The PowerPoint of Doom

Here's the slide somebody handed over to The New York Times's Michael Gordon, providing a graphical depiction of the US military's view that the situation in Iraq has gone to shit -- moving from a bad situation before the February shrine attack in Samarra toward a state of inc reasing chaos. In addition, "An intelligence summary at the bottom of the slide reads 'urban areas experiencing "ethnic cleansing" campaigns to consolidate control' and 'violence at all-time high, spreading geographically.'"

Meanwhile, in yesterday's editorial making the case for the GOP, National Review argued it was vital to keep the Democrats out of power, because only a Republican majority can protect the American public from accurate information about Iraq: "their victory would undoubtedly strengthen the forces who want to declare Iraq a defeat and come home. Partisan oversight hearings will politicize every military miscalculation, every dime misspent, and every abuse by our allies (real or imagined). The effect will be to sap what public support remains for seeing the job done in Iraq. The doomsday clock on our commitment in Iraq will have lurched a few minutes closer to midnight."

Vote GOP: We'll maintain a cocoon of denial!

Comments

I can't wait for the howls from the right, demanding that the leaker of the Slide of Doom be waterboarded.

Posted by dj moonbat | November 1, 2006 9:54 AM

Isn't there some way to include thumbnail in a post that's linked to a larger version of the picture?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | November 1, 2006 10:01 AM

No...that's the largest version available on the internets.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | November 1, 2006 10:09 AM

only a Republican majority can protect the American public from accurate information (Matt)

Hehe, excellent.

Posted by Gary Sugar | November 1, 2006 10:10 AM

SCMT: why not just a link to the Times?
link to the image

I don't see the inconsistency between the NR editorial and the graphic. The graphic says that we're in a bad situation and getting worse. The editorial says we shouldn't choose people that will declare defeat. Being in a bad situation that's getting worse is not the same thing as being defeated.

Posted by Al | November 1, 2006 10:14 AM

a larger version of the picture?

It's at the link. Or here.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/11/01/world/01military_CA0ready.html

Posted by Gary Sugar | November 1, 2006 10:15 AM

Al, you're being stupid again. Matt's not saying National Review is being inconsistent; he's noting that NR is consistent in its belief that knowing the truth is bad for the war effort:

Partisan oversight hearings will politicize every military miscalculation, every dime misspent, and every abuse by our allies (real or imagined). The effect will be to sap what public support remains for seeing the job done in Iraq.

Now, being a partisan yourself, you would likely say, "NR said partisan oversight, which wouldn't let us know the truth." Well, perhaps. But right now we have partisan lack of oversight, which is guaranteed to hide the truth. At least with partisan oversight, there's a chance that America will find out what the hell happened and continues to happen with this war.

Posted by dj moonbat | November 1, 2006 10:18 AM

Right -- the NR strategy for success in Iraq is an aggressive campaign of spin and cover-up aimed at preventing people from understanding how poorly the war is going. Like if a war goes horribly in the desert and nobody hears about it, it was actually a stunning success.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | November 1, 2006 10:26 AM

I thought this sentence in the National Review editorial was very revealing:

"Partisan oversight hearings will politicize every military miscalculation..."

While I was reading the Times's description of the slide, I was reminded once again that almost without exception the military's conduct of this war has been excellent; and that their own analysis, from the pre-war stage to this analysis of the current situation, have been also of high quality. Almost all of the very bad decisions in the conduct of this war, even including the decision to use torture, have been external to the military, all originating from the political class and most of those ultimately originating from Cheney's office or influence. (The torture came in by way of the CIA and the civilian contractors and originated with the VP office giving it the go-ahead.)

But in this one sentence in this editorial, we get an insight into, at least, how the conservative pundits see things: if there have been mistakes, it's the military's fault.

I don't think I've seen anyone discuss this possibility, but it occurs to me that the disaster that this war has been, in the context of the Pentagon civilian leadership versus the Pentagon brass, Cheney's influence, and the conservative chattering class, there is the possibility that the GOP may be poisoning their natural alliance with the US military. That may be too much to hope for. But it's worth keeping in mind just how long and dark of a shadow Vietnam had on the US military. It's hard to imagine that Iraq won't have a similar impact.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 1, 2006 10:41 AM

Wow, we really do live in different worlds. You think people aren't really hearing about how badly the war is going? Please. The MSM trumpets every failure on the front page. If anything, the public is getting a too BLEAK picture of the war - which is pretty impressive, given the graphic showing how poorly the war really is going!

That being said, I don't really agree with NR that "partisan oversight hearings" will "sap what public support remains for seeing the job done in Iraq". I don't really think anything could sap public support more effectively than the relentless anti-war drive of the MSM.

Posted by Al | November 1, 2006 10:43 AM

Gloom, doom, and despair.

The National Review: where right wing Jesuitical Catholic thinking meets left wing Trotskyist opportunism.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 1, 2006 10:47 AM

Wasn't it a powerpoint presentation that got us into this thing in the first place?

Posted by DanF | November 1, 2006 11:07 AM

I think Powerpoint is evil, but I'm not sure I'm willing to blame it for the Iraq War.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 1, 2006 11:17 AM

"I was reminded once again that almost without exception the military's conduct of this war has been excellent..."

I wouldn't go that far. The much greater ineptness displayed by the military leadership shouldn't blind one to the generally inept handling of the counter-insurgency campaign by the military. It was like they hadn't ever heard of counter-insurgency and had no clue how one is supposed to go about it.

Having said that, I do think they've shown a much clearer grasp of the scope of the problem and have, of necessity, been more honest at least internally about the actual situation on the ground.

Posted by Doug T | November 1, 2006 11:34 AM

Wow. Pretty much sums it up, huh?
Well as I've said before, I was definitely wrong on this war. I really believed that the Iraqis wanted freedom. But it is clear that they don't value freedom and therefore don't deserve our soldiers dying on their behalf. We should withdraw immediately and completley, and let the Iraqis kill each other until they are tired of it and ready to actually find ways to work together.

I've had two lessons reinforced:
1) You really can't trust government to do anything right.
2) We should return to an isolationist foreign policy. It's the only ethically responsible course in a world that views every intervention of the United States as imperialistic.

If I sound bitter, I am. I allowed myself to be convinced that activist government could be a source for good, when history and logic so clearly demonstrate the opposite.

And no, the Democrats aren't any better. They just have different freedoms they want to limit, and their own set of justifications for why that's ok.

Posted by jb | November 1, 2006 11:40 AM

If anything, the public is getting a too BLEAK picture of the war - which is pretty impressive, given the graphic showing how poorly the war really is going!

Really? What was Iraq like the last time you were there? Share your non-public wisdom, oh troll of sorrow!

I think the slide of doom shows we're getting the good nres from Iraq. And while that sliding scale isn't ideal (since the ends will never be used) it's better than Tom Ridge's bullshit discrete rainbow of terrah.

In short, Iraq makes the Heat look good.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | November 1, 2006 11:51 AM

It was like they hadn't ever heard of counter-insurgency and had no clue how one is supposed to go about it.

This was a deliberate decision, so bone-headed I wouldn't believe it, even of the military, if it weren't confirmed by multiple sources.

After Vietnam, it was decided 'we'll never do this again', although deciding who, when, where, and why to fight is a political and not a military decision. But it became the received wisdom that the U.S. military would never again do counter-insurgency. The Vietnam experience was not studied, much less any other insurgencies. Counter-insurgency wasn't taught in American military schools. I think the Marines and special forces paid some attention to the subject, but for the military as an institution counter-insurgency has been officially 'not our job' since Vietnam.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 1, 2006 12:03 PM

And while that sliding scale isn't ideal (since the ends will never be used) . . .

Optimist.

Posted by David Tomlin | November 1, 2006 12:07 PM

Keith:

One nitpick. Thomas Ricks often finds fault with (and often doles praise out to) the U.S. military in Fiasco. He notes that the failure to adjust its combative approach to Iraqis in a timely manner was a significant factor contributing to the anti-U.S. sentiment on which the insurgency has fed. Some of the inertia was the fault of politicos in the White House and Pentagon who refused to acknowledge the existence of an insurgency, to be sure. But Ricks notes that field commanders' perceptions and personalities were also key. Specifically, he compares the heavy-handed operations of the 4th Infantry Division to the more nuanced approach of the 101st Airborne and other units.

BTW, the U.S. military in large part shares Ricks' view, and is evaluating how better to prepare its combat units for the sort of policing/occupation role they were forced to assume after the fall of Baghdad.

Posted by Pat | November 1, 2006 12:11 PM

I find it interesting that the Bush administration wants to focus on the words of a Senator on the campaign trail in California while virtually every intelligent observer believes that the "stay the course" effort in Iraq is putting our troops in harms way.

If the President is actually concerned for our troops, why doesn't he admit his administration's mistakes and focus his energy on crafting a new war strategy rather than a new political strategy...but that would require him to be less concerned with political power and more concerned with protecting our troops...troops he enjoys waving around like a cheap campaign sign when he thinks that will win him votes...the same troops that died in near record numbers in October in a war the President declared we had won more than two years ago.

Read more here:

www.thoughttheater.com

Posted by Daniel DiRito | November 1, 2006 12:11 PM

"Partisan oversight hearings will politicize every military miscalculation, every dime misspent"

I bet.

Didn't the National Review editor Kate O'Beirne's husband do a lot of the spending in Iraq? Wasn't he part of the reconstruction team doling out contracts to friends? No wonder she is afraid of hearings on money misspent.

Posted by Nan | November 1, 2006 12:19 PM

Good points, DougT, David Tomlin, and Pat. I stand corrected with regard to them. I do feel, though, that these errors are comprehensible and to some degree forgivable. In particularly, they are not at heart the result of an almost ming-boggling arrogance as are the errors of the political class. Not to mention what I feel is a large dose of widespread bad-faith in the political class, as well. I tend to think the neocon true believers suffer from extreme arrogance (as well as a variety of wilfull simple-mindedness), though I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and see them as not acting with a large amount of bad-faith. But not so all the rest of the executive branch politicos involved with this war. Admitting that a lot of my sense of this is intuitive, I really believe that among these folks there's both a great deal of arrogance and a great deal of bad-faith. I'm not at all one to throw around words like "treasonous", but in this case I think this group is well within that range.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 1, 2006 12:36 PM

Nan: Ha! Katie O'Beirne's husband worked at the Pentagon, and was certainly responsible for sending a lot of unqualified Bush partisans to work for the CPA in Baghdad, and for rejecting qualified but insufficiently Republican candidates. You're absolutely right. The thought of hearings into her husband's conduct must keep the lovely couple up at night.

Keith: Well said. The military's mistakes were largely a function of its historic role and focus: combat. That's what its structure, training, culture, etc. are all about. Policing and occupying require a different skill set.

Posted by Pat | November 1, 2006 1:38 PM

Wow, we really do live in different worlds. You think people aren't really hearing about how badly the war is going? Please. The MSM trumpets every failure on the front page.

I don't see the inconsistency between the fact that the "MSM" reports bad news and the fact that people aren't really hearing about how badly the war is going. The MSM is saying that we're in a bad situation and getting worse. The facts show that the actual state of Iraq is even worse than what the MSM is reporting.

Posted by JP | November 1, 2006 1:39 PM

Kevin Drum:

In fact, here's some fun pseudo-math to go along with it. If you mark off the entire scale in units from 0-100, the "Chaos Quotient" has increased from 55 to 81 in the past eight months, an increase of slightly more than 3 points per month. So how long until we hit 100 at the current rate?

Answer: Just under six months. Even the U.S. military now thinks we have less than one Friedman before Iraq is hopelessly lost.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

Posted by David Tomlin | November 1, 2006 4:03 PM

To change the subject, why is this even in Powerpoint? Do Pentagon people just like pretty colors?

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 1, 2006 10:59 PM

National Review argued it was vital to keep the Democrats out of power, because only a Republican majority can protect the American public from accurate information about Iraq

Knowledge is power...and El Presidente (and supporters of the Junta) feel he should be the only one to have the power since he is "The Decider".

Posted by Porn Store Owner Dude... | November 3, 2006 8:18 PM

To change the subject, why is this even in Powerpoint? Do Pentagon people just like pretty colors?

According to Tom Ricks, PowerPoint is the only way the DOD communicates these days.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | November 3, 2006 8:58 PM