I agree with all your points. I'm not surprised that the military on the ground in Iraq has a better grasp of the situation than the administration, given that their lives actually depend on it.
I will note that I think you're misinterpreting the line about "Unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict", though, and I've seen others also come away with the same impression that I think is wrong.
Note that the scale on the slide is:
Green = Routine Yellow = Irregular Orange = Significant Red = Critical
These adjectives are describing the effects these things are having on U.S. military operations. So "Unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict" is not "routine" in the sense of it's happening all the time and is no big deal, but instead "routine" would be shorthand for something along the lines of "not happening enough to disrupt our day-to-day routine operations".
When you look at it that way, I think the description is pretty accurate. You don't hear about the kind of random groups of Shi'ites or Sunnis rioting in the streets on a daily basis that would characterize "unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict". Instead, this particular mass civil conflict is very organized and planned out, which puts it in others of those 14 categories.
It would be a great day for the U.S. and Iraq if all 14 of those bullet points were labeled "routine", but as that slide shows, we've botched 12 of them fairly badly to really badly, and the line on the right shows that the trend is towards worse rather than better.
11:25 AM, November 02, 2006
A day or so after Cheney said of the Iraqi government, "If you look at the general overall situation, they’re doing remarkably well." he presumably saw the following PowerPoint slide:
[Image] (HT: Sullivan) Is Cheney going to change his tune? I doubt it.
First of all, I'm glad there are PowerPoint slide makers in the military who aren't completely smoking crack. The most frightening thing about this slide is that "Unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict" has a little green dot by it, which apparently means it is routine.
As Sullivan's reader points out, how can Bush officials see slides like this and spew such delusional rhetoric about Iraq? This graphic is very powerful, but an aspect of it needs to be stressed. These power-point slides are prepared for regular briefings for leadership in the Pentagon (this means Rumsfeld, Cambone, England and others) and NSC (Cheney, Bush, Rice). They know all this. So check this graph against the rhetoric that pours from their mouths (like Cheney's "they're doing remarkably well.") They have no respect for the truth and no respect for the voters. They lie to us continuously. I'm fascinated by this slide, and I'd love to see more. I think you can tell a lot about an institution by its PowerPoint slides. It would be fun to contrast this slide with a Republican political slide listing talking points for the Iraq occupation.
I'm still in the "we should get out of there very soon" camp. It will be awful, but I don't how it will be any easier to pull out in three to five years than to do it within the next six months. At least it won't be us doing the killing and getting killed. It's not like we're doing much good there now, especially if our troops are taking orders from Maliki under pressure from Shiite militia groups.
posted by Zachary Drake at 12:36 AM on Nov 2, 2006
"PowerPoint assessment of Iraq"
1 Comment -
I agree with all your points. I'm not surprised that the military on the ground in Iraq has a better grasp of the situation than the administration, given that their lives actually depend on it.
I will note that I think you're misinterpreting the line about "Unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict", though, and I've seen others also come away with the same impression that I think is wrong.
Note that the scale on the slide is:
Green = Routine
Yellow = Irregular
Orange = Significant
Red = Critical
These adjectives are describing the effects these things are having on U.S. military operations. So "Unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict" is not "routine" in the sense of it's happening all the time and is no big deal, but instead "routine" would be shorthand for something along the lines of "not happening enough to disrupt our day-to-day routine operations".
When you look at it that way, I think the description is pretty accurate. You don't hear about the kind of random groups of Shi'ites or Sunnis rioting in the streets on a daily basis that would characterize "unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict". Instead, this particular mass civil conflict is very organized and planned out, which puts it in others of those 14 categories.
It would be a great day for the U.S. and Iraq if all 14 of those bullet points were labeled "routine", but as that slide shows, we've botched 12 of them fairly badly to really badly, and the line on the right shows that the trend is towards worse rather than better.
11:25 AM, November 02, 2006