If that headline sounds a tad screwy, imagine my surprise reading this article which paralleled a conversation I had a week ago with someone. At this point, absolutely nothing would surprise me about what the US will do, even bringing back Saddam. I mean, at least we know he’s qualified to do the job.

Bush’s final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator?

The news was buried in a New York Times story last week but it confirmed what others in the Washington chattering classes have been observing lately.

The context is that the White House has been inviting outsiders in to the Oval Office to discuss strategy in Iraq. The new chief of staff Josh Bolten has apparently been trying to pierce the intellectual cocoon in which the president comfortably resides. Bush family consigliere James Baker has already been asked to rescue the president’s failed Iraq policy.

But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert” attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

This conservative caucus never liked the neocon argument for removing Saddam. They didn’t like nation building and didn’t believe that Iraqis were capable of democracy. They wanted to remove a WMD threat but, most of all, they wanted to strike terror into the heart of the enemy by showing what US military might could do.

Depose Saddam, remove the weapons, install a client dictator and leave as much rubble behind: that was the game plan. It would deter the Iranians and leave a light military footprint. It had Donald Rumsfeld written all over it and it helps explain a lot about the Bush administration’s dogged refusal to add more troops in the first few months after the invasion.

What appeared to be incompetence is unmasked as a brilliant strategy? So, the next thing I should expect to read is Israel wanted Hezbollah to kick their butts?



  1. moss says:

    Do you mean we’re back to foreign policy as practiced by American governments — before King George?

  2. Anon says:

    Really, wasn’t all this inevitable? Are there any justifications for war left, be it imaginary or imaginary?

  3. Calin says:

    Are there any justifications for war left, be it imaginary or imaginary?

    Do you speak of the Iraq war particularly, or war in general? There can be arguments on both sides for the justification of the Iraq war. I can see both sides of the coin in that case.

    However, if you are saying there is never any justification for any war ever……..I have to envy the utopian life you must lead.

  4. ECA says:

    Why’d we go there in the first place, I forget…

    Sorry, but as someone ELSE stated…its time for civil war.
    Time for impeachment.
    Time to get our UGLY hands out of THEIR problems….

  5. Mike Voice says:

    chattering classes

    Can we add this to the annual, year-end list of over-used phrases of 2006 which we never want to hear/read in 2007?

    In July 1,666 “improvised explosive devices” exploded and 959 were discovered before they went off.

    Does the use of quotes around “IED” mean the author is as sick of the term as I am. Its been 3-years, and bombs are still being “improvised” – as if every single one of them is a McGyver-type contraption, not purpose-built in workshops around the region.

    What’s interesting in the latest polls — in the middle of the Israel-Lebanon war and the foiled terror plot that shut Heathrow — is how Iraq is still more important to Americans than the more general issue of terrorism.

    Well D’uh!

    /sarcasm

    How many Americans died in the terror “plot”?
    How many Americans died in the Israeli-Hezbollah war?
    How many Americans died in Iraq last week?

    As it is, We’re more concerned with Timberlake dissing Hicks than whats going on in Iraq… 🙁

  6. ECA says:

    The real problem with PUTTING HIM BACK, into postiion to RULE…

    IT wont last long.
    He has lost credibility.

  7. Saddam Hussein says:

    Mwa ha ha haw. I am laughing so hard, it hu hu hurts.

  8. Mike Abundo says:

    I’d like to see how Bush spins that one.


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