WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration yesterday came under more pressure to outline the number of American forces that may need to stay in Iraq over the next two years after the Pentagon failed to meet a 60-day deadline set by Congress to provide a detailed plan for training Iraqis and for likely US troop levels.
The report to Congress, due yesterday, was required under the $80 billion war spending legislation approved in May. It is intended to help answer one of the most pressing questions hanging over the American-led occupation: when the United States might be able to begin drawing down the estimated 140,000 forces in Iraq.
Yet another blown deadline; no work done and no results. If they were cartoonists, they'd be fired.
''I am deeply disappointed that the administration failed to comply with this initial . . . deadline," Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Lowell Democrat and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, told Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in a letter. ''It is long past due for the administration to provide Congress with meaningful information to evaluate our progress in Iraq."
The Pentagon yesterday maintained that it is still compiling the report, but did not say when it would be complete.
How about never? Does never work for you?
The war spending legislation, approved by both houses of Congress, stipulated that ''the administration must develop and provide to the Congress a more comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security in Iraq than is currently available."
It calls for ''detailed descriptions" of how the Pentagon will measure the security environment, political stability, and economic progress and how it will assess the capabilities and readiness of Iraqi security forces, including military and police, to take over the mission now performed by US-led forces. The report must also include ''an assessment of US military requirements, including planned force rotations, through the end of calendar year 2006," according to the instructions from Congress. The Pentagon is providing updates to Congress every three months until Oct. 1, 2006.
This completely appalls me, but if I were a parent with a child in Iraq, I would be screaming for the blood of Bush and Rumsfeld. They rushed into war with no plan; they had no plans for how to handle their mess after the invasion, and now, under deadline, they still have not come up with a plan.
Parents of soldiers: The Bush Administration doesn't care about your child. They have concentrated more on a Social Security attack and Terry Schiavo than they ever have on the war. Bush couldn't be roused from his ranch for anything with this war, before or afterward, but he flew back to DC in the middle of the night for the feeding tube follies.
They have no plan, they haven't done a lick of work, and their attitude trumpets their complete lack of concern.
They got what they wanted. Now the rest of us can go piss up a rope.
Update: Greg over at The Talent Show has more.
(I am a cross-post, I am an anarchist...)
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