1115.org

WaPo’s Dan Froomkin demonstrates how ridiculously easy it can be to be a real journalist:

It seems almost inconceivable: The White House actually invites the press corps to hold it accountable — but when the time comes, and a key benchmark is missed, the press is silent.

And yet that’s exactly what has happened.

Back in January, when President Bush announced that in spite of the public opinion against the war in Iraq he was going to send in more troops, he repeatedly insisted that what was different this time was that the Iraqis were finally serious about stepping up.

Responding to reporters who were skeptical — after all, they’d heard this many times before — White House officials urged them to judge for themselves whether that would happen

“You’re going to have to — you’re going to have some opportunities to judge very quickly,” one senior administration official said at an official background briefing on January 10, a few hours before Bush’s prime-time announcement.

“The Iraqis are going to have three brigades within Baghdad within a little more than a month. They have committed to trying to get one brigade in, I think, by the first of February, and two more by the 15th,” the official said.

“So people are going to be able to see pretty quickly that the Iraqis are or are not stepping up. And that provides the ability to judge.”

(I don’t know how the rest of the press missed it, but I have a good guess as to how Froomkin didn’t. I think, back on January 10, he just made a little entry in his journal for February 15. See—that’s how easy it is to be a journalist.)

This is a key benchmark, right? We have been told repeatedly that the big difference between this clear-build-and-hold security crackdown in Baghdad and previous attempts, was going to be the number of security forces involved. And the number was going to be dramatically higher — “200% larger than before” — because of the number of Iraqi troops who would participate. The Iraqis would lead, they would provide the bulk of the troops. We would really have more of an advisory role. Together, we’d finally have enough troops committed to the operation to do the job right.

In short, the Iraqis delivering three brigades wasn’t just part of the plan, it was the key to whether the plan would work or not.

So how did the Iraqi government measure up in terms of this key benchmark? Well, it depends on how far up the chain of command* you pluck your answer from (and it’s still Dan Froomkin talking):

And President Bush yesterday insisted that everything’s going according to plan: “Our new commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is now on the ground in Baghdad,” Bush told the American Enterprise Institute. “He says the Iraqi government is following through on its commitment to deploy three additional army brigades in the capital.”

But at a Pentagon press conference yesterday, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace acknowledged that only two of those three Iraqi brigades are there: “You’ve got two of the Iraqi brigades in — that were going to plussed up in Baghdad in Baghdad now. The third one is moving this month,” Pace said.

Other press reports suggest that even those two brigades are not anywhere near full strength.

Incidentally, those press reports suggest that the brigades are closer to half-strength: “American officials have said Iraqi units arriving in Baghdad to fulfill their part of the new plan are only at 55 to 60 percent of their full strength”. So let me see, two out of three brigades, and those two at roughly half-strength, why, that makes effectively one brigade in place out of the three that were needed and promised!

Bush, of course, was only being a journalist in his remark above. You know … just uncritically repeating what a reliable source had told him. So if we declare Pace to be the winner over Petraeus by virtue of rank, the official version is that the Iraqis have indeed failed to step up as required.

(Indeed, if we think about it, what Bush says Petraeus told Bush doesn’t really say the Iraqis met the benchmark, does it? “Is following through” sounds very much like a work in progress. Without a defined endpoint. Perhaps Bush should have asked a follow-up question or two? He doesn’t seem to have learnt anything from his press conferences. Or, on the other hand, maybe he has—the art of suggesting the lie rather than spelling out the truth.)

Anyway, with the Iraqis largely missing from the action, U.S. forces were left holding the fort. Initial reports had 2,500 U.S. troops supporting the 200 Iraqis who were spearheading the action and doing all the heavy lifting.

Despite this, the security crackdown in Baghdad seems to be going well, at least for now. Someone will really have to explain all this to me — in small doses over a long period of time, please, with aspirin breaks as required — because my head is about ready to explode. I’m not even sure I trust myself to summarize the chain of events:
• We announce the imminent launch of Operation Last and Final Ditch (after first carefully making sure it’s not August). This is it. If we can’t secure Baghdad this time, nobody knows what else we can even think of trying. We might actually have to start officially admitting that Victory may not be possible. (A lot of Republican-heads-in-Congress will be exploding if it ever comes to that. I’ll bet you ten bucks that at least one House Republican will go completely bonkers, and climb a tall building with an AK-47, and start mowing down anyone who looks like they’re relieved we’re getting out of Iraq. All the Osama cheerleaders, in other words. My money is on Virgil Goode; he’s almost totally bonkers already. It’s not enough to read his words though; you have to hear the way he says it.)
• This latest version of the product is New and Vastly Improved—bigger, bolder and better. The big innovation is that vast numbers of Iraqi forces will participate. Spearhead, in fact.
• First, we start without them. They don’t even know we have started. We’re holding press conferences saying all is going well so far (and according to plan). They’re holding press conferences saying yes, there have been unconscionable delays, but just you wait till we get this started.
• But, that’s okay. In not only every war, but every military operation, the first thing that happens is that the plan goes out of the window. That’s why we use so many Humvees in Iraq that have no doors or windows. (All the better to toss the plans out of.)
• The Iraqis catch up and join in. Somehow the number of U.S. troops involved in the operation still vastly outnumber the Iraqis. Senior generals show up on Capitol Hill, look befuddled, and scratch their heads, and say: “this ain’t how she wrote the script”. (Remember, we may know all about the fate of such scripts now, but the generals didn’t know then. They don’t teach that stuff in War College, and Tony Snow’s comments had not yet reached out and enlightened us all.)
• At this stage, NOTHING is going according to plan. But initial reports of how the operation is going are positive.

Is it possible that we’re finally going to succeed by the simple expedient of totally deviating from plan? If so, the Iraqis really delivered, didn’t they? We would never have succeeded if they hadn’t failed to show up. So if this is the way it plays out, let’s give them all the well-deserved credit, let’s declare that they have stood up, and let’s recognize that it’s time for us to — ever so reluctantly — stand down. And let’s bring our poor, ill-used, serially-abused troops home.

* In the spirit of fun and games for boys and girls of all ages:
Question: Why is it called the chain of command?
(Instructions: there isn’t necessarily just one correct response; pick all responses you think are correct.)
a) because, all along the chain, the guy above you yanks it on command
b) because they’re tethered by it to the wanker yanker-in-chief (not just their body, but their soul too)
c) “daisy chain” was taken
d) “Just do what Rumsfeld says” was vetoed by the PR department