Is Roe v Wade yet a deal-breaker.
A friend in Chicago responds to the New York Times story found at the bottom of this post.
February 7th, 2007
In what has become almost a daily event — the breaking of a story of new evidence of perfidy or incompetence — you find this, a rather non-descript story about bureaucracy. It’s really the sort of typical Washington Post story that never really plays out of Washington or wouldn’t, had it not so much dark portent.
It is to me one of the better ‘litmus’ stories that shows just how deep the incompetency runs. It makes a nifty little bookend to Waxman’s work yesterday — when historians write about Iraq, they could look at this and say that almost every misconception about the war is contained in it.
Talk about locking the door after the horse has gone — this is trying to lock the door after the barn has burned down.
Condi may be in for the chop and it could be for insubordinate behavior. Pete Pace may grow some courage when he finally figures out the military is going to be left holding the bag on the war.
Heaven knows — they may have to ’surge’ the civilians by drafting people like us who have some sense as to how things work. What do you say fellas and gals — six months in Anbar as builders of social infrastructure? Or working at the “ward” level in Baghdad making sure local politicians have some walking around money. Jobs for everybody — I mean they needn’t be more than picking up trash on sharp sticks, but it would be something. Of course, I realize my naivete knows that a little cash is no solvent for intra-Islamic hatreds, but it wouldn’t hurt to spread a little around where it might have counted.
Hell, if they had recruited about 300 Chicago political workers to organize things three plus years ago, they might have had a chance. Now, we just have one more very sad story about how half-assed ideology, idiocy born of machismo and stubborn wrong-headedness has driven out every vestige of competency and common sense. An assignment outside the Green Zone would be a bad career move for a state department employee — it’s probably also a death sentence.
I wonder how all those twenty-something, ideologically-correct, non-Arab speaking boobs who worked in the Green Zone right after the “victory” making and executing policy have listed it on their resumes.
WWII was, as wars go, fairly decently run because reasonably competent people knew something about organization and about the limits of power and because Hitler was as foolish as “W” and made about as many fundamental mistakes.
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Military Wants More Civilians to Help in Iraq
“This is not at all a finger-pointing exercise,” Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said Tuesday.
February 7, 2007
Military Wants More Civilians to Help in Iraq
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — Senior military officers, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the new Iraq strategy could fail unless more civilian agencies step forward quickly to carry out plans for reconstruction and political development.
The complaints reflect fresh tensions between the Pentagon and the State Department over personnel demands that have fallen most heavily on the military. But they also draw on a deeper reservoir of concerns among officers who have warned that a military buildup alone cannot solve Iraq’s problems, and who now fear that the military will bear a disproportionate burden if Mr. Bush’s strategy falls short.
Among particular complaints, the officers cited a request from the office of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that military personnel temporarily fill more than one-third of 350 new State Department jobs in Iraq that are to be created under the new strategy.
At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Gates made clear that he shared the officers’ concerns, telling senators, “If you were troubled by the memo, that was mild compared to my reaction when I saw it.”
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Please find the entire article at The New York Times.