Mystical Politics Paparazi: State Of Denial

Arrogance and Incompetence
In the first of a two part preview of his book 'State Of Denial' Bob Woodward has some very interesting things to say about the wonder boys who he praised in his first two books. The following quotes are selectively picked from this 5 page article.

As has already been leaked, Rice had differences of opinion with Rumsfeld but Dear Leader was taking Kissenger's advice and 'Staying The Course'. What that has come to mean after all the other things known from observation is that Bushji wanted to stay at the prom with the one who brung him. That is fine with me because they can both go down with the sinking ship and the sooner the better... - ƒç

washingtonpost.comSTATE OF DENIAL

Behind Public Optimism on Iraq, Administration Had Doubts

By Bob Woodward

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 1, 2006; Page A01

"We've made three tragic decisions," Garner told Rumsfeld at their meeting.

He cited the first two orders Bremer signed when he arrived, the first banning as many as 50,000 members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government jobs and the second disbanding the Iraqi military. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around.

Third, Garner said, Bremer had summarily dismissed an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term. "Jerry Bremer can't be the face of the government to the Iraqi people. You've got to have an Iraqi face for the Iraqi people," he said.

Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."

"They didn't see it coming," Garner added. "As the troops said, they drank the Kool-Aid."

Returning from a visit to Iraq, Robert D. Blackwill, the NSC's top official for Iraq, was deeply disturbed by what he considered the inadequate number of troops on the ground there. He told Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, that the NSC needed to do a military review.

"If we have a military strategy, I can't identify it," Hadley said. "I don't know what's worse -- that they have one and won't tell us or that they don't have one."

"I give us a B-minus for policy development," he told a colleague on Feb. 5, 2005, "and a D-minus for policy execution."

On Feb. 10, 2005, two weeks after Rice became secretary of state, Zelikow presented her with a 15-page, single-spaced secret memo. "At this point Iraq remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence and undergoing revolutionary political change," Zelikow wrote.

In sum, he said, the United States' effort suffered because it lacked an articulated, comprehensive, unified policy.

In a column in The Washington Post on Aug. 12, 2005, titled "Lessons for an Exit Strategy," Kissinger wrote, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."

He delivered the same message directly to Bush, Cheney and Hadley at the White House.

To emphasize his point, he gave Gerson a copy of a memo he had written to President Richard M. Nixon, dated Sept. 10, 1969.

"Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded," he wrote.

Card was enough of a realist to see that two negative aspects to Bush's public persona had come to define his presidency: incompetence and arrogance.

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