Missing from Mr. Bush’s latest speeches, at least so far, is detail about the progress of his previous plan, the “Strategy for Victory” of November, billed as the product of a review and rethinking of what had worked and what had failed.
About which Lieberman wrote:
Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.
How's that working out, Joe?
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A much-anticipated ceremony to transfer operational command from U.S-led forces to
Iraq's new army was postponed on Saturday at the last minute amid confusion, a U.S. military spokesman said, citing poor planning.
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The event had been hailed by the U.S. military as a big step toward Iraq taking responsibility for security, key to any eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces. U.S. commanders, with 140,000 troops on the ground, would still have a big say.
"There was an error in planning between us and the Iraqi defense minister over the ceremony. This all boils down to a bureaucratic thing," said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson. He said the ceremony had been rescheduled for Sunday.
Johnson played down suggestions the glitch reflected logistic and communication problems between the two forces. Iraq's Defense Ministry had no immediate comment.
Reporters who had been invited to attend the ceremony in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone were left sitting in a bus for more than one hour as the U.S. military first informed them that the event had been delayed for later in the day and then postponed until Sunday.