That’s the essential question about Iraq. I’m not there. I can only read as much as I can and try and make sense of it. I sure hope the president’s boundless optimism is right, but it was a little worrying to hear his response to criticism yesterday. Here’s one:
Later, asked by reporters about calls from GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) for a more candid assessment about the Iraq situation, Bush replied that both men “want me elected as president. We agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell. And that stands in stark contrast to the statement my opponent made yesterday, when he said that the world was better off with Saddam in power.” Kerry has said he would not have waged war in Iraq if he had been president but has asserted that “the world is better off” without Hussein in power.
So his main concern is not whether those senators are right, but whether they are voting for him. That seems consonant with his general approach. And then he distorts his opponent’s position. The Washington Post then notes the following:
Bush also played down the significance of a CIA report forecasting more difficulty in Iraq. “The CIA laid out several scenarios and said life could be lousy, life could be okay, life could be better, and they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like,” he said. The confidential August report to policymakers, according to an administration official who described it yesterday, outlined three scenarios over the next 18 months: a period of “tenuous stability,” a time of “further fragmentation and extremism” or a period of “trending to civil war.”
It seems he reads this CIA report the way he read previous assessments of Iraq’s WMDs: he reads what he wants to read. Look, this war has to succeed; and if this president is re-elected in November, we will all have to do whatever we can to make sure he does. But it is not crazy now to ask whether he has enough of a grip on the situation to carry us forward. His comments yesterday suggest that the cocoon is intact. Which is more worrying than any news from Iraq.
NOW, BASRA: The British army’s smart tactics once made Basra a success story of the liberation. But now, apparently, the city is teetering on the brink:
Last month, the British Army fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition in southern Iraq. The base in al-Ammara sustained more than 400 direct mortar hits. The British battalion there counted some 853 separate attacks of different kinds: mortars, roadside bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire… A vicious campaign of intimidation doesn’t help matters. Last month, five cleaning ladies at a British base were murdered on their way to work. Two local translators disappeared. Their severed heads were found outside the front gate. But perhaps the most worrying development of the August fighting was that none of Basra’s 25,000 police officers came to the aid of the British soldiers. Some even helped the gunmen. I met one of the senior civilian political advisors to the military command. Every time he came to Basra things seemed a “step change worse”, he said.
Yes, this is the BBC. But the report provides some good news, and seems pretty balanced to me. I link. You decide.
The Dish 