1) It’s cool if you think it was improper to write that editorial. Bu I’ll wager that John Edward invoking Cheney’s lesbian daughter did more to damage Kerry, than Petraeus did to “help” Bush. As for the wildly optimistic statements, lessee, Petraeus wasn’t referring to Maliki’s admin, he was referring to Alawi and if you compare the two, Allawi did more given the situation he was in. As for security, as Petraeus pointed out, security forces are being stood up but the biggest problem has been a lack of equipment and infiltration by various causes. Sistani and Moqtada are rivals, with the Mahdis being supported by Iran. In hindsight, we should have put a cap in Moqtada, in any case, he was marginalized until Malik was voted in. How are any of the above relevant to what Petraeus should have known. That was the reason for the timeline, to recap major events leading up to the elections that ushered in Maliki’s govt. If that was wildly optimistic, then Thomas Edison & the Wright brothers irrationally delusional.

2) The surge did not start in Feb, it finally got full force in June when the last of the troops deployed in. Until the, it was an operational ramp-up as opposed to pre-op staging. So in a way, as the surge troops flowed into the AO, they hit the ground running, but technically, the surge was not happening until the buildup was complete.

As for the electorate, I don’t agree that it was overwhelming in favor of bringing the troops home. You ignore the saga of Joe Leiberman. More than enough conservatives sat on their hands as a demonstration of disgust at RINOs for liberal spending, immorality & greed. Statistically, it was a safe thing to do, that even if the Dems won, the odds of winning a supermajority was next to none. I doubt with so much at stake that any conservative will be sitting on their hands next year. They may hold their nose, but they are going to pull the lever for the candidate that is anti-amnesty & pro-Iraq and that eliminates any of the Far-left and/or anti-war candidates.

3) Now you’re being forgetful. Bush has collaborated more often with the Dems than not. How else would that hideous No Child Left Behind, Kennedy’s pet project, come into being? The Dems have always been a factor in his decision process because of the votes required to pass anything. That’s why David Obey called the liberal activists a bunch of idiots — It takes a certain # of votes to get anything done. Thanks to the wisdom of we-the-people, enough Bluedog Dems were sent to DC to help Bush push thru vital national security issues while looking out as best can for traditional liberal issues. Bush doesn’t need to deal with maddog Reid, when he can win over more reasonable bluedogs.

4) It was justified and we even had the grudging blessings of that useless UN. Yeah, the one and same that “managed” the Oil For Food program that enabled Saddamn to build out his weapons while greasing UN officials & friends

5) You ignore half their story. And they’re doing a bangup job of waffling on NoKo & Iran. I also imagine that they were simply shocked, shocked that Syria even had the goods without them even being aware. Just as they were blindsided by how advanced Kaddafi was until he decided to come clean and seek Bush’s good graces.

6) My point is that wherever there is political strife involving Muslims, you’ll find AQ in the mix. It stood to reason, that if we move to take Saddam, AQ would move in to get what they could for their own objectives. Just as they have recently moved into Palestine & Lebanon, even tho there are no US targets in those countries. Simply put, AQ are opportunists seeking to leverage chaos anywhere into a bloodfest.

7) We expected millions and millions of refugees. That’s why in addition to the tons of body bags, we also stockpiled tons of refugee relief equipment. In fact, one of Turkey & Jordan’s conditions for supporting the takedown was that we provide logistical & equipment support for the expected refugees. Much like FEMA’s stockpile of Katrina relief supplies sitting around going to waste, our refugee supplies are rotting and collecting dust in the desert.

Flip your last statement around and ask the millions of refugees from Saddam’s regime if they’re mad at the US. If they say yes, it’s probably because they’re mad at Papa Bush for not taking Saddam down the 1st time around and worse, implying he would support a domestic uprising by the Shias, then doing nothing while Saddam crushed the revolt.

Until I see good numbers on the Iraqis forced to flee because of Dubya, I’m disinclined to believe that this is significant enough to tip the scales of balance. If anything, the majority of pissed-at-Bush-Iraqis are Sunnis and they’re pissed that they can no longer lord it over the Kurds & Shia.

Can you name an American newspaper with better news coverage than the Times? (Or — for that matter — a better sports section?)

What statements are wildly optimistic?

“Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up.” (then why are they unable to maintain security three years later?)

“Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously” (just not the Sunni leaders, who withdrew from the government – and not those leaders who are now dead because there is no security in Iraq)

“Their readiness to enter and clear the Imam Ali shrine was undoubtedly a key factor in enabling Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to persuade members of the Mahdi militia to lay down their arms and leave the shrine.” (that’s why the Mahdi army still rules much of Iraq?)

2) ““ah yes, but there still is no political gain”

That’s the reason for the surge. I don’t know how many hundreds of soldiers died since the surge started in February – however the reason to send more troops to Iraq was to achieve political gain, which obviously has not happened.

Let’s review: the electorate voted overwhelmingly in 2006 to bring troops home. Bush thumbed his nose at the American people — not to mention the Baker commission report — and did the exact opposite. He promised that sending more troops in the line of fire would finally enable the Iraqi government to coalesce. Didn’t happen. There are hundreds (thousands?) more deaths and casualties, with no progress in sight. The Iraqi governme Am I missing something?

3) Get serious. Has Bush ever consulted with Democrats? Has anything Democrats – or the American people – advocated ever changed anything he did?

4) “By what law does a country not have the right to attack another?” If a country is attacked – or faces an imminent threat of attack – then it is justified in defending itself. This was clearly not the case with Iraq.

5) I don’t see any wishy-washiness on the part of Blix and El Baradei. They clearly warned against invasion. They were right and Bush was wrong.

6) Al Qaeda did not exist in any significant degree in Iraq before we invaded. By destabilizing the country and the region, we gave them an opportunity to attack both us and innocent Iraqis. Your suggestion is that we made progress by giving them another battleground?

7) I don’t know who expected “millions and millions” of refugees, but roughly ten percent of the Iraqi population has been forced to relocate. This obviously is no big deal to you. I suggest you try to explain to someone who lost a family member or had to leave their home why we forced them to do so to find weapons which never existed.

1) If there was any legal improprieties in writing an editorial, legal would not have let Petraeus publish it. In any case, you say Petraeus was wildly optimistic in 04, which would seem to be valid in light of the 3 years that have elapsed since that editorial. However, as I stated, given the dynamics of that point in time that it was written, his editorial was reasonably optimistic. I invite you to re-read it (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49283-2004Sep25.html) and point out exactly which assertions were “wildly optimistic”. Also this link nicely appends the timeline I gave you earlier. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html

Face it, of all the factors that influenced the ’04 election, Petraeus’ editorial probably did not even rank in the top 100. Outside of military circles, hardly anyone even knew of Petraeus, who at the time was simply just an Army lieutenant general, commanding the Multinational Security Transition Command in Iraq. He was not responsible for leading the combat operations in Iraq, he was training the Iraqis to stand up their military and he wrote from that perspective.

2) Fine on the 1st part. On the second part, we’d probably have to consider another change in strategy. But I believe that under no circumstances do we leave Iraq before we’ve exhausted every conceivable effort in making her self-reliant. Even if we have to revert to a martial law scenario similar to Germany or Japan.
You conveniently ignore the 95 Senators who wildly praised him for what he had accomplished both in his career and Iraq up to the day of his confirmation & promotion to 4 Stars. Only because Petraeus is succeeding in his primary mission to use the surge to tamp down the violence, you join the naysayers in saying “ah yes, but there still is no political gain, and by the way, what about that ’04 article?”.

With regards to Generals trying to influence political outcomes, luckily there weren’t many wars, but let’s look at GEN McClellan. Here’s a guy that was constantly reluctant to engage because he didn’t like the Army he had and wanted more troops & equipment, particularly on the Border States. Lincoln resisted firing him until after Antietam because he didn’t want to lose the support of moderate Republicans and the Peace Democrats. Ironic that in those days, the part of the Republicans pushing for linking anti-slavery to the cause were called Radical Republicans. Anyway, McClellan allowed the public think via editorials that he was fired for his view that anti-slavery cause shouldn’t be linked to the effort. That event still cost Lincoln some support in the 1862 midterms. Imagine where we’d be if Lincoln lost every seat up for election then thanks to a less than stellar, but popular General. Later on, McClellan declared the war a failure (gee, where have I heard that before) and announced he was going to run against Lincoln in ’64 as th e Antiwar Democrat.

How about the running battles that MacArthur had with Truman? Finally Truman had to fire him for insubordination. And that was the right thing to do because, as good as MacArthur was, the public spat was toxic to the war effort.

3) Did I say the Dems made the benchmarks for Iraq? I was talking about the Dems’ own hifalutin goals that they put on themselves post ’06 elections. As your link points out, the benchmarks outlined by Bush were made after consultation with the Dems. In keeping with the nefarious meme, I was offering the tinfoil crown the notion that Bush might have agreed to tougher goals than he would have preferred, thanks to the ankle-biting. My bad …

4) Huh, just because we didn’t invade Russia, didn’t mean we weren’t at war or have you forgotten the Cold War? During that time, there were many with the sentiment that a good Russky was a dead one. But then again, there were plenty that could hate the regime without hating the people. That was my point. I find Russian history fascinating and had there been any Russian language course around me, I would have taken it instead of trying to do it on my own with tapes. With luck, I’ll finally visit next month. As for the final question, let me turn it around and ask, by what law does a country not have the right to attack another? We’re not talking civil law, but national rights.

5) For practically every quote you can find those two bureaucrats being very skeptical about the putative existence of WMD in Iraq, you can find another where they are skeptical about the opposite. Their wishy-washiness makes Kerry envious.

6) I don’t think I can be any clearer. AQ has been operational for 20 plus years now. Their operational genesis began in Afghanistan thanks to Carter. Nevertheless, their ideological genesis stemmed from the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt prior to post WWI. Answer the questions and the point about AQ will crystallize. You partially touched on it by saying AQ got stronger because of us. Juxtapose the rise of Nazism, Japan’s militarism and there is a similar thread for dealing with them. It is simply inevitable, the question is when & where, preferably at a time & place of our choosing — Iraq.

As for the refugees, it would be useful to know their tribal/religious affiliations as well as when they fled. Simply 2 million means nothing without context, let alone assume they are all angry at us. I hardly imagine that the Iraqi Christians and Jews are angry at us. Considering that in 2003 we expected millions upon millions of refugees, 2 million is pretty low.

Give up trying to rationalize the NYT, they screwed the pooch because they were afflicted by BDS. And to top it off, it was illegal from both sides of the coin thanks to the stupid McCain Feingold.

Cheers

Moreover, if we are willing to use the same standard of statistical reliability for weathermen as we do to invade other countries, God help us all.

2) If the Iraqi government coalesces into a viable government in the short or intermediate term future, then I will be happy to admit that I was wrong and the surge turned out to succeed. If six or nine months pass, another 500 soldiers die, and the government is where it is today, what will you do?

3) The Democrats did not make the benchmarks. The Iraqis and the Bush administration did. “Reid and co.” had nothing to do with them.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html

4) We did not invade Russia. I’m not sure what your point is. My point is that we invaded a country whose people never asked us to do a thing. By what right do we invade a country which never attacked us?

5) Blix and El Baradei were both quoted as being very skeptical about the putative existence of WMD in Iraq.

6) I’m not sure what your point is about Al Qaeda. As a result of our invasion of Iraq, there are 3700 dead Americans, many more wounded, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dead Iraqis, two million displaced Iraqi refugees (something Crocker didn’t see fit to mention in his testimony – nor would he mention the fact that we won’t let any of them come here), and the world justifiably views America as a belligerent and aggressive country. Balance this with the fact that as a direct result of our invasion, Al Qaeda is stronger than ever. The only way to solve terrorism is to make sure there aren’t any more terrorists, and we’ve given bin Laden a recruiting gift he could only dream of.

Now tell me that our invasion of Iraq has something to do with defeating Al Qaeda.

7) I’m also puzzled as to exactly what the problem is with the New York Times. Is the suggestion that the Times only runs advocacy ads for people it likes? (Demonstrably false: a typical issue has three or four advocacy ads representing all sorts of groups). Is it that moveon.org gets better rates than people the Times’s editorial board dislikes? (Also untrue: Giuliani got the same rate for his ad attacking Hillary). Moveon.org has millions of dollars: is the suggestion that the Times is so in cahoots with moveon.org that it happily gave up $80K to help them out? (Ridiculous on its face.) The Times’s own “public editor” wrote the column today criticizing the management. (Could you imagine an ombudsman at the Wall Street Journal or Fox News?) Or is it just more smokescreen to distract attention from, say, two million Iraqi refugees who are (justifiably) very angry with the United States?

2) Then if between now and the next report, the Iraqi govt accomplishes most of their objectives, then I guess we’ll tune in to see you say the surge was still a failure because all of the goals weren’t accomplished according to the original schedule. Have you even considered that some of the goals, like the dems’ own goals might be overly optimistic? Or given the nefariousness of Reid & co, set deliberately high to ensure failure? No, I suppose not. Suffice to say, the party of nutroots have gotten religion, on their knees twice daily praying for failure, otherwise they will see ’08 slip away from them.

3) I based my opinion of the Wilsons on the Commission Report.

4/5) Fine.

6) Regimes, such as the USSR or Saddam as enemies? Yes. Peoples such as the Russians or Iraqis as enemies? No. On the other hand, I consider all Islamofascists/jihadii as pure enemies.

UNMOVIC could verify neither the presence nor absence of WMD. They could only report that they have found some and supervised the destruction/disposal of said weapons. As for the rest, only time would tell, given Saddam’s games of hide & seek and/or procedural processes. Unfortunately, Saddam ran out of the time mandated by the UN. http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/SC7asdelivered.htm
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030308-1.html

7) That’s news? It’s been part of the overall big picture for taking down Saddam. With regards to AQ, we only need to look to history. Where was AQ when the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan? Where was AQ when we had our little Somalia adventure? Where was AQ when Clinton fought the Serbs to end the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia/Kosovo? Where was AQ when US Forces lodged in Saudi? Where was AQ during the rash of slayings in Algiers? Where was AQ while Russia was fighting Chechen rebels. Where was AQ when Arabs were sniffing around US bases in Germany looking for nukes and portable weapons? Where was AQ when we sanctioned Sudan? Where was AQ when two embassies were simultaneously attacked in Africa. Where was AQ when the Chechens took the fight to Moscow? Where was AQ when a bunch of German tourists were slaughtered in Djerba? Where was AQ when we berthed the USS Cole?

Now then, where would AQ be if we attacked Iraq? Where would AQ be if the Chechen rebels attacked a Russian school?

Regarding the ad pricing. If it was a billing screw-up, plain and simple, that explains why the NYT is going down the drain. If it was a partisan hack attack, it still explains why the NYT is going down the drain. The people running the NYT are about as smart as a herd of farm turkeys in a rainstorm.

Having managed media sales teams for almost two decades, I can tell you that this happens all the time. My guess is that either the guy made an honest mistake, or he knew he had the inventory that day and told moveon.iorg they would get the placement so he would get the order. (In other circumstances, this wouldn’t be so bad: I’ve always told salespeople that it is better to ask for foregiveness than to ask for permission).

In any event, it is hardly the sinister plot that feverish minds insist upon. A salesperson screwed up. Needless to say, those who want to believe that it was so important to the New York Times that moveon.org save a few bucks that the order came directly from Bill Keller will continue to believe that. Ratiocination always gets trumped by fantasy to those with a conspiratorial mind.