ABCNOTE saw this editorial as proof the NYT Editorial Board Skews Left - speech was a "tired" "rehash" of old arguments, offered a "false choice," and was "misleading" on the state of the Iraqi military's progress. But I like "Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat." and noting how similiar to Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech with Iraqi constitutional process replacing Paris peace talks.<snip>
In any case I guess thruth telling is now only on the "left".
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/opinion/01thur1.htmlDecember 1, 2005 Editorial
Plan: We Win
<snip>It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.<snip>
On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.
What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.<snip>
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