Say Anything Blog

Let’s review today’s news from the front.

Henry Kissinger says that a military victory in Iraq is impossible.

LONDON—Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq’s neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region.

“If you mean by ‘military victory,’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Apparently now we are debating the definition of “win.”

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq’s neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

“A dramatic collapse of Iraq _ whatever we think about how the situation was created _ would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region,” he said.

Right, cause the middle-east was such a peaceful place before we showed up.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair is backtracking like there is no tomorrow on his statement that Iraq is a disaster

Downing Street moved swiftly to play down an apparent admission by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the invasion of Iraq had been a “disaster,” labelling his comments a “slip of the tongue.”

In an interview Friday on Al-Jazeera’s new English-language channel, broadcaster Sir David Frost suggested that the 2003 US-led and British-backed invasion had “so far been pretty much of a disaster.”

“It has,” Blair replied, before adding quickly: “But you see, what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It’s not difficult because of some accident in planning.

“It’s difficult because there’s a deliberate strategy… to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war.”

But during Blair’s trip to Pakistan for talks with President Pervez Musharraf, the prime minister’s official spokesman told reporters: “It was a straightforward slip of the tongue… sometimes he does this when he’s half-listening to the question and wants to get on and respond.”

No, a slip of the toungue is saying sh*t in church.  A four sentence statement is not a slip of the tongue.

Elsewhere, in his bid for the Republican nomination in 2008, John McCain says we need more troops in Iraq.

Sen. John McCain, a front-runner among GOP presidential contenders for said Sunday the U.S. must send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize Iraq or face the possibility of more attacks in the region and on American soil.

“I believe the consequences of failure are catastrophic. It will spread to the region. You will see Iran more emboldened. Eventually, you could see Iran pose a greater threat to the state of Israel,” said McCain, R-Ariz.

“We left Vietnam. It was over. We just had to heal the wounds of war,” said McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war after his Navy plane was shot down in 1967. “We leave this place, chaos in the region, and they’ll follow us home. So there’s a great deal more at stake here in this conflict, in my view, a lot more.

McCain said he based his judgment partly on the writings of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. air raid, and of Osama bin Laden.

And Charlie Rangel will lead the Democratic effort to reinstate the draft.

WASHINGTON—Americans would have to sign up for a new military draft after turning 18 if the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has his way.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars and to bolster U.S. troop levels insufficient to cover potential future action in Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said.

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, said he will propose a measure early next year.

In 2003, he proposed a measure covering people age 18 to 26. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women between age 18 and 42; it went nowhere in the Republican-led Congress.

That, that’s just great.

No wonder we are having trouble, we’ve got a bunch of extremists trying to dictate how things will happen.