest imagination could I imagine us losing a so-called war. We've gone into 2 countries now and there is nothing but utter chaos with our military being killed everyday - for what? This is like the Boy Scout helping the old lady across the street that didn't want to go.

and I question whether the U.S. media will dare to pick it up.

Today will tell if this will be another triumph for our Great Patriotic Media.

Instead, I'm sure we'll get scads of time on Laci Peterson and the Senate lock-in party for the driveling right wing.

Rosie O'Donnell....

CNN has a crawler going, but nothing from talking heads

Good Morning America had "announced" it as a 2nd lead in story, but I didn't see a "report" on it - they went from the repug senate marathon right into "Rosie" story

on the bright side - they were "reporting" it as a LEAKED report

MSNBC had it as a crawler also

"It says we are going to lose the situation unless there is a rapid and dramatic change of course," the source said.

Hard to to, when you're sliding into an abyss.

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Chechnya ...

And you thought that shrub meant when he wanted to see democracy installed.

Where in history did you see a democracy installed in under a year? This is a long term commitment if he meant it.

The war profiteering will be complete by early nexy year...the oil flow and who controls it will be in place...no reason to hang around.

When Americans lost thier media...we lost the search for truth.

If the insurgents keep attacking, and the attacks keep growing, and they're targeting pipelines and oil installations, I can't imagine that this will suddenly just magically dry up. If they're against us and want us out, they're not going to be that friendly to ANY American interests there, especially those perceived to be in place to exploit THEIR oil. It would actually please me greatly to see Halliburton lose its collective shirt on this. I hope this turns out to be a bad investment for all of those pirates!

But they already have ALL of ours, and our kids, and our grandkids, if there is even a planet left for them.

For crying out loud, people have been trying to install democracy in the U.S. for over 225 years, and that mission is far from accomplished.

Of course, we also have internal resistance fighters who are trying to PREVENT the installation of democracy. Right now they're operating under the trade name "Republicans."

the situation there is a mess and getting messier.
this whole thing makes me sick.

eom

I guess, technically, he wasn't lying, unless your definition of Nation Building is scamming U.S. taxpayers out of billions for the likes of Halliburton.

Means the same thing, so why choose the French term? Because "rebel" is too clear and too likely to bring them sympathy?

Just asking....

...but, by our own definition, wouldn't WE be the terra-ists in this situation ??


Why don't any of the sheeple see that ? (rhetorical question)



:hippie:

Calling junior an imposture or afake is what we should refer to this junior president.

terrorists. I heard bremer say it several times yesterday. I believe they are using this like the 9/11=saddam ploy. Unfortunately it make work on the murkins....

Not 'rebels' or 'insurgents'. Both those terms imply that the Chalabi/Bremer 'government' is legitimate! Iraqis are fighting for their freedom from foreign occupation, no more, no less!

What's in a label?

Sure doesn't sound as bad as terrorist.

patriots? they are fighting for their country against and invading force
:evilgrin:

Remember "evil-doers"? I miss that one.

Welcome to DU :toast:

the different terms used to identify all of these characters. Remember "Enemy combatants" vs. "prisoners of war"? Terrorists, insurgents, ........

Then do an analysis of who uses what terms.

I SAW Tenet say that saddam was unlikely to ever use bio/chem *unless* he was attacked- this was when nearly everyone was convinced he had them- and that carried no weight. We attacked, defective gear and all.

...because he knew Iraq didn't have any WMDs.

The CIA report has weight now because the CIA leaked the report to the media rather than delivering it directly to the WH.

(both in LBN) In one a Gen in Iraq estimates the insurgents to number 5,000. In the other we're told that the insurgents have intel far superior to ours. That's USAToday, I think. Both would seem to muddy the reliability of this new CIA report. (or *attempts* to muddy it)

to scrap this report and go invent some numbers that look better!

Françoise

this is going to be a losing proposition.

We..the many and the sane saw the writing on the wall at the beginning...this was a no win situation...Dont look at historical precedent..ignore the advice of world leaders...bury the truth in rethoric.

...is that Bremer is heading back there with "some proposals from the president."

like he's demanding of the Senate today.
You Iraqi's vote up or down for democracy in 24 hours.
Up, we stay and rape your country of all it's riches
Down, well cut out and bomb your little country to hell.
The proposal is filled with another childish tantrum.

in fact, we already lost.

We lost before it started.

bring the troops home now

www.kucinich.us

we'll be expediting our exit?

Guess not, just reached the bottom of the article....

However, the secretary of state, Colin Powell insisted: "We are committed to the governing council and are prepared to help them in any way we can."

"We're looking at all sorts of ideas, and we do want to accelerate the work of reform," Mr Powell said.

"We want to accelerate the work of putting a legal basis under the new Iraqi government and we are doing everything we can to get the governing council equipped with everything they need."

I'm overloading on the spin--help!