I have been reading a lot about the movie No End In Sight
It bills itself as a "jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003) as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts".
It claims to "examine the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy – the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military – largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. How did a group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world or personal experience in Iraq come to make such flagrantly debilitating decisions? NO END IN SIGHT dissects the people, issues and facts behind the Bush Administration’s decisions and their consequences on the ground to provide a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war".
I support the US Army (the best Army in the world, by the way) 100%. I am pleased, encouraged and gratified that the surge appears to be working in some quarters. That said I am becoming fairly disgusted with the current administration and their complete inability to prosecute this conflict successfully, specifically their putting our troops un-necessarily in harm's way.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Cheney lists several compelling reasons for not invading Iraq.
Well I am sure most people following events as they unfold in Iraq will have seen or heard of the 1994 video of Dick Cheney spelling out why invading Iraq would be a bad idea. He makes a very good case! The deperessing thing about it is that everything he prerdicts in the video came to pass, pretty much.
Dick Cheney points out:
- Invading would mean a US occupation of Iraq "on its own" without the support of neighboring Arab States
- Toppling Saddam would cause Iraq to fragment in to sectarian violence. (A "quagmire" he calls it).
- It would cause many casualties, more than getting rid of Saddam "would be worth".
Someone has made a video which compares his warning to what has transpired.
It makes it even harder to support the administration when faced with documentary evidence like this.
Dick Cheney points out:
- Invading would mean a US occupation of Iraq "on its own" without the support of neighboring Arab States
- Toppling Saddam would cause Iraq to fragment in to sectarian violence. (A "quagmire" he calls it).
- It would cause many casualties, more than getting rid of Saddam "would be worth".
Someone has made a video which compares his warning to what has transpired.
It makes it even harder to support the administration when faced with documentary evidence like this.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
British "Defeated" in the South?
"The British have basically been defeated in the south," a senior U.S. intelligence official said recently in Baghdad.
There doesn't seem to have been much good news from Basra, but this is a particularly negative spin.
The British, who announced their withdrawal from Iraq in February, are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as "surrounded like cowboys and Indians" by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.
Britain sent about 40,000 troops to Iraq -- the second-largest contingent, after that of the United States, at the time of the March 2003 invasion -- and focused its efforts on the south. With few problems from outside terrorists or sectarian violence, the British began withdrawing, and by early 2005 only 9,000 troops remained. British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced further drawdowns early this year before leaving office.
The administration has been reluctant to publicly criticize the British withdrawal. But a British defense expert serving as a consultant in Baghdad acknowledged in an e-mail that the United States "has been very concerned for some time now about a) the lawless situation in Basra and b) the political and military impact of the British pullback." The expert added that this "has been expressed at the highest levels" by the U.S. government to British authorities.
One of the major problems with this conflict has been a lack of clarity about what constitutes "success". Deposing Saddam ... military victory ... a free and democratic Iraq ...? Without clearly defined success (or victory) criteria there can be no "victory", and difficult to quantify "defeat".
We might feel good about a good bit of Brit-bashing occasionally, but I have to say I am fairly disappointed that the administration is allowing this scapegoating. The USA has become careless of its allies (what few remain) and vilifying the efforts of the British will do litte except encourage our enemies.
There doesn't seem to have been much good news from Basra, but this is a particularly negative spin.
The British, who announced their withdrawal from Iraq in February, are abandoning their former headquarters at Basra Palace, where a recent official visitor from London described them as "surrounded like cowboys and Indians" by militia fighters. An airport base outside the city, where a regional U.S. Embassy office and Britain's remaining 5,500 troops are barricaded behind building-high sandbags, has been attacked with mortars or rockets nearly 600 times over the past four months.
Britain sent about 40,000 troops to Iraq -- the second-largest contingent, after that of the United States, at the time of the March 2003 invasion -- and focused its efforts on the south. With few problems from outside terrorists or sectarian violence, the British began withdrawing, and by early 2005 only 9,000 troops remained. British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced further drawdowns early this year before leaving office.
The administration has been reluctant to publicly criticize the British withdrawal. But a British defense expert serving as a consultant in Baghdad acknowledged in an e-mail that the United States "has been very concerned for some time now about a) the lawless situation in Basra and b) the political and military impact of the British pullback." The expert added that this "has been expressed at the highest levels" by the U.S. government to British authorities.
One of the major problems with this conflict has been a lack of clarity about what constitutes "success". Deposing Saddam ... military victory ... a free and democratic Iraq ...? Without clearly defined success (or victory) criteria there can be no "victory", and difficult to quantify "defeat".
We might feel good about a good bit of Brit-bashing occasionally, but I have to say I am fairly disappointed that the administration is allowing this scapegoating. The USA has become careless of its allies (what few remain) and vilifying the efforts of the British will do litte except encourage our enemies.
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