How We Got Here

After reading this post from Glenn Greenwald yesterday via Atrios, I decided to try something a little bit different.

I’ve noted in the past that I’m reading “State of Denial” By Bob Woodward about Iraq, a good third book in a series about the war that I wish Woodward had written two books ago, actually. As I read it, I’m trying to note items that I think are interesting, under-reported, outright ignored by our corporate media, or fall under any of these scenarios.

At a certain point, I know it gets to be a bit redundant to keep rehashing all of this; the indisputable fact it that our people continue to fight, suffer, struggle and die as a result of this horror, and as John Edwards among others has said, we need to leave, and the best way to leave is to actually start leaving (despite the fact that even under the most optimistic of scenarios, that isn’t going to happen any time soon, and like you I’m sure, I find it hard to put my utter disgust into words concerning that fact).

And speaking of disgust, that begins to also describe my reaction to the Washington Post (Woodward’s newspaper as we know, ironically enough) for granting a forum to Robert Kagan to spout more propaganda that gets our people killed, which is echoed thoroughly by Greenwald in his fine post.

So to try and counter the steady drumbeat of garbage from the right-wing echo chamber on the war in particular, I’m going to note some excerpts from Woodward’s book from time to time, representing the reality-based perspective. The only other recurring feature I have is “Where The Rubber Meets The Road” usually on Fridays, but I’ll try to do the same thing here, beginning with this item…

(pp. 153-155)

(On about March 22, 2003…) No WMD had been used or found since the first days of the invasion. The intense pace of (Major Gen. James A. “Spider”) Marks’ intelligence team only got more frantic. The quality of the intelligence on the hundreds of remaining sites on the WMD site list (946 assumed total) was still unsatisfactory and the unanticipated Iraqi opposition was jarring. It had been part of the intelligence shop’s job to figure these things out, and they hadn’t done it.

…

“Thousands (of Iraqi Army soldiers) are just taking off their uniforms and going home,” Bush told Prime Minister (Tony) Blair on the phone.

“Yes, they are melting away,” Blair added.

“Just melting away,” Bush echoed.

Bush didn’t really have a lot to do once the fighting started. Notes of his conversations and meetings show he spoke repeatedly about victory, but they also reveal a president concerned that the U.S. could win the ground conflict but lose the propaganda battle.

“We need to remind people why we are here,” Bush said in a Pentagon meeting on March 25th. He told Rumsfeld: “You will remind the world of who we are fighting.”

The Air Force had three giant, four-engine Commando Solo transport planes in the air – flying TV and radio stations – broadcasting over Iraq.

“How does this look to the average Iraqi?” Bush asked at an NSC meeting on March 28th. The answer was that the broadcasts were reaching Baghdad for five hours a day, from 6 to 11 p.m. They weren’t broadcasting video, just still photographs.

Not enough, was Bush’s reply. “You have to calibrate it. You have to market programs. People don’t turn on the television if there’s nothing to watch.”

Three days later, he had General (Tommy) Franks on a secure video teleconference. “Are you pleased with our information ops?” he asked. “Can you broadcast our message to Baghdad?”

Franks said he wasn’t pleased that Iraqi T.V. was still on the air, and he needed more translators “to turn up the quality and volume of Arab language broadcasts.”

Bush said, “If you need help from the States, we’ll give it to you.”

On April 4th, towards the end of another NSC meeting, somebody mentioned that the electricity was off in Iraq’s capital city, which U.S. forces had not yet reached.

“Who turned out the lights in Baghdad?” Bush asked.

“Most probably the regime to reposition its forces,” Franks said on the video screen. “But we don’t know for sure.”

“Well then, if it’s the regime, put the word out that we didn’t do it,” Bush said.

Still, the president appeared confident. “Only one thing matters: winning,” he said at one NSC meeting, as he dismissed “second-guessing regarding the post-Saddam world.” In a private moment, (National Security Adviser Stephen) Hadley asked him how he was doing.

“I made the decision,” Bush said. “I sleep well at night.”

Please keep in mind that, up to this point, Dubya is portrayed pretty much as a follower by Woodward in the run-up to the war as well as during actual conflict. The excerpt above is easily his most active participation to date in this book.

And how appropriate for “The Decider” that he thinks marketing and propaganda can put an end of the misery of Iraq. And what a tragedy for us all that it took everything to date for him to learn (?) that you can’t win a war the same way that you can start one.