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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (239137)	8/8/2007 10:10:30 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Hey General Petraeus, Wake Me When September Ends By Larry C Johnson Wait until September has been the watchword. As Green Day has sung, Wake Me Up When September Ends. Someone also should smack General David Petraeus upside the head and wake his ass. youtube.com It is truly astonishing that Petraeus is being given the hero treatment when his record is neither distinguished nor honorable. I was reminded of this last week during a conversation with an active duty Army officer who was at Fort Leavenworth Kansas last year when Petraeus was supposedly thinking great thoughts about counterinsurgency ops. According to this officer, Petraeus declined to dig into the details of the manual he supposedly authored. Truth is he ignored the substance and scholarship that went into drafting the counterinsurgency manual for the Army. Pat Lang, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who taught at West Point in the seventies, said Petraeus as a student was considered the kind of sycophant who would marry the Superintendent’s daughter just to get a leg up. Guess who Petraeus married? That’s right, the Superintendent’s daughter. So how did Dave do during his second tour in Iraq (June 2004 - September 2005). Have you seen Frontline’s program, The Gangs of Iraq? Check it out. It seems that it was under the watchful eye of General Petraeus that the Iraqi Interior Ministry started its campaign of death squads, torture, and murder. Martin Smith’s interview of Petraeus is especially telling: Let me jump ahead. Just after you leave, we have the bunker incident. We find the structure has been infiltrated, or has devolved into militia groups; that the police within them have formed militias. Now clearly, you must have seen this coming. Editor’s Note: Two months after Petraeus rotated out of Iraq, a U.S. general found a ministry building, called the Jadiriyah bunker, containing 169 prisoners and evidence of torture; almost all of the detainees were Sunnis. I did not. I did not see militia groups in the special police during the time that I was there. Now, first of all, we brought in militia members as a matter of Iraqi policy. … It was actual [policy] to, in fact, recruit and bring into the army and the police militia members who met the qualification for those respective services, so there’s no question but that there were militia members in these organizations. The objective was to spread them out, not to have, for example, an entire battalion or company to be from one militia. Our belief was, at that time, that that had not taken place. Certainly Gen. Adnan Thabit and Minister Naqib, during their watch, felt that that was not the case. There was a shift, of course, in the ministry in the late spring of 2004 from a Sunni Arab to a Shi’a Arab minister. [When] Minister [Bayan] Jabr took over, there were concerns raised. … We addressed this with the new minister right away, in fact, because Minister Naqib and others said: “Hey, watch out. This is happening; that could happen.” Petraeus did not authorize or approve the actions of the death squads. But the key point is that he failed to put in place a system to ensure that there would not be those kinds of abuses. That lack of attention to detail was not, in my opinion, an aberration. Besides whacking folks the Iraqi security forces also had trouble hanging on to their weapons. Back in October 2006 there was this account: MORE noquarterusa.net

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (239137)	8/8/2007 10:25:33 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Tony Cordesman went on the same trip that Pollack and O'Hanlon went on. He issued a far more detailed and nuanced report than their "Hey we might win this thing yet" op-edit that has received so much publicity. Of course, the fact that it is 25 pages is probably the reason it hasn't received the same publicity. But for those who are interested, here is a link to the full report: Here is a link to Cordesman's article: csis.org There is something for everyone in this report, even for those who counsel "strategic patience." Here is Cordesman's brief synopsis of the report, though the 25 page version is worth reading if you have the time: Synopsis: Everyone sees Iraq differently. As one leading US official in Iraq put it, “the current situation is like playing three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you.” It is scarcely surprising that my perceptions of a recent trip to Iraq are different from that of two of my traveling companions and those of several other recent think tank travelers to the country. From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq's ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq's politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning. The attached trip report does, however, show there is still a tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq, and for timing reductions in US forces and aid to Iraqi progress rather than arbitrary dates and uncertain benchmarks. It recognizes that strategic patience is a high risk strategy, but it also describes positive trends in the fighting, and hints of future political progress. These trends are uncertain, and must be considered in the context of a long list of serious political, military, and economic risks that are described in detail. The report also discusses major delays and problems in the original surge strategy. The new US approach to counterinsurgency warfare is making a difference, but it still seems likely from a visit to the scene that the original strategy President Bush announced in January would have failed if it had not been for the Sunni tribal awakening. Luck, however, is not something that can be ignored, and there is a window of opportunity that could significantly improve the chances of US success in Iraq if the Iraqi government acts upon it. The US also now has a country team in Iraq that is far more capable than in the past, and which may be able to develop and implement the kind of cohesive plans for US action in Iraq that have been weak or lacking to date. If that team can come forward with solid plans for an integrated approach to a sustained US effort to deal with Iraq’s plans and risks, there would be a far stronger and more bipartisan case for strategic patience.