Tim / thread: please take a minute and read tekboy's recent comments on Iraq...
[he worked in the last Administration, understands foreign policy, and is well connected....One of his friends (Ken Pollack) wrote a book on the Iraqi problem and how it needed to be addressed...Here tekboy comments on what the overly optimistic Hawkmoon has posted]
Message 19248158
<<...I'd be reasonably optimistic if I thought the B. admin was going to be as flexible, pragmatic, and dedicated as you imply. unfortunately, I'm increasingly uncertain that they will indeed be all those things, so I'm starting to get a bit worried. (heads should be rolling, or at the least the bodies attached to those heads should be reassigned to other tasks. but only the hapless Gen. Garner has gotten the boot, while those higher up seem unscathed, and there's little evidence that the president himself or any of his inner circle realize the extent of the problems.)...>>
Bilow / Carl critiques things...
Message 19248282
<<...Re: "Security: Deploy sufficient forces to subdue Iraqi resistance ..."
Problem is that would require a tripling of soldiers there (per the figures for Britain in Northern Ireland etc.) and no soldiers even approaching these numbers are available to go, not from the US or anywhere else.
Re: "... and continue the hunt for former leaders of the regime, especially Saddam Hussein."
A sign that the writers are still deluded into believing that Saddam's life matters in terms of the guerilla war. We've been capturing one card after another, but the guerilla war not only continues, it grows. This proves that capturing all of them ain't gonna stop the war.
Re: "Law and Order: Must be established in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. The U.S. should intensify its efforts to recruit and retrain Iraqi police officers, and immediately seek international assistance for this process."
Again, we need about 500,000 troops in Iraq and huge numbers of police as well. They can't come from the US because we can't speak Arabic and consequently don't have the slightest idea whose ox was gored. They won't come from the Arab world unless we let them run the place which would imply an admission on Bush's part that the war was a disaster. They can't come from Iraq because it will take many months to even hire ones (that have been security checked), and then train them, etc., and then we'd have the same problem every similar situation has generated in the past, the guerillas would infect the Iraqi police force.
Re: "Re-establish Services: In Baghdad and throughout Iraq as soon as possible. Especially electricity and telecommunications."
These are all great ideas, but there is no way that we can do any of this in the face of a guerilla war. Pipelines and electric lines are linear things that stretch for hundreds of miles. They cannot possibly be defended in guerilla war and never have been, ever. In Vietnam, even with 500,000 troops we were unable to even defend the major highways. In Iraq, our troops again cannot defend even the major highways but instead are ambushed anywhere they go. Under these circumstances, to talk about restoring power is ridiculous.
Militarily, they should be talking about supplying generators for small neighborhoods that do not require power lines, and moving oil around in convoys of (easily ambushed but less easily sabotaged) oil tanker trucks. Ah, but such would require an admission that the Bush administration cannot keep the lights on, and in addition it would be massively expensive.
Note that since the report was written, the Iraqi water supply has been sabotaged.
Re: "Get the Message Out: Through the establishment of world class radio and TV broadcasting ..."
This is true, but not solvable. The problem is that human nature being what it is, the American government can't even convince its own population that smoking is a bad idea. How the hell is it going to convince the Iraqi population not to hate us? While our soldiers run around shooting civilians daily? It won't work any better than the Soviet attempt to convince their citizens to love their state.
Re: "... support for independent media ..."
The problem is that truly independent media in Iraq is complaining constantly about the Americans. This is not a solvable problem.
Re: "... and possibly the opening of local public information centers where Iraqis can more readily access CPA officials."
This is a joke. We should instead be giving power over to whatever Iraqi groups are willing to take it, and let them deal with the minor problems of their citizens.
As it is, we have a situation where a country is 65% unemployed, angry, and is accustomed to everyone owning a machine gun or even grenades, in their home. We cannot possibly control the place, Saddam Hussein, in all his viciousness, was barely able to keep the civilians in check....>>
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tekboy's final response...
siliconinvestor.com
<<...I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are. the reason I'm starting to get worried is not because I think the problems are unsolvable, but rather because I think the Bush administration is so mule-headed that it is not going to do what would be necessary to begin solving them. I had thought the crazies would be edged to the side when the situation became serious, but that hasn't happened yet, and might never happen (or happen too late for it to do any good)...>>
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THE BOTTOM LINE IS BUSH HAS NOT MANAGED THE IRAQI ADVENTURE WELL...We should not have rushed in when we did (we now know there wasn't an 'imminent threat') -- we needed much broader support from the allies. We should have done MUCH MORE post war planning but we didn't. Bush should fire some of the stubborn folks who've made critical mistakes (like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) and humbly go to the U.N. and give up some control in Iraq in exchange for some additional support...WE ARE IN A QUAGMIRE RIGHT NOW IN IRAQ AND IT'S NOT FUNNY -- SOLDIERS ARE GETTING KILLED EVERY WEEK...I'm not impressed with Bush's leadership...One of my best friends is a Ranger still over in Iraq and he lost one of his best friends from Westpoint in the last week over there. His return date (to come back to the states and see his wife and child) has been pushed back 3 different times by our Defense Department...He's commanding over 150 of our troops near Baghdad in 130 degree weather and its rough over there. I support our troops 100% BUT I sure don't support the leadership they are getting right now...I don't think our country is any safer after going into Iraq and spending tens of billions of our tax dollars...We've actually created a breeding ground for terrorism...Many of us around the country are hungry for new leadership...Keep an open mind. It may be time to draft a General...;-)
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