“I don’t think this war can be sustained for more than six months if in fact we don’t see some progress,” Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told Associated Press this week. But Roberts supports the surge, subject to establishing benchmarks, and wants to give Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, a chance to succeed. “People trust this military, and I think they trust Petraeus,” Roberts said. “He is the right man at the right time for a very, very difficult job.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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44 Comments
This guy’s crediability is right up there with Rumsfeld! Who on earth listens to him anymore?
I support the surge – because I support the troops and I think they are in a dire situation and need reinforcements, badly.
If we pull out and the insurgents lay claim to the oil fields we’ll be back – most of the Western World will be back.
I am for sending in the power we need to put down the uprising, once and for all.
But I don’t understand why we should dump so much money into the war and the reconstruction and then just walk away.
Why don’t we plant our flag and claim the country for ourselves? The people living there would be FAR better off – safer – happier.
Isn’t that what our forefathers did here – in America?
Were they wrong to do that? The ‘great experiment’ turned out to be a great success.
Why can’t the same method work elsewhere in the world?
That might be a good idea GS if we had a draft or the ability to sustain a much larger volunteer force. It’s not like the Native Americans we’ve interred for almost 200 years, who were not capable of defending themselves. In this case, occupying Iraq would only serve to inflame the rest of the Muslims who aren’t pissed at us …… and they have access to WMD’s etc — so a nuclear war seems would be inevitable ….
If we want to install democracy today it seems that instead of overwhelming prospective “clients” with bombs and bullets, we should show them the good / wealth democracy has provided us — give em flat screen tv’s, a bunch of McDonalds – KFC – Pizza Hut franchises, Rus Limbaigh, Al Franken, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Brittany Spears, Jessica Simpson, Beyonce etc ….
but GS all in all a bad idea
The question I have is, why 20,000? Why are we calling that a “surge” when it’s merely a hickup? 20,000 troops will just fade into Iraq. This is just another example of this administration taking a good idea and making a joke out of it.
This administration goofed when they ignored the Powell Doctrine (overwhelming force) and tried to conduct a war on the cheap (save that money to pay Haliburton). We see how that worked. The time for more troops was at the beginning. Now that the insurgency has taken root, 20,000 troops will do nothing to improve the situation.
Iraq is a Bush war, a republican war, and it will be remembered that way. Think there will be a victory in Iraq? That’s delusional.
You just want their oil GS.
Admit it.
Weren’t you one who advocated going nuclear?
Which is it, save them, or take them over and kill them if they don’t convert.
Thank you for stating the obvious comrade sheridan
am for sending in the power we need to put down the uprising, once and for all.
But I don’t understand why we should dump so much money into the war and the reconstruction and then just walk away.
Why don’t we plant our flag and claim the country for ourselves? The people living there would be FAR better off – safer – happier.
Gee Pat, if you had done your job and issued the report on weapons of mass destruction instead of hiding it for TWO years and not having the courage to finish it, maybe this war would have been over TWO years ago.
Roberts giving the enemy a timeline? Isn’t that treasonous?
“It’s not like the Native Americans we’ve interred for almost 200 years, who were not capable of defending themselves.”
The perfect example of what happens when you cut Defense spending.
“The Sedition Act of 1918 was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 passed at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who was concerned any widespread dissent in time of war constituted a real threat to an American victory. Subversive activity had assisted in overthrowing the Russian Czar in 1917, and contributed to the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916. Subversive activity in Great Britain was less successful.”
Here, Libs.
There is an article in today’s We titled “Militia”. It is a real eye-opener and leads to the conclusion that Muqtada Al-Sadyr may well be the next Saddam.
That would mean that Iraq will be a Shai theocracy next door to the Iranian Sunni theocracy!
If that occurrs, what have we accomplished?
In the mean time, Gen. Casey says he really only wants 1/2 the number of troops proposed for the “Surge”.
???
silly conservatives you can’t win an idealogical war with guns and an iron fist.We should have dropped ipods laptops and designer jeans on the Iraqis all the nifty fun things from western culture.the insurgency would have never started.they would have been too busy setting up my space and you tube accounts.
So, Fleet, from your posts this morning, you apparently would like to have Pat Roberts arrested for sedition. How’s that working out?
…Conceal and carry obviously has a different meaning in Iraq…
No, ws- that would be you people.
Peckerwood–
Wilson was a democratic president, yes, but he wasn’t liberal by any stretch of the imagination.
His vicious racism alone excluded him from the title liberal.
Just like Teddy Rooseveldt, although a republican, had many strong liberal values.
Consider all the national parks Teddy created, and the way he started the process of reigning in predatory capitalism . . .
Teddy brought us “The New Deal”.Conservatives have been working ever since to repeal it, along with Johnson’s “Great Society”.
IF they succeed in bankrupting our nation, they will acomplish this repeal of social programs.
Sorry TRACY, you have the wrong Roosevelt there.
FDR gave us the New Deal.
But TR was a great President in his own right. He was one of the first to address the robber barons.
War?
What war?
The war is over. It lasted about three weeks. Our troops won easily.
What bush failed at was the occupation/reconstruction in too many ways to list here.
Iraq is in a civil war. We should guarantee its borders and let it play out.
My bad JR.My memory is still better than rubber stamp Pat’s is.
Roberts Politicized Phase I Report By Criticizing Joseph Wilson. In the additional views to the intelligence report, Roberts joined Sens. Kit Bond (R-MO) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to veer away from a meaningful investigation into prewar intelligence, and instead devoting over two pages to criticism of Joe Wilson. They concluded, “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.” “Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue…the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts.” [Additional Views of Roberts, Bond, and Hatch]
Roberts Attempted To Absolve White House From Prewar Intelligence Blame In Phase I Report. Roberts defended Tenet and the President on Meet the Press: “Well, we have a situation where the DCI, George Tenet – and it’s very easy to go back and pick out a certain statement. Of course, his most famous one is ’slam dunk.’ There isn’t any slam dunk in intelligence. You don’t bat, you know, 1,000 percent. I mean, you’re lucky if you bat, you know, 500 percent. The information that was provided to the president and to the Congress that led to the same kind of assertive comments that the same critics are now blaming the president for was flawed. What he said is what he got, and what he got was wrong, and I think he was right to challenge it at the time.” [Meet the Press, 7/11/04]
July 2004: Roberts Called Phase II A ‘Priority.’ “It is a priority. I made my commitment and it will get done.” [UPI, 7/9/04]
Roberts Claimed Phase II Was ‘Ongoing,’ But Would Not Be Released Before Election. Roberts said that Phase II was “ongoing right now,” but it would be impossible to finish the report before the November election. “I don’t know if we can get it done before the election,” Roberts said. “It is more important to get it right. Understand, too, that it is going to an independent commission after we get our work done. So we haven’t heard the end of this by any means.” [Meet the Press, 7/11/04]
March 2005: Roberts Said Phase II Too Difficult, Placed On ‘Back-Burner.’ “[Phase II] got to be a problem in regard to a subjective point of view. If you ask any member of the administration, ‘Why did you make that declarative statement?’ … basically, the bottom line is, they believed the intelligence and the intelligence was wrong. In addition, we were in an even-numbered year and you know what that means. So…we sort of came to a crossroads and that is basically on the back burner.” [UPI, 3/10/05]
Roberts Called Phase II ‘A Monumental Waste Of Time.’ Roberts blew off the second phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Iraq prewar intelligence, claiming the Silberman-Robb Commission covered the same ground as Phase II: “I don’t think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence. I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further.” But the Silberman-Robb Commission never investigated Phase II’s main charge – how policymakers used prewar intelligence. [U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 3/31/05; Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President, 3/31/05]
Roberts Refused To Conduct Phase II After Election. “To go though that exercise, it seems to me, in a post-election environment – we didn’t see how we could do that and achieve any possible progress. I think everybody pretty well gets it.” [U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 3/31/05]
April 2005: Roberts Continued to Stall Phase II, Said Other Matters Were More Important. “I’m perfectly willing to do it, and that’s what we agreed to do, and that door is still open. And I don’t want to quarrel with Jay, because we both agreed that we would get it done. But we do have‚Äìwe have Ambassador Negroponte next week, we have General Mike Hayden next week. We have other hot-spot hearings or other things going on that are very important.” [Meet the Press, 4/10/05]
Roberts Promised To Make Phase II Public. “Tim, we’re going to do that. I will bring [Phase II] here.” [Meet the Press, 4/10/05]
July 2005: Roberts Backed Out Of Pledge To Make Phase II Public. “When the Committee has completed its work on phase II, we will determine the form in which the Committee will express its findings and whether it will be possible or prudent to release them publicly.” [Letter, 7/20/05]
November 2005: Reid Forced Senate Into Closed-Door Session. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session, threatening to delay legislative action until the Intelligence Committee followed through on its planned investigation of prewar Iraq intelligence failures. Reid said the leadership in Congress had “repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why.” [CNN, 11/1/05]
Roberts Backtracked Again, Claimed Phase II ‘Ongoing.’ “Well, there’s been a lot of talk about Phase II. What is Phase II? Why has it been delayed, if in fact it has been delayed? … It isn’t like it’s been delayed. As a matter of fact, it’s been ongoing. As a matter of fact, we have been doing our work on Phase II.” [Senate Floor Speech, 11/1/05]
Roberts Dismissed Need To Examine Administration’s Use Of Prewar Intelligence. “There’s a part of me that says if you look in the rearview mirror, there’s a little crack in regards to partisan lines, and figure out what somebody said two or three years ago, and was it justified by intelligence. I don’t know the relevancy of that.” [CNN, 11/1/05]
Roberts Promised To Finish Phase II. “We have several working drafts that we will get to members as of this week that we have been working on for a considerable amount of time. We’ve been working on that. We will finish it. We had it scheduled for this week. There was no need for the Senate to all of a sudden pop in to an executive session or a closed session and then demand action when we were going to do it anyway.” [Face the Nation, 11/6/05]
Roberts Offered Excuses For The Administration. Roberts agreed that there “may be a concern to some extent” about the White House’s claim that Congress saw the same intelligence as the administration in the run-up to the war. But he offered caveats for the White House, claiming “we had the same information on the aluminum tubes at the time we went to war as the time that we took another look and said, whoa, wait a minute, this isn’t adding up.” Roberts was wrong. The New York Times explained that of the 15 tube assessments sent to Congress, “not one of them” informed readers that experts within the Energy Department believed the tubes could not be used to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. [Fox News, 11/13/05; New York Times, 10/3/04]
Roberts Failed To Conduct A Thorough Phase II Investigation. In a Nov. 2005 letter to Sens. Bill Frist (R-TN) and Harry Reid (D-NV), three members of the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote that Roberts refused to pursue “additional interviews and documents” needed to fully answer the “critical questions surrounding the use of intelligence in the months leading up to the war.” [11/14/05]
Roberts Missed Deadline for ‘Statements’ Portion of Phase II Report. Roberts promised to complete a draft “statements” section of the Phase II investigation into manipulated pre-war intelligence by April 5. But the American Prospect blog reported in late April: “You’ll no doubt be surprised to hear this, but guess what: It didn’t happen. Wendy Morigi, a spokesperson for Senator Jay Rockefeller, the committee’s ranking Democrat, acknowledged…that committee members hadn’t yet received the draft.” [Roberts Press Release, 3/14/06; American Prospect blog, 4/27/06]
April 2006: Roberts Sought to Further Divide and Delay Inquiry. The Hill reported that Roberts wanted “to divide his panel’s inquiry into the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq-related intelligence into two parts, a move that would push off its most politically controversial elements to a later time. … Left unfinished would be a report on whether public statements and testimony about Iraq by senior U.S. government officials were substantiated by available intelligence information.” [The Hill, 4/25/06]
Phase II Report Delayed Until After 2006 Midterm Elections. CQ reported: “A Senate panel investigation into the use of intelligence leading up the the Iraq war remains in limbo after almost three years of politically charged clashes over the content and conclusions of the inquiry.” Roberts “set still more deadlines… for finalizing some of the work despite those differences.” Under the new deadlines, the report will have “virtually no chance of being completed before the fall elections.” [CQ, 7/11/06]
Intelligence Leak HypocrisyRoberts Said He Supports Stricter Leak Laws. The Washington Post reported Roberts “may add language to the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill to criminalize the leaking of a wider range of classified information than is now covered by law.” “Whether it’s a reporter or just any individual or somebody by the water cooler who’s upset or somebody who has just a very strong difference of opinion knowingly reveals classified information,” Roberts said, “that would be a felony.” [Washington Post, 2/17/06]
Roberts Let Sen. Shelby Off the Hook For Leaking Classified Information. The Washington Post reported in 2004, “Federal investigators concluded that Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) divulged classified intercepted messages to the media when he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.” Shelby was accused of leaking “how the National Security Agency handled messages before the Sept. 11 attacks” to Fox News and CNN reporters. The Justice Department decided not to prosecute Shelby, and referred the case to the Senate Ethics Committee. By June 2005, the pace of the Ethics Committee’s investigation was “slowed by difficulties obtaining information, difficulties created partly by Sen. Pat Roberts’s (R-Kan.) decision not to recuse himself from the case.” Ultimately, the Ethics Committee dropped the investigation. [Washington Post, 8/5/04; New York Times, 11/14/05; The Hill, 7/28/05; New York Times, 11/14/05]
Roberts Reneged On Promise To Hold Hearings On Plame Leak. Roberts claimed last summer that he would hold hearings on the Plame leak. “We intend to have a hearing,” Roberts said, “And I think it would be a good idea to visit with her.” Within a few days, Roberts backed away from his promise. The Wichita Eagle reported Roberts did not investigate the leak because he believed “Rove’s role in revealing the identity of CIA agent Plame is already under investigation and that his critics are playing politics.” Roberts said he would not investigate because the “Senate Intelligence has to be nonpartisan.” [Time, 7/26/05; Wichita Eagle, 7/28/05]
Roberts Falsely Claimed Plame Was Not Covert. On CNN Late Edition, Roberts said about Valerie Plame, “And I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don’t know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert.” Recently released documents from the Libby investigation found Plame did “covert work overseas” and “was making specific efforts to conceal” her identity. [CNN, 7/24/05; Newsweek, 2/13/06]
Roberts Leak ‘Impaired’ Hunt For Saddam. National Reporter Murray Waas reported that Roberts “was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information [in 2003] that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States.” The incident showed “how rank and file intelligence professionals now have much to fear from legitimate and even inadvertent contacts with journalists, while senior executive branch officials and members of Congress are almost never held accountable when they seriously breach national security through leaks of information.” [National Journal, 4/25/06]
“His vicious racism alone excluded him from the title liberal.”
Like this?
“I think colored people should be cleaner”, by Joe Biden.
woody is a liar!woody is a liar!that’s not what he said woody.shit man, we saw it on the boob tube a bunch of times already.and you think you can misquote him?well I guess you can if you wanna be a liar liar pants on fire.
woody your pants are starting to smoke.
BIDEN: I mean you got the first, sorta, mainstream African-American.
HOROWITZ: Yeah.
BIDEN: Who’s articulate and bright and‚Äìand clean and a nice-looking guy.
HOROWITZ: Mm.
Link to latest unclassified National Intelligence Estimate:
http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/02/02/nie.3.pdf
From cnn.com site.
Not encouraging.
“…Iranian Sunni theocracy!
Actually Iran is a Shi’ite theocracy. Suadi Arabia, also next door to Iraq, is a Sunni theocracy.
We’ve done a great job reshaping the middle east.
Senator Robert’s comments make sense, when one reads the entirety of the linked article in the IP. By six months, a fair assessment should be able to be made of the Iraqi government’s ability to meet the November, 2007 promise it has made for takeover/security.
SD- You’re right – I was backwards. Thanks!
G
I need to get my Shia together , I guess.
VT – in 6 months all we will know is what we already know and have known for years – Bush’s hallucination (vision) ain’t gonna work.
Indeed. And then in six months it’ll be our very last, absolute last, finally I’m serious this time! last chance to get it right.
Ben, CF, I agree with you both; just wanted to point out there was a rational basis for the Senator’s thoughts.
VT,
Fair enough, though I think you’re being too charitable by at least half; what you’re calling a ‘rational basis’ I would refer to as a ‘fig leaf.’ But there you go.
So long as there’s SOME pretext for plausible deniability (which I take it is your point), Roberts can claim to be making an argument that has at least some basis.
Sen. Roberts leaves the Intelliegence Committee for the Agricultural -something committee– coincidence??
How about CYA??
…Would be concerned if was told that a force of 20,000 equipped with armor and support fighter aircraft was heading to my town…very concerned…:-)…
for fleetwood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pLWbTSOEdg&mode=related&search=
Where did hot pants go?
21,500 troops?! At an estimated 5.6 Billion dollars? WRONG! According to the the Congressional Budget Office, it’s more like 48,000 troops at an estimated cost of 20 to 27 Billion dollars for a 12 month deployment.http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=7778&sequence=0http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/77xx/doc7778/TroopIncrease.pdf
Thanks to Keith Olbermann and crooksandliars.comhttp://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/02/02/is-bush-surging-21500-or-as-many-as-48000/
DING, DING, DING: CF wins the prize! Step right up folks, gotta let another person have their chance to win.
If you ain’t Muslim you ain’t Shiite.
VT,
That wasn’t the Joe Williams bell you were ringing for me, was it?
CF, I thought you knew me better than that!
The reason why there is so much political pressure to end the war, especially amoung presidential candidates, is that no one wants to inherit this war and be responsible for it.
But Bush has already stated that this war will probably not end while he is in office.
That is what politically charged politicans are so upset about. Especally Democrats.
Now come now Joe,
You are a quasi conservative right?
What about it to you is fair that bush makes a mess and everybody else has to clean it up? How much “personal responsibility”is in that?
The JUNIOR Senator from Kansas lost all credability by choosing to be Bush’s stooge on the Intelligance Committe. Leaving the committe shows he also lost his character.
Thank you TRACY for your very accurate description of Pat Roberts cover up of the Phase II report on Iraq. It is sad that in a world of written information no one has a memory. What is sadder is that no one in Kansas cares that Pat Roberts is a liar who created a cover up instead of telling the American public the truth. Maybe if Roberts had done what he promised, the Iraq war would be over now and American soliders would not be dying in vain there.