What Fires You Up?

11/14/2003

 

And now for something completely different...

From the home page of blogger at http://new.blogger.com/blog.pyra found this link to The Onion, which I've not be reading for a few months. "Mom Finds Out About Blog" -it's a kill! LOL

BJ 11/14/2003 07:36:00 AM

 

'We could lose this situation'

• CIA says insurgents now 50,000 strong
• Crisis talks over transfer of power

Julian Borger in Washington and Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
Thursday November 13, 2003
The Guardian

"The White House yesterday drew up emergency plans to accelerate the transfer of power in Iraq after being shown a devastating CIA report warning that the guerrilla war was in danger of escalating out of US control".

The report, an "appraisal of situation" commissioned by the CIA director, George Tenet, and written by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, said that the insurgency was gaining ground among the population, and already numbers in the tens of thousands.

One military intelligence assessment now estimates the insurgents' strength at 50,000. Analysts cautioned that such a figure was speculative, but it does indicate a deep-rooted revolt on a far greater scale than the Pentagon had led the administration to believe.

An intelligence source in Washington familiar with the CIA report described it as a "bleak assessment that the resistance is broad, strong and getting stronger".

"It says we are going to lose the situation unless there is a rapid and dramatic change of course," the source said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1083847,00.html
Note: This item was sent to me in a Pagans4Peace newsletter subscription I receive daily. Thanks to Nora and J-9 for posting it today. It continues to be the foreign journalists who are bringing forth the "news" that Americans seem to get much later, if at all...

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BJ 11/14/2003 07:13:00 AM

11/11/2003

 

Wilson's - Great Megawebsite! http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/help.html

Wilson's Almanac is a terrific website of great depth and fascination. I suscribe to the daily blog of the site, and also to companion sites Pagans4Peace and Almost Prophetic. Been reading Pip Wilson's commentary and gems of history, folklore and peaceful links for quite a while and highly recommend to all readers.

Today the aphorism blog - AlmostProphetic - delivered a telling quote from BushDaddy, from just five years ago. Read it and see what you think! Comments welcome - just click on the "poseur" link at the end of the post.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome."

Source: A World Transformed, former President George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor during the Bush administration, 1998, Chapter 19

BJ 11/11/2003 06:00:00 PM