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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (283694)	4/11/2004 11:51:57 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Thanks for the reference. amazon.com Terry Jones version may not be as good, but he gives an insight into the region that is way superior to the stuff printed in the newspapers etc.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (283694)	4/11/2004 1:55:22 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

From today's Washington Post..... Series of U.S. Fumbles Blamed for Turmoil in Postwar Iraq washingtonpost.com Clearly, the occupation, reconstruction and rebuilding of an Iraqi governance structure was not something the Bush administration spent much time thinking about, and they did not bring the right skills to the table to figure it out. Given the amount of money spent, the number of US and Iraqi lives lost, and the stakes for America's credibility and Iraq's welfare, the very, very poor US planning effort is astounding (to say nothing of our original objective of getting rid of WMDs). The mistakes made have been fundamental blunders in areas of critical importance... we did not get ourselves into the current situation overnight...it took months of bad planning and bad decisions to get where we are now. Now the question outstanding is whether there is enough good will left for America in Iraq for us to possibly turn the situation around ... we'll see. Among the mis-steps..... ....The Pentagon's insistence that it run the postwar effort also was a miscalculation, U.S. officials and experts said, because it lacked experience, sufficiently detailed plans and experts in nation-building. "The decision to transfer civilian aspects of reconstruction from the State Department to the Pentagon imposed immense costs as Defense had not handled anything like it for at least 50 years, while State had garnered consideredexperience over the previous decade," Dobbins said. ....Then there were ignored lessons from the past decade in the Balkans, Somalia and Haiti indicating that the United States and its allies might need a significantly larger force to stabilize postwar Iraq -- the essential first step on which all subsequent efforts would depend. The earlier formula of success was 20 men per thousand inhabitants. Washington opted for just over six per thousand Iraqis. ....Another early failure was to create an Iraqi Governing Council -- as a partner to the occupying powers -- made up largely of people who had limited following inside Iraq, a senior adviser to the CPA said. There was also no outreach to the Sunni minority, nervous about their future after dominating power since modern Iraq was created about eight decades ago. ..."We spent months and months resisting Sistani, never successfully," said Juan Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan. "It would have been better to cooperate with him, since he was a moderating force and a major source of moral authority. And the things he was asking for were not injurious to the rebuilding of Iraq." ...On security, the coalition opted to disband the Iraqi military abruptly -- before hundreds of ordinary munitions stashes could be found, collected and eliminated. Arsenals of conventional arms are still being uncovered a year later, with no full account of what else is still out there or what has been taken by the dozen militias or even Iraqis trying to protect their families and tribes. Former soldiers were also left with no alternative jobs and, initially, without pensions to which they had contributed, leaving about 400,000 disgruntled men who were armed and trained. "Historically in post-conflict situations, from feudal times to the end of the Ottoman Empire, the people who created the most trouble were demobilized troops. When you don't find them new jobs, they do the only thing they know how to do: fight," Barkey said. The immediate U.S. goals may also have been too ambitious, Lang said. "We went in there thinking we could restructure the Arab world in a Western style. There was a lemminglike drive to prove everyone is the same. That was doomed to failure," he said. "Guess what? They have a culture of their own, and this is not a Kodak moment," Lang said. "It was a mistake of gargantuan proportions." Wow!