So the result of the President's meeting with his generals has been his acceptance that there shall be a change in tactics as necessary. The goal is still 'victory' though. Victory here is a comparative term, not a term of art, is it not?
What possible change in tactics could he mean ? And what is now happening, or is expected, that means that continuing the same tactics as used for the last three years is the wrong course? Surely 78 more US dead in this month alone, a record since the campaign post- invasion started,is no evidence of failure is it?
It's a pity he can't be frank and say out loud that this equals a change of strategy and he can't wait to get the hell out of the place.
The British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells was much more forthcoming today. He said that he expected the occupation forces to be out in a year. The BBC was quick to note that he would have knowledge of what the President and his advisers were really thinking and what the plans were: he would not make such a statement, a statement made obviously with the approval of his own government, if the result was certain embarrassment.
The BBC commentator in Washington is certain that there is an unspoken timetable already in place and in mind.The US will have told the Iraqi government that it will have the peacekeeping of its country in its own hands soon.
Couldn't all these leaks and hints about withdrawal or change be aimed mainly at US voters in the mid-term elections?
'The generals who told President Bush before the war that Donald Rumsfeld's shock-and-awe fantasy would not work were not enough to persuade him to change his strategy in Iraq. The rise of the insurgency did not do the trick. Nor did month after month of mounting military and civilian casualties on all sides, the emergence of a near civil war, the collapse of reconstruction efforts or the seeming inability of either Iraqi or American forces to secure contested parts of Iraq, including Baghdad, for any significant period.
So what finally, after all this time, caused Mr. Bush to very publicly consult with his generals to consider a change in tactics in Iraq? The president, who says he never reads political polls, is worried that his party could lose some of its iron grip on power in the Congressional elections next month.
It is not necessarily a bad thing when a politician takes stock of his positions in the teeth of an election...
...[but] it is happening in the midst of a particularly ugly, and especially vacuous, election season. There is probably no worse time to begin a serious discussion about Iraq policy than two weeks before a close, bitter election. But now that the discussion has begun, it must continue, as honestly and openly as possible. It is time for the American people to confront all the things that the president never had the guts to tell them about for three and a half years.' NYT editorial
What was not, perhaps, obvious from other reports is that the words " arrogance and stupidity " [NNN's post, above] were not said in English but in Arabic. Mr Alexander is a fluent Arabic speaker and was appearing, as he often does, in a discussion programme on al-Jazeera. He might have hoped that nobody would pick his frankness up
The BBC did, of course. The Monitoring Service of the BBC exists to monitor broadcasts from all over the world, twenty-four hours a day. It employs a large staff fluent in, or, mostly, native speakers in a myriad of languages. Al-Jazeera has a backbone of Arabic staff recruited from the BBC World Service. At that time the BBC,unfortunately,had cut back on its Arabic services for want of adequate funding so these people were out of a job We may safely assume that the Monitoring Service knows how to translate.
The whole service of al-Jazeera has been modelled on that of the BBC, unsurprisingly when its founding workforce was largely ex-BBC. Recently the station has recruited star broadcasters of considerable weight and reputation. One has been Sir David Frost, he of the famous interviews with the disgraced Richard Nixon. Another has been one of our best-known BBC broadcasters, journalists and news-readers, Rajiv Omar.So now it boasts some big names in broadcasting too.
The Administration , of course, or some element in it, has been down on the station from the outset as some mouthpiece of terrorists .The station's offices in Baghdad were hit by American bombing (and not, one suspects, by way of friendly fire )Over here it is regarded as highly respectable.
Whatever the "tactics" the strategy is plain viz. tell the present Iraqi government to act fast or face the consequences. This is a two pronged attack: the US threatens their Prime Minister and Blair threatens the Deputy Prime Minister. Prong one
Note how many sides there are fighting in Iraq . The town of Amara was left by the British only two months ago. This week it was the scene, not of fighting between Sunnis and Shia but between Shia and Shia. It ended with Iraqi forces restoring peace though the truth appears to be that Shia leaders, notably al- Sadr, told them to stop.
PS The BBC , both UK and World Service, are running the video of the material part of Mr Alexander's piece. That's just so the rest of the Arabic speaking world doesn't miss it . That should help a lot.
And what is now happening, or is expected, that means that continuing the same tactics as used for the last three years is the wrong course? Surely 78 more US dead in this month alone, a record since the campaign post- invasion started,is no evidence of failure is it? 
We may safely assume that the Monitoring Service knows how to translate.
.The station's offices in Baghdad were hit by American bombing (and not, one suspects, by way of friendly fire 
