The Joint Cheifs of Staff are at odds with the Bush administration over adding more troops in Iraq. The WaPo reports today that White House officials are “aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.”

The idea is to send “15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months” in effect to “reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq.”

But the Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public.

At regular interagency meetings and in briefing President Bush last week, the Pentagon has warned that any short-term mission may only set up the United States for bigger problems when it ends. The service chiefs have warned that a short-term mission could give an enormous edge to virtually all the armed factions in Iraq — including al-Qaeda’s foreign fighters, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias — without giving an enduring boost to the U.S military mission or to the Iraqi army, the officials said.

So, the Joint Chiefs see that BushCo still doesn’t have a plan on Iraq and they don’t want to continue along the same path of shoot from the hip war planning. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. No plan.

The mission is a failure. It has been a failure all along and we had business being there in the first place. We simply can not afford to keep sending our young men and women into harm’s way on a fool’s mission.

IN THE BLOGOSPHERE:

Filed under: Bush Admin, In The News, Iraq, Politics, Republicans | Get Permalink or trackback |