You can tell things are getting worse in Iraq
You can tell things are getting worse in Iraq when even ex-presidents start taking shots at administration policy. For example, THIS WEEK ON ABC had Jimmy Carter on. Consider this excerpt:
STEPHANOPOULOS:. Of course, the whole country is talking about Iraq. You’ve called it one of the biggest mistakes in U.S. history, foreign policy mistakes in U.S. history. … STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you be for cutting off funding for the mission? CARTER: Not for troops already over there, no. But I would be willing to see a limit on funds that would apply to an increase in funds.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So capping the level of troops. CARTER: Absolutely. STEPHANOPOULOS: Vice President Cheney this week has been very harsh on those kinds of measures in the Congress. VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: (From videotape). If we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all it will do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people. CARTER: And if you go back and see what Vice President Cheney has said for the last three or four years concerning Iraq, his batting average is abysmally low. He hasn’t been right on hardly anything and his prediction of what is going to happen, reasons for going over there and obviously this is not playing into the hands of al Qaeda or the people who are causing violence and destruction over there to call for a change in policy in Iraq.
Meanwhile, on the same program, Secretary Condoleeza Rice tried her best to spin the news about the latest withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As we’ve sent new troops into Baghdad, the British announced this week they’re going to be withdrawing some of their troops from the south of Iraq in Basra. Vice President Cheney and others said this is a sign of progress but a lot of military experts have disagreed. I want to show you what Tony Cordesman said.
He said it’s a sign of British defeat and he goes on to say, “The coming British cuts in many ways reflect the political reality that the British ‘lost’ the south more than a year ago. The Shiites will take over, Iranian influence will probably expand, and more Sunnis, Christians and other minorities will leave.” Also, Michael Knights and Ed Williams of the Washington Suit for Near East Policy said that this is a sign of a slide into chaos. They say, “Instead of a stable, united, law-abiding region with a representative government and police primacy, the deep south is unstable, factionalized, lawless, ruled as a kleptocracy, and subject to militia primacy.” How worried are you that we are going to see a slide into chaos in the south as the Brits withdraw? RICE: Well, let’s remember that the Brits are leaving a lot of forces in Iraq. This is a drawdown – STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s under 4,000, though. RICE: But it’s a drawdown of some of their forces. And the plan for the whole country, including for the south, has been to transfer responsibility to Iraqi forces as they are capable of dealing with the situation, and the south is different. Yes, there continue to be problems between militias in the south.. Yes, there continues to be some political turmoil in the south. But the British and in conjunction with, in consultation with our commanders believe that we can — they can now transfer responsibility to the Iraqi forces. The area in which American forces serve is, of course, a different mix. STEPHANOPOULOS: But why didn’t we ask the Brits to — if the situation is better in the south — why didn’t we ask them to redeploy to other areas of Iraq where we need the help? RICE: Well, the British need to get their forces, to bring their forces down. They’ve made that very clear. But they’ve always said they wouldn’t do it until conditions permitted. And I think to try and change that bargain now and to say, all right, conditions permit but we would like you to go someplace else would simply be unfair.
And, over on FOX NEWS SUNDAY, Secretary Rice confirmed the theory that if you let a discussion go on long enough sooner or later someone starts talking about Hitler.
WALLACE: Let’s turn to Iraq. Senate Democrats are talking now about rewriting the 2002 congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq. Given that our mission there has changed so dramatically over the last four years, don’t they have a point?
RICE: We don’t need to do anything but to allow the commanders on the ground; General Petraeus, who’s gone out there as the new commander, to pursue the course that he and other commanders have put together and have recommended to the president. That’s what we need to concentrate on as a country. I know it’s extremely difficult, and yes, the president has said, we’ve now overthrown Saddam Hussein, we are in a different situation, even, some would say, a different war. But our — the consolidation of a stable and democratic Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is a part of what America owes to the Iraqi people, owes to the region, and owes to our ourselves, so that our own security is there. It’s — Chris, it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.
Finally, over on MEET THE PRESS Sen. Carl Levin [D-MI] illustrated how the Democrats are backsliding on Iraq:
LEVIN: Hopefully, we’re going to come up with a resolution, which is going to modify, in effect, the previous resolution, which is very broad. It told the president that he had authority to do basically whatever he wanted to in Iraq — and to come up with wording which would modify that broad resolution and broad authority so that we would be in a supporting role rather than in a combat role in Iraq. Things have changed in Iraq. We don’t believe that it can be possible to remove all of our troops from Iraq because there’s going to be limited purpose that they’re going to need to serve, including continued training of the Iraqi army, support for logistics in the Iraqi army, a counterterrorism purpose, or a mission, because there’s about 5,000 al Qaeda in Iraq. So we want to transform, or we want to modify, that earlier resolution to a more limited purpose. That is our goal; we hope to pick up some Republicans, we don’t know if we will, but the final drafting is going on this weekend. RUSSERT: Will you set a goal for withdrawing combat troops? LEVIN: We would. We would follow, basically, the pattern, which was set, or proposed, by the Iraq study group, which was to set a goal for the removal of combat troops, as you put it correctly, by March of next year. RUSSERT: So how many troops would that be — of March of next year would be taken out? LEVIN: We don’t have a specific number nor did the study group, but it would be most. There would be a limited number of troops that would be left. RUSSERT: So out of 150,000 we would take out how many? LEVIN: I would say most?
RUSSERT: What would be left behind? LEVIN: It would be a limited number, which would – RUSSERT: Ten, 20,000? LEVIN: I don’t want to put a specific number on it because that really should be left to the commanders who decide how many would be needed to carry out those limited functions.
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