Rumsfeld's Strategy Under Fire As War Risks Become Increasingly Apparent

By: Joseph L. Galloway  

Intelligence officials say Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and other Pentagon civilians ignored much of the advice of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency in favor of reports from the Iraqi opposition and from Israeli sources that predicted an immediate uprising against Saddam once the Americans attacked.

The officials said Rumsfeld also made his disdain for the Army's heavy divisions very clear when he argued about the war plan with Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the allied commander. Franks wanted more and more heavily armed forces, said one senior administration official; Rumsfeld kept pressing for smaller, lighter, and more agile ones, with much bigger roles for air power and special forces.

"Our force package is very light", said a retired senior general. "If things don't happen exactly as you assumed, you get into a tangle, a mismatch of your strategy and your force. Things like the pockets (of Iraqi resistance) in Basra, Umm Qasr, and Nasariyah need to be dealt with forcefully, but we don't have the forces to do it."

By: Robin Miller  

A nation that prides itself on its adherence to the rule of law has violated that commitment in launching a patently illegal war.

Under fundamental international law, military force is permissible only in self-defense or when authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

The administration does not attempt to argue that self-defense applies. Iraq poses no imminent threat.

The Bush team's new doctrine of "preventive war" simply has no legitimacy under international law. Nazi leaders offered the same defense at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

With all possible legal bases for the invasion of Iraq shown to be unjustified - if not wholly fraudulent - there can be only one conclusion: The leaders of the Bush and Blair administrations are war criminals, guilty of the Nuremberg Tribunal's "supreme international crime".

By: Maureen Dowd  

Even though he came to politics with a sparse résumé, compared with his dad's stuffed one, the cocky W. was always more comfortable with the first person perpendicular.

When I asked him during the 2000 campaign about why he hadn't inherited his father's phobia about the dreaded singular pronoun, he laughed and self-deprecatingly replied: "That's the difference between a Phi Beta Kappa and a gentleman's 'C'."

The hawks of Bush II are not afraid of disorder in the pursuit of American dominance. They have no interest in any coalition - except their own. They see the international "we" as an impediment to joy - and to destiny. The Bush doctrine is animated by "the big I". That self-regarding doctrine, concocted by Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle back when W. was still merely a presidential gleam in Karl Rove's eye, preaches preventive pre-emptive preternatural pre-eminence.

Lawmakers, Activists Say Tactics for Enforcing Loyalty Are Tough and Sometimes Vindictive

By: Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei  

As the United States wages war this week following a pair of ultimatums to the United Nations and Iraq, the airwaves and editorial pages of the world have been full of accusations that President Bush and his administration are guilty of coercive and harrying behavior. Even in typically friendly countries, Bush and the United States have been given such labels this week as "arrogant bully" (Britain), "bully boys" (Australia), "big bully" (Russia), "bully Bush" (Kenya), "arrogant" (Turkey), and "capricious" (Canada). Diplomats have accused the administration of "hardball" tactics, "jungle justice" and acting "like thugs".

At home, where support for the war on Iraq is strong and growing, such complaints of strong-arm tactics by the Bush administration nonetheless have a certain resonance - even among Bush supporters. Though the issues are vastly different, Republican lawmakers and conservative interest groups report similar pressure on allies at home to conform to Bush's policy wishes.

By: Lisa Walsh Thomas  

She goes way back, George, way back before the history your advisors have tried to teach you in the past two years. She marched in Selma, Alabama; she was in Montgomery. She was hanging out with a Russian foot soldier in World War I and helped him to make a U-turn and head home to take his country from the czar. Some say she was in Boston Harbor in 1774, dressed as a Mohawk Indian, helping to heave almost ten thousand pounds (sterling) worth of Darjeeling tea into the water.

She's a mystery to you, George W., because you are an intellectual and emotional and spiritual troglodyte, able to know only that she's in your way, so you must try to kill her. You are unable to fully comprehend that she is the PEOPLE and that, in the end, however long it takes, however many have to die for freedom and justice, the PEOPLE triumph over the greed of megalomaniacs who would despoil the planet to control them.

You think that if she opens up her mouth to sing aloud, you're going to hear only an old scratched LP, a Woody Guthrie protest song. That thought belongs in the bag with most of your expressed thoughts, Mr. Chairman. When she opens her mouth, what you will see are birds. Then you will see that they are doves. And then you will see that even doves, when fighting for their lives, can grow fangs.

By: Eleanor Clift  

The Bush clan doesn't like to be crossed, just ask Saddam - or Tom Daschle for that matter. But will there be a price to be paid for making it all so personal?

Bush has personalized this war to such an extreme that even if American forces take over all of Iraq and find weapons of mass destruction, the war will not be judged a success unless Saddam is captured or his body is found. It's a Bush family trait to turn everything into a grudge match. Anybody who crosses Bush gets the treatment. During last fall's congressional races, Republican operatives likened Democratic leader Tom Daschle to Saddam Hussein because he stood in the way of passing Bush's legislation. Daschle is again in the crossfire for criticizing Bush's failure to resolve the impasse over Iraq with diplomacy.

By: Paul Krugman  

The new study, carried out by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, estimates the present value of the revenue that will be lost because of the Bush tax cuts - those that have already taken place, together with those that have been proposed - using the same economic assumptions that underlie those Medicare and Social Security projections. The total comes to $12 trillion to $14 trillion - more than the Social Security and Medicare shortfalls combined. What this means is that the revenue that will be sacrificed because of those tax cuts is not a minor concern. On the contrary, that revenue would have been more than enough to "top up" Social Security and Medicare, allowing them to operate without benefit cuts for the next 75 years.

The administration has tried to deny this conclusion, inventing strange new principles of accounting in the process. But the simple truth is that the Bush tax cuts have utterly transformed our fiscal outlook, for the worse. Without those tax cuts, the problems of an aging population might well have been manageable; with them, nothing short of an economic miracle can save us from a fiscal crisis.

"I wonder if anybody watching this 'Shock and Awe' bombing Friday noted that Iraq didn't have a plane. There is no joy to kill the bull unless he fights. You can't call this a war. The television people, and the politicians in Washington, said this was an extraordinary exhibition of bombing that never has been seen before. They used the right word, exhibition. It's an exhibition war, not a real war. You'll take it right now, if it keeps these young men of ours alive. Take it and gag on it, for this is a total character collapse of a country that was supposed to be so far above this loathsome act. You become the thing you hate. And Friday, we did. We became the Germany of 1939."

- Jimmy Breslin

By: Paul Craig Roberts  

Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These are not hyperbolic questions. Mr. Bush has permitted a small cadre of neoconservatives to isolate him from world opinion, putting him at odds with the United Nations and America's allies.

What better illustrates Mr. Bush's isolation than the fact that he delivered his March 16 ultimatum to the U.N. concerning Iraq from an air base in the Azores, where there was no prospect for massive demonstrations against his policy. Standing with Mr. Bush against the world were Britain and Spain.

By: William Rivers Pitt  

On September 11^th, I sat in numb horror as the images of carnage unfolded before me on the television. On that day, I was the victim of terrorism, along with every other American. Today, I sit in numbed horror as more carnage unfolds. Hundreds of massive missiles have rained down on a city far away, killing indiscriminately among the young, the infirm, the old, and the innocent. My government did this. My nation did this. My leaders did this. Today, I am the terrorist.

So are you.

There is no justification for this attack. Saddam Hussein and his forces had been effectively disarmed by the first Gulf War, by the UNSCOM inspections, and by the more recent UNMOVIC inspections. According to Hussein Kamel, son-in-law to Saddam Hussein whose comments to the U.N. in 1991 were recently reported in a buried Newsweek story, Iraq was pretty much disarmed of mass destruction weapons even before the first war. The Bush administration, in pushing for this war, has foisted lie after lie after lie upon the American people and the world. The world didn't buy it, but they weren't dependent upon lapdog media sources like ours for their data.

American corporations with close ties to the White House are poised to cash in on Saddam's defeat. French companies need not apply.

By: Farhad Manjoo  

The news that some well-connected American firms will be first in line for these billion-dollar deals did not help the Bush administration's case for war internationally. Headlines all over the world questioned the White House's true motives for war. During a session of the British Parliament, one Liberal Democrat member asked Prime Minister Tony Blair why his allies in the U.S. had "pointedly excluded British and foreign firms". Vincent Cable, the MP, continued: "Is the prime minister not embarrassed to have given such unstinting loyalty to an American President who regards international cooperation with such contempt and war as an opportunity to dish out contracts to his cronies?" Blair dodged the question, but his spokesman told the British press that the prime minister hopes the United Nations, and not the U.S., would head the rebuilding effort.

It's hyperbole to argue that the Bush administration wants to invade Iraq only for the benefit of its friends in the corporate world (though some people no doubt believe that). For some businesses - most notably the airlines, which fear billions in losses if there is a war - an invasion will likely be terrible for the balance sheet. But, as in the Gulf War, some companies will make a bundle from an attack, and one doesn't have to be very conspiracy-minded to notice that these are the very same firms that have intimate ties with the Bush administration. Is it unreasonable to think that the high-minded goal of bringing freedom to Iraqis exists, in this White House, alongside many less noble political calculations - for instance, old-fashioned corporate opportunism? Or, making sure that the spoils of war stay out of the hands of the troublesome French?

By: Michele Kambas and Dina Kyriakidou  

They filed off their plane from Baghdad silently, their thoughts still back in Iraq.

There was no elation at swapping the hardship of living and searching in the sands of Iraq for lying on a beach on the Mediterraen tourist island of Cyprus.

There was just frustration, even some anger, that their professionalism had been challenged, that they had been forced to walk away from a job not yet done.

"I am saddened that this President failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life, because this President couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country."

- Sen. Tom Daschle

From:  

China has called for an immediate end to the U.S.-led war against Iraq, criticizing the United States for ignoring the desire for peace among the nations and peoples of the world.

From:  

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia banned broadcast media from an appearance Wednesday where he will receive an award for supporting free speech.

The City Club usually tapes speakers for later broadcast on public television, but Scalia insisted on banning television and radio coverage, the club said. Scalia is being given the organization's Citadel of Free Speech Award.

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind."

- John F. Kennedy

By: Lisa Kadonaga  

There was a time when diplomacy meant something. Not wheedling and bribing and threatening, or bestowing cute nicknames and laughing at people behind their backs. Compromise was something you strove for - it wasn't derided as being "irrelevant". Just as a legal system was something dignified and praiseworthy, not the last resort of people were too weak and cowardly to do anything other than "file a lawsuit".

And yet, the ones who jeer so disrespectfully are the very same people who rushed off to file their own lawsuit - to prevent all the votes from being counted - back in the last months of 2000.

The American people were right. They chose a leader, a competent and thoughtful man, even a visionary of sorts, whom they believed would be the best choice to guide their nation into a new century. But the court forced someone else on them, and day by day, choice by choice, the individual who quite literally "took office" in January 2001, is leading his country into a disasterous Middle East conflict.

By: BartCop  

This isn't America's war.
This isn't Washington's war.
This is George W Bush's war - he is responsible.

When the body bags start to return from the Gulf, don't believe the networks when they say "America lost her soldiers", because that's not what happened.

Bush got those men killed, not "America", and not "Washington".

By: Paul Krugman  

The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts.

Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks, and pulled out of the International Criminal Court - all in just two years.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

- H.L. Mencken

By: William Rivers Pitt

Somewhere in America - perhaps in New York, perhaps in Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Detroit, San Francisco, Cleveland, Atlanta, perhaps in all of them simultaneously - there will be an explosion. A group that cares nothing for the well being of Saddam Hussein will take responsibility, in the name of those thousands of Iraqi Muslims slaughtered in the initial aerial bombardment of Baghdad.

The body bags will come out, here at home and across the sea in Iraq, as Americans begin to die in terrible numbers.

Martial law will be declared, habeas corpus will be suspended, posse comitatus will be left aside, and the strictures outlined by both Patriot Acts will come to full bloom. 227 years of constitutional law in America will draw to a close.

An oil shock will roll across the global community, ripping through an already precarious economic situation...

Commentary from:  

So enthralled is Bush with the might of the Pentagon, so enraptured is he with his self-assigned role of liberator, so sure is he of doing God's will that he has become an enormously frightening figure. He seems to believe he can rule the world alone - or at most as part of a triumvirate with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

The costs of the policy are already mounting. Bush has done grievous damage to Washington's relationship with its traditional European allies. Tony Blair might lose his job. The governments of Spain and Italy could also tumble because of their toadying. France or Germany could exercise a veto over the expansion of the European Union or NATO. Such expansion can occur only by unanimous consent, and if "Old Europe" sees the Eastern European countries as Trojan horses of Washington, it may decide to scuttle the whole deal.

U.S. relations with Russia also have suffered. Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of the house of Russia's parliament, condemned Bush's cowboy approach. "Do you know the difference between a policeman and a gangster? A policeman complies with rules which are elaborated not by the policeman but by a certain democratic community accepted by everyone", he told the New York Times. "A gangster implements his own rules."

By: Donna Di  

The economy tanks in 6 months flat, millions of jobs are lost, the actions of Enron CEO Kenneth Lay (you can call him Ken) costs tens of thousands of people their life's savings and retirement money (some men and women who worked at Enron were so desperate to pay their bills that they posed in Playboy and Playgirl) and Lay doesn't even get a slap on the wrist because he was Bush's biggest campaign contributor and close friend (shoot, they have yet to find the guy!). And the handful of Nazis using a million screen names and posting numerous messages on the various message boards (we've been on to that for the longest time!) mean to tell people that's all Clinton's fault?

Let's not even get into the 9/11 brouhaha and how Bush did nothing to try to prevent it (the FBI and the CIA did their jobs. Bush was determined to take his hundredth vacation in the 6-7 months since his coronation, the working people in the World Trade Center towers be damned). Let's talk about how the FBI and CIA warned him of young men wanting to steer airplanes, not fly them, in flight schools and how he continued to shovel cow shit on his ranch rather than deal with it. Let's talk about how he continued to (attempt to) read to those Florida school kids when a Secret Service agent whispered in his ear what was happening...

"There is a much cheaper way, less complicated way to bring Saddam to his knees: send the Bush economic team over there and let them run the country."

- John Kerry, Mar. 13, 2003

By: Joel Siegel  

Former President Bill Clinton double-dissed President Bush last night, saying his successor in the White House has bungled handling the U.S. economy and the crisis over Iraq.

Clinton, who drew standing ovations from a packed auditorium at the 92^nd Street Y on the upper East Side, criticized the administration's economic policies as "wrongheaded" and getting worse.

Stolen from:  

Last night, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh denounced the Bush administration's approach to Iraq while accepting the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at the Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Hersh began his acceptance speech by discussing the difficulties today's reporters face, especially in Washington. "I have never seen my peers as frightened as they are now" commented Mr. Hersh, who was recently described as a "terrorist" by Senior White House advisor Richard Perle. Mr. Hersh also spoke of his own frustration with the Bush administration. "There is no real standard of integrity because the White House doesn't have any", he said.

While Mr. Hersh's observation that the White House is deliberately intimidating the Washington press may be correct, it is disingenuous at best to blame President Bush for the White House's success in this effort. The catastrophic failure of our national press corps began well before Mr. Bush assumed office, at a time when American journalists were free to critique Mr. Bush with little fear of retribution.

American attitudes about a connection have changed, firming up the case for war.

By: Linda Feldmann  

In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11.

Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45% of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was "personally involved" in Sept. 11, about the same figure as a month ago.

Sources knowledgeable about U.S. intelligence say there is no evidence that Hussein played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, nor that he has been or is currently aiding Al Qaeda. Yet the White House appears to be encouraging this false impression, as it seeks to maintain American support for a possible war against Iraq and demonstrate seriousness of purpose to Hussein's regime.

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