The real Iraq Study Group

[CatWoman]

Forget Jim Baker's crew. The neocon hawks who sold the war, joined by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, unveiled their new plan for "victory": At least 25,000 new troops in combat roles well into 2008.

By Mark Benjamin

Jan. 6, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- Hawks gathered in the plush, carpeted suites of the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Friday to discuss a new course in Iraq they say should be spearheaded by tens of thousands of new troops camped out in Baghdad neighborhoods in active combat roles well into 2008.

The plan is not to be dismissed. Unlike the much ballyhooed Iraq Study Group, these are the people President Bush listens to, many of them the same influential voices who were predicting in 2002 that the war would establish a flower of democracy in the Middle East. Sitting in the overheated, standing-room-only conference hall, a Department of Homeland Security official leaned over to me to note the irony that reporters had paid so much attention to the workings of the Iraq Study Group, as opposed to the troop-surge plans being cooked up at AEI. "This is the Iraq Study Group," he quipped.

Bush is expected to release a new Iraq strategy next week that reportedly hinges on a troop increase, and many have said his thinking has been influenced by the AEI experts who gathered on Friday.

The think tank's plan is not for the lighthearted. The glossy 47-page AEI report, titled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq," envisions sending 25,000 additional troops to clear Baghdad house by house. Then, as report author Frederick W. Kagan put it, those soldiers would not pull back to their bases but remain stationed in Baghdad neighborhoods, providing security for civilians. "We can clear and hold critical terrain in Baghdad," Kagan told the crowd.

This is no small surge, nor a temporary one. For better or for worse, it is an escalation of the war. Supporters envision a last-ditch effort to forget about all the mistakes of the past and return, four years into the war, to the overwhelming force envisioned in the so-called Powell doctrine, which held that the United States should never commit less than the overwhelming force needed for a decisive military victory. For die-hard supporters of the war, this is a chance to finally do it right. The plan calls for increased troop levels for at least another 18 months.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/01/06/aei/

[azurnoir]

1. Tactics like this worked so well in 'nam and Korea

In reality these "people" know that the new Dem majority are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If the Dem's allow this "surge" then they betray the voters, and if they don't then it will be the Dem's fault we "lost".

[Dhalgren]

2. The Democrats will allow the escalation. Just watch.

Of course they really can't stop the Murderer in Chief, they can only de-fund him. That will be too politically hard for the conservative Democrats and it won't be done.

Remember in 2002 there were a lot a military experts who said that the only way to subdue the Iraqi population was by vicious, urban warfare, house-to-house combat, which would cost tens of thousands of US casualties? Well, it is now about to happen, except that now we have allowed the guerrillas to become very well armed and supplied, very well trained and seasoned and very effectively dug-in. This is going to be a mini-Stalingrad ("mini" only because we don't have the number of troops). It will end in the fire-bombing of Baghdad. I don't think Bush will nuke Baghdad, but he will flatten it like he did Falluja. That will be the crime that we will never get away from...