try and follow this....
QUESTION: A couple of weeks ago, you stood in the Rose Garden with Generals
Abizaid and Casey and you cited the accomplishments regarding standing up of
Iraqi troops there and said that there were 12 battalions that were working on
Fallujah in the western part, 20 in Baghdad, 100 across the nation. And
that afternoon, Abizaid and Casey went up to Capitol Hill and said, Well, there's one battle-ready battalion, which led some Republican
senators to say, Well, the situation is getting worse.
BUSH: Well, what is happening in Iraq is the following: More and more Iraqi
are able to take the fight to the enemy. And that's important to achieve our
goal. And the goal is for a stable, democratic Iraq that is an ally in the war
on terror.
Right now, there are over 80 army battalions fighting alongside
coalition troops. When I say army battalions, Iraqi army battalions. There are
over 30 Iraqi battalions in the lead. And that is substantial progress from the
way the world was a year ago.
Success in Iraq is really important for our
future. And to succeed in Iraq, we have a dual-track strategy.
On the one hand, there's a political strategy: the constitutional
process and then elections in December. On the other one is the security
strategy that you described.
American troops have got two missions. One is to track down the Zarqawis and his affiliates and bring them to justice. We had success doing that, as you might recall, with the fellow in Baghdad.
And the second mission is to train Iraqis. And we've got several ways we're
doing that.
One is, obviously, your basic training route. The other is to
embed our troops with Iraqi forces to teach them not only how to fight but how
to have a proper command and control structure. I remember a Rose Garden press
conference awhile back -- I think it was a Rose Garden press conference -- where
you might have asked me this very type of question. I said one of the concerns
we have is the capacity of the Iraqis to develop command and control.
In other words, there's one thing to have people able to march; it's another thing
to have the capacity to send them into battle in an organized way.
One of the things that our folks measure is whether or not that's taking place. And the answer is there is progress.There's, obviously, more work to be done, more units
to be stood up. But we've got, as I said, over 30 battalions in the lead, and
that's positive progress
HUH??? I know that Robert McNamara, in The Fog of War said "never answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question you wish had been asked of you. " But what possible question could this have been an answer to? "Mr. President, would you please babble incoherently for a while? Thanks much." I mean, maybe I just don't have the attention span to follow his chain of thought...but it strikes me he didn't not only answer the question, he didn't say ANYTHING.
posted by squinchbot at 5:42 PM
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