1 in What?
If this is true, I’m wondering why it is we didn’t hear about this before the surge actually started as part of the, you know, debate:
Smith [Gordon Smith, R-OR] said he recently spoke with Gen. David Petraeus, the new top military commander in Iraq, who told him the troop surge has only a one in four chance of succeeding.
Looking good then, looking good. I mean, one in four isn’t bad. Well, not as bad as, say, one in five so…
Heh.
And:
“If you’re really going to do a surge, you don’t do it with 20,000, you do it with 250,000,” he said, noting that Baghdad is a city of nearly 7 million people. But he said the United States cannot afford such a response; instead it has to come from the Iraqi Army.
More:
Libby Spencer at The Impolitic
Mark Kleiman at The RBC.
7 Responses to “1 in What?”
Just remember that it’s only those evil liberals who decided that the surge didn’t have very good odds of success before it had a chance.
Gordon Smith is a Republican, but he is up for reelection in ’08, and is from a state that has turned against the war. Also, what has he done to stop the surge besides talk?
The truth is that the Iraqi army is not large enough, trained well enough, or armed well enough to win this war, either. Total boondoggle.
If it wasn’t for intermissions provided by Seitzerland’s invasion of Lichtenstein, this Iraq war would really drive me crazy, and I mean, certifiably crazy. You see, after Nixon’s Watergate and the shooting of students at Kent State, I naively thought that the nation had learned a lesson, that nothing ever again could shake the basic foundations of the nation. Stupid me!
The troops making up the surge are beninning to look like sacrificial lambs. Of course, we find out what’s going on only when it’s too late!
I truly think that during my lifetime, no clear understanding of his war will emerge. If they’re lucky, maybe my grandchildren will know what happened.
So if Petraeus has admitted that the surge has only a 25% chance of
success —why was it widely circulated previously in the media that the surge had a 50% chance? Big difference. Now it makes you wonder if the chance of success is even less, since the military leader in charge of the mission would probably be the most optimistic to avoid creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This goes back to those who were vilified for calling the strategy Bush’s Hail Mary- a desperate move by a president who when faced with the ISG’s report calling the war a failure, turned to neocons at the AEI for an alternative. In order to ensure the irrelevancy of congressional debate, he managed to get the surge underway before even announcing it. If someone tells our president that in 50 years he will be seen as the second coming of Harry Truman, can we declare victory already? It would be helpful to avoid straining our military to the breaking point over this tragic error in foreign policy.
Just today I read in WaPo, that should the surge fail, and there’s at least a 75% chance that it will, there is no backup plan. The mistakes in this war just keep on coming.
It only takes common sense to realize that 20,000 more troops, “surged” for a matter of months, will not be able to pacify a country as large and as deeply screwed up as Iraq.
I’d say a snowball’s chance in hell is a overly optimistic assessment.
To be fair Kim, there has been mostly hot-air from everyone and little in the way of progress in ending the way. Let’s see how he (and the rest of Congress) votes in the budget bill coming soon.
Wasn’t there an article a few months ago about some in the Iraqi Army were soldiers by day and Insurgents by night? If true, equipping them better may make the situation worse.
Rambie- If Smith and likeminded GOP members feel that way, they need to work with Congressional Democrats who have been trying to stop the surge. There’s a lot of talk about disapproval, but the votes have fallen largely along party lines. Yes, mostly there have just been non-binding resolutions, but that’s taking a small first step, and is better than nothing.
The point you made about arming the Iraqi army is a good one, but it only adds to the evidence that getting the Iraqi army and police to defend themselves is a pipedream. Yes we will be helping the insurgency and even the death squads if we arm them (this is already happening) but won’t they also desert in droves if we don’t arm them? There’s really no way to win if the army we trained won’t defend a national unity government—so what good is the surge supposed to do?