PNAC not happy with Fallujah "truce". Doesn't suggest alternatives.

[Alpharetta]

I don't know if this is old news to DU but I found it interesting

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20040512.htm

May 12, 2004


MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS


FROM: GARY SCHMITT


SUBJECT: A Second Falluja?



Today’s Financial Times carries a front-page story (“US Approaches Insurgents to Help Control Najaf”) in which Major General Martin Dempsey, commanding officer of the 1st Armored Division, indicates that he has begun talks with various militia groups, including components of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, to form up to seven new battalions in the Shia south. According to FT correspondent Nicolas Pelham, “the offer resembles last week’s deal in the Sunni town of Falluja, in which US troops lifted their three-week siege, withdrew to the town’s periphery and handed security to a ‘Falluja Brigade,’ in part comprised of insurgents.” Gen. Dempsey is quoted as saying, “We are going to try this model any place that I control right now and I think probably you are going to see some similar approach across the country.”


Let’s hope not. The message being sent to both the insurgents and the Shia majority who have supported the coalition is “if you kill Americans, eventually they will give you arms and power.” Can anyone believe this will lead to real stability? That it won’t in fact create the very conditions for a civil war? To the contrary, it sends the signal to the majority of Iraqis that the coalition has decided it has had enough and just hopes to hang on until it can turn over “the whole bloody mess” to the UN and the new faux sovereign Iraqi state.

[BJ]

1. It's all part of a plan to redirect blame

The right is already working on the "we would'a won but the politicians stabbed our boys in the back" line for the monumental failure that is the Iraqi occupation.

[Alpharetta]

2. PNAC ready to sell out Bush to save themselves

PNAC is running scared and doing CYA for ttheir own mistakes because their little plan for democracy in the Middle East has failed.

They're blaming Bush and the Pentagon.

In a document dated May 11:

"The existing Bush administration plan in Iraq is to wait for U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to name an interim Iraqi caretaker government by the end of May that will take power on July 1, and prepare for elections in January 2005. This plan might have been adequate a couple of months ago. But it is inadequate to meet the new challenge.

Among the biggest mistakes made by the Bush administration
over the past year has been the failure to move Iraq more rapidly toward elections. It’s true that many, inside and outside the administration, have long been clamoring to hand over more responsibility to Iraqis, responsibility above all for doing more of the fighting and dying. But the one thing even many of these friends of Iraq have been unwilling to hand over to Iraqis is the right to
choose their own government. This is a mistake."

etc. link: http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-20040511.pdf

[Another Bill C.]

3. The PNAC

“What’ll we do tomorrow night, Brain?”
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.”