Why are Rice and Rumsfeld in Baghdad?
To bend some arms and legs, either SecState or SecDef should have been enough. But Rice bending Iraqi arms one way, Rumsfeld the other way, changes nothing.
There is a ongoing struggle between R. and R. on responsibility for the political process in Iraq.
"We just want to make sure there are no seams between what we’re doing politically and what we’re doing militarily," Rice told reporters on her plane en route to Iraq. "Secretary Rumsfeld and I are going to be there together because a lot of the work that has to be done is at that juncture between political and military."
Celebrity Deathmatch in the Green Zone?
The official reason Rice is giving for her visit does not sound quite right.
"This is the Iraqis’ time," Rice told reporters traveling with her. "This is the time to support the Iraqi government of national unity. It will be up to the Iraqis to determine how this moves forward and we’re going to be there very much in support of them."
It is up to the Iraqis to ignore both Secretaries as they will.
There is, by the way, no government of national unity. So far a candidate for the Prime Minister has been named, but neither has he selected a cabinet, no one is even named for defense and interior, nor has he been elected by the parliament. Those processes will still have major hurdles and the government, if created at all, will be as partisan as possible.
But the trip is not to help Iraq anyhow, it is the "last chance" to save the project.
There was an atmosphere in her entourage that this visit offered perhaps a last chance to reverse some of the mistakes of the last three
years in providing security for Iraq, getting the oil and power systems
back and curbing sectarian hatreds and corruption within the Iraqi
government.
None of these mistakes can be reversed with the U.S. administration interfering. Iraq is a lost cause, the war against the resistance can not be won.
Unfortunately, like in Vietnam, it will take years until that is acknowledged.