Node Of Evil - Fair And Balanced Reporting

Monday, March 31, 2003

 
Update Number Two: Here's an excerpt from the end of Hersh's article (solid, once again, from beginning to end). This bit takes us into some interesting territory:


'There is also evidence that Turkey has been playing both sides. Turkey and Syria, who traditionally have not had close relations, recently agreed to strengthen their ties, the businessman told me, and early this year Syria sent Major General Ghazi Kanaan, its longtime strongman and power broker in Lebanon, to Turkey. The two nations have begun to share intelligence and to meet, along with Iranian officials, to discuss border issues, in case an independent Kurdistan emerges from the Iraq war. A former U.S. intelligence officer put it this way: “The Syrians are coördinating with the Turks to screw us in the north—to cause us problems.” He added, “Syria and the Iranians agreed that they could not let an American occupation of Iraq stand.”'


Update: Seymour Hersh outlines Rumsfeld's role in the military planning in this week's New Yorker.


The Guardian has an update on a story we've been following here at the node about General Eric Shinseki's estimates of the number of troops that'd be required to administer a post-war Iraq. If you scroll down you'll see that Paul Wolfowitz challenged Shineski's estimates while the Pentagon gave its own -- 100,000 troops and an indeterminate timetable. To quote from the previous NYT article:


'Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops.'


The U.S. started the war with 175,000 troops (I believe that's a composite number of U.S. and British forces) and is planning on sending another 120,000.

Andrew 9:34 AM : |

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