Pentagon Institute: Iraq War "A Major Debacle," Outcome "Is In Doubt"

McClatchy DC:

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

Read the whole story: McClatchy DC

Comments

[speakingtruth2power]

Outcome? Are you guys on dope? There's only two choices, war or peace.

As long as we stay, there will be an insurgency and as long as we appear

to be stealing their oil, the resistance will be very strong against America.

Our presence is unwanted and pretending it isn't, makes you a war whore.

[lisakaz]

So much for "the surge is working" and Bu$h "keeping us safe" (the GAO report). Any other whoppers we missed? Sure, like invading Iraq wasn't about oil.

[tomcat27834]

HOW IS IT ?


How is it that come Jan. 20 2009 GWBush is going to get away with this ?

[MikeMidCity]

We will have to see, Obama could go after him since he doesn't have any prior administrations to cover up for. Hillary not so much.

Obama has said he will at least look at the Bush Administration for wrong doing.

If not then we will have to trust to God that George Walker Bush gets what he has coming to him.

[speakingtruth2power]

America returning to the rule of law will take more that trust.

God helps those who help themselves (if He exists at all).

[osage]

And WHO would vote for John McCain to "perpetuate" this COLOSSALLY DEADLY, DESTRUCTIVE and COSTLY FAILURE? How can any sane individual want to indefinately "continue" the CARNAGE, SUFFERING and WASTE created by the greatest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history? Anyone who votes for John McCain is voting against the best interests of the American people.

[lisakaz]

You mean those "values voters" who wanna ensure there's no gay marriage and such. Yep, the GOP sure is protecting us...NOT.

[nogimmicks]

Sadly, your correct opinion expressed in a tiny comment in a tiny impact publication. However, the "think tanks" and the TV analysis, and the likes of Bill Kristol and Bill Schneider whose voices dominate the Media do no think so. They want a perpetual war, a new war or two and they will get it.

[rich3324]

Sure Fox will spin this as just another liberal think tank sounding the gloom and doom.

[MajorKong]

Maybe they can find Baghdad Bob and make him the new White House Press Secretary.

[bitabingbitabangbitaboom]

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

-Sir Winston Churchill


.

[speakingtruth2power]

Did you just squawk?

[TocinoHumano]

Spoken like a true bird barin.

[Caloula]

Who of the three remaining presidential candidates had the judgement to oppose this quaqmire? Barack Obama. Remember this when you cast your vote this fall.

[msmaggie]

Well only two of them were in the position to oppose it in a meaningful way. I get the point that Obama made the right call, but it's clearly apples and oranges. What would he have done had he been asked to cast a vote like Hillary and McCain? It's impossible to know.

[jinjinpinti]

In the latest debate, HRC did it again, with her imperialistic view touting her position for more aggression by us in the ME. She, Like the Bushies and McCain, needs another war or two to feather her and Bill's nest for the mass emigration to Paraguay and beyond our "leaders" plan to make from the empty shell of a country we'll be left with.

[transendentilist]

We have only Obama's word that he was against Iraq from the beginning. That, and a speech he gave to an anti-war crowd in Illinois. He wasn't even in the Senate at the time, that's how much of a rookie he is.
I do know that as soon as he got into the Senate, he voted right along with Hillary to finance it's continuance.
I think it's very sleazey to condemn a fellow dem for casting a vote that he was never required to cast. And he wants us to believe he's a "uniter?"
Bush said he was a uniter too. Look how that turned out.

[desmirl]

Has General Betrayeus had a chance to comment on this? Or Ambassador Crock-of-it?

[wmbear]

WELL, BUSH SAID HIS "MEASURE OF SUCCESS"..­.

is "success." (One of his better Chimpisms, actually.) To do a riff on Groucho Marx, I have nothing but confidence in our Commander in Chief -- and very little of that....

[HumeSkeptic]

Bush is really worried about 2 Brazilian soldiers dying. He thinks that's a lot of soldiers, much more than a million.

[HumeSkeptic]

"I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars." - Barack Obama (October 2, 2002)

----------­----------­----

Seems to me that someone had it right.

Just goes to show that with the right person in the White House, one could have avoided this "Major Debacle".

[castrochavez08]

"I may be opposed to dumb wars, but that won't stop me from voting to fund them" - Barack Obama, by his own actions (2007)

[HumeSkeptic]

Making up quotes like a typical Clintonista? Stop lying like Hillary.

But, while I'm opposed to it, funding troops already in the battlefield is a different matter. Here is what he tried to do:


Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007
__________­__________­__________­_____
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Iraq War De-Escalation Act)
Jump to: navigation, search


On January 30, 2007, Barack Obama introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S 433). The plan would stop the planned troop increase of 21,500 in Iraq, and would also begin a phased redeployment of troops from Iraq with the goal of removing all combat forces by March 31, 2008.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_De-Escalation_Act

[HumeSkeptic]

Highway: It's a cluster fu*k, sir.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki//Heartbreak_Ridge)

[suntzu]

I downloaded the report (60 pages pdf) and have not read it yet, but will. But reading McClatchy's write-up the following excerpt jumped out at me:

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East..."

Even if you can put aside all the terrible costs of the war, the fact is, it has not made us safer from terrorism, in fact, has compounded the threat.

Obama should certainly use this report. Clinton may not be able to because she voted for the war. McCain cannot touch it because it is too toxic for him.

[HumeSkeptic]

Pentagon Institute: Iraq War "A Major Debacle,"

--------------
In other words, we lost.

[CharltonHestonsGUN]

you didn't lose because YOU are the aggressors who started all this shit.

It was an Invasion..­..........­..........­.....again­st a country that posed no threat.

Not one iota difference than what the German Army did to Poland.

[HumeSkeptic]

Guilty as charged, Your Honor.

Tried to stop it, but even some of the Dems (like Hillary) betrayed us.

[HumeSkeptic]

Pentagon Institute is emboldening the enemy.

[dutchgirl55]

...or is staying with the same failing strategy emboldening the enemey?

[HumeSkeptic]

No, that means that we're winning. You must learn how to speak NeoConese.

[CharltonHestonsGUN]

heelemal KUT, liefie.

[elderly]

What is embodening the enemy is every step this country has taken since March 2003. We have not only emboldened "the enemy" but we have created them in far greater numbers which creation continues to date and will continue for, at a minimum, the time remaining in the war criminal's term of office.

The enemy, MY FRIENDS, I fear is us.