LAST FEBRUARY, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner was trying to put together a team of experts to rebuild Iraq after the war was over, and his list included 20 State Department officials. The day before he was supposed to leave for the region, Garner got a call from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered him to cut 16 of the 20 State officials from his roster. It seems that the State Department people were deemed to be Arabist apologists, or squishy about the United Nations, or in some way politically incorrect to the right-wing ideologues at the White House or the neocons in the office of the Secretary of Defense. The vetting process ?got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion", recalled one of Garner's team.
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How did we get in this mess? NEWSWEEK interviews with top government officials involved in the planning and execution of the reconstruction of Iraq point to a 'perfect storm' of mistakes and bad luck: wrongheaded assumptions, ideological blinders, weak intelligence and poor coordination by White House national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Much of the damage was done at the outset?in the first days after the war, when political infighting and wishful thinking prevented the United States from taking control of a bad situation that was turning worse.
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In hindsight, General Franks should have immediately declared martial law. But after combat, his men were loath to open fire on civilians running down the street carrying TV sets. And reinforcements of infantry should have been flown in fast. As Franks had foreseen, his troops were largely the wrong kind for occupation duty: armored battalions driving tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, not light infantry patrolling on foot. But only six companies of military police (less than 2,000 GIs) were provided, and they were slow in arriving. Iraqis were indignant that the Americans could not control what one senior defense official described as 'industrial-strength looting.'
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On May 16, five days after he arrived in Baghdad, Bremer assembled the top American officials in Baghdad and announced that all ministries would be 'de-Baath-ized' by removing roughly the top six layers of bureaucracy. The CIA's Baghdad station chief demurred. "Well, that's 30,000 to 50,000 pissed-off Baathists you're driving underground," said the senior spook. Bremer went on: the Army would be formally disbanded and not paid. "That's another 350,000 Iraqis you're pissing off, and they've got guns," said the CIA man. Said Bremer: "Those are my instructions."
More proof that this American administration has behaved in a totally incompetent manner in Iraq.
Via money Europe could become political in five years" "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal"
AniThyng wrote:in the face of this kind of nonsense, how exactly are muslim moderates in my country and other islamic nations supposed to support america in iraq...?
[this is a serious question]
Fuck if I know. By this point if the Democrats run a ticket with a guy who's not a total idiot and has a clear stance on the issue other than "Bush is wrong", I think I may have to consider their offer.
Ryoga wrote:Fuck if I know. By this point if the Democrats run a ticket with a guy who's not a total idiot and has a clear stance on the issue other than "Bush is wrong", I think I may have to consider their offer.
You and me both. The only problem is all the leading Democrats (save Clark who hasn't said anything) are against the $87 billion for paying for continuing operations and rebuilding in Iraq. No matter how incompetently Bush handled things at least that policy is better than cross your fingers and forget about the problem.
Ryoga wrote:Fuck if I know. By this point if the Democrats run a ticket with a guy who's not a total idiot and has a clear stance on the issue other than "Bush is wrong", I think I may have to consider their offer.
You and me both. The only problem is all the leading Democrats (save Clark who hasn't said anything) are against the $87 billion for paying for continuing operations and rebuilding in Iraq. No matter how incompetently Bush handled things at least that policy is better than cross your fingers and forget about the problem.
Agreed. I may be a liberal but it doesn't take a genius to see that the Democrats don't have a clue what to do in Iraq any more than Bush does. Yes, he was wrong to invade in the first place. But that is the past. Now, we have already made our bed and we have to lie in it.
Stormbringer wrote:
You and me both. The only problem is all the leading Democrats (save Clark who hasn't said anything) are against the $87 billion for paying for continuing operations and rebuilding in Iraq. No matter how incompetently Bush handled things at least that policy is better than cross your fingers and forget about the problem.
As I recall, Dean said that they had to stay- or was there a flippity flop?
Stormbringer wrote:
You and me both. The only problem is all the leading Democrats (save Clark who hasn't said anything) are against the $87 billion for paying for continuing operations and rebuilding in Iraq. No matter how incompetently Bush handled things at least that policy is better than cross your fingers and forget about the problem.
As I recall, Dean said that they had to stay- or was there a flippity flop?
He's said they should stay but he's firmly opposed to spending the money necessary to sustain operations there and in Afgahnistan and to rebuild either country. At the very least he's willing to keep them there but not willing to support them.
AniThyng wrote:in the face of this kind of nonsense, how exactly are muslim moderates in my country and other islamic nations supposed to support america in iraq...?
[this is a serious question]
Moderate Moslems aren't doing much to stop terrorism in the first place, so who gives a damn how they feel about Iraq. By the way, the U.S. is not going a good job in Iraq because we are forcing the military to act like cops rather than soldiers.
Ronaldo wrote:By the way, the U.S. is not going a good job in Iraq because we are forcing the military to act like cops rather than soldiers.
Until we actually get enough Iraqi cops trained so that they can police their own country our soldiers are all we have. We sent them to be peacekeepers and it's not an excuse when that's exactly they have to do under the mission plan.
