Monday, November 17, 2003
Iraq & Bush: the last week (or so)
First, let's recap:
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"President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended " (Source: Official White House website).Now, fast forward to the past week and the news that:
"U.S. Intensifies Strikes at Guerrillas in Iraq":Maybe, Bush's war-prep team should have consulted Toby Dodge before they started this ill-conceived war. Read a short interveiw with Dodge, whose new book "Inventing Iraq" argues that the United States is repeating many of the mistakes that Britain made in the 1920s when it tried to build a democratic state in Iraq, here. ("The Same Mistakes?" Source: Newsweek) Learn more about Dodge's book "Inventing Iraq" here.
Operation Iron Hammer, the name of the campaign in its second day Thursday, marked another change in U.S. tactics to put down resistance in central Iraq.
"This is the same force that came out of Kuwait and won the war...," said Lt. Col. George Krivo, a spokesman for occupation forces.
One military official said the aim of Operation Iron Hammer was not so much battlefield advantage as creating a perception that the United States has taken the initiative. Managing perceptions is considered critical among top commanders, the official said.
Some American observers here are skeptical [though]. "I don't know that this will impress anyone very much," said a senior civilian official in the Coalition Provisional Authority. "Maybe it will be good for the troops' morale." (Source: Washington Post)
"CIA report: Iraqis losing faith in U.S.":
Lack of confidence in coalition may be helping resistance. (Source: MSNBC)
"Bomb at Italian Base in Iraq Kills at Least 26":
18 Italians Among Dead (Source: Washington Post)
"Iraq Policy in Crisis":
The abrupt recall of America's top administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer III, for two days of urgent White House consultations signals a new level of alarm among American policy makers. (Source: New York Times)
"CIA: No evidence of WMD transfer":
Agency has no proof that Saddam gave weapons to terrorists (Source: Washington Post)
"At Least 17 Dead as 2 U.S. Copters Collide Over Iraq":
American officials said the collision occurred when one of the helicopters came under hostile fire from the ground and swerved upward to avoid it, driving its rotor into the second helicopter. (Source: New York Times)
"America's Gamble: A Quick Exit Plan for Iraq":
The announcement of a firm date to create an interim Iraqi government and end the formal American occupation - though not the American military presence - promises the Iraqis the sovereignty they have clamored for, and offers President Bush the political symbol he needed: the beginnings of an exit strategy that he can explain to American voters.
But the price of a speedy transfer of power, Mr. Bush's own top aides worry, may be a rapid loss of control - control over the drafting of a constitution, and over the effort to make democracy flower in a land where it had never been cultivated.
"It's a gamble, a huge gamble," one of the most senior architects of Mr. Bush's campaign to oust Saddam Hussein conceded this week, after two days of meetings with L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the American-led occupation authority. "But it's easy to overestimate the degree of control we have over events now," the official said, "and to underestimate how much we will retain." (Source: New York Times)
"U.N. Officials Are Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop":
The Bush administration's decision this week to speed up the transfer of power to the Iraqis won evenhanded, public praise from Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had long championed a quicker restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
But officials and diplomats here, while welcoming the policy change, warned privately against a rapid reduction of American military forces and said they feared that the United States would dump Iraq into the hands of the United Nations. (Source: New York Times)
"Hussein, on Tape Sent to Arab TV, Said to Urge War":
An Arab television station broadcast a new audiotape on Sunday that it said had been made by Saddam Hussein in which the speaker mixed invective against Israel, calls for holy war and curses on American and other foreign occupation troops in Iraq. (Source: New York Times)
"Plan for Guerrilla Action May Have Predated War":
American intelligence agencies have found increasing evidence that the broad outlines of the guerrilla campaign being waged against American forces in Iraq were laid down before the war by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, government officials said Friday. (Source: New York Times)
"Iraq Goes Sour":
A great editorial summing up all the mismanagment gaffes by the Bush administration of the situation in Iraq. (Source: New York Times)
