Leon Panetta, Iraq Hack

This is how the former Clinton Administration chief of staff began his opinion column in the New York Times today…

WHAT has been particularly frustrating about the debate in Washington over Iraq is that everyone seems to be fighting one another and forgetting the fundamental mission of the war.

Whether one is for or against the war, the key to stability is to have an Iraq that, in the words of the president himself, can “govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.” Achieving that goal is largely dependent on the political reforms that Iraqi leaders have promised but failed to put in place in their country.

This is wrong. The “fundamental mission of the war” was to find WMD, which as it turns out, were destroyed sometime after the first Gulf war (and by the way, I’ve reached the point in “State of Denial” where David Kay said that in so many words in early 2004).

Short of that, the “fundamental mission of the war” was to bring something that approximated democracy and self-rule to Iraq (and oh yeah, to free Iraq from a brutal dictator, assuming earlier in the war that our military could just hop around the globe and take out any dictator we didn’t like). So I agree with Panetta somewhat, but what he lists as a fundamental mission has really morphed from a secondary one.

Anyway, in Panetta’s column, he states how important it is that we all work together to bring peace and stability to Iraq, then he cites a list of missed milestones that make it completely clear that peace and stability is nowhere in sight for that country, unfortunately.

And as far as Panetta is concerned, who has the most to lose if we all don’t Just Shut Up And Clap Louder?

Why, the Democrats of course (do you even need to ask?), as witnessed by this quote brought to us by Matt Stoller here…

"Look, the American people expect you to fight for what you believe in," says Leon Panetta, Mr. Clinton's chief of staff in 1995. "But they don't expect you to be stupid about it. If in the end, this is going to hurt our troops, [Democrats] have got to be very careful. There's a point at which they are going to have to compromise."

Typical centrist, accomodationist, triangulationist, Third Way, DLC-approved insider bullshit (sorry for the bad word, but that’s exactly what it is – and by the way, at what point did anyone start taking Harold Ford seriously on foreign policy or anything else for that matter?).

Leon Panetta is not a stupid man, but apparently it is necessary to remind him once again that the vast majority of this country has communicated as clearly as it can that they want our people to start coming home from Iraq sooner than later. And as far as I’m concerned, the fact that that could happen no earlier than next year, depending on the latest moves in this stupid little faceoff Dubya insists on having between himself and Congress, is nothing to celebrate.

What will come to pass in that region of the world will come to pass independent of anything we do. Bushco had its opportunity to make its case for invading Iraq legitimately to the world, and they totally blew it with half-truths and utter lies exacerbated by poor to nonexistent post-invasion planning and the most naïve thinking imaginable.

This country decided long ago that it’s wrong for our fine service people to pay the price for that, making its voice heard loud and clear last November. And it’s a shame that Leon Panetta and his ilk apparently decided not to listen.

And by the way, regarding Dubya’s claim that this delay in funding he has manufactured by refusing to sign off on the Iraq supplemental is jeopardizing training for our active duty forces, I’d like to refresh our memories with this Q&A with Tony Snow (hat tip for the link to BarbinMD at The Daily Kos)…

Q There was also a report this morning that two Army combat brigades are being sent to Iraq without desert training -- the Associated Press has a story out today -- and that it's because they're being rushed to Iraq to help get the surge in place.

MR. SNOW: Again, let me stress, what happens is, a lot of times you will also do training in theaters, as well as equipping in theater. The generals have made it very clear, and military commanders have made it clear, nobody is going to go into combat activity without proper equipment and training. Period. So if things --

Q But the story flatly says that two brigades are going in without desert training in California. So that doesn't sound like --

MR. SNOW: All right, I understand.

Q -- they're getting the training.

MR. SNOW: Well, but they can get desert training elsewhere, like in Iraq.

So it sounds like our people weren’t getting prepared for training anyway, current budget issues notwithstanding.

Yep, just throw them into the muck with no preparation and see if they can manage not to get killed just so a bunch of chickenhawks and military opportunists can pat themselves on the back over “the surge,” right?

Mission Accomplished!

Update: I looked at Panetta's column from one angle, but Prof. Marcus looks at it from the one spelled O-I-L here (easy to forget that that's the one that really matters to these people, unfortunately).