WaPo: White House pushes troop buildup; Joint Chiefs say NO!

WaPo: White House pushes troop buildup; Joint Chiefs say NO!
by EZ writer
Mon Dec 18, 2006

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are UNANIMOUSLY opposed to a near-term buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq, but the White House keeps pushing.

FROM WaPo http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801477.html



The Joint Chiefs appear to have had enough of this.
Of course, so have the American people. A poll last week showed only 12 percent favor sending more troops to Iraq.
http://www.latimes.com/...

More from WaPo:



This would be rather stunning if Bush went against the UNANIMOUS advice of the Joint Chiefs.

more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/12/18/222551/78

as they were of Rummie.

and dems in some power.

It would be logistically difficult, and apparently goes against the judgement of the Joint Chiefs, in toto, for moral reasons ...

I am sure a YES General could keep troops at their stations beyond their scheduled leave, but a GOOD General recognizes that he has a duty to the soldiers to honor their rotation schedules. and to respect the service of the troops by getting them OUT when their time is up ....

These Generals are saying 'enough', apparently ...

I applaud them ...

That being said : What is the possibility of a military coup against an insane US administration ?

Kinda scary, I think ...

specifically i am curious if it may be 30k may be out of the question because now our military is spread too thin and they just cannot do it?

thanks to your ???s

But "reason" will not sway the "bush" in my opinion...kp

the specific reasoning of the generals for later time. this would be be far not the first time these soldiers have been redeployed. it has been harmful to our service this action. this one more must be too much and good for generals to speak out.

and understanding that the american people are against the war. I wish it were so, but don't think that is the motive. That said, this is wonderful news.

Recount of the 2000 elections, in Dade County Florida.

there they are...unbelievable.

That is precisely the reason that Bush will want to send more troops. Nothing bothers him as much as people advising to do something he doesn't want to do. Like the petulant child that he is, he go against their advice just to show who's in charge.

all along those in iraq have said they needed more, and he said listening to them and they dont want more. now they dont want to send more.... last i heard from snow he says he will listen to generals but he decides.

Chimperor Codpiece is incapable of taking expert advice - unless there's a clear profit in it for him.

aren't they

Joint chiefs didn't ask for them; have no provisions for them; have no plans for them.

Because the WH wants to look like they are doing something, the Joint Chiefs now have a 40,000 problem.

There have been leaks and op-ed ruminations galore concerning the "surge" option, but there is no clear public position from Shrub or his government as to what the "surge" would do.

The most fundamental question is whether it means to go after Al Sadr and the Mehdi Army. We have been to this spot before, more than once, and most pointedly in August of 2004, when we launched an offensive in the city of Najaf and publicly announced the objective of arresting Sadr and destroying his militia. After a couple of weeks of fighting, a deal was engendered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani who organized a peaceful march of the faithful into the line of fire between the Americans and the Mehdi Army. Rather than reckon with the consequences of shooting up Sistani's demonstration, the offensive was called off, and Sadr returned to Baghdad where he remains today, more powerful than ever.

This time around, we would not be fighting him in a single mosque -- we would be in a street fight within the city of Baghdad. Air power and armor would give our troops a realistic chance of winning a shootout with Sadr's irregular forces, but at the cost of destoying the city scape, as in Fallujah.

I would expect the Joint Chiefs (as well as anybody not high on crack) to regard that as a foolish option. There are several million inhabitants of Baghdad, and if they decide, en masse, to repeat Sistani's strategy, the Green Zone itself would be in serious jeopardy.


An altogetehr different "surge" option would ignore Sadr and the Shiites, but instead go after "the insurgents" in Anbar province. The problem with this idea is that the insurgents have been fighting guerrilla style from the outset, and they are unlikely to stand and fight, obliging us to do Fallujah yet again, this time with a few thousand more pairs of boots on the ground. In the implausible event that such a surge could actually curtail the insurgency's capacity to make mayhem, it leaves the Shiites in total control of the Iraqi state, and makes Sadr's militia the predominant force in the country.

The problem with this bold stroke is that it accomplishes nothing of significance at a very high cost. Why not just let Sadr have it out with Sunnis, then? Why should Americans die for the cause of a Shiite theocracy?


A third option is to exercise both of these idiotic options. Since neither has a prayer of succeeding on its own terms, and since defeat is not an option for our determined Commander In Chief, the War President, the Big Decider -- I'm thinking we're going for Door Number Three, the worst of both worlds. War against both sides of the ongoing civil war.



With luck, the Joint Chiefs will face down our clown prince. It is long past time that he be told NO.

Well spoken, DaveT ... and welcome to DU ....

I think you have nailed the 'strategy' of the surge down as an ultimate failure ....

The only 'surge' I could envision working is the one establishing a staging area for a planned exit ....

The numbskulls who started this mess really have no chance of 'fixing it', so why even bother trying ? ....

There is ONE cause for the LOSS of Iraq, and that is the vanity of those who decided to go there in the first place .....

George W. Bush lost this war because he started this war .... 30,000 new troops cannot change that ...

Let us hope somebody stands up to the idiot and makes him stop this foolish assault upon a country which can only hurt us as long as we hang out on their streets.

The congress had damn well better end the funding come January.

the word they prefer we not use is escalation

More people to evacuate from the embassy rooftop.

our troops in combat, particularly when it's for political rather than national security purposes . . . they've seen their buddies blown to bits, they've had to notify new widows of their husbands' demise, they've seen the devastation that war inflicts on a country and its populace . . .

and, for the most part, they hate it . . . most believe that war should be a REAL last resort that we engage in ONLY when it's absolutely necessary to protect our nation and its people . . . since those instances are few and far between, it might not be inaccurate to posit that career military officers (my dad was one) are among the most anti-war citizens among us -- even if they can't explicitly express it . . .

Ha. The Joint Chiefs finally grow a spine with Rumsfeld gone. Guess they are tired of Smirky playing GI Joe with their military.

says "there is too and I am gunna show you" "I'm the Decider" and stomps his foot...:shrug: I am soo glad the "adults" took over the country in 2001...

was that just for show?

:rofl:

needs to make to satisfy is thirst for blood? Are we dealing with a satanic cult?

where are they going to get these troops? that is why the Joint Chiefs oppose it.

After all, he's the "Decider".

The corpomedia is spinning like spiders...

what the german generals felt about hitler when they knew the war was over and they only wanted to save what was left of the german military. we have reached that moment in time. he likes to think of himself as truman but he does`t have the balls to fire them like truman fired macarthur during the korean war. what is frightning is that bush has reached the point where has lost the people and the military so will he disregard or accept this fact. only he can descide

These are some arrogant mo fo's.