A BushCorp™ First: Brush with Candor

SecDef Ron Dumsfeld (or something like that) commited news 3 times today.

First he admitted the the Iraqi insurgency could well last another 12 years (which it certainly will unless the US makes some better decisions and soon).

He also confirmed that US officials have been talking with elements of the insurgency:

Asked to respond to a report that U.S. military representatives met with several Sunni Iraqi insurgents twice in June, Rumsfeld told Fox News "there have probably been many more than that" and described the contacts as an effort to "split people off and get some people to be supportive" of the political process in Iraq.

Other parts of the U.S. government, including the State Department and CIA, have also been holding secret meetings with Iraqi insurgent factions in an effort to stop the violence and coax them into the political process, according to U.S. government officials and others who have participated in the efforts.

The military plan, approved in August 2004, seeks to make a distinction between Iraqi insurgents who are attacking U.S. troops because they are hostile to their presence, and foreign insurgents responsible for most of the suicide bombings -- which have killed more than 1,200 people in the last couple of months -- and whose larger political aims are unclear.

Which leads to the third bit of news: BushCorp™ (or at least some elements thereof) are proceding in a rational matter, and, apparently, its non-Vice-Presidential elements anyway, recognize the mess we're in.

But back to news item #2, talks with insurgents. The Iraqi anti-occupationalists, primarily Sunnis, can be an enormous help in cutting down the life-expectancy of the insurgency mentioned in news item #1. A successful resolution and understanding with the Sunni elements of the insurgency can have a salutory affect on Iraq in 3 ways.

First of course it simply reduces the number of insurgents.

It also eliminates the legitimacy of the foreign-born jihadists which will help reduce their recruiting as well as make it more difficult for them to operate in Iraq (which requires at least a degree of tacit Iraqi approval).

And finally, by better integrating Sunnis into itself, the Iraqi government gains greater legitimacy.

So, bringing their prodigal Sunni bretheren into the fold would be an enormous boon to the people and government of Iraq. And since, blue-fingers notwithstanding, the US is still the de facto power in Iraq, it's a remarkably hopeful sign that we're talking with the Sunnis.

One problem though:

The newspaper said the insurgents "had agreed beforehand to focus their main demand" on a guaranteed timetable of U.S. withdrawal. "We told them it did not matter whether we are talking about one year or a five-year plan but that we insisted on having a timetable nonetheless," one of the Iraqi sources was quoted as saying. [Emphasis mine-CK]

And that's the sticking point. Bush refuses to even consider ANY time-table at all for fear insurgents will merely bide their time until the last GI leaves before unleashing hell or some such.

As I've argued before, this contention is both incorrect and irrelevent. And worse, it's obviously now preventing progress with the Sunnis that could provide a true tipping-point in Iraq.

Now it's possible that BushCorp™ is merely using its "no time-table" rhetoric as a negotiating stance.

More likely, I fear, is that BushCorp™ is too beholden to its corporate masters (Halliburton et al.) who are now, and wish to continue to make huge profits from their Iraqi ventures. The reason BushCorp™ will never set a withdrawal timetable is that it has no intention of EVER leaving.

And that isn't really news at all.