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November 30, 2005
WB: A Strategy for Victory
Comments
Top of page 4: “We will do everything it takes to win.”
Everything. Obviously.
(According to their definition of winning.)
Posted by: teuton | Nov 30 2005 16:54 utc | 1
And drugs. Lots of drugs. Very good drugs that poor people probably can’t afford. Obviously high-grade mind-altering agents are the key to victory, because only somebody totally whacked out of their mind could read this without spewing milk through their nose (assuming, of course, you’re drinking milk while you read this).
Posted by: Aigin | Nov 30 2005 16:57 utc | 2
I’m surprised he didn’t mention that other essential ingredient that certain Americans associate with victory.
Posted by: roro | Nov 30 2005 17:32 utc | 3
Plan for Victory:
1) Drink the Kool-Aid;
2) Now, Kiss the Ring;
3) Don’t Stop Shopping!
4) Sleep, Baby, Sleep.
All your transgressions
will be forgiven. The
Fed is a Kompassionate
Konservative Kabal (KKK).
That is all. Back to work.
Posted by: Gary Uttermeyer | Nov 30 2005 19:01 utc | 4
Top of Page 13 under the heading Victory Will Take Time: Our Strategy Is Working.
Posted by: Col. Walter Kurtz | Nov 30 2005 22:07 utc | 7
Shrub is a grocery clerk sent to collect a bill for a field of Gardenias.
Posted by: No Method | Nov 30 2005 22:10 utc | 8
A little reality check here …
If the military forces of the worlds only superpower, using over ten ‘first world’ heavy combat divisions and numerous brigades from the Army and the Marines Corps with effectively the full resources our intelligence agencies can muster as well as a veritable pseudo-army of mercenaries (security contractors) supported by instant ‘on call’ Combat Air Patrols (CAP) from the Air Force cannot, after 2 1/2 years even ‘suppress’ an insurgency armed with little more than small arms and IEDs … how the F__k can Iraqi, at best ‘third rate’ re combat effectiveness, armed with small arms and pickup trucks, and a few months training and experience be expected to ‘win’ when fighting their own fellow citizens ?
The new weapon of this American occupation is the Stryker in which Colby Buzzell sits and reads his Orwell, listens to his iPod, and occasionally peeks out to man, sometimes a little blindly, his M240 Bravo machine gun.
The much more porous Humvee is anathema to Buzzell, and really the Stryker’s only competition is the laptop, with its DVD player, on which Buzzell finally gets to see the men who mortar their compound every dayone of the Iraqi translators working at the base picks up a training video from the insurgency in town.
Instead of the frantic, fearful mortarmen he’d imagined, the video “showed three Iraqi men, all wearing black ski masks, laying out the mortars all nice and neat and all in a row in broad daylight.
It showed these masked mortarmen taking their time prepping the mortar tube and getting the mortars ready with no feeling of being rushed or any fear whatsoever of being caught or blown to bits by nearby U.S. forces.
Then the camera pans onto our forward operating base, where you can see the water tower, chow hall, and guard towers…. They patiently fired seven or eight mortars, and then they stopped and slowly packed up their equipment, and then they all drove away in an old beat car.”
Hello ? Why are the press and the ‘talking heads’ even giving the Preznit the time of day … the premise of his speechifying is absurd … it deserves only one thing … open, loud and determined ridicule.
We blew any chance of ‘victory’ in the first three months of the invasion … since then the military situation has only grown progressively worse. Despite the supposed fig leafs of political success touted by Bush&Co the only measure that counts, daily attacks by insurgents and subsequent casualties, has steadily and determinedly increased, and will continue to do so.
The disparagement of Iraqi security forces by American troops was so widespread that Mr. Murtha was surprised when one soldier “started talking about how good they are, how much they’ve improved, and so forth.”
It was a miscommunication. The congressman soon realized that the soldier was talking about how much the insurgents had improved; how they had become more sophisticated, and thus “more deadly.”
Bush has told us his vision of ‘victory’, what would constitute Victory for the terrorists ?:
Cavalierly killing (~100,000), detaining (83,000) and torturing large numbers of innocent civilians by using ‘at best’ questionable means or conduct “would be a victory for the terrorists.”
Not being able to provide clean water, electricity or basic health care to the citizens “would be a victory for the terrorists.”
Overcharging for services and otherwise blatant corrupt profiteering off the resources of the citizens of the (United States and Iraq) “would be a victory for the terrorists.”
Not having and never gaining the support of the majority of citizens of the world or of the free world or of Iraq “would be a victory for the terrorists.”
Continuing to misrepresent insurgent forces that are in the overwhelming majority (~94-96%) ordinary Iraqis as “terrorists”, making the “terrorists” appear larger and stronger than they really are while disparaging and demonizing the Iraqi people making up the actual insurgency, the ‘right to resist foreign occupation’ Iraqis – “would be a victory for the terrorists.” – .
The Iraqis feel no differences between Saddam’s era and life under the occupation, both are equally horrible and inhumane. Many believe the current situ is far, far worse.
Is this the democracy the American president claimed in the run to bring war to the country? The U.S. has brought the Iraqis nothing but extra jails, lack of freedom, blatant corruption and colonial style cronyism, destruction of their economy and national infrastructure, the right to be arbitrarily detained without charge, the right to be tortured, executed by roving death squads, lack of transparency and usurpation of their most basic rights such as clean water, untainted by raw sewerage.
“I would definitely say that Baghdad is enemy territory,” said Colonel Lanza, a member of the first cavalry division responsible for patrolling a wide area of Baghdad with a population of l.3 million.
Captain Peter McCulloch of the Black Watch: “The enemy is everywhere and nowhere. I see children, women and old men; the young men have vanished. But we know as the fighting has shown that we are the hated enemy. The children and the women are no longer afraid.
“One young girl in simple English said to me: ‘If I were older and strong enough I would kill you.’ This was no casual remark for I knew she would not have batted an eyelid in executing that oath.
“How often have we been taunted by young boys and above all girls? Their pet word is ‘scum’, which hits the bullseye.”
Our Global War on Terra is nothing more that a battle for the hearts and minds of world opinion, and we are losing it, if we haven’t already fundamentally lost ‘it’.
America has squandered the worlds ‘opinion’ capital in the wake of the attacks of 9/11 when the world was held spellbound by the sight of firefighters and police running into collapsing buildings to rescue innocent victims of true terrorism.
We have never been baser than since the world saw a few graphic photos of American soldiers torturing captives in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year, and not even the most egregious of those events. Rumsfelds solution – banning cameras … Cheneys solution – the new Amerikan Gulag and the horrors of the secretly tortured and ‘disappeared’.
In the end, we have to decide whether we are fighting for our (claimed ?) true ideals or if we are simply combatants in a conflict without moral boundaries.
To have chosen wrongly, is to have already lost and therefore Bushs talk of ‘victory’ merely a passing and hollow, shrill note.
Guerrillas never win wars but their adversaries often lose them.
– Charles W. Thayer
November 4, 2005 Jane’s Defence Weekly
The United States is moving to train Iraqi police and soldiers to deal with the roadside bombs that are the favored weapon of insurgents in Iraq, while also beginning the process of handing over its advanced technology for disrupting those bombs.
However, the Iraqi police and armed forces are believed to be heavily infiltrated by members of the insurgency, and U.S. officials are concerned that handing over the counter-IED technology – the details of which are highly classified – would, in effect, be giving secrets to the enemy.
“Some of it, of course, will be used against us,” said one U.S. military official, speaking at a conference in Washington, “but we have to accept some risk if we are going to make any progress.”
my 0.02 cents is up
Posted by: Outraged | Dec 1 2005 3:00 utc | 9
Well said Outraged. I guess the real issue isn’t whether this week’s BushCo excuse for the slaughter of fellow humans has any rationality or coherency to it, which it plainly doesn’t. The real issue is whether his attempt to recreate the Nuremberg Rally will find any resonance with his ‘fellow amerikans’.
I hoope he has done his dash in that regard and not only for the sake of the long suffering Iraqis. World opinion was sorely tested when Bush was re-elected in 2004, so any substantial positive response to this blatant fascism will be the final nail in the coffin of empathy for that well known amerikan Joe Q Public.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 1 2005 3:32 utc | 10
Like everything else for this administration, the perception of victory/democracy is more important than actual victory/democracy. The new strategy for improving the perception of victory must involve even tighter control over the news media; remote bombing to reduce politically unpalatable and unsustainable US military casualty rates; and continued corruption of the US political process [election and judicial fraud] to ensure no-one is held accountable for the outright corporate looting of the US treasury.
Posted by: gylangirl | Dec 1 2005 3:52 utc | 11
we need better stories. so far the anti-war movement/left/conscious citizen is still relying on the framework established by a pathological establishment to argue its case. we need a new pattern for historical interpretation. at times it seems we’re getting closer to a breakthrough that will provide a good story for who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going to wind up if we don’t make massive changes in the ways we have lived up to this point. at other times it’s depressing how a nation/continent/planet of so many people can resign themselves to the status quo. i keep hearing people say ‘if only the american public will wake up’ as if that’s going to happen anytime soon. brainwashed people just don’t snap out of it one day. besides, that serves as an excuse for the significant percentage of people who have stayed up from taking responsibility. until we stop letting the status quo determine the format, there will not be any psychic shifts or viable outlets for directing the level of cultural transformation required at this moment in history. we need better stories that provide meaningful patterns of understanding just wtf has happened & is happening. we should have stopped paying attention to the words emanating out of the beltway long ago.
it is up to us to assemble and tell these new stories. even should efforts to dismantle corporate ownership of media suceed, the corporations will still own the media through advertising (and control the ‘programming’). we cannot settle for only modifying the existing cultural systems and not change the basic pattern of its functioning. as the hopi elders assured us
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
…
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
we can hope for peace, but our real work is most needed when we are faced w/ challenge. the time is ripe for profound changes, not reforms, to the existing patterns of “civilization.” as many have pointed out again & again, the raw mechanics/psychic dynamics underlying the american society have been openly exposed for all to see. the tensions of this society have been intensified to such a degree that transformation could be a realistic agenda. but we need new stories to channel this awareness. why tolerate the wilkerson frame? why tolerate the corporate/msm frame? enough w/ the lies and the delusion-soaked bubbleheads. the pump is primed. our challenge is to rely on our creativity and imagination to provide enough coherent, synchronous storylines connecting the root causes of our cultural & institutional pathologies to our existing situation and provide a vision to lead us out of this darkness. to help others connect the dots & find courses for action in their communities. to allow real voices to be heard. to take control of our fates. the correct articulation of our reality is everyone’s responsibility. from these narratives we shall smother their stories w/ new stories that will educate, heal & guide us to a better world.
Posted by: b real | Dec 1 2005 5:40 utc | 12
“I intend to spend the rest of the night reading about Bush’s ‘strategy’ for Iraq. I haven’t seen it yet, but I expect it’ll be a repetition of the nonsense he’s been spewing for two and a half years now. Don’t Americans get tired of hearing the same thing?
It’s unbelievable that he’s refused to set a timetable for withdrawal (is he having another “Bring it on…” moment?). It’s almost as if someone is paying him to intentionally sabotage American foreign policy. With every speech he seems to sink himself deeper into the mire. A timetable for complete withdrawal of American forces would be a positive step- it would give Iraqis hope that, eventually, sovereignty will return to Iraq.”
Oil.
Posted by: beq | Dec 1 2005 13:35 utc | 13
If They Never Know – Looking Back …
The administration proceeded with their plans independent of the rest of the world. The Geneva Convention was not of the NeoCons creation (or liking), so except to keep tensions with other nations down, it was not really observed. The incident/edict referred to as “Night & Fog” (Nacht und Nebel) was clear evidence of unbounded and lawless cruelty.
Even before the deportation and murder of the terrorist ‘suspects’, the mentally impaired, the radicals, the Islamists, and so forth, the NeoCons had been dealing severely with political opponents. Most of the early prisoners were of two sorts: they were either Afghani or Iraqi civilian ‘detainees’ whom the NeoCons deemed in need of “re-education” to NeoCon imperial thinking; or the far larger permanent group was that of ‘suspected Unlawful Combatants‘ in the Global War on Terra(sic)(GWOT). Up until the time of the “Night and Fog” Decree, detainees were handled by American soldiers in approximately the same way other countries did: according to national agreements and procedures such as the Geneva Convention. President George W Bush and his White House staff however, made a critical decision not to have to attend to what they considered unnecessary convention.
‘Suspected Unlawful Combatants’ were held in contempt and distain by the NeoCons: there were constant repetitions of the harms and evils that Bush felt that the terrorists had wrought, and the ‘suspected Unlawful Combatants’ were the representation of this great evil. The decision to depart with international convention in the fair and humane treatment of combatants and civilians was made: political prisoners, most of whom were ‘suspected terrorists’, particularly ‘suspected unlawful combatants’ were to “disappear” without a trace: there were to be no notifying letters to governments or the International Committe of the Red Cross, no notification of next-of-kin, and no open records of destinations or fates.
Reasons & Results
The reasons for this were many:
First, distinct actions against the Bush government were made far more difficult, because the exact cause of interment or death, indeed whether or not the event had even occurred; was obscured. It kept the Neocons from being held accountable.
The decree and hidden events afforded the Neocons the ability to act cruelly and unjustly without public decry.
It allowed an across-the-board Silent Veto of International Treaties and Conventions: one cannot apply the limits and terms of humane treatment in war if one cannot locate the victim or discern his destiny.
Additionally, it lessened the moral qualms and confrontations of the American Public as well as that of servicemen, in an agreed and/or ignorant silence. The result, even early in the Global War on Terra, was the facilitating of utter brutality and execution of political prisoners, especially ‘suspected Unlawful Combatants’, who early in the GWOT outnumbered the Afghani and Iraqi civilian detainess in number of deaths even at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other ‘black sites’. As the secret air transports grew and Bush’s troops and operatives moved across the wider Middle East, that ratio changed dramatically.
The Night and Fog Decree was carried out sereptitiously but it set the background for orders that would follow. As the Global War on Terra grew bolder, so did the openness of the decrees and orders: it is probably correct to surmize, from various writings, that in the beginning, the American Public knew only a little of the insidious plans Bush had for a “Project for the New American Century (PNAC)”. As the years and the GWOT grew on, though, even despite the best attempts of Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld (another Goebbels ?) and the Pentagons Propaganda Bureau with its formidable Domestic and Foriegn information control; there can be little doubt given diaries and periodicals of the time, that information about the harshness and cruelty became progressively known to the American public. Soldiers brought back information, families on rare occasion heard from or about deterred loved ones, and foriegn news sources and the BBC were able to get through sporadically. Night and Fog set the stage for the mire of information the NeoCons hoped would provide a cover for their operations in the wider Middle East, and elsewhere, in the Global War on Terra.
Original unedited source here … worth reflecting on …
The Night and Fog Decree formed a major basis for the successful prosecution of the leadership for War Crimes at the Nuremberg Trials II.
[Night and Fog Decree]
The President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces
[stamp] SECRET/NoForn
Directives for the prosecution of offences committed within the occupied territories against the United States or the occupying power, of July 7th, 2003.
Within the occupied territories, terrorist elements and other circles hostile to America have increased their efforts against the United States and the occupying powers since the Iraq campaign started. The amount and the danger of these machinations oblige us to take severe measures as a deterrent. First of all the following directives are to be applied:
I. Within the occupied territories, the adequate punishment for offences committed against the United States or the occupying power which endanger their security or a state of readiness is, on principle, the death penalty.
II. The offences listed in paragraph I as a rule are to be dealt with in the occupied countries only if it is probable that sentence of death will be passed upon the offender, at least the principal offender, and if the trial and the execution can be completed in a very short time. Otherwise the offenders, at least the principal offenders, are to be taken into detention.
III. Prisoners taken into detention are subjected to military procedure only if particular military interests require this. In case American or foreign authorities inquire about such prisoners, they are to be told that they were arrested, but that the proceedings do not allow any further information.
IV. The Commanders in the occupied territories and the Military Court authorities within the framework of their jurisdiction, are personally responsible for the observance of this decree.
V. The Secretary of Defence determines in which occupied territories this decree is to be applied. He is authorized to explain and to issue executive orders and supplements. The Attorney General will issue executive orders within his own jurisdiction.
Unedited original source is here
The abov is not meant as an idle nor flippant comparison …
Posted by: Outraged | Dec 1 2005 13:51 utc | 14
carry on the mission?
Jeebus…is anyone else wondering..”what fucking mission are you talking about”?
Make sure Iraq has no WMD. Check.
Depose Saddam. Check.
Kill Uday and Qusay. Check.
WTF mission are they talking about? What does “victory in Iraq” even mean?
Damn. This gives me an Excedrin headache.
@Carla
The true, not publicly acknowledged mission, the mission of both the Repugs and Dems for over 50 years, yet more so the last 30 years, obviously in the last 14 years and blatantly ‘in your face’ with Bush&Co in the last four years …
Military dominance of the central Middle East, the Persian Gulf and to a lesser extent Central Asia. Direct or effective domination of the governments of the region. Thereby ensuring through extensive direct military bases and political control unrestricted access to the worlds remaining major oil reserves … to the detriment of Europe but especially to China ‘rising’ … use the remaining card of military superpower status to pre-emptively seize the geopolitical initiative and redraw the nature of the worlds affairs to ensure the survival of Americas superpower status in its current form.
Posted by: Outraged | Dec 2 2005 2:39 utc | 17
Keitel added the following to Hitler’s decree which seems to wholly reflect the reasoning behing the US thinking:
“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal. The prisoners are, in future, to be transported to Germany secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because – A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.”
Posted by: theodor | Dec 2 2005 3:05 utc | 18
Keitel added the following to Hitler’s decree which seems to wholly reflect the reasoning behind US thinking:
“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal. The prisoners are, in future, to be transported to Germany secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because – A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.”
Posted by: theodor | Dec 2 2005 3:05 utc | 19
@Theodor
Precisely.
In the current case masses of corpses, numerous large scale concentration camps, forced slave labor, are not necessary in order to achieve the wider goal:
the entrenchment of fear and enduring intimidation, across all audiences, as a result of ‘leaked’ knowledge of the ‘above the law’ actions being executed with utter impunity …
Good to see you posting again. 🙂
Posted by: Outraged | Dec 2 2005 3:13 utc | 21
Masked insurgents mount show of force in Ramadi after Bush speech
· Fighters target US base and government offices
· Marines dismiss incident as publicity stunt
Michael Howard in Sulaymaniya
Masked insurgents took over much of the centre of the restive city of Ramadi yesterday and attacked a US base and government offices in an apparent show of force hours after George Bush’s victory in Iraq speech on Wednesday night.
Residents and police said that shortly after dawn about 100 heavily armed men entered the city’s streets, 68 miles west of Baghdad. “They stayed there for a few hours, launching mortar rounds before dispersing,” said Captain Hassan al-Dulaimi of the Ramadi police.
He said the men distributed leaflets saying that al-Qaida in Iraq, the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was in charge. Television footage showed the insurgents walking down a deserted street and in a residential neighbourhood as well as firing mortars.
Ramadi is the capital of the predominantly Sunni Arab Anbar province and regarded as a magnet for militants.
But US officers in the area played down the violence, dismissing it as a publicity stunt.”Reports of insurgents taking control of Ramadi are completely unsubstantiated,” Captain Patrick Kerr, of the 2nd Marine Division, told Reuters.
This week 2,000 US and Iraqi troops launched a joint operation in western Iraq to try to prevent further attacks during the run-up to elections on December 15. But residents and Iraqi officials have complained that despite the repeated sweeps, insurgents operate relatively freely. An official in the Iraqi defence ministry, who asked not to be named, said: “In Ramadi, as in other towns in the Sunni triangle, it is the same story of cat and mouse. The US and Iraqi soldiers go in, and the insurgents slink away. Then they [US] withdraw, claiming victory, and the insurgents move back in.” Khalil Jihad, an Iraqi journalist who visited Ramadi last week, said yesterday: “The people there know who is in charge, and I mean the mujahideen, not the coalition.”
Posted by: Outraged | Dec 2 2005 4:00 utc | 22
What a superb thread. This is why I keep coming back to this blog; why it is like no other. I especially appreciate Outraged @ Nov 30, 2005 10:00:11 PM and Dec 1, 2005 8:51:32 AM ,as well as b real @ Dec 1, 2005 12:40:16 AM. Thank you.
A Tale Told by a Dangerous Idiot, Signifying Much Worse than Nothing
Posted by: Outraged | Dec 2 2005 13:02 utc | 25