Bush Utters Taunt About Militants: 'Bring 'Em On' (washingtonpost.com)
Good land.
Our president is an idiot.
Not that this is entirely news, you understand, but just when you think that you have a grip on just how idiotic he may be, then he pops off like this and displays hidden depths of idiocy. (If idiocy can have depths.)
President Bush yesterday delivered a colloquial taunt to militants who have been attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, saying "bring 'em on" and asserting that the forces in Iraq are "plenty tough" to deal with the threat. [...] The Pentagon, which is studying whether it needs additional troops in Iraq, is straining to sustain more than half the Army in Iraq while maintaining other troop commitments in Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans. Other countries are also resisting entreaties to help in Iraq. In the latest sign of the squeeze, the foreign secretary of India, from which the administration is seeking an entire division, said yesterday that his government remains wary of sending troops to Iraq. Bush's vigorous defense of his administration's decisions in Iraq -- his second defense in as many days after a period of relative silence -- came as another U.S. Marine was killed and three were injured while clearing mines in Iraq, while a soldier died from wounds suffered in an attack on Tuesday. At least 64 Americans have been killed -- 26 from hostile fire -- since Bush declared the bulk of fighting over two months ago.
Leaving aside the puzzlement of what the other 38 Americans have died from -- surely the accident rate can't be that high -- I would imagine that the Joint Chiefs are trying hard to think of some way to politely tell the commander-in-chief to keep his big trap shut. The one thing they don't need is to provoke the guerillas, or anybody else, for that matter.
A Day After Bush Assurances, 10 U.S. Soldiers Hurt in Iraq (NY Times, July 3, 2003, registration required): A day after President Bush asserted that coalition forces in Iraq were prepared to deal with any security threat, American troops came under attack again today, with 10 soldiers wounded in three separate incidents. [...] The attack suggested that the urban warfare that had so concerned military planners before the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime was materializing in unexpected forms. The attack against the three-vehicle convoy on Haifa Street was at least the second rocket-propelled grenade assault in broad daylight in Baghdad this week. In both cases, the attackers escaped. Whether out of fear or sympathy for their cause, bystanders and witnesses have done nothing to help coalition forces apprehend attackers. [...] The crowd's ire seemed to be fueled by a lack of jobs and electric power in Baghdad — most parts of the city still have no more than 8 to 10 hours of electricity a day. "It's not because of Saddam people are doing these things," one man said. "It is because there's no government, there's no electricity, and just false promises."
So let's see: we have more powerful and more sophisticated attacks coming from the guerillas. We have bystanders who are understandably not eager to help -- what with coming down with the odd case of bystander death, the cancellation of local elections, keeping Ba'athist administrators in power, and the like, Iraqis might understandably feel a bit betrayed. This, of course, does not take into account the widespread destruction of the country and our continuing failure to get basic services functioning again.
Political Veteran (Washington Post): ..... Cleland has come full circle. In 1963, he arrived at American University's Washington Semester Program as a naive student and left dreaming of a career in the Senate. Now, after six years in the Senate, he's back at the Washington Semester Program, this time as a "distinguished adjunct professor.'' But he lost a few things along the way. In 1968, he lost his right arm and both legs in Vietnam [...] The war in Iraq is beginning to look awfully familiar to Max Cleland. "Now wait a minute," he says. "Let me run this back: We have a war. A bunch of Americans die. After the war, we try to figure out why we were there. There's a commitment of 240,000 ground troops with no exit strategy. You know what that's called? Vietnam! Hey, I've been there, done that, got a few holes in my T-shirt."
Aside from the fun in Iraq, Our Glorious Leader is now considering supplying troops to the peacekeeping forces in Liberia. Not that there's any actual peace to keep at the moment, but that's not entirely the issue. The issue is that all but two divisions of US troops are now committed, either in Iraq or elsewhere. The administration's ability to respond militarily to ... well, anything, really, is getting stretched rather thin.
Posted by iain at July 03, 2003 01:59 PMComments
