Bush supporters' aftermath thread

I was on the ground in Iraq,and I dont buy those numbers.
I have seen American soldiers risk their own lives to save civilians and the innocent during combat.

We also gave the civilians time to escape before we attacked,if it was possible.

I am not disputing the fact that there have been civilian casualties,but I do dispute the number of 100,000.

You think that's too low?

Apparently you exclude a priori any possible historical judgement that a significant net benefit may emerge from our intervention in Iraq, This also precludes any possible description of a successful outcome as well. Can you really be sure of this? Are you sure that Iraq "has been delivered to the terrorists"?

Consider for a moment all the pessimistic and "yes but" rhetoric that accompanied most of our major actions to oppose the Soviet Union during the Cold War -- from the Berlin airlift, to the Korean War, Vietnam, our resistance to various Soviet-inspired and financed "populist revolutions" from Africa to Central America and Asia, etc. I'm not suggesting that all were done perfectly, or even that every one was well-advised. However they were all criticized by the habitual hand-wringers, despite the fact that, together, they ccontained and finally brought down the evil empire.

I believe your logic on this question is below your usual high standard.

Pollingreport has this to say::

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?"
Approve: 35%, Disapprove: 63, unsure 2%

"In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?"
Mistake: 54%, no mistake: 45%, unsure: 1%.

"All in all, do you think it was worth going to war in Iraq, or not?"
Worth it: 38%, not worth it: 60%, unsure: 2%.

No I can't really be sure of this. Yes I'm pretty sure anyway, but needless to say, I could be wrong. We'll see.


I admit that. I also admit I was wrong in 1987, when I believed quite strongly that Reagan was being dangerously naive in his Berlin speech. ("Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate; Mr. Gorbachev, tare down this wall!") I might be wrong again. But that possibility doesn't change the opinion I happen to hold here and now.


Well, thanks for saying that my standard is usually high. Some of the people I've argued with today wouldn't go that far.

mysteryman, I thank you for serving in Iraq, and how you and your men saw your experience. However, your assessment is based on only what you saw which would be very limiting considering the overall problems associated with our war in Iraq.

I see the biggest problem concerning the casualty rates of Iraqis on the restricttions imposed by this administration. "We don't do Iraqi death counts."

Over and above all this, I'm sure none in your squadron/batallion was ever involved in atrocities that killed so many of the civilian women and children by our coalition forces.

We all understand that shet happens during war; that's the reason why some of our own are killed by friendly fire.

In your mind is 35,000 innocent Iraqi lives justified?

CI,
IF that number is correct,which I am not sure of,does that also count Iraqi's killed by other Iraqui's?
Does that count those killed by their own security forces?
Does that count those that have left for a safer place and not told anyone?

The point is that even IF that number is correct,it cannot be blamed solely on coalition forces.

Thomas - would this statement by Lieberman have any impact on your current opinion on how we may (or may not) ultimately prevail in Iraq?



We are told daily on television and in the newspapers that the war in Iraq is a fiasco. Yet, it seems possible the Iraqi people themselves may see it differently.

What's up with that? They don't read the New York Times? They never heard of Paul Krugman? Because, you know, he'd certainly set them straight, right?

Another question. Do you think the NYTimes, CBS, the L.A.Times and all the rest will run this poll front page, above the fold the way they do what they perceive is the latest debacle on Bush's domestic war numbers?

Because, I don't think they will. And that fact, I think, is a large part of why those domestic war numbers are what they are.

<Ditto what georgeob1 said about your high standards of posting>

PS...regarding your comment on the Cold War.. Although I wasn't around at the time, my Dad assures me that back in the mid-60'ss there was similar chatter about how the US was the aggressor against the Soviet Union, only interested in profits for the military industrial complex, etc. etc. etc. The more things change, the more the stay the same, huh?

US will provide no estimate of Iraqi war casualties
By Jerry Isaacs
28 April 2003
Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author

Bush administration and Pentagon officials have made it clear they have no intention of providing an official estimate of the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians who were killed or wounded by US and British forces during the three-week war.

According to the military brass, the US no longer does "body counts," a reference to the often-inflated battlefield reports that contributed to galvanizing international and domestic opposition to the Vietnam War. In line with its efforts to sanitize the image of the US military, the Pentagon and the US news media have decided to conceal from the world and the American public the extent of the massacre that has occurred in Iraq.

The difficulties of counting Iraqi casualties.

Methodology:

Overview
Sources
Data Extraction
Data Storage
Publication of data (including conditions of use)
Limitations



1. Overview

Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports and eyewitness accounts. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least two members of the Iraq Body Count project team in addition to the original compiler before publication.


2. Sources

Our sources include public domain newsgathering agencies with web access. A list of some core sources is given below. Further sources will be added provided they meet acceptable project standards (see below).

ABC - ABC News (USA)
AFP - Agence France-Presse
AP - Associated Press
AWST - Aviation Week and Space Technology
Al Jaz - Al Jazeera network
BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation
BG - Boston Globe
Balt. Sun - The Baltimore Sun
CT - Chicago Tribune
CO - Commondreams.org
CSM - Christian Science Monitor
DPA - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
FOX - Fox News
GUA - The Guardian (London)
HRW - Human Rights Watch
HT - Hindustan Times
ICRC - International Committ of the Red Cross
IND - The Independent (London)
IO - Intellnet.org
JT - Jordan Times
LAT - Los Angeles Times
MEN - Middle East Newsline
MEO - Middle East Online
MER - Middle East Report
MH - Miami Herald
NT - Nando Times
NYT - New York Times
Reuters - (includes Reuters Alertnet)
SABC - South African Broadcasting Corporation
SMH - Sydney Morning Herald
Sg.News - The Singapore News
Tel- The Telegraph (London)
Times - The Times (London)
TOI - Times of India
TS - Toronto Star
UPI - United Press International
WNN - World News Network
WP - Washington Post

For a source to be considered acceptable to this project it must comply with the following standards: (1) site updated at least daily; (2) all stories separately archived on the site, with a unique url (see Note 1 below); (3) source widely cited or referenced by other sources; (4) English Language site; (5) fully public (preferably free) web-access.

The project relies on the professional rigour of the approved reporting agencies. It is assumed that any agency that has attained a respected international status operates its own rigorous checks before publishing items (including, where possible, eye-witness and confidential sources). By requiring that two independent agencies publish a report before we are willing to add it to the count, we are premising our own count on the self-correcting nature of the increasingly inter-connected international media network.

Note 1. Some sites remove items after a given time period, change their urls, or place them in archives with inadequate search engines. For this reason it is project policy that urls of sources are NOT published on the iraqbodycount site.


3. Data extraction

Data extraction policy is based on 3 criteria, some of which work in opposite directions.

Sufficient information must be extracted to ensure that each incident is differentiated from proximate incidents with which it could be potentially confused.
Economy of data extraction is required, for efficiency of both production and public scrutiny.
Data extraction should be uniform, so that the same information is available for the vast majority of incidents. This is best guaranteed by restricting the number of items of information per incident to the core facts that most news reports tend to include.
The pragmatic tensions in the above have led to the decision to extract the following information only for each incident:

Date of incident
Time of incident
Location of incident
Target as stated by military sources
Weapon (munitions or delivery vehicle)
Minimum civilian deaths (see Note 2)
Maximum civilian deaths (see Note 2)
Sources (at least two sources from the list in section 2 above)
Reliability of data extraction will be increased by ensuring that each data extraction is checked and signed off by two further independent scrutineers prior to publication, and all data entries will be kept under review should further details become available at a later date.

Note 2. Definitions of minimum and maximum

Reports of numbers dead vary across sources. On-the-ground uncertainties and potential political bias can result in a range of figures reported for the same incident. To reflect this variation, each incident will be associated with a minimum and maximum reported number of deaths. No number will be entered into the count unless it meets the criteria in the following paragraphs. This conservative approach allows relative certainty about the minimum.

Maximum deaths. This is the highest number of civilian deaths published by at least two of our approved list of news media sources.

Minimum deaths. This is the same as the maximum, unless at least two of the listed news media sources publish a lower number. In this case, the lower number is entered as the minimum. The minimum can be zero if there is a report of "zero deaths" from two of our sources. "Unable to confirm any deaths" or similar wording (as in an official statement) does NOT amount to a report of zero, and will NOT lead to an entry of "0" in the minimum column.

As a further conservative measure, when the wording used in both reports refers to "people" instead of civilians, we will include the total figure as a maximum but enter "0" into the minimum column unless details are present clearly identifying some or all of the dead as civilian - in this case the number of identifiable civilians will be entered into the minimum column instead of "0". The word "family" will be interpreted in this context as meaning 3 civilians. [Average Iraqi non-extended family size: 6. -CIA Factbook 2002.]


4. Data storage

Although it is expected that the majority of sources will remain accessible on the web site from which they were drawn, the project will create a secure archive of all original sources (in both electronic and paper form). Where judged appropriate by the project team, this data may be released to bona-fide enquirers, for verification purposes. At an appropriate juncture, the entire archive will be passed to an institution of public record (such as a University or National Library) for permanent access by bona-fide researchers. The copyright of original sources will remain with the originators. The copyright of the Iraq Body Count data extraction remains with the named researchers on the project (see About us).

5. Publication of data (including conditions of use)

Once verified through the processes described in section 3 above, each new incident will be added as a new line on a spreadsheet database which will be updated regularly (at least daily) on the www.iraqbodycount.org site. The total minimum and maximum deaths will be automatically updated, and will feed through to all remotely positioned web-counters donwloaded from the site.

Permission is granted for any individual or agency to download and display any of the web counters available on this site, provided that the link back to the www.iraqbodycount.org site is not disabled or otherwise tampered with when displayed on a live interactive web-site. Permission is also granted for cut-and-paste downloads of the spreadsheet database listing each incident. All press and non-commercial uses are permitted. Other commercial uses are prohibited without explicit permission (contact [email protected]).

We request that you acknowledge any use of the Iraq Body Count data base or its methodology by mentioning either the project name ("Iraq Body Count") or the url (www.iraqbodycount.org) or the names of the principal researchers, Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda.


6. Limitations and scope of enquiry:

Any project has limitations and boundaries. Here are some FAQs about this topic and our answers to them.

Why don't you report all civilian deaths in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War ended?

Our decision to stick with deaths from Jan 2003 is mainly tactical, and based on the resources we have. We would rather provide one stream of verifiable evidence to a high degree of reliablity than spread ourselves too thin. Current deaths are more newsworthy than past deaths, and will be of more interest to the general websites who will carry the IBC Web Counters. We agree that reckoning total deaths since 1991 is a very worthwhile project. We would be happy to support someone wanting to do this, but we can't manage it ourselves with current resources.

Why don't you report civilian injuries as well as deaths?

Injuries are difficult to quantify. Anything from shock to loss of limb can be classified as an injury. Also, injuries can recover, so that by the time there is independent verification the injury can have healed. The level of resource we would need to track and categorise the far higher number of injuries would likely overwhelm our resources. Deaths are irreversible and immutable. Again, they are the most "newsworthy" tip of the iceberg, and the greatest crime against innocents.

"Does your count include deaths from indirect causes?"

Each side can readily claim that indirectly-caused deaths are the "fault" of the other side or, where long-term illnesses and genetic disorders are concerned, "due to other causes." Our methodology requires that specific deaths attributed to US-led military actions are carried in at least two reports from our approved sources. This includes deaths resulting from the destruction of water treatment plants or any other lethal effects on the civilian population. The test for us remains whether the bullet (or equivalent) is attributed to a piece of weaponry where the trigger was pulled by a US or allied finger, or is due to "collateral damage" by either side (with the burden of responsibility falling squarely on the shoulders of those who initiate war without UN Security Council authorization). We agree that deaths from any deliberate source are an equal outrage, but in this project we want to only record those deaths to which we can unambiguously hold our own leaders to account. In short, we record all civilians deaths attributed to our military intervention in Iraq.

(The above FAQ does not apply to sanctions; although we are opposed to them, our study deals with the consequences of our current military actions in Iraq. It has also been newly revised due to our growing awareness that we were too narrowly-focused on bombs and other conventional weapons, neglecting the deadly effects of disrupted food, water, electricity and medical supplies. These effects, though relatively small at the outset of a war, are likely to become much more significant as time passes, and we will monitor media reports accordingly.)

Won't your count simply be a compilation of propaganda?

We acknowledge that many parties to this conflict will have an interest in manipulating casualty figures for political ends. There is no such thing (and will probably never be such a thing) as an "wholly accurate" figure, which could accepted as historical truth by all parties. This is why we will always publish a minimum and a maximum for each reported incident. Some sources may wish to over-report casualties. Others may wish to under-report them. Our methodology is not biased towards "propaganda" from any particular protagonist in the conflict. We will faithfully reflect the full range of reported deaths in our sources. These sources, which are predominantly Western (including long established press agencies such as Reuters and Associated Press) are unlikely to suppress conservative estimates which can act as a corrective to inflated claims. We rely on the combined, and self-correcting, professionalism of the world's press to deliver meaningful maxima and minima for our count.

Will you co-operate with other similar projects?

Many projects are needed to evaluate the full human cost of this war. We value them all, but this one is ours. We need to ensure that our study is focused and that its intent, scope and limits are widely and clearly understood. We will certainly build up and maintain our set of links to projects doing related work so that viewers of this site can be pointed to related activity.

The last sentence says iut all. What "rigor" characterizes these meedia agencies in reporting facts? Damn little as far as I can see.

The much touted "standards" each "agency" must meet all have to do with easy web access and data collection, and NOT with the accuracy of the source data itself.

Just who is the "Iraq Body Count Project"? What is their political agenda? What is their record for objective veracity?

This doesn't pass the laugh test.

george, I didn't see this issue as funny as you did; I find it a serious problem when we are denied important information on the casualties of any war.

Thanks for your candor and this straight answer. I accept your opinion and earnestly hope it is eventually proven wrong.



You are being unduly modest. That's why your opinion concerns me.

Comfortably resettled in the Bay Area now - reconnected with most of the old friends. I travel back to the East Coast just often enough to reassure myself that I am in the right place. Don't fail to let me know if you come this way again.

This soldier has served three tours in Iraq and guess who he's mad at? Moveon.org LOL!



"...and they don't even know what an American soldier looks like."

That just about says it all

Representative Murtha Holds a News Conference on the War in Iraq

Courtesy FDCH e-Media
Thursday, November 17, 2005; 3:17 PM

NOVEMBER 17, 2005

SPEAKER: U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA (D-PA)



MURTHA: And I started out by saying the war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It's a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.

The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq. But it's time for a change in direction.

Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course.

It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region.

General Casey said in a September 2005 hearing: "The perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency." General Abizaid said on the same date: "Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy."

For two and a half years I've been concerned about U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I've addressed my concerns with the administration and the Pentagon, and I've spoken out in public about my concerns.

MURTHA: The main reason for going to war has been discredited.

A few days before the start of the war I was in Kuwait. The military drew a line, a red line around Baghdad, and they said, "When U.S. forces cross that line, they will be attacked by the Iraqis with weapons of mass destruction." And I believed it and they believed it.

But the U.S. forces -- the commander said they were prepared. They said they had well-trained forces with the appropriate protective gear.

Now, let me tell you, we spend more money on intelligence than any -- than all the countries in the world put together, and more on intelligence than most country's GDP. And when they say, "It's a world intelligence failure," it's a U.S. intelligence failure. It's a U.S. failure, and it's a failure in the way the intelligence was used.

I've been visiting our wounded troops in Bethesda and Walter Reed, as some of you know, almost every week since the beginning of the war. And what demoralizes them is not the criticism. What demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace.


The devastation caused by IEDs is what they're concerned about. Being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes -- you've seen these stories about some of the people whose homes were destroyed and they were deployed to Iraq after it. Being on their second or third deployment, leaving their families behind without a network of support.

The threat by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must prepare to face all these threats.

The future of our military is at risk. Our military and our families are stretched thin.

Many say the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on a third deployment. Recruitment is down even as the military has lowed its standards. They expect to take 20 percent category 4, which is the lowest category, which they said they'd never take. They have been forced to do that to try to meet a reduced quota.

Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made. We cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared.

The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls in our bases at home. I've been to three bases in the United States, and each one of them were short of things they need to train the people going to Iraq.

MURTHA: Much of our ground equipment is worn out. And I've told the CEOs of big companies, "You better get in the business of rehabilitating equipment because we're not going to be able to buy any new equipment because the money's not going to be there."

George Washington said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace."

We don't want somebody to miscalculate down the road. It takes us 18 years to put a weapons system in the arsenal. And I don't know what the threat is -- nobody knows what the threat is -- but we better make sure we have what's necessary to preserve our peace.

We must rebuild our Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being terrified about the deficit in the coming decades.

In other words: Where's the money going to come from for defense?

I voted against every tax cut. Every tax cut I voted against. My wife says, "You shouldn't say that." I believed that when we voted for these tax cuts you can't have a war and you can't have a tragedy like we had, the hurricanes, and then not have a huge deficit, which is going to increase interest rates and could cause a real problem.

This is the first prolonged war we've ever fought with three years of tax cuts without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft.

And the college campuses always ask me about a draft. "Are you for a draft?" I say, "Yes, there's only two of us who voted for it, so you don't have to worry too much about it."

The burden of this war has not been shared equally. The military and their families are shouldering the burden.

Our military has been fighting this war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, captured or killed his closest associates, but the war continues to intensify.

Deaths and injuries are growing, and over 2,079 of confirmed American deaths, over 15,500 have been seriously injured -- half of them returned to duty -- and it's estimated over 50,000 will suffer from what I call battle fatigue. And there have been reports at least 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed.

I just recently visited Anbar province in Iraq in order to assess the conditions on the ground. And last May -- last May -- we put in the emergency supplemental spending bill Moran amendment, which was accepted in conference, which required the secretary of defense to submit a quarterly report and accurately measure the stability and security in Iraq.

MURTHA: We've now received two reports. So I've just come from Iraq and I've looked at the next report. I'm disturbed by the findings in the key indicator areas.

Oil production and energy production are below prewar level. You remember they said that was going to pay for the war, and it's below prewar level.

Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation. Only $9 billion of $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent.


And I said on the floor of the House, when they passed the $87 billion, the $18 billion was the most important part of it because you've got to get people back to work; you've got electricity; you've got to get water.

Unemployment is 60 percent. Now, they tell you in the United States it's less than that. So it may be 40 percent. But in Iraq, they told me it's 60 percent, when I was there.

Clean water is scarce and they only spent $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects.

And, most importantly -- this is the most important point -- incidents have increased from 150 a week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over a time when we had additional more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revolution at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled.

You look at the timeline. You'll see one per day average before Abu Ghraib. After Abu Ghraib, you'll see two a day -- two killed per day because of the dramatic impact that Abu Ghraib had on what we were doing.

And the State Department reported in 2004, right before they quit putting reports out, that indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism.

I said over a year ago now, the military and the administration agrees now that Iraq cannot be won militarily. I said two year ago, "The key to progress in Iraq is Iraqitize, internationalize and energize."

Now, we have a packet for you where I sent a letter to the president in September and I got an answer back from the assistant secretary of defense five months later.

I believe the same today. They don't want input. They only want to criticize.

Bush One was the opposite.

MURTHA: Bush One might not like the criticism and constructive suggestion, but he listened to what we had to say.

I believe and I have concluded the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress. Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, the Saddamists and the foreign jihadists. And let me tell you, they haven't captured any in this latest activity, so this idea that they're coming in from outside, we still think there's only 7 percent.

I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted -- this is a British poll reported in the Washington Times -- over 80 percent of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition forces and about 45 percent of Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified.

I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice: The United States will immediately redeploy -- immediately redeploy.

No schedule which can be changed, nothing that's controlled by the Iraqis, this is an immediate redeployment of our American forces because they have become the target.

All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free, free from a United States occupation. And I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process.

My experience in a guerrilla war says that until you find out where they are, until the public is willing to tell you where the insurgent is, you're not going to win this war.

MURTHA: In Vietnam it was the same way. If you have a military operation, and you tell the Sunnis, because their families are in jeopardy -- you tell the Iraqis, then they are going to tell the insurgents, because they're worried about their families.

My plan calls for immediate redeployment of U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces to create a quick reaction force in the region, to create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq.

Assuming that the Iraqi University Lieberman quotes as a source is reliable, it would be one datapoint making me a bit more optimistic. But there are many datapoints to consider, so the effect of this particular one would be limited.


My skepticism of the war does not derive from the Times or from Krugman. It derives from pre-war statements from people who know something about military strategy -- Powell, Scowcroft, Clark and others -- whose overall tone was very skeptical. Moreover, the most passionate supporters of the war came from academic ideologues who had no demonstrated competence in military stratety, and for the most part hadn't even served. It was this negative correlation between military competence and support for invasion that made me skeptical from the beginning.



I don't follow CBS and the LA Times frequently enough to answer that, and I don't know the source of that poll well enough to know whether it should be on anybody's front page. As a general matter though, I think the New York Times is fairly good at reporting facts that contradict the drift of their editorials. On the conservative side, I find the Wall Street Journal's reporting similarly good, but certainly not the reporting of the Washington Times, the National Review, or anything Murdoch.


I agree -- as Mark Twain put it, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Trouble is, you think Iraq rhymes with the Cold War, I think it rhymes with Vietnam. We'll see who's right.

Since you were trying to persuade me with a source from my side, what do you (and georgeob1, and Tico, and ...) make of Scowcroft's perspective on Iraq? I know that George, in particular, holds Scowcroft in high esteem. Does his turn against the Bush administration (published online here) affect your judgment of the war in any way?

As someone who was around at that time (and conscrpted in the military sevices at the 'high noon' of the cold war), at least here in the west primarily the UdSSR were seen as the agressor. (And only the extreme left started in the late 60's/early 70's to take the other position.)

Vietnam/Iran taken out here.

There was pleanty of worried hand-wringing throughout the Cold War, both in the U.S. and among our allies - all to the effect that the U.S. was being excessively aggressive and confrontational with respect to the Soviet Union. George Kennan (a self-professed intellectual of the Hofstadter school) was one of the chief spokesmen for this point of view in this country. The issues in dispute were usually defense budgets & programs, and Allied resistance to Soviet inspired revolutionary movements in so called Third World countries.

It is easy for me to believe that in Gerrmany there were fresh memories of the Berlin blockade and the ever-present awareness of the numerous mobile armored divisions of the Red Army deployed across the GDR and Czech borders - all of which may well have altered the atmospherics a bit. Throughout the Cold War only the U.S. and the FRG met their NATO military spending budget committments with any regularity. France was in its Gallic hell, fighting colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina, and the rest were along for the ride, content to see the U.S. carry the load while they criticized from a point as close to the sidlines as they could get.

I don't see the arguments with respect to Iraq - pro or con - as involving military strategy in any serious way. The business about "too few" troops in Iraq to quell the insurgency, etc. is the worst sort of canard. The basic military fact is that in this struggle we must be - and be seen to be - capable of outlasting any resistance there. (A war is won only when the enemy gives up hope.) The simple fact is that the tradeoff between the numbers of troops deployed there and our ability to tolerably sustain them is very steep. None of the many so-called professional critics have addressed how we could sustain (say) 400,000 troops in Iraq - the reason being (in my view) is that their opposition is visceral and the argument is merely a tactic.

Both Powell and Scowcroft were of the Washington breed of military officers - far more time in the Pentagon and various Washington Aassignments than in operational units of the Army and Air Force (respectively). While they were certainly skilled in the ways of our government and as well of many aspects of national strategy, they were not particularly skilled military leaders - nor were they considered as such within our military.

I believe the issue of Iraq, among those with experience in our government has more to do with various views of the desirability (or lack of it) of confronting Islamist fundamentalism and attempting to create a model of modern government in the Islamic world, or, alternatively, waiting in the hope that good things will happen, In particular, those with a mistrust of the intentions, political will and staying power of our principal European allies, are more inclined for action now. Overall it is hard to prove the issue one way or the other. However, based on my understanding of history and experience of life, I am with those who pursue an active policy.

Bush's speech this morning was one of his very best. He needs to do a lot more of this to combat the media who don't take care in reporting the whole story or reporting accurately. I think it was a home run.

"These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgement of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington," Bush said.

However, on Tuesday Bush said he hoped to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq next year.

According to an Associated Press poll, 62% in the US now disapprove of Mr Bush's Iraq policy. His overall approval rating is at 37%, the lowest of his presidency.