Catching my breath

I spent most of the day away from the TV, computer and newspapers, in the company of folks who had lots of things to talk about that didn't involve torture, partisan politics or any of the other things that seem all-pervasive when I spend the day immersed in CNN and the blogs. Turns out that a lot of folks are out there planning vacations, getting the garden in shape, fixing the roof while the good weather holds and wondering what in the world happened to the Mariners. It's good to get perspective.

Still, there's some news that I want to make note of before the press of tomorrows headlines pulls me past today's stories.

Fareed Zakaria has a must-read Newsweek piece, exploring the broader implications of Iraq policy through the lens of Al Ghraib.

He writes "Rumsfeld went on in his testimony to explain that "these terrible acts were perpetrated by a small number." That's correct, except the small number who are truly responsible are not the handful of uniformed personnel currently being charged for the prison abuse scandal. The events at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger breakdown in American policy over the past two years. And it has been perpetrated by a small number of people at the highest levels of government."

He's clearly right about that, and I suspect that will become more and more obvious as the prosecutions in the Al Ghraib case go forward. As guilty as they may be of a variety of crimes, the handful of enlisted troops currently targeted for court martial don't show any interest in falling on their swords. I have no sympathy for the 'just following orders' defense in these cases, but they'll be doing everything they can to push the blame up the chain of command, and that push will continue every step of the way, I believe, until you have flag rank officers testifying agains the Secretary of Defense in trial proceedings, assuming he doesn't do the right thing and resign before it reaches that point.

Mary at the Left Coaster points to another essential piece, this one from US News & World Report, detailing the mounting evidence that we are losing the war in Iraq.

"The costs of the occupation are mounting inexorably. Not only was April the deadliest month of the Iraq mission, but more than 1,000 soldiers were wounded, creating a huge drain on resources. These losses averaged out to losing the equivalent of a platoon a day in manpower last month. "This cannot be sustained," says another State Department official. But officials contend that there is little being done to plan strategically to replace the wounded. Instead, marines in units set to deploy to Iraq later this year from Camp Pendleton, Calif., are being asked to volunteer to head over early--a form of borrowing from the future that will eventually come due."

Further on, they make note of a particularly distressing example of Rumsfeld's incompetence.

"In an unintentionally revealing moment, Rumsfeld conceded that he had not been paying attention to the hearts-and-minds battle. "I haven't been focused on the war of ideas, to be honest with you," he told a press conference. Some insiders are concerned, they say, that Bush, Vice President Cheney, and even Rumsfeld don't appreciate the full extent of the trouble in Iraq. "They don't understand that it's a total f - - - ing mess over there," says one high-level U.S. official working on Iraq policy. "I think someone's gotta be fired."

Mary comments "It is becoming obvious that there is no way to win the war as it is being conducted now."

I agree to a large extent, but would take it further. I don't think we can win a war in which we don't even seem to understand what a 'win' would look like. Stability and withdrawal might not be considered a win, but it would forestall further disaster. It's time to set a simple, understandable, attainable goal in Iraq, but it will probably take a new administration for that to happen.