Spitwads

[Lanya]

Pace yourself: the 'Clean Sweep' strategy for defending the realm

From ?A clean sweep?, by Mark Perry (emphasis in red):


    ?Gates was nonplussed and quickly announced that Pace's replacement would be the current chief of naval operations, Admiral Michael Mullen ? a riposte that was a mini-declaration of war against the pro-war press.

    Mullen, a tough-minded and hard-nosed conservative, is known for his scoffing (if private) dismissal of Washington's neo-conservatives, though sometimes he can barely keep it under wraps. During a recent Washington reception, he was asked by a reporter whether he would oppose an attack on Iran: ?It's your job to convince the politicians just how stupid that would be,? he said, ?not mine.?

    Accompanying Pace out the door will be Admiral Edmund Giambastiani (predictably, ?St John the Baptist? to his friends), a former protege of Paul Wolfowitz ? one of the last of the senior uniformed neo-conservatives.

    The retirement of Pace and Giambastiani completes the ?clean sweep? of the senior military leadership that marked the tenure of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. Since the swearing in of Gates as Rumsfeld's successor, nearly every major senior military officer responsible for the war in Iraq has been replaced.?

[........]
Perry quotes a major, commenting on a proposed slight increase in the size of the ?surge?, and reflecting on the preparedness of the Pentagon:


    ?What are we going to fight them with, spitwads??


And yet I keep hearing about the inevitability of an attack on Iran.  The strategists know that any kind of attack will lead to retaliation which can only be controlled by ?boots on the ground?, many times more than are now being deployed in Iraq.  I don?t care how much the Jews pray for war:  the Pentagon just doesn?t have the spitwads.

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2007/07/pace-yourself-sweep-strategy-for.html

[BT]

I don?t care how much the Jews pray for war:  the Pentagon just doesn?t have the spitwads.

Patterns

and

Scapegoats

[Michael Tee]

If it's true about the replacement of the neo-cons' proteges in the military, that could be a good sign.  It's barely possible that Bush is coming to realize that these superficially bright but essentially moronic neocons have conned him into a bear-trap and he is now trying to reverse course gradually without making himself look like a total idiot for listening to them in the first place. 

Kinda like JFK, conned by the Dulles brothers into invading Cuba, realizing he'd been lied to when the promised "popular uprising" failed to materialize and refusing to provide the air support that his predecessors had promised to the mercenaries.  The difference of course being that what Kennedy realized in a matter of days, Dubya may have come round to in a matter of years.

[Michael Tee]

Here's some more great quotes from the article:

<<This is not to say that the United States is about to win the Iraq war. It's not. And it won't. But a shift, small and perceptible - away from escalation and confrontation - has begun. There are people, powerful people, in Washington who are still committed to confronting Islam, whose default position is the deployment of another division, another aircraft carrier. But there are others now, also powerful, who oppose them.

<<As General Joseph Hoar has put it, "Perhaps we are finally, finally learning that this idea that Americans can walk down the street and be safe in Iraq is ludicrous. And perhaps we are also learning that we cannot drag a Muslim man out of his house in front of his family, in front of his wife and children, and humiliate him and expect to be considered a great power and a great people. Maybe, just maybe, we are starting to learn that too. And it's about time." >>

Although I was expecting a different ending to the last sentence.  I don't think the kind of conduct described has much to do with the U.S. being considered a great power or not.  But I think it has a lot to do with the multiplier effect, and payback.  Now there are kids and a father with a lot to avenge and a lot of time to avenge it in.  On the American troops, ideally, or on their collaborators if the Americans themselves don't stick around long enough to face the music.