Evidence of Rumsfeldian Stupidity

[Xavier_Onassis]

In the US Embassy in Baghdad now, over three years after the war began, there are 1,000 Americans. How many know some Arabic?  66, according to Newsweek. How many can carry on a conversation with an Iraqi?  SIX (6). And that is NOW, in December 2006. This is beyond pitiful.

We have Arab-Americans, of course, who speak the language, but the FBI, CIA and State Dept mostly does not trust them. There have been numerous instances where Iraqi-Americans who applied for jobs were arrested and subjected to harsh interrogations. This has tended to drive others who could help away in droves.

It is a fact and a well-known one, that what is called "Arabic" is not one language, as is English, but a multiplicity of dialects and mutually unintelligible languages

There is something called "Koranic Arabic" that people of the region learn when they study , most often by rote memorization, the Koran. The equivalent would be for Australians, Americans, Nigerians and Canadians to communicate using King James Bible English.

There was no plan to have an obviously essential crash course in Iraqi Arabic, or specifically Iraqi dialects of Arabic prior to the invasion. Shock and Awe was all Rummy thought we needed.

Juniorbush, of course, had zero knowledge of culture and geography. He is the pitiful bumpkin that asked if Brazil had any Black people (it has more than anywhere else on the planet).

Being as his knowledge fo foreign affairs was several visits to the International House of Pancakes, he was given Colin Powell as a mentor. Naturally the Neocons never gave Powell the chance to educate him even a little bit.

He was, and still is ignorant, stupid and stubborn.

It is sad to watch him flounder and flail about like a fish out of water.
It is too bad that his optimal career choice: manager of the Midland Texas Piggly-Wiggly was not realized. He might have made president of his Rotary Club by the age of 70.

[Lanya]

I can't understand this either.  That seemed to me to be one of the very first things to do: Start the intensive language training, even as we hire competent translators who already speak the language. 

[Plane]

If you were to stop beleiveing everything you read uncriticly , you would have to stop being Liberal.



http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-05-21-translator-deaths_x.htm

Translators dying by the dozens in Iraq
More than 4,000 translators work for San Diego, Calif.-based Titan, which supplies the U.S. military with Arabic- and Kurdish-speaking linguists.

The U.S. Labor Department reports 126 death benefit claims for Titan workers in Iraq out of a total 305 for contractors as of mid-May. The Titan death toll includes 12 Americans, and possibly some non-translators, the company said, with another 149 wounded.


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There are a lot of translators in Iraq and each one of them is a hero .

What could you possibly pay a person to put up with such threat?
These people are not getting wealthy, they are getting killed , but like the majority of Iriquis they want a better future than an unmarked grave for half of their family and grinding tyrany for the rest.

If the station in Bagdad can get by on six I admire them for doing without , they must be depending a lot on Iriquis who can speak English.

Every patroll needs a translator , should they put a higher priority on paper chasers?


But to isolate the fact that there are only six in the embsassy coumpound makes a good political "Gotcha", kinda truthy, not really the truth.

[Xavier_Onassis]

There are six people who can communicate in Iraqi in the Embassy.

This war cannot be won by killing all the hostile Iraqis. All military solutions are doomed to failure. The US can only win by convincing Iraqis to lay down their arms and trust in the ballot as a means of being governed as they wish. Of course, most the political parties are divided along religious and ethnic lines, and many Shiites, who are in the majority, believe that the Sunnis should get nothing.

The Sunnis, knowing this, are opposed to democracy. They ruled by force since Ottoman times, and believe that they can rule only through the use of arms. No American soldier with a rifle and a translator is likely to convince him otherwise. Perhaps he would prefer to blow up said soldier and translator to prevent having that rifle pointed at him again.

 It will be successful through diplomacy or not at all. And our pitifully staffed embassy can't do this, because they don't have what it takes.

And this is because this is an idiot war, planned poorly by bungling, incompetent, stubborn imperialist morons.

Our troops are dying for no reason other than they were in the way of a bullet.

[Plane]

There are six people who can communicate in Iraqi in the Embassy.

This war cannot be won by killing all the hostile Iraqis. All military solutions are doomed to failure. The US can only win by convincing Iraqis to lay down their arms and trust in the ballot as a means of being governed as they wish. Of course, most the political parties are divided along religious and ethnic lines, and many Shiites, who are in the majority, believe that the Sunnis should get nothing.

The Sunnis, knowing this, are opposed to democracy. They ruled by force since Ottoman times, and believe that they can rule only through the use of arms. No American soldier with a rifle and a translator is likely to convince him otherwise. Perhaps he would prefer to blow up said soldier and translator to prevent having that rifle pointed at him again.

 It will be successful through diplomacy or not at all. And our pitifully staffed embassy can't do this, because they don't have what it takes.

And this is because this is an idiot war, planned poorly by bungling, incompetent, stubborn imperialist morons.

Our troops are dying for no reason other than they were in the way of a bullet.

According to Knute we have killed 5% already .

And 95% already have defied the insurgency and gone to vote.

Are you saying the the 1% or so that are fighting us cannot be killed entirely off?

Maybe you are right about that but you are wrong that this is what we need to do , we are trying to put political power into the hands of the people , what makes this an impossibility?

[Plane]

I can't understand this either.  That seemed to me to be one of the very first things to do: Start the intensive language training, even as we hire competent translators who already speak the language. 

Absolutely not!

Did you think we intended to stay ?

All of our operations in Iraq are portable and most of the translators we are using are locals who can stay when we have left.

[Plane]

 It will be successful through diplomacy or not at all. And our pitifully staffed embassy can't do this, because they don't have what it takes.

And this is because this is an idiot war, planned poorly by bungling, incompetent, stubborn imperialist morons

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I think you are exactly backwards on this , most of the people in Iraq are already in agreement with what we want .

And we seldom loose a military engaguement , the enemy is depleated to the point that they can only attack one or two at a time usually by placeing a mine or attacking noncombatants.

There is no possibility of looseing this War untill we loose it right here.

[Lanya]

[...........]   Meet the Press transcript Dec. 17 2006
MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, I think that one thing Republican voters will want, Tim, if I, if I’m right, and Americans in general, is something that the Baker-Hamilton commission gave us, which is at least an honest diagnosis of where we are. You can agree or disagree with their recommendations, but people wanted an honest bipartisan diagnosis. Not Rumsfeld’s nonsense about flying over Iraq at 30,000 feet and see, see people farming.

Think of what happened this week. OK, Dick Cheney, the vice president, stood up at a massive farewell ceremony for, for Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and said he was the greatest secretary of defense in American history. Now, if that is true, either George Bush is a fool or Dick Cheney is a liar, all right? Because either George Bush just fired at the height of a war, at the greatest national security threat of our country’s current era, the greatest secretary of defense in history, or Dick Cheney thinks we’re all walking around with a sign that says “Stupid” on it.

But I can stand up and say this: After this incredible fiasco—you know, just to go back to David’s point—and tell people that this guy was the greatest secretary of defense in history—people are tired of that, Tim. Too much is at stake now. The first lady says, you know, “Things are going well in Iraq.” If things are going so well in Iraq, why are there a million Iraqi refugees in Jordan now, and 600,000 in Syria? Because we misreported it? They’re not reading The New York Times.

MR. BROOKS: If I could say something about internal Republican politics and about this show. I hope Josh Bolten, the White House chief of staff, was watching Gingrich this first half of this show. Gingrich said, “Unless we fundamentally restructure what we’re doing in Iraq, we will not win.” He is not far off from where a lot of Republicans are. Probably where most elite Washington Republicans are.

So what’s going to happen? These Republicans do not want to run in 2008 with Iraq hanging over. They never want to face another election like that. So at some point, six months, eight months, there’s going to be men in gray suits. There’s going to be a delegation going into that White House saying to President Bush, “You are not destroying our party over this.” And Bush will push back. But that’s going to be the, the tension. Talk about world—American support for the war, it’s Republican support in Washington for the war that the president needs to worry about.

MR. RUSSERT: We have to leave it there. David Brooks, Tom Friedman, thank you.
[.........]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16153676/print/1/displaymode/1098/

[Plane]

OK, Dick Cheney, the vice president, stood up at a massive farewell ceremony for, for Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and said he was the greatest secretary of defense in American history. Now, if that is true, either George Bush is a fool or Dick Cheney is a liar, all right?

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Or he is perfectly correct .
And this author does not under stand the situation at all.


Rumsfeild is the longest serveing Sec Def we have ever had , he is the greatest too, but he is supposed to last forever?

Tell me who was the greatest Coach the Yankees ever had , and who replaced him?

Rumsfeild has done well and having to leave for political reasons.


He might be right about the Republicans who would rather win in Washington than win in Iraq , but it is a tough condurum . Iraq cannot be won without winning in Washington , and Washington is being lost due to Iraq.


I feel more sorry for the people of Iraq than for anyone elese , they are on the brink of being thrown to the wolves , the mysery that they had during Decades  of repression under Saddam and years of insurgent power struggle will seem like the good old days pretty soon.

[Xavier_Onassis]

According to Knute we have killed 5% already .
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But that is not true: somewhere near 5% have been killed, wounded or left the country.
The wounded will heal, many may be healed already.

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And 95% already have defied the insurgency and gone to vote.
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And  this is also untrue: 95% did not vote. And many who voted have surely given up on the idea of democracy and have taken up arms, to support whatever faction they belong to.

Are you saying the the 1% or so that are fighting us cannot be killed entirely off?
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I am saying that  there is more than 1% fighting 'us' (and it's the ones that are fighting each other that really matter. Those that are fighting 'us' are not the problem: when 'we' leave, these will have no one to fight. That is, assuming 'we' leave.

I am also saying that when you kill one insurgent, his relatives feel bound by custom to avenge his death, so you might kill one and cause the insurgency to gain ten more insurgents.

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Maybe you are right about that but you are wrong that this is what we need to do , we are trying to put political power into the hands of the people , what makes this an impossibility?

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You are clearly deluded: the Bushies DETEST democracy. If we had a democracy in the USA, we would have no Bushies or their stupid war. They crave power, and power comes from the oil they still want their buddies in Big Oil to peddle for the usual gigantic profits. The clowns you think want a democracy want no such thing: they want a corrupt regime they can bribe, or perhaps just a highly gullible populace in Iraq that they can manipulate with advertising, idiotic talkshow hosts, innuendo and falsehoods, much as they manipulate you and all the gullible Americans that voted for their useless asses.

What makes a democracy in Iraq an impossibility is the fact that the US government is opposed to it. The Israeli lobby also does not want a democratic Iraq that might contribute aid to the Palestinians, and would manipulate Congress and US opinion to prevent Iraq from actually exercising the desires of the Iraqi people.

Observe please that nearly all the NeoCons are Zionists.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Dick Cheney, the vice president, stood up at a massive farewell ceremony for, for Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and said he was the greatest secretary of defense in American history. Now, if that is true, either George Bush is a fool or Dick Cheney is a liar, all right?

BINGO! [/color]

Juniorbush is indeed a fool.
Dick Cheney is an accomplished liar.

And Rumsfeld is the least successful Secretary of Defense since  Robert MacNamara, if not ever.

He has done a shitty job. His intelligence was bad, and he planned an invasion with no exit strategy, no provisions for how to provide for law & order when the Ba'athists were removed, and every word out of his mouth has been a lie.

He has caused 3000 of our troops to be killed for no reason at all and billions of dollars to be squandered. 

History will kick the shit out of his memory. He will be held up to all his predecessors, just as that photo of Mussolini swinging from the light pole has served to remind every Italian politician of what happens when an Italian leader betrays the Italian people.