Ken Pollack, interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman of CFR, tells presidential candidates they should just not talk about Iraq "until early 2008," which would certainly be helpful to a certain vulnerable-on-Iraq front-runner I can think of.
« Airstrikes in Afghanistan | Main | "Completely Unfounded" »
Nothing to See Here
10 Aug 2007 10:15 am
Comments (14)
What planet are these guys from? Does Pollock honestly think that Democratic candidates can pass through the entire New Hampshire primary campaign, for example, without addressing Iraq every day? Do they have any notion at all about what is happening in this country outside the Washington beltway or the conference rooms of CFR?
It's no accident that Kenneth's bullshit is published on the "Council of Foreign Relations" website -- which bills itself as a "Nonpartisan resource for Information and Analysis".
Yeah, right. Maybe in the same way that whores are a "Nonpartisan Resource" for blowjobs.
Tyrone:
No!! It would hurt HRC, because she hasn't admitted any mistake. I wonder if Pollack has been promised a role in a HRC administration.
Dan:
Why do you think Pollack would have any clue what's going on outside the Beltway bubble? If they had any clue, they wouldn't be spouting half the crap they do.
It's interesting how Kenneth Pollacks lapses into CYA mode --aka "Alternate Reality" when the interviewer brings up the two prominent FACTS suggesting that Kenneth is full of shit.
Re Fact 1:
GWERTZMAN: Do you find the electric power is on more continuously?
POLLACK: We found there had been a real shift from trying to repair and defend the national power grid, which was extremely difficult to do. There now is a shift away from that toward helping the Iraqis essentially get their own local generators and bring local businesses and houses into those local generators.
------------
Ha ha ha ha. I guess that's a longwinded "NO".
Let a million -- no, make that 9 MILLION -- generators bloom?? So where are you going to get the FUEL , Kenny? How long do they run without Diesel fuel and oil? Especially in a hot, sandy environment?
Sure, if you can throw $100 BILLION of the US Taxpayers money at a problem, you can cover up the smell of catshit. But only for a while.
The best was this. It was like something coming out of Belzebuub's mouth, if he was asked if there was air conditioning in hell:
"Do you find the electric power is on more continuously?
We found there had been a real shift from trying to repair and defend the national power grid, which was extremely difficult to do. There now is a shift away from that toward helping the Iraqis essentially get their own local generators and bring local businesses and houses into those local generators."
That's so cool, that he would change the topic to the fact that the U.S. has 'shifted' so cannily from defending the national power grid. Why, one hour of electricity in Baghdad per day, national blackouts, weeks with only three days of power in cities like Karbala, the collapse of sewage system that require electricity to process and channel waste - what others would consider marks of a downward spiral that is making Iraq as destitute as Ethiopia - turn out to be marks of success!
Pollack isn't just full of shit. He's an abettor of crimes against humanity. He's not really different from the Rwandan radio operators who talked about 'cockroaches' while the massacres were going on. Those guys are now on trial in Tanzania. Pollack will get a post as an advisor to some honcho, and never miss a steak lunch. Life isn't fair.
It seems that his main rationale for kinda-optimism (in a "grave" situation) is that the soldiers he spoke to had, overall and with exceptions, better morale than soldiers on previous visits. No doubt a scientific sample. But eventual winners are not the only soldiers with good morale. Morale is not a mark of divine grace. Bobby Lee's boys had good morale on their surge into Pennsylvania in July 1863. That situation didn't even look grave. Morale only takes you so far.
Oh, and his minders took him to a time and place in Ramadi where he could walk without body armor. Places usually are safer after a battle than during a battle. What about everywhere else in Iraq? Like the Green Zone? Don't they have to wear armor there, if they go outside? Need for body armor, per area over time, is a metric that can be quantified, not just cited in one anecdote about one place.
I like how he handled the question about the electricity situation: "Um, that's hard. We're telling people to find their own electricity."
Sorry Don - had the same idea at the same time as you!
"Therefore, you have to keep reassessing, and it may be that in early 2008, the progress we saw on this trip peters out."
Early 2008 could be march. The current assessment date is september. And the new day of judgement is about six months later or one F. U.
Surely just a coincidence.
If only he'd take his own advice.
Re "Sorry Don"
------
That's ok , Roger. Same thing happens to me.
Actually, I believe that Pollack's advice is based on his thinking, "Maybe if nobody talks about what a cock-up I've enabled, I won't remember it so much and feel like such a fucking idiot."
(though it's also possible that he doesn't think he's an idiot at all, despite years of Bush fucking up Iraq, with the cheerful assistance of his "liberal" and "non-partisan" BFFs, Pollack and O'Hanlon, in which case there needs to be even *more* derision and rejection of his delusions)
Thank god he's giving this advice in the primary, where it should destroy the credibility of anyone who listens to him, instead of in the general election, where it might actually cost us a chance to distinguish ourselves from whichever Bush-lite doofus the GOP nominates.
At this point I think he has pretty well talked himself out of a job, even in a Clinton administration.
Carl, I wish. I can just see him being very useful to Hillary, both for the idea of 'let's not talk about Iraq', and for general hawkish cheerleading.
Putnam: "Oh, and his minders took him to a time and place in Ramadi where he could walk without body armor. "
That's probably the new slogan - 'I walked around (for several minutes) without my body armor!'.
Talk about setting low expectations.
Comments closed August 24, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Pollack is advising Rudy?
Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | August 10, 2007 10:23 AM