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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (197025)	2/20/2007 12:42:58 AM
From: Elroy	Respond to of 793759

By the standards now being implied, FDR and each of his generals would have been convicted of incompetence, and "no-confidence" motions would have been passed in 1942. The mistakes of WWII were horrendous, and caused unnecessary casualties in the 10's of thousands. People had more mental toughness in those days. They also could conceive of the costs of losing the war. The analogy isn't even close to accurate. The "Iraq war", as far as I'm concerned, is over. We won, Saddam lost. It's the post-war "crowd management" portion of the action that has been going poorly. If the Nazis had been destroyed, the Nuremberg trials held, the German military dismantled, and three years later Germany in 1948 looked like Iraq does today, I imagine Americans might have said "What are we doing here trying to help some Germans defend themselves from other Germans?" No, I don't give the administration a free pass to bungle the post-war activity in Iraq for three years, and then "change course" because, well, the previous course wasn't working. Instead I give them an "A" in the war and a "D" in the post-war rebuilding phase. When you put America on course to undertake the largest international activity since Vietnam, AND you decide the start time (it's not forced upon you), you should be better prepared than these guys were. At least, don't you think they should have put 15,000 US troops through 6-12 months of Arabic language training prior to launching the war? How the hell was the US military supposed to train the new Iraqi military when they can't communicate? Is that retarded, or what? Don't you think it makes more sense to run Iraq like a State of Emergency, massive curfew, virtual prison state immediately following the fall of Saddam rather than allowing free press and the ensuing chaos immediately? Shouldn't they have put US marines manning every road in and out of Iraq from day 1? Muh of this seems obvious to me, and I'm not even a military person. We have people that plan for this type of thing as their career, for decades, and my grade for their performance is "D". "Mistake happen in wars" doesn't cut it. They're doing a poor job.