Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace--A yardstick dipstick

General Peter Pace, outgoing(thank God) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a total dipstick about the Iraqi "success" yardstick. Excerpted here is an article from Think Progress.


Pace: Success In Iraq Based On Whether Iraqis ‘Feel Better Today Than They Did Yesterday’

During a press conference last week, outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace said that “the recent rise in U.S. troop deaths in Iraq is the ‘wrong metric‘ to use in assessing the effectiveness” of the U.S. military in Iraq. “So it’s not about levels of violence,” he explained. “It’s about progress … in the minds of the Iraqi people.”
Today, Pace made similar remarks. He called the measuring the level of violence in Iraq a “self-defeating approach to tracking results” and added, “What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?” When asked if he actually knew how the Iraqi people currently feel about the U.S. occupation of Iraq he conceded, “I do not have that in my head.”

If Pace did consult the Iraqis about whether they “feel better about today than they did about yesterday,” the answer would be a resounding “no.” As a recent ABC News/BBC News poll found, “The optimism that helped sustain Iraqis during the first few years of the war has dissolved into widespread fear, anger and distress amid unrelenting violence“:

- 39 percent of Iraqis said they feel their lives are “going well,” compared to 71 percent in November 2005.”
- 40 percent of Iraqis said the situation in Iraq will be “somewhat or much better” a year from now, compared to 69 percent in November 2005.
- 26 percent of Iraqis said they feel “very safe” in their neighborhoods, compared to 63 percent in November 2005.
- 82 percent of Iraqis said they “lack confidence” in coalition forces.
- 69 percent of Iraqis said coalition forces make “the security situation worse.”
Whether one measures results in Iraq based on “how the Iraqi people believe they are today,” or on the increasing levels of violence, it is clear the United States is not succeeding in the war.
– Ryan Powers


So Pace is now saying success should not be measured by the amount of death and violence in Iraq, nor by the amount of money squandered, nor by the failure of the Iraqi forces to "stand up", nor by destruction of anything resembling a normal life for the Iraqi citizens, nor by the dramatically lowered life expectancies of the Iraqi's, nor by the elimination of AlQaeda in Iraq, but should be measured by how much the Iraqi's LIKE what's happening to them!!!!

What idiocy! Pace is spouting this garbage at a time (and I'm not kidding) when Iraqi's are reduced to celebrating whenever a family member is fortunate enough to die a natural death. They won't even eat fish from the Tigris river any longer because so many of their murdered fellows are dumped into it every night.

By Pace's insane logic, all we have to do to "succeed" is convince those poor bastards that what has and is happening to them is for their own good. Can you hear it?--"You should rejoice! This is exactly what American democracy is becoming!".. "Don't Stop-Thinkin' About Tomorrow".."Don't Worry-Be Happy".."Success is Just a Smile Away".."Way to go,kid-now you're the head of the family!".."It's always darkest before the dawn"

And of course, the surest way to get the "happiness" quotient into positive numbers is simply to kill all the pessimists. At least, I'll bet that's what Pace is advocating, brilliant strategist that he is. Shouldn't take more than fifty years or so.