Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the committee, was extremely critical of the fledgling Iraqi government and said if Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki was not able to improve the situation in the next 60 days to 90 days, that the United States should consider taking "bold action."
...
"We did not have freedom and ability to travel to places I had been in years past," said Warner, who has been to Iraq seven other times since 2003. "The press accurately describes a very serious situation. There is progress being made in certain areas: Oil production is up, reconstruction is going forward, you find so many communities don't have drinking water or sanitation."
"In some areas, there are steps forwards, and others, steps backwards," he said. "The situation is simply is drifting sideways.... And agencies of the government are not able to meet fundamental responsibilities of a government."
That sounds like Iraq is looking a lot like a failed state kinda like Afghanistan.
Then Senator Warner warns we might have to take "bold action" if things don't improve in 60-90 days. When apparently, asked to expand on that label Warner said:
"At that point, we'll have assert own leadership."
John Dickerson at Slate(in "Cut-and-Run Boomerang: Bush's political speech undermines his diplomacy") notes that the new Bush strategy might be the one I've been suggesting for a couple months now. (Not that even the pathetic Bush administration is getting ideas from me, though I hadn't heard anyone else using the argument. Then again I've have political dirty tricks troubles with a couple of blogs in the last 2 months too. Could it be? Nah...)
Anyway, I was suggesting that the Bush administration, use the threat of cutting and running on the Iraqi government unless they learned to share more with the Sunnis and in other ways cleaned up their act, like stopping the interior department from allowing its resources to be used for sectarian violence. This was the "JFK solution" which the late president was about to start using on the government of Vietnam unless they started sharing power in their portion of that beleaguered nation just about the time he was assassinated.
Apparently the little Bugger in the White House now got wind of that piece of history somehow and the US is considering making the "JFK" threat according to Dickerson.
Or, maybe, once again, they are lying about this, and, like I've been surmizing, might be their actual stategy, use Iraq as a staging ground, holding the troops there, until time to get the boots on the ground in Iran for regime change there, because 3rd time's the charm. They are bound to get one incredibly stupid invasion right, aren't they? (Preferably someplace with big caches of oil. For Pete's sake our president will be booted out of the White House in little over 2 years now. If he can't earn cushy board positions in the mega wealthy and powerful Big Oil industry he might actually have to take up ranching on his ranch. You know with smelly cows and steers and fly attracting manure and s... er stuff like that.
Using the "you're not good enough to protect any longer" excuse could be what the Bushies need to cut and run (into Iran) after so much rhetoric against the c and r idea. If used wisely c and r threats can lead to good as I have been advocating.
But this is the Bush administration. So just Hang on to Your Hats cause we have 2 more years of this crazy crew in the executive branch. All we can hope is that a Democratic Congress will be able to slow them down a lot. Get out the drag chains, Nancy and Harry. We'll be having a lot of work to do come January.
Condi's Rainbow Tour of the Middle East was seen as an cheerleading trip. The political cartoonists are going to have fun with that one.
Rah rah sis boom bah. Blood-- pain-- We want it now. Birth pangs, Birth pangs. Hah, hah, hah!
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