Back to the Front

Tom Ricks (The Washington Post)

The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.

Insiders have dubbed the options "Go Big," "Go Long" and "Go Home."*


Steve Gilliard

The problem is that the go home option is the only viable one.

The American public doesn't support this war, will not send their kids to fight it, will not permit a draft for it, and want their soldiers home.

Bush may not realize that a go big option may face bitter, bitter opposition in Congress and here's why:The Iraqi miliary is growing more factionalized, more unruly as we speak. Giving them better arms and training will not make them more responsive to our needs, but their own agenda. The Iranians can make our stay in Iraq impossible, with few fingerprints, but the fact is that the Iraqi government is a fiction of our making.

The Iraqis want no part of our war, but want to fight their war. Which is a war to see who runs Iraq. Bush tried to rebuild Iraq and convince us that was a worthy goal. The public is war weary and there is no success on the horizon. There is an intense dishonesty about how the faltering, corrupt Iraqi Army and police are depicted. They are not going to fight for a central government which defines the word useless.

At some point, our Iraqi auxillaries will turn on us and show us their true intentions


Spencer Ackerman

GO NOWHERE. Thanks to Tom Ricks, we learn that the Pentagon's Iraq review promises more of the same -- an infusion of an unspecified number of forces for an unspecified period of time to fight the insurgents, and an eventual but unspecific shift in emphasis to the training of Iraqi troops and police. This is called "Go Long," but in reality it's "Go Nowhere." This is exactly what we've been doing for at least a year, plus or minus an Army division.


*I actually prefer the "go long" option, only if Brandon Lloyd would make the catch this time.