The Coffeespy

In an Early Birded story from the Washington Post, writer Stephen Dinan claims the link between resolutions condemning the Iraq strategy and troop morale has been removed:

The Defense Department’s top civilian and its top military officer, undercutting the White House and other senior Republicans yesterday, said Congress doesn’t endanger troop morale by voting on nonbinding resolutions opposing President Bush’s Iraq reinforcement plan.

“From the standpoint of the troops, I believe that they understand how our legislature works and that they understand that there’s going to be this kind of debate,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, effectively taking out of play an argument that had been made by Mr. Bush’s spokesman and other top Republicans, who had warned resolutions disagreeing with the troop increase plan would send bad signals.

Interesting opinion, unfortunately, this is a news story.  Opinions aren’t supposed to appear.  The argument has, by no means, been taken “out of play.”  From the same article:

“Our political will is directly related to the morale of our troops,” he said on the Senate floor. “Those who seek to, for rhetorical purposes only, assert their support of the troops while communicating their opposition to their mission cannot sever this natural connection between political will and morale.”

Mr. McCain last month raised the question about resolutions and morale with Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, during a Senate hearing.

“It would not be a beneficial effect,” answered Gen. Petraeus.

Well, that’s interesting.  I wonder what kind of comments the WaPo journalist will follow that up with:

The division over U.S. troop morale aside, Mr. Gates, Gen. Pace and others all agreed that the debate could send wrong signals to al Qaeda and other enemies the United States is fighting.

Hmm, so there’s yet another down-side to this proposed resolution.  Well that doesn’t jive well with the WaPo headline attached to the story, does it?  How do you reconcile “War Foes Will Not Hurt Morale” with “our enemies may be emboldened?”

“We have a house that’s burning, and we’re putting gasoline on it by sending more troops to Iraq when what we need to be doing is trying to put out that fire,” Rep. Hank Johnson, Georgia Democrat, told Gen. Pace and Mr. Gates yesterday. “I think that’s what the American people want to hear.”

No, Mr. Johnson, the American people don’t want to hear that their soldiers are the cause of the problems.

Now I may not be the head civilian-in-charge or the officer at the pinnacle of his profession, but I can tell you from the junior non-commissioned officer’s perspective that myself and my team were pretty much unanimous that debate was fine, grandstanding protests and votes of no-confidence weren’t.

McCain and Biden arguing over their views?  Fine.  Cindy Sheehan using her dead son as a propaganda piece?  Not fine (and I told my own mother as much).  Bush vs. the Media?  Fine.  Congress losing its backbone when the soldiers need it the most?  Not fine.  Dialogue is good, it keeps the nation honest.  Speaking out of both sides of your mouth isn’t, by definition, honest.

From the LA Times, we learn what the Pentagon and military leaders are doing to make Iraq a success:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates acknowledged Tuesday that Pentagon planners were considering alternative war plans in case the current buildup of forces in Iraq failed to quell ongoing violence in Baghdad, saying the administration strategy “is not the last chance” to salvage the war-torn country.

Although he insisted the administration would give the new offensive the time and funding it needed, Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that if the strategy did not show the hoped-for results, the military would probably shift its efforts to a strategy centered on moving U.S. troops “out of harm’s way.”

“I think that if this operation were not to succeed — and we clearly are hoping it will succeed, planning for it to succeed, allocating the resources for it to succeed — but I would tell you that I think I would be irresponsible if I weren’t thinking about what the alternatives might be if that didn’t happen,” Gates testified.

Irresponsible, indeed.  Speaking of irresponsible, I wonder what was going on across the river?  Ah, the Washington Post has the answer (page A11, by Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane):

Senate leaders squabbled yesterday over how to consider resolutions opposing President Bush’s plan for more troops in Iraq, but the quarrel did not stop lawmakers from launching an informal debate on the chamber floor over the war.

…

Republicans are advocating the Gregg resolution because they know, as do Democrats, that only it could garner 60 votes. Gregg’s proposal would recognize the power of the president to deploy troops as well as the “responsibility” of Congress to fund them.

Democrats regard the measure as a political stunt but are loath to go on the record opposing it, for fear of giving the impression that they would harm troops in the field. They also recognize that a vote in favor of Gregg would amount to a tacit endorsement of Bush’s troop plan.

Irresponsible, indeed.  For the record, the Democrats now refer to passable resolutions as “political stunts” whereas resolutions containing language only the minority can embrace are “worthy of debate.”

The Washington Times reports on recent comments by Defense Secretary-designate Robert M. Gates concerning Osama bin Laden:

The challenge in chasing al Qaeda leaders is “figuring out where they’re going to be, not where they’ve been, and getting the information in a way that is timely enough to act on it,” Mr. Gates said.

So it’s no challenge to figure out where they’ve been or it’s not important to know?  Hopefully, Mr. Gates meant the latter, but I’m hearing the former…

Bulletin from the intelligence world: You need to know history to extract indicators.  You need to extract indicators to discern patterns.  You need to discern patterns to predict actions.  You need to know where they’ve been in order to figure out where they’re going.

Hopefully, this is simply poor public speaking and not insight into a thought process.