Scowcroft- min.500000 troops, $500 B,, 10 yr military draft & wartime tax

Clinging to happy talk
Bush says elections will bring democracy to Iraq, but that is as unrealistic as all his other now-disproved rosy scenarios.

By Sidney Blumenthal

<snip>
President Bush clings to good news and happy talk, such as the number of school openings in Iraq. Those with gloomy assessments are not permitted to appear before him. The president is spared agonizing. He orders no meetings on options based on worst-case scenarios. The senior military strategists and officers are systematically ignored. Suppression of contrary "metrics" is done in his name and spirit. Bush makes his decisions from a self-imposed bunker, a Situation Room of the mind, where ideological fantasies substitute for reality.

"I think elections will be such an incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people ... And I look at the elections as a -- as a -- you know, as a -- as -- as a historical marker for our Iraq policy," Bush proclaimed last week. His statement was prompted by remarks made last week by Brent Scowcroft, his father's national security advisor and alter ego. Summarily fired as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Scowcroft went public with his views at a lunch sponsored by a Washington think tank. The Iraq election, he said, has "deep potential for deepening the conflict," acting as an impetus to civil war. He reflected sadly that being a "realist" has become a "pejorative." "A road map is helpful if you know where you are," he said.

Scowcroft was joined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security advisor, who spelled out the minimal metrics for winning the Iraq war -- 500,000 troops, $500 billion, a military draft and a wartime tax -- and added that it would take at least 10 years. Unwillingness to pay this essential price while continuing on the current path would be a sign of "decadence."

Bush speaks of the Iraq election as though it will be the climax of democracy. But by failing to provide for Sunni presence in the new government -- proportional representation would easily have accomplished this -- it is as ill-conceived a blunder as invading with a light force, disbanding the Iraqi army, attacking Fallujah, halting the attack and finally destroying the city in order to save it, Vietnam style. The British had proposed local elections, beginning in southern Iraq, but Bush's Coalition Provisional Authority rejected the idea. According to disillusioned former CPA official Larry Diamond, "One British official lamented to me, the 'CPA didn't want anything to happen that they didn't control.'"

Bush, meanwhile, works on his second inaugural address to be delivered next week....<snip>



http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/01/14/pentagon_suppression/index.html

in fact, Zinni is responsible for the Kerry quote during the campaign "Zinni says Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time - with the wrong strategy." From 'They've Screwed Up'
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml

VIPS said that the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London had estimated 500,000 troops were necessary if there was to be an occupation; and don't get me started on Scowcroft and GHWB's book "A World Transformed" and the pre-Gulf War plans that said do not go into Iraq, it will be a quagmire...which it clearly now is.

Iraq-nam was for oil and nothing else. Bush and co. got duped by Chalabi and his Iranian masters. Neocons should be ashamed of themselves.

And now, Gen Frank's book says we'll be stuck in Iraq for 5 years...but Sen McCain on CNN tells us no, it will be from 10 to 20 years. Republicans haven't got a clue. We ought to throw them all out of the DoD and whereever else they've inserted themselves... root them out.

probably correct in your prediction.

--------------------------

Baker Advises Administration to Consider a Phased Withdrawal of Troops
- BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, January 13, 2005

(01-13) 13:23 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, an architect of the U.S. war with Iraq in 1991, is advising the Bush administration to consider a phased withdrawal of some of the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Otherwise, Baker says, the United States risks being suspected of having an "imperial design" in the region.

A protracted U.S. military presence in Iraq is probably unavoidable since attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces and on Iraqi security forces are likely to continue, Baker said Tuesday in a speech at Rice University in Houston.

"Even under the best of circumstances, the new Iraqi government will remain extremely vulnerable to internal divisions and external meddling," he said.

Still, former President George H.W. Bush's secretary of state said, "any appearance of a permanent occupation will both undermine domestic support here in the United States and play directly into the hands of those in the Middle East who -- however wrongly -- suspect us of imperial design."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2005/01...

After all the lives (on both sides) and money we've spent, I cannot believe we would escalate it that much more. I'm pretty sure far fewer people would support the war if they knew about Scowcroft's numbers. Something like this could easily be the tipping point of public opinion.