Scathing or Real? – Moon of Alabama

June 19, 2005

Scathing or Real?

Atrios pointed; to a Boston Globe piece about Iraq, that has an interesting bit on Iran.

A former Pentagon official, journalist, and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, a man with considerable political and military knowledge, came back from a fact-finding trip in Iraq …

In a report to the council, Gelb was scathing about America efforts to train an Iraqi army. ”If you ask any Iraqi leader, they will tell you these people can’t fight. They just aren’t trained. And yet we’re cranking them out like rabbits." As for plans to train a 10 division Iraqi army by next year, Gelb was scathing. ”It became very apparent to me that these 10 divisions were to fight some future war against Iran. It had nothing to do, nothing to do," with taking Iraq over from the Americans and fighting the insurgents.

The Boston Globe author refers to Gelb’s CFR talk 10 days in Iraq. There Gelb says:

If you ask any Iraqi leader, they will tell you these people can’t fight. They just aren’t trained. And yet we’re cranking them out like rabbits. I’m going to leave the names out of here because I really do admire the people involved, and I know what political pressure is. I said, "Well, where is all this heading?" And no kidding, he said to me, "A 10-division Iraqi armed force." And I lost it at that point, the only time in the whole trip I just lost it. I said, "Ten divisions! The United States Army has 10 divisions!" And he said, "And two mechanized divisions." I said, "We have two mechanized divisions! You’re going to create an Iraqi army as big as the American Army? Are you nuts?" And then the next PowerPoint chart comes up: "Well, we need a division here and we need a division here and we need a division"–it became very apparent to me that these 10 divisions were to fight some future war against Iran. It had nothing to do–nothing to do–with taking that country over from us and fighting the insurgents. It made no sense to me. It was the single-most disturbing conversation I had ..

Why doesn´t this make sense? And is Gelb really scathing here or did he miss his portion of Kool Aid and this is for real?

Posted by b on June 19, 2005 at 16:20 UTC | Permalink

Comments

US Computer Diplomacy Failing in China
Microsoft’s Ballmer Charges WCD’s
by Steve Baker and Erin Hannegan
Warshington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 19, 2005
*New York* – The Microsoft administration’s rhetoric towards the Chinese world
has become a blitzkreig. And it’s taking no prisoners.
Speaking before the United Nations Friday, Microsoft Chairman William
Gates and his Chief of Staff Steven Ballmer charged that China’s attempts to
undermine the Microsoft Windows monopoly with a low-cost version of the
popular Red Hat Linux program, dubbed “Chinux” by a wildly gesticulating
Ballmer, represents a “weapon of computer destruction” (WCD) that
threatens the entire civilized Office world.
Microsoft’s rabidly aggressive stance is already undermining U.S. credibility
in the computer industry, with a well-placed U.S. official warning about “the gap
between Microsoft’s rhetoric and a global reality.”
Gates’ demands come as a US Computer Accountability Office report released
this month criticized the Bush Administration for failing to develop a strategy to
improve the image of the Windows operating system as “recent polling data
show that anti-Wintelism is spreading and deepening around the world.”
“Such anti-Microsoft sentiments can increase foreign public support for Chinux
terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of computer
operations, weaken the United States’ ability to align with other nations in pursuit
of Windows IT policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics’ enthusiasm for U.S.
computer business services and products, specifically Windows,” the report warned.
Gates called upon the United Nations to form a coalition of computer experts to
undertake what he called a “regime change” in China, effectively disarming the
Chinese Linux beta testing program, dubbed “Yellow Cookie” by Chinese IT officials,
who are hoping to break the Office lockstep Microsoft is forcing upon their country.
Ballmer brushed off such Chinese claims at strongman belly-bumping.
Holding up a copy of Red Hat Linux in one hand, and a copy of Chairman Mao’s
Little Red Book in the other, Ballmer visably trembled, “Do we have to draw you a
picture!? There is a growing threat of global IT domination by a communist regime!
They have the WCD’s, they have the testing program, and they can reach our shores
in 45 minutes through the Internet!”
President Bush directed Defense Department Chief Don Rumsfeld to begin assembling
a battalion of computer warriors in advance of possible UN coalition action against China.
Microsoft stock soared on the news, and the price of Windows XP doubled on the speculation,
as eager buyers swooped into stores ahead of the disappearance of any competing OS software.
© 2005 The Warshington Post Company

Posted by: tante aime | Jun 19 2005 16:28 utc | 1

Nice catch, b.
Really, Bush has the Iran “election” results needed to justify an attack. There’s no way the Bush Doctrine will accommodate a nuclerar Iran. No way. The war will certainly be widened to include Syria & Iran.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 19 2005 16:38 utc | 2

@tante aime – the Warshington Post – I don´t thinks Buffet will invest there.

Posted by: b | Jun 19 2005 16:40 utc | 3

I think they *want* to attack Iran and/or Syria but I think the slow-boil shit at home is going to derail them. Ain’t 2002 anymore.

Posted by: Lupin | Jun 19 2005 17:30 utc | 4

This may be a stretch, and possibally a dumb question, but if anyboby read my link on “Bin Laden in Iran” Timmerman says “we don’t need to invade Iran. We’ve got a tremendous asset in the Iranian people.”
And here the stretch, what if this fool really means “we don’t need to invade Iran. We’ve got a tremendous asset in the Iraqi people.” Read Iraqi divisions to go into Iran as a buffer proxy vangard conseqently, letting out some perverse truth unknowingly. Perhaps, his hubris in faulting his book for greed, he may know something.
Is that to far fetched in my thinking?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 19 2005 18:17 utc | 5

faulting= flaunting his book…grrrr sorry.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 19 2005 18:20 utc | 6

Makes no sense whatsoever.

Posted by: Friendly Fire | Jun 19 2005 19:35 utc | 7

It makes sense in BushJunta World. (sort of like Disney World, but instead you have to deal with insane leaders who send people to their deaths without forethought.)
They do not want to have a draft. They claim they want an all volunteer army because it’s lean and mean, but in reality they know they’ll go down faster than Jeff Gannon in the Lincoln Bedroom.
So, in the weird Rummy world, it makes sense to train the Iraqis to fight a war for the neocons, because they are just that stupid…and isn’t that what they did with the mujahadeen, in a way…armed them to fight Russia? Weren’t all the cold wars proxy wars?
The joke will be that the Iraqis will train an army that turns on the U.S. when the rest of the world decides to invade to get rid of them when our electoral and constitutional processes fail…I’d guess in, oh say, seven years, with Bush III, aka Jebthro and his theocratic v.p.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 19 2005 20:09 utc | 8

I can not see how anyone would get an Iraqi national army to fight Iran, especially not when it was doing so blatantly in the service of the occupier (i.e., USA). Iraq and Iran battled it out viciously for 8 years in the 80s and both nations lost an incredible number of soldiers. So they have a very realistic idea of what they would be getting into. And with Saddam gone, why would Iran and Iraq fight each other? Iraq is more friendly now to Iran than any time in decades.

Posted by: maxcrat | Jun 19 2005 20:23 utc | 9

Amazing, how all this and the British memos don’t faze our witless leader. Pull the string on the back of his neck for the same handful of phrases over and over and over and over….

Posted by: catlady | Jun 19 2005 20:26 utc | 10

Maybe I’m dense, b, but I don’t understand your final question. What’s contradictory between Gelb being “scathing” and the plans being “for real”?
Sounds to me as if the Bushites’ plans for the Iraqi army are for real, albeit insane and doomed, and that Gelb is pointing that out scathingly.

Posted by: ralphbon | Jun 19 2005 20:59 utc | 11

b- before the war, six generals testified about how wrong it would be to invade Iraq…and were ignored BushCo.
General Shinseki was given the “see ya” for accurately noting that Rummy was not allowing for enough troops, as was General Zinni.
Not all in the military are Millers and Myers. Not all in the military are like the Air Force talibornagains…but a volunteer army makes sure that the talibornagains are disproportionately represented when many of them are from southern states that are always in the last places as far as education, etc…places like Roy Moore country where he is still on his crusade to have the fundie version of god acknowledged as the source of the American govt.
I took it to mean that, like Hagel and Durbin and others (the republican from NC with Kuchinich and the moderate repub who all combined to talk about setting a timetable for withdrawing troops), people think that it is more dangerous to allow BushCo to continue their disasterous policies than it is to speak out against them.
That’s a good thing. It may mean that the majority of Americans are willing to admit some truths about incurious George.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 19 2005 21:08 utc | 12

Billmon picks up Gilb’s observation. Comment thread on Billmon’s take here

Posted by: b | Jun 19 2005 22:21 utc | 13

BigNews from GulfNews
Iraq threatens Iran with military action as tensions flare
Friday 17th June, 2005
Fears are emerging in the Middle East of the prospect of military conflict between Iraq and Iran.
Friday’s front page story in the Gulf News, the widest circulating English newspaper in the region, says tensions between Iran and Iraq have escalated in recent weeks.
The newspaper says threats of military action have been made, attributing its source to a senior member of Iraq’s security forces.
General Nazim Mohammad, chief of Iraq’s Border Police in Muntheria, told Gulf News in an interview at his headquarters, on the Iraq-Iran frontier, his forces had come under small arms fire from Iran. Iranian troops had also fired mortars which exploded on Iraqi soil, he said.
American officers confirmed there had been mortar strikes, which they said appeared to hit no-man’s land between Iraqi and Iranian lines.
When contacted, Laith Kubba, spokesman for the Iraqi Government, told the newspaper, “I don’t have any information on this. But these could be smuggling groups which are usually armed. This is not the first time it has happened.”
Iranian officials and media, however, cast doubt on the claim. Mosib Nuaimi, Editor-in-Chief of Al Wesaq newspaper, told Gulf News from Iran: “How can mortar shells fall without anyone seeing them? After the recent explosions in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, security has been boosted. But I haven’t heard of any tension on the border.”
According to Gen Nazim, however, he and other Iraqi officials were sent by the Ministry of Interior to a meeting with Iranian authorities recently.
“I told the Iranians, mortars from the Iranian side are often being fired on the Iraqi side. I have ordered my soldiers, if Iranian soldiers come close to us, we will open fire directly. If I capture your soldiers, I told them, I will parade them on TV in front of the entire world,” he told Gulf News.
Gen Nazim, who is believed to be well respected by U.S. forces, said his men had arrested several Iranians involved in sabotage.
“We captured three men and there is proof they blew up oil pipelines near Nuft Khaneh under the orders of Iranian intelligence officers,” he said. “They had people working with them in Baquba too.”

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jun 20 2005 5:40 utc | 14

@John Francis Lee
Hmmm, sounds just like the material the Pentagon’s disbanded ‘Office of Strategic Influence’ or it’s $300M outsourced operators would concoct for publication in the ‘foriegn’ press. Gulf papers are ideal as they are totally controlled by our puppet governments.
Yes, rather unimaginative, yet very reminiscient of:

In the statement, “The bigger the lie, the more the people believe in it,” said by Hitler, what did he mean?
============
He meant just that. Literally. Let us read the following BBC report of 31 August 1939:
“There have been reports of an attack on a (German) radio station in Gleiwitz, which is just across the Polish border. The German News Agency reports that the attack came about 8.00 pm this evening when the Poles forced their way into the studio and began broadcasting a statement in Polish. Within quarter of an hour says reports, the Poles were overpowered by German police, who opened fire on them. Several of the Poles were reported killed, but the numbers are not yet known.”
The next day, 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.
In fact the Gleiwitz event was a false, a fake attack fabricated by the German Gestapo and the special operations section of the Security Service of the SS, led by the Sturmbannfuhrer (major) SS Alfred Naujocks (1911-1960). The killed “Poles” were prisoners from a concentration camp, drugged by epidemic injections and dressed posthumously with Polish uniforms. The same day Naujokcs and his men “attacked” also a German forestry station and destroyed a German customs building.
Everyone in Germany believed that Poland had attacked a German boarder town. This false attack, this big lie, gave Hitler the excuse he needed in order to invade Poland.
Hitler’s big lie led to World War II, the biggest war ever. – Jean Nakos

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 20 2005 6:19 utc | 15

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