The Carpetbagger Report article "About that Petraeus report..."
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12802.html
notes that "It looks like the political world no longer needs to debate who's writing next week's report on the administration's war policy and conditions in Iraq.
ThinkProgress noticed this Washington Times piece that highlighted a minor detail: there is no report.
A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. "There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony," the officer said...
So, on the one hand we have reports and data from the National Intelligence Estimate, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. Embassy, and the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, all of which point to very little security progress and no political progress in Iraq. On the other hand, we'll have Petraeus' opening statement to
Congress."
Then W let the man who is leaving soon and whose physical lack of well being elicits sympathy from us all muddy it all up as "A month ago, Tony Snow told reporters, "Now, let us keep in mind that the full burden of this report does not fall on his shoulders. A lot of the key judgments, especially about politics, will fall on Ambassador Crocker. So this is - although I know a lot of people talk about 'the Petraeus report,' in fact, you have a report that is a joint report by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker."
Isn't this the ancient Abbott and Costello skit about who was on first? As it the big bro 43 team is delivering us propagnada spiced with tragic/comedic hypocrisy! Who is delivering what to whom?
"In three sentences, Snow referenced a "report" (the noun) four times. And now there isn't going to be any such document?
This is all just too bizarre. For a couple of months, the White House has responded to every question about conditions in Iraq the same way: let's wait until September and see the report from Petraeus and Crocker. Given their credibility, the argument goes, the document they provide to lawmakers should carry enormous weight.And on the other side of the aisle, critics of the administration have wondered how best to respond to a predictable report, written by Bush allies who have given skeptics reason to worry about their objectivity....
Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), told reporters Thursday that Petraeus said he and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had briefed the administration on the situation in Iraq, but added that "as far as [Petraeus] is concerned ... he is writing his recommendations of that report and testimony."
Notice how the report and testimony were considered separate things? Now, all of a sudden, they're not. The testimony is the report.
I'm completely lost."
Congress is lost, the article's writer is also, the common masses are-so Rove's misinformation succeeded perfectly!
It is very hard to deal with chronic liars. They set up a web of deceit.Add in the common mans' mass hysteria after 9/11, with fear-mongering, Feith's OSP cherry-picking of valid intelligence, and complete fabrications-such as
those spawned by Chalabi's INC, and soon, weary, trusting US citizens will believe anything. Hussein was involved with 9-11 Cheney says. Why not-these GOP, daddy party, guys know about war. Thanks to big bro 43 we believe "War is Peace"!
You have all of this lying and W's team is making profits. That couldn't be happening in the US of A that I know, but it turns out Cheney knew more about war-profiteering. The recent YouTube release of Cheney saying that during the 41 Iraq invasion that capturing Hussein wasn't worth US soldiers' lives would haunt any decent human. That is precisely why Cheney isn't disturbed.
They lied us into war and huge profits were made by insiders.
I've found an article that applies but it is from the Smirking Chimp site which apparently has stopped being in existence after I found it, so I can't give a link to it. The article "The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone" stated "How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini?"
They cited many examples of this pattern and substantiated every claim including "But even obligating money to no one was better than what sometimes happened in Iraq: handing out U.S. funds to the enemy. Since the beginning of the war, rumors have abounded about contractors paying protection money to insurgents to avoid attacks. No less an authority than Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi
National Congress, claimed that such payoffs are a "significant source" of income for Al Qaeda. Moreover, when things go missing in Iraq -- like bricks of $100 bills, or weapons, or trucks -- it is a fair assumption that some of the wayward booty ends up in the wrong hands. In July, a federal audit found that 190,000 weapons are missing in Iraq -- nearly one out of every three arms
supplied by the United States. "These weapons almost certainly ended up on the black market, where they are repurchased by insurgents," says Pratap Chatterjee,
a writer who has spent months in the Mideast researching a forthcoming book on Iraq contracts."
How does Chalabi still have a prominent standing? He had his dwelling raided by the US military as he was considered to be giving US military information to the Iranians. He's still around because the US wants him to be!
Look, W and Cheney's get a cut of all of the money that has been ripped-off in this Iraq fiasco. The typical commission is 10%. All of the money was transferred to hidden accounts around the world after being thoroughly laundered.
The article "Pentagon Won't Make Surge Recommendation to Bush" at
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/30/3517/
shows how Cheney and W plan to fool the red staters so that the pillaging of our taxpayers and the destruction of our international image can continue as "In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won't make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month's strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations.
"Consensus is not the goal of the process," Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. "If there are differences, the president will hear them."
Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat."
Morrell said that making individual presentations about Iraq policy rather than trying to reach a consensus before talking to the president will lead to a more honest discussion. Gates is "looking for a way to sort of make sure that the normal bureaucratic massaging that sometimes eliminates the rough edges or the sharp differences between individuals does not victimize this process so that the president can get distinct - if that's the way it turns out to be - points of view on where we are and where we need to go," Morrell said.
At the same time, Morrell made it clear that the decision rests with the president, not the military.
"I think once [the president] receives the advice from Gen. Petraeus - and as I have outlined - and others, my understanding is that he has a decision to make," Morrell said.
A new report that is the work of an independent commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones gives poor marks to the Iraqi National Police and says it is a cesspool of corruption that has been infiltrated by Shiite militias and suggests it should be disbanded so officials can simply start over.
The Jones report suggests the 26,000-member force should be recreated as a smaller organization, but it doesn't recommend such drastic action with the much larger local and provincial police. The fact that there are problems with the national police is nothing new, but yesterday the Pentagon vehemently rejected the report's suggestion that the force should be disbanded. Military officials prefer to try retraining, even though these types of efforts have failed in the past. Disbanding the force would be a risky move, especially when considering the uproar after the Iraqi army was dissolved in the early days of the occupation. We remember the de-Baathification process is one of the benchmarks that the Iraqis are failing at.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
