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Waiter, There's a Surge in My Soup

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted January 10, 2007.


Bush's announced 'surge' is one of the more outrageous media deceptions in the history of an Iraq war that has been rife with them.
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Proponents of escalation cite the example of Tal Afar, a town in northwestern Iraq. U.S. forces there have met some genuine success since September 2005 with the 'clear, build and hold' strategy that Mr. Bush apparently now favors for Baghdad.

But Tal Afar is only about one-thirtieth the size of Baghdad, and it isn't even Arab: its people are mostly members of the Turkmen minority. Trying to replicate that (limited) success in Baghdad is a fool's errand.

In Tal Afar, there was one U.S. soldier for every 40 residents. Using the same ratio in Baghdad would require 150,000 troops, sustained for more than a year. That's impossible. -- Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times

I was in Tal Afar, Iraq's "genuine success" story, over the summer. It was such a success story that the city's neurotic, hand-wringing mayor, Najim Abdullah al-Jubori, actually asked American officials during a meeting I attended if they could tell President Bush to stop calling it a success story. "It just makes the terrorists angry," he said. At the meeting he pointed to a map and indicated the areas where the insurgents held strong positions.

"Here," he said. "Oh, and here. And here. Here also..."

After that meeting the unit I was with -- MPs from Oklahoma on a personal security detail, guarding a Colonel who was inspecting police stations in the area -- went to a precinct house in one of Tal Afar's "safe" neighborhoods. There I found five American soldiers huddling in a room about the size of a walk-in closet, hunched over a pile of MRE wrappers and Play Station cassettes.

They seldom ever left that room, they explained. Occasionally they would have to go out and fight whenever someone started shooting at the police station (a regular occurrence, they said); sometimes they'd even round up the aggressors, only to have some Iraqi army creeps come by later and insist on the attackers' release, telling the soldiers they had the "wrong guys." The Iraqi army units and the Iraqi police in the town were constantly at odds and the soldiers there spent a lot of their time breaking up violent outbreaks between the two groups. In short, Tal Afar was a total fucking mess, a violent chaos, and yet Tal Afar is still upheld as the Iraqi success story -- and an example of the "impossible" standard of a 1-soldier-per-40-residents security paradise that even a liberal columnist like Nicholas Kristof dismisses as a hopelessly optimistic fantasy, saying such a wonder couldn't be replicated in Baghdad.

This whole sales campaign designed to pitch a new troop increase -- hilariously called a "surge" in the new "Iraq Policy Mark IV" that President Bush is planning to announce with a straight face -- is one of the more outrageous media deceptions in the history of an Iraq war that has been rife with them. President Bush is going on TV this week and tell the American people that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is somehow going to make a difference in the security situation. He is going to be aided in this effort by a legion of knucklehead editorialists who entered the New Year pimping a preposterous new creation story about Iraq, one that argues that the Iraqi-American Eden was spoiled only by arrogant generals and Pentagon officials who tried to secure an occupied country on the cheap.

This absurd interpretation of events, pitched hardest by (among others) Washington's reigning power-worshipper/professional Crate and Barrel shopper David Brooks, pins the blame for the Iraq mess on such persons as Don Rumsfeld, George Casey and John Abizaid, all of whom sold Bush on a "light footprint" strategy for occupying Iraq. "Casey and Abizaid are impressive men, and Bush deferred to their judgment," Brooks wrote last week. "But sometimes good men make bad choices, and it is now clear that the light-footprint approach has been a disaster."

According to Brooks and a lot of other people in Washington (our possible next president, John McCain, among them), everything in Iraq would have been okay from the start, if we'd only had enough troops.

Coming to this realization now -- three and a half years late, as it were -- gives all these people a chance to argue one more time for a troop increase. They're going to get that increase now, and if history is any guide, they'll patiently give that troop increase another few years to work. When it doesn't, bet on it, they will come back once again and say that what they got was not a big enough increase, that what was needed was a full-blown commitment, a "Super-Marshall Plan," etc. And then we will be in Iraq until 2011 or 2012, just like everyone in Iraq (who's seen the huge embassy complexes we're just now breaking ground on) already knows we will be.

The whole idea that "more troops" are needed in Iraq is absurd on its face. They sell this idea in America as though our soldiers are being sent to patrol the streets like New York City cops policing Malcolm X Boulevard on foot -- spreading goodwill, talking to shopkeepers, collaring the occasional fare-jumper, and scaring off the odd stick-up kid by their very presence.


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Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.

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View:
what is a playstation cassette?
Posted by: gretavo on Jan 10, 2007 11:34 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Play Station uses compact discs, not cassettes. Maaaaatt... were you REALLY in Tal Afar? And where is that analysis of the physics of 9/11 you promised so long ago now? Were you unable to actually make sense of the official conspiracy theory? You spoke with such conviction against us "conpiracy fruitcake moonbat nuts" and our "outlandish claims". Why haven't you made good on your promise to address the physics of the impossible collapses of three buildings on 9/11? Isn't it because you know we're right and can't come up with any remotely convincing argument as to how we are wrong? I think it is, Matt. Don't you owe your readers better?

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» Hair splitting Posted by: lessbread
Bone and Rag Men and a Bo-Bo
Posted by: Russ Wellen on Jan 10, 2007 12:01 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
That's what our men are reduced to, picking up dead bodies.

Too funny: "professional Crate and Barrel shopper David Brooks" harking back to his "Bo-Bo" days.

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» RE: Bone and Rag Men and a Bo-Bo Posted by: bronx_girl
FobbitMFs
Posted by: LeftCoastProgressive on Jan 10, 2007 9:27 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
New venacular!
"That's not at all the way it works in Iraq. For one thing, the majority of the troops in a place like Baghdad never leave the massive, seemingly Manhattan-sized walled-in Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). Battle-hardened soldiers derisively describe army personnel who live in the FOBs as "Fobbits" and it is roundly accepted in Iraq that Fobbits make up a clear majority of our deployed military men. For soldiers who actually have to go out and risk getting blown up in patrols, Fobbits are a vile contagion, like malarial mosquitoes -- amazingly numerous and deeply annoying. One soldier laughed when I asked if he thought we needed more guys in Iraq. "Not more troops, but fewer Fobbit-motherfuckers," he growled."

This is clearly information that Bush needed before his move to increase troops in Iraq. Fobbit-MFs! LOL rolling-on-the-floor! The commander-in-chief Fobbit-MF is in the Whitehouse and he is skilled at avoiding IED exposure. He tells his Sargeant he can't go 'cause he's shit his britches!

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SERIOUS questions about the integrity of Don Hazen, Alternet’s Executive Director
Posted by: aburritt on Jan 11, 2007 9:02 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I just ran into an eye-opening column a couple days ago entitled “Ethics Problems at Alternet” written by Al Giordano about Don Hazen in 2002. Hazen is the current executive director of Alternet. Giordano is editor of Narco News Bulletin and considered by many as one of the finest front line journalists working today. It was his successful NY State court battle, concluded at the end of 2001, which secured important internet press freedoms. Giordano is a well-know champion of “authentic journalism,” and his readers know that he is a relentless and fearless journalist who deals with facts.

Giordano’s long article, which can be found by Googling “Al Giordano and Alternet” makes a number of serious charges against Hazen. These charges include Hazen’s theft of royalties from writers, his blacklisting of writers, his lying to Giordano when confronted about trying to sell stories written by other writers without permission, and his asking his staff to post bogus positive “reviews” of Alternet publications on Amazon.com. Now, over FOUR YEARS after Giordano published this column, Mr Hazen is still the executive director of Alternet.
According to Giordano, the only response Hazen has made to his questions and before writing the column was to lie and attack him personally, (Giordano also mentions Hazen’s brazen attack on Jeff Cohen and FAIR in what appears to be an attempt to secure more donor funding for his own operation.)

The hypocrisy of all this is amazing: Unlike the folks at Halliburton or the Bush Administration, for example, Alternet is a website which day in and day out publishes articles and opinion demanding transparency and honesty from others, whether it be the government, big business or the corporate media. And yet this very same website is being directed by someone who, according to a highly reliable veteran journalist noted for his uncompromising integrity, has violated a whole mass of basic journalistic principles and ethics and so far has gotten away with it.

Read the article by Giordano and make your own judgment. (Again, just Google “Al Giordano and Alternet.”) There is also a growing exchange of posts concerning this issue in the comments section to “Will Bush Provoke a Constitutional Crisis?” published on 1/7 here at Alternet. It begins with the post, about half way down, entitled “Hmm....Alternet not such a nice buncha kids, hmm?” which first brought this article to my attention, and then develops into an exchange mostly between staff member Joshua Holland, several supposedly posters who are supposedly unconnected with Alternet (make your own judgment about that after reading this exchange,) and myself.

After reading this material, I’d be interested in hearing from other Alternet readers how all of this sits with them. My opinion is that Mr Hazen owes readers and supporters of Alternet a detailed explanation which sticks to the facts and is not loaded down with Ad Homonym attacks on those requesting such an explanation.

If these charges are indeed true, and Don Hazen has never responded to this story to my knowledge, then I think that Don Hazen as executive director of Alternet destroys the inherent credibility of Alternet, makes a mockery of its professed political mission, and should be forced to resign sooner than later. So far as I know, there is no statute of limitations on basic journalistic integrity and ethics within any credible news organization that I’ve heard about. I’d be interested in hearing comments from others about this.

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» What is this post.... Posted by: Mewsician
» Wow. Posted by: ssmit355
NOW IS THE TIME FOR PROTEST IN THE STREET
Posted by: art_chippendale on Jan 11, 2007 12:15 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Congress may not be able to do anything about it, but we, the people can.
Congress is stymied by this minor ramping-up of troops. They are afraid of falling into the cleverly set political trap of refusing to come to the aid the Iraqi government and costing us the war. Failure would be blamed on democrats and used to hoist the republican flag past half mast, where its been since November. What will congress do when Bush asks for 20,000 more in another six months?
STREET PROTEST IS THE PUBLIC'S LOUDEST AVENUE
Vote. Contact your Congressperson and Senator. Then protest! All these avenues are historically legitimate methods of affecting government policy. But protest is now the most effective way to be heard until 2008. So get off your duff! Email congress and then contact your local activist organization about where and when the next protest will be.
See you in the streets!

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» Protest Posted by: ssmit355
I too was there...
Posted by: integrity76 on Jan 12, 2007 12:00 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mr. Taibbi, I too was in Tal'Afar during my second tour in Iraq. I spent a year in the city from March of '05 through February '06, and was a Platoon Sergeant in the 3rd Armored Cavalry, the unit responsible for ridding the city of insurgents. To comment on the first part of your article, let me just say that Tal'Afar WAS a success. Trust me, when the President refers to it as HIS success story, it angers the men who actually fought those battles there. The failure in that city rests on the follow on units who relieved the 3rd ACR, the Iraqi army, Iraqi police and Mayor Najim. The reason my unit was so successful in quelling the violence in that town was that after we assaulted the Sarai district on the eastern side of the city, ALL of the Company/Troop sized elements of my Squadron maintained a 24 hour presence in town at separate Patrol Bases, and conducted round-the-clock patrols and operations in order to keep it that way. The units that relieved us did not, got lazy, and subsequently the terrorists were able to re-infiltrate the city, with what I believe is the help of certain members of city council, the IA and IP's. So it was a success, it just wasn't reinforced properly. But had the follow on units taken the same approach to that battle space that mine had, it wouldn't be the total "lunacy" that you encountered.

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Send In The Europe Fobbits
Posted by: hole11 on Jan 12, 2007 8:34 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I was stationed in Europe (US too) and there are always people who do not leave the confines of security and the known.

You could find whole families that do not move from their city or state in the US their entire lives. They might go for a weekend vacation but in the end they are right back to the known.

City fighting or security is different than jungle or open terrain security. A grunt would much rather stick near a building than be stuck in a foxhole out in the open being a sniper target.

Obviously soldiers are getting paid to stay alive and not get killed, so unless there is a need to police the area they shouldn't go out and provoke confrontations.

What difference is it to send US troops from Europe to Iraq? If they are needed in Iraq the bases should be moved from Europe as well. What are the Fobbits doing in Europe anyways?

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SIC SIC SIC
Posted by: Grozny_Guy on Jan 19, 2007 9:20 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I didn't have to read too far to find my Taibbi-shoddy-column SIC this week:

"President Bush is going on TV this week and tell [SIC] the American people that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is somehow going to make a difference in the security situation."

Um, he's going on TV this week to tell...? Or, he will go on TV this week and tell...?

Ha ha ha. Big Rolling Stone journalist who can't pass third grade grammar. How do these idiots get paid journalism jobs?

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