Well, This Should be a Good Debate
For some bizarre reason, the Washington Post is running an article this morning that seems to be pretending that there’s a legitimate debate going on between George W. Bush and people who are actually experts on Iraq. No, really:
Feb. 22, 2006, is the day the Bush administration says everything in Iraq changed.
I wonder if Bush is going to repeat the phrase “2-22” over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and use it as an excuse to justify doing anything he wants.
Before that day, military and administration officials frequently explain, Iraq was moving in the right direction: National elections had been held, and a government was forming. But then the bombing of the golden dome shrine in Samarra derailed that positive momentum and unleashed a wave of brutal sectarian violence.
En otras palabras: “Hey, we need some excuse to justify our grave and monstrous fuck-ups!”
Above: The bombed golden dome shrine in Samarra. Of course, as we learned from the Jamil Hussein affair, this shrine isn’t that badly damaged and is probably a fabrication of MSM lies anyway.
Even now, more than a year later, the president and other administration officials cite Samarra as a turning point — “a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal,” President Bush called it in a March 6 news conference. “One of the key changes in Iraq last year,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow in January.
Many Iraq specialists and defense analysts contend that this narrative of the mosque bombing is misleading, yet also revealing of how U.S. strategy in Iraq has evolved.
Hmmmm, let’s see, who am I more likely to believe, Iraq experts or George W. Bush?
Experts say the attack did not begin a civil war but rather confirmed the ongoing deterioration and violence in Iraq — conditions the White House and the generals had resisted recognizing. In that sense, the bombing destroyed much more than the shrine: It also demolished the positive view of progress in Iraq, leading military and administration officials to a more pessimistic perspective, and eventually to a new U.S. strategy. […]
The U.S. military had planned to begin drawing down its combat force in Iraq sometime in 2006, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a congressional committee last month. “We did not because in February of last year, the golden mosque bombing and all the sectarian violence that ensued from that, we realized by around June that we were not going to be able to come down,” he said.
See, yeah. This is what we call a lie.
Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist in Middle Eastern security issues, agreed. “I do not think things were going well before the bombing,” said White, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The insurgency was not controlled. Incident levels were rising.”
Uh. Doesn’t this sound more like he’s disagreeing with the general? Nice job of catching this, WaPo editors! You just got schooled by a comedy blog! Bwah-ha-ha!
What the official narrative does not consider, said Ahmed Hashim, a professor of strategy at the Naval War College, is that civil war was well underway before February 2006. The mosque bombing should be seen as “a reflection of that, not a cause,” he said.
Pffft, why are we listening to some sissy perfesser at the far left Naval War College, anyway?
Asad Abu Khalil, a political scientist at California State University at Stanislaus, said it is characteristic of foreign occupiers to seize upon one episode and point to it as the moment that undercut all their good efforts. “The golden dome merely focused and intensified a conflict that was already taking place,” he said. “If the bombing of the golden dome did not take place, some other bombing would have occurred.”
The view that U.S. strategy was working before the bombing in Samarra leans on the assumption that the elections at the end of 2005 were a sign of progress, noted Carter Malkasian, who has served three tours in Iraq advising the Marines on counterinsurgency techniques. At the same time, he observed, the country was fracturing — with growing support for insurgents, an increasing number of attacks on U.S. forces and deepening Sunni unhappiness with the Iraqi government. “In the end, stability was so weak that it only took the mosque bombing to break it apart,” he concluded. “If the golden mosque hadn’t done it, another bombing probably would have.”
Nuh-uh! 2-22! 2-22! 2-22! 2-22! 2-22! I can torture people now!! 2-22!! 2-22!! 2-22!! 2-22!! 2-22!! 2-22!! Let’s pass more tax cuts!!! 2-22!!! 2-22!!! 2-22!!! 2-22!!! 2-22!!! 2-22!!! 2-22!!! IRAN HAS SET US UP THE BOMB!!!!!!
One Army officer who recalled buying into the optimism of late 2005 and early 2006, when he was a commander in Iraq, said that in retrospect, the situation was far worse than he and others understood it to be. He said it was the Samarra bombing that led him to believe that Iraq was indeed caught in a civil war. “What Samarra came to mean for me was a defining point in time, almost like a teaching point, where the real face of the Iraq war became clear,” he said.
Yessir. And that just goes to show, you should nevereverevereverever believe one goddamn word the Bush administration says.
Brad, Brad, Brad – why are you so trapped in 2/21 thinking? It’s a different kind of war now, a whole different world. And while you’re studying and examining and critiquing this “reality,” a whole new “reality” is being created.
Get with the times!
Feb. 22, 2006, is the day the Bush administration says everything in Iraq changed.
Feb 19th, 2002, however, is the day we realised that the Bush administration was totally full of shit (date changed to protect the innocent).
The bombing of the Golden Mosque didn’t mark the beginning of the civil war, it only marked the end of Bush’s ability to deny that there was a civil war.
That dome is still standing! They said the Golden Dome had been destroyed, but does that look destroyed to you?
It doesn’t look golden, either! It looks kind of pulverized concrete-colored! WE’VE BEEN LIED TO! Darn liberal media!
What about “the,” Bradstir?!?
Huh?
What about fucking “the”?
They say “the” aLOT, and I goddamned believe them most of the freakin’ time!
So, there!!
OTOH, every other word passing their shit-sucking lips is a damned lie, no question. Just to clarify.
Ah, I see MSM-NBC has deigned to hire Jamil Hussein, whom I remain unconvinced exists.
They blame EVERYTHING on the Golden Dome.
All goofing on GW aside, many sensible people do think the Samarra Shrine attack was a turning point.
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2006/02/al_qaedas_black.html
http://www.juancole.com/2006/02/shiite-protests-roil-iraq-tuesday-was.html
I knew it wouldn’t be long until the insurgent celery attacked that fat-ass dome!
http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j300/t4toby/incelerant.jpg
I suspect that for Iraqis—you know, the people who really really don’t matter in any of this to the Bushist fucks— the Day That Changed Everything is 3-19. On the bright side, they did get a great new pop song out of it:
Baghdad seems like a dream to us now.
It took four years to get here from Shockinawe
We’re still being fucked by America.
Forget the Golden Dome. I’m much more concerned about the Golden Arches.
Turning points can turn things from bad to worse.
Look, here’s the thing — this collective amnesia is insane. The endeavor was FUCKED, the minute the asshole declared Mission Accomplished and we stayed. There was NEVER a positive outcome precisely because things like the bombing were inevitable.
Remember this. All of the time.
Uh, not to be picky… Okay, just to be picky. That should read “IRAN SET UP US THE BOMB!”
Geez… How can anybody take you seriously if you can’t get your memes right?
Jay B. said,
March 13, 2007 at 19:06
Turning points can turn things from bad to worse.
Absolutely. The attack on the Samarra Shrine was the day it turned from totally fucked to ohmygoditsdoomed. 3/22 was the day Iraq as a country became no longer viable.
Variations on R. Porrofatto’s theme:
I am just the dumb son, my real story’s seldom told
I have squandered reputations for a pocketful of rubble, and some no-bid deals
All lies and jest, still I just hear what I want to hear
And disregard the rest, hmmmm
Lie lie lie, lie lie lie-lie lie lie lie, lie lie lie
Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie-lie lie lie lie . . .
Sadly No, I think this was just an error that the Washington Post corrected. I don’t know if this was caught internally or because of your post, but it now reads “said” not “agreed”
Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist in Middle Eastern security issues, said, “I do not think things were going well before the bombing.” White, now an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, added: “The insurgency was not controlled. Incident levels were rising.”
I think it was just an error because the whole thrust of the article is that people disagree with the Administration’s position.
Here’s the headline and the subhead as they stand now.
Shrine Bombing as War’s Turning Point Debated
Administration Says Event Increased Violence, but Many Iraq Experts Disagree
Turning points can turn things from bad to worse.
You’re missing the point. Bush and the Pentagon claim that it was all going fine and according to plan and that there was no civil war until that particular bombing. I’ve seen Pace make that argument repeatedly.
Why it matters is that claims that there was no civil war until the bombing of the Golden Mosque are generally followed by accusatory glances in Iran’s direction.
Look, think Pravda circa 1978. Authoritarian governments ALWAYS engage in revisionist history. They will repeat this from enough directions that history will actually record that the American Invasion and Occupation of Iraq was a shining success until those al Quaida jihadi fuckers snuck in thru Iran and blew up the golden dome. They will do what they can to wrap themselves in the glory of war, and try desparately to dump the consequences in the laps of their opposition.
That said, I’m also real tired of hearing about the “War in Iraq”. The war ended in the summer of ’03, when the regime fell and the US took the capitol. Since that time, it’s been an occupation, not a war. The reason there is fighting is there is resistance to the occupation, along with a ethno-sectarian civil war. But America is not fighting a “war”, and it would be a lot better for all if this was recognized.
mikey
Since that time, it’s been an occupation, not a war.
Word.
Ah, those were the good old days.
A successful, lightning-quick tank rush had allowed us to secure the Oil Ministry from looting, Saddam’s statue had just been pulled down by cheering GOP stooges, and any day now Uday and Kusay would be captured and the countryside would shine with the sunlight of freeance and peance. And bunnies.
Okay, wow. I just read that article. How bizarre is it that there was no mention of the fact that this turning-poing bombing is actually pretty suspicious in that:
– it didn’t kill anyone (the Sunni bombers seem to like to kill people as much as destroy things); and
– nobody has claimed responsibility for the bombing that I’m aware of.
Iran has claimed that the US was actually responsible for the bombing. It seems odd until you consider that, if we weren’t trying to actively stoke division in Iraq, we’d be the stupidest occupiers in recorded history. Rule number one of occupying a foreign land: divide and rule. The escalation of civil strife has led to an escalation of US presence in Iraq. Now “nobody” (according to several articles I’ve read quoting “experts”) is talking about a total withdrawal from Iraq because it would harm the country too much. So permanent bases become a given. The government continues to be completely beholden to us. We’re in it for the long haul. And at the cost of a mere 1000 deaths a year – not actually a bad deal!
And now the Shiites & Sunnis will never join forces to kick the occupiers out. Perfect!
Look, I don’t know why we want to continue to rule Iraq but then again, I didn’t know why we wanted to invade in the first place. But we did and we are, and now nothing’s gonna stop us. Particularly when nobody’s questioning whether the US might not have an interest in stoking the flames of civil war.
How bizarre is it that there was no mention of the fact that this turning-poing bombing is actually pretty suspicious
At the time, the bombers were described in news reports as “dressed in the uniforms of Iraqi security forces.” I remember thinking, curious how they can tell they weren’t actual Iraqi security forces, no?
Also, I was thinking *cough* mossad *cough*.
the goden dome of unlimited devotion
jakester, i think your analysis has something going for it. on the plus side, it fits with SOP of empires past, as you note. on the minus side, it puts the Bush admin in something of an omnipotent position, pulling all the strings and completely in charge, which conflicts with the view that they’re incompetent.
seems to be pretending that there’s a legitimate debate going on between George W. Bush and people who are actually experts
isn’t that all the DC media does these days?
Tet.
mikey said,
The reason there is fighting is there is resistance to the occupation, along with a ethno-sectarian civil war.
Or perhaps even the other way around.
7-11 changed everything.