He has a strong suit or two, but not these ones.

Meh. And how much is that just Bremer being self-serving?

Oh yeah…it’s just because he’s trying to sell a book. Dean, come on. You’re coming out of the gate with that? Pretty weak, partisan hackish stuff my friend… I’m just saying…

A simple question to ask yourself, or any other critic: you say it was wrong to disband the old Iraqi military.

When did I say it was wrong to disband the Iraqi Army? I certainly don’t ever recall saying anything of the sort. In fact, Bremer countered those critics quite effectively in the Dateline piece, and I believe him that there really wasn’t much of an army to begin with. So why did I show that paragraph of the Reuters piece? Well, because it discusses that he talked about the whole “disbanding” issue in the Dateline piece. That’s all.

I am not one of those critics Dean. Sorry.

What I generally find is that if you’ve ever managed any real-world project of more than a tiny handful of people, you find that there will always, ALWAYS be mistakes–underestimates, overestimates, nasty surprises, and so on. None of that is unusual.

Hey, fair enough, but when your guy in Iraq is saying, “More troops please”, you shouldn’t ignore him in favor of the military theory by Rumsfeld who is snug as a bug in Washington. That’s ridiculously bad management, and both you and I know that.

I myself continue to be surprised the insurgency isn’t FAR worse and hasn’t caused FAR more damage–I expected way worse when we went in, and most of the Pentagon projections were worse.

Well, too bad they didn’t take those Pentagon estimates into account. And if Bremer didn’t anticipate the insurgency and Rumsfeld didn’t anticipate the insurgency, then I’m curious as to what your point is? There were voices in our own government who were saying the WMDs weren’t there too. And they got ignored in favor of the “good” news.

What Bremer is trying to say now is that we still haven’t effectively addressed the realities on the ground. Still. That’s telling, and frankly, what it looks like is Bush and Rumsfeld playing politics and trying to maintain the guise of being right instead of really caring about what’s right for Iraq.

And what’s right for Iraq is pretty much all I care about right now, and if I think somebody is putting politics before the safety and well being of our soldiers and the people of Iraq, then I think they have to go…plain and simple.

Thanks for the comment.

The President himself said in his much-maligned aircraft carrier speech where he was (quite wrongly) accused of stating that the entire Iraq mission was accomplished that parts of the country remained quite dangerous and there was a whole lot of work yet to get done.

Rumsfeld–who in my estimation is the best SecDef of my lifetime, so you know my bias–has said many times that the insurgency was worse than we figured, not that we never thought there’d be one. I myself continue to be surprised the insurgency isn’t FAR worse and hasn’t caused FAR more damage–I expected way worse when we went in, and most of the Pentagon projections were worse.

What I generally find is that if you’ve ever managed any real-world project of more than a tiny handful of people, you find that there will always, ALWAYS be mistakes–underestimates, overestimates, nasty surprises, and so on. None of that is unusual.

A simple question to ask yourself, or any other critic: you say it was wrong to disband the old Iraqi military. Okay, fine, that’s easy to say. Were you on record as saying that AT THE TIME, or are you just engaging in hindsight? And is there any possibility–any at all–in your mind that if we had NOT disbanded the old Iraqi military, things might not be worse? You are CERTAIN, are you, that we would have had fewer problems? And you said so back at the time, and aren’t just saying it now?