One of the most disturbing aspects of the last few years under Bush has been the cowardice of people like Bremer, Colin Powell and Tony Blair who all have had countless opportunities to publicly speak out but have failed to do so. Bullies like Bush rely on this and this lot somehow think that it is respectful or somehow beneficial to just be quiet. Hardly. This is a crisis of democracy and these people deserve no credit at all for going along with the madness, the incompetence and the ignorance of the Bush team.
As an outsider, I did not get bombarded with the American media spin that went 24/7 after September 11 so when I visited the US afterwards, I would listen and then question the madness that I would hear. Even just questioning caused problems just about everywhere I went in the US. It has always bothered me to hear that people like these guys did not really buy into the Bush story, but were somehow playing along for the sake of unity. Bullshit. They are all cowards, plain and simple. They should all feel ashamed of themselves and quite frankly be embarssed to show their faces in public because they failed democracy.
Today's NY Times book review of Bremer's book is worth a read. Why he is only now admitting that the US was well under-manned in the field is a mystery but I suppose he was too interested in playing the game. Say-nothings stick around for the long haul and those who question are sent packing. Bush did not want to admit that more troops were needed because it did not fit with his campaign strategy and Bremer and others were only too happy to tow the line.
Bremer turned to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, and asked him what he would do with two more divisions, as many as 40,000 more troops. General Sanchez did not hesitate to answer. "I'd control Baghdad," he said. Bremer then mentioned some other uses for the soldiers, like securing Iraq's borders and protecting its infrastructure, to which General Sanchez replied: "Got those spare troops handy, sir?"
Yet for most of the 14 months that Bremer oversaw the occupation, he and his aides, and General Sanchez and his, often seemed the only people in Iraq who refused to acknowledge the anarchy in the streets. Though confronted by the growing guerrilla insurgency and the brazen behavior of armed militias, Bremer and other senior American officials routinely batted down any suggestion that they needed more soldiers.
