John P. Briggs, M.D., and JP Briggs II Ph.D.: Why Bush's Inner "Reality" Has Poisoned His Troop Plan

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From Truthout:


Why Bush's Inner "Reality" Has Poisoned His Own Troop Plan
By John P. Briggs, M.D., and JP Briggs II, Ph.D.
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributors

Wednesday 07 February 2007

The president has included an extraordinary fatal flaw in his plan for additional US troops in Iraq, a fact that may not make much sense to his advisers and allies, but is psychologically understandable in terms of a mechanism that governs his inner reality.

The escalation plan's strongest proponents warn that his requirement dictating two separate and independent command structures for Iraqi and American forces portends disaster, according to Mark Benjamin of Salon.

Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the US forces commander in Iraq, has agreed with Senator John McCain that "I know of no successful military operation where you have dual command." American Enterprise Institute's Frederick Kagan, the neoconservative architect of the "surge plan" itself, says this provision means "the plan is going to fail."

Lt. Gen. William Odom sees Bush repeatedly making mistakes like this that are "so painfully clear that sometimes I think I might be crazy."

Pundits may rationalize that the self-defeating element of the surge derives from political expediency to get the Iraqi prime minister on board, but that's hardly a sufficient explanation. .....(more)

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020707R.shtml