You voted for and support an administration which sent bombers to kill innocent civilians in a country which was doing yours no harm.
hi ican you still going at it on that iraq business?
its over you lost remember?
From 60 Minutes:
CBS) In February, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a surprising admission.
He told The Washington Post that he doesn't know whether he would have recommended the invasion of Iraq if he had been told at the time that there were no stockpiles of banned weapons.
Powell said that when he made the case for war before the United Nations one year ago, he used evidence that reflected the best judgments of the intelligence agencies.
...
'They Are All So Wrong'
By MARK HELPRIN
September 9, 2005; Page A16 Wall Street Journal
September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore -- purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds, whose presentation, unclean in every respect, is honored nonetheless by the controlling rump of Democrats -- and to Bushmen like "Kip" Hawley of Homeland Security, father of the proposal to allow carry-on ice-picks, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to five-inches long.
* * *
For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.
The underlying corollary to this reflex of appeasement is the notion that our military options are constrained financially, as if we are not a nation of stupendous wealth and it has not been the American tradition since the Civil War to spend, in support of war, with the intensity of war itself. In 1945, we devoted 38.5% of GNP to defense, the equivalent of $4.76 trillion now. The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of that and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000. A false sense of constraint has arisen in every quarter of society. It is the ethos of the administration, the press, the civilian side of the Pentagon, and many of the prominent uniformed military brought to high rank in recent years.
They are all so wrong. In violating established tradition and throwing aside advantage and elemental common sense, they waste American lives. And for what? What moral construction would allow anyone to spend more than 2,000 dead and tens of thousands of wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan -- so far -- while insisting without major exception that cutting costs is a virtue? When is holding back from one's troops at war the reinforcements, armor and basic equipment they need a virtue rather than a sin?
Is it not the duty of the secretary of defense, his chiefs, and the wide array of generals to press energetically -- even to the point of resignation -- for whatever is necessary (not the minimum, but a safe surplus) to support the armies in the field? If they do not, who will? Had the president gone to Congress on September 12 and asked for almost anything, he would have been granted it. But he never did. This was a fundamental strategic error. If you must go to war, do not do so hesitantly, with half a heart. And in answer to the rationale that the casualties of this war are relatively light, one does not decently measure casualties against those of previous wars, but in terms of whether they can be avoided.
Apart from the paucity of armored vehicles, body armor, and other staples of battle, the chief problem of prosecuting the Iraq war has been the size and scale of the force. Despite inaccurate claims of unprecedented speed in the advance to Baghdad, the three weeks of halting action it took to get there, with lines of supply that are to this day poorly protected, were both spur and instruction for the insurgency. In what is only apparently a paradox, the military objective should have been less the conquest of territory and echelons than of morale, and, to accomplish this, territory and echelons would have to have been subdued with the blinding speed, shock and awe of the Six-Day and Gulf wars. The instant the Arab world realized that the promised shock and awe had not materialized, the insurgency was born.
We then nurtured it by deploying a fraction of the ratio (10:1) long experience indicates is necessary for suppression; by dismissing the enemy as mere "thugs," when, although they are thugs and worse, they have the thousand-year motivation of their civilization defending its heartland from Persians, Mongols, Shiites, and now Christians; and by gratuitously elevating our aims from the purely defensive to the transcendental, while steadily diluting the little power we have in the hope of forcing the entire Arab and Muslim worlds to a new politics. From a country where they have been held down in their beleaguered enclaves for two-and-a-half years, how are 140,000 soldiers to transform the highly aggressive and deeply rooted political cultures of 1.2 billion people?
* * *
Ceaselessly, we court strategic error. At the end of the Cold War, assuming that history had concluded, we discarded too much military power. This continues through the present, rationalized by reference to transformation. But it is yet further error to believe that military-technical evolution can make up for the kind of deficiencies and poor strategic judgments from which no machine can save an army. Continual and remarkable innovation is both indispensable and expensive, but President Clinton required budgetary choice between innovation and everything else, and his successor has yet to disagree. The root of the error that offers transformation as a substitute for so much that is crucial is the conviction that having both would exceed reasonable military expenditures and somehow break the common weal.
Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy -- now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking -- to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.
The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies' delight.
When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.
The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America's borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.
Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation's presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.
Mr. Helprin, a Journal contributing editor, is Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute and Distinguished Visiting Fellow of Hillsdale College. He is the author, most recently, of "Freddy and Fredericka" (Penguin, 2005).
RESOLUTION URGING CESSATION OF COMBAT OPERATIONS
IN IRAQ AND THE RETURN OF U.S. TROOPS
WHEREAS, The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 was passed by the U.S. Congress on October 11, 2002, and that Public Law 107-243 cited Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction as a primary reason for the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq; and
WHEREAS, On January 12, 2005, President Bush officially declared an end to the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and
WHEREAS, The United States initiated combat operations in Iraq on March 19, 2003; and
WHEREAS, Hundreds of thousands of members of the United States Armed Forces have served with honor and distinction in Iraq; and
WHEREAS, More than 1,700 members of the United States Armed Forces have been killed and more than 12,000 members of the Armed Forces have been wounded in substantially accomplishing the stated purpose of the United States of giving the people of Iraq a reasonable opportunity to decide their own future; and
WHEREAS, The United States military occupation of Iraq has placed significant strains on the capacity of the United States Armed Forces, both active duty and reserve and the National Guard.
WHEREAS, The armed forces of Iraq number more than 76,000 troops as of June 8, 2005, and are growing in number and capability daily; and
WHEREAS, The forces of the Iraqi Interior Ministry number more than 92,000 personnel as of June 8, 2005, and are growing in number and capability daily; and
WHEREAS, More than $200 billion has been appropriated by Congress to fund military operations and reconstruction in Iraq, and Chicago residents' share now exceeds $2.1 billion; and
WHEREAS, The funds spent by Chicago taxpayers on the war and occupation in Iraq could have provided Head Start for one year for 238,056 children; or medical insurance for one year for 1,076,242 children; or 31,147 public school teachers
for one year; or 16,183 additional housing units, according to the National Priorities Project; and
WHEREAS, The war and continued occupation have resulted in the devastation of Iraq's physical and social infrastructure and led to widespread and continuous resistance to U.S. occupation that threatens the lives of Iraqi civilians and the men and women who compose the ranks of U.S. and other occupying forces; and
WHEREAS, The presence of United States forces in Iraq and the alleged torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other facilities have inflamed anti-American passions in the Muslim world and increased the terrorist threat to United States citizens, both at home and abroad; and
WHEREAS, Polls show that less than half of the American people support the war; and
WHEREAS, Illinois Congresspersons Rush, Lipinski, Emanuel, Davis, Schakowsky, Jackson, Gutierrez, and Costello joined more than 100 other Congresspersons in voting for a House resolution on an Iraq exit strategy; and
WHEREAS, On January 2003, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution 47-1 opposing the war in Iraq prior to its commencing in March 2003; now, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED, That the City Council of the City of Chicago, on behalf of the citizens of Chicago, urges the United States government to immediately commence an orderly and rapid withdrawal of United States military personnel from Iraq; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the City Council of Chicago, recognizing that the stability of Iraq is crucial to the security of the citizens of Chicago and to all Americans, urges the United States government to provide the people of Iraq with all necessary non-military material aid as shall be necessary for the security of Iraq's citizens and for the rebuilding of Iraq; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the financial resources used to prosecute the war be redirected to address the urgent needs of America's great urban centers and the most vulnerable portions of our population, including health, education, and homeland security; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution shall be sent to George W. Bush, President of the United States, and the members of the Illinois Congressional delegation.
A booklet by the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), believed to be linked to the recent London bombings, declares the U.S., Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam and lists eight reasons for global jihad. These include the restoration of Islamic sovereignty to all lands where Muslims were once ascendant, including Spain, "Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Sicily, Ethiopia, Russian Turkistan and Chinese Turkistan. . . Even parts of France reaching 90 kilometers outside Paris."
Phase 7, "final victory." All the world's inhabitants will be forced to either convert to Islam, or submit (as second class citizens) to
Islamic rule. This will be completed by 2025 or thereabouts.
Nothing really new in all this. Al Qaeda has been talking openly about this (the global Islamic state) for years. These Islamic terrorists are true believers. God is on their side, and they believe all obstacles will be swept aside by the power of the Lord.
Tim Wilcox, International Investigators, Inc.
www.internationalinvestigators.com [/b]
What has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn?
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 19 September 2005
One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.
The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.
"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.
"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."
The carefully planned theft has so weakened the army that it cannot hold Baghdad against insurgent attack without American military support, Iraqi officials say, making it difficult for the US to withdraw its 135,000- strong army from Iraq, as Washington says it wishes to do.
Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters. The manufacturers said they should have been scrapped after 25 years of service. Armoured cars purchased by Iraq turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour. A shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns, at a cost of $3,500 (£1,900) each, consisted in reality of Egyptian copies worth only $200 a gun. Other armoured cars leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned. A deal was struck to buy 7.62mm machine-gun bullets for 16 cents each, although they should have cost between 4 and 6 cents.
Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped. In Baghdad they often ride in civilian pick-up trucks vulnerable to gunfire, rocket- propelled grenades or roadside bombs. For months even men defusing bombs had no protection against blast because they worked without bullet-proof vests. These were often promised but never turned up.
The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.
Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry.
Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and "rogue elements" within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.
Given that building up an Iraqi army to replace American and British troops is a priority for Washington and London, the failure to notice that so much money was being siphoned off at the very least argues a high degree of negligence on the part of US officials and officers in Baghdad.
The report of the Board of Supreme Audit on the defence ministry contracts was presented to the office of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, in May. But the extent of the losses has become apparent only gradually. The sum missing was first reported as $300m and then $500m, but in fact it is at least twice as large. "If you compare the amount that was allegedly stolen of about $1bn compared with the budget of the ministry of defence, it is nearly 100 per cent of the ministry's [procurement] budget that has gone Awol," said Mr Allawi.
The money missing from all ministries under the interim Iraqi government appointed by the US in June 2004 may turn out to be close to $2bn. Of a military procurement budget of $1.3bn, some $200m may have been spent on usable equipment, though this is a charitable view, say officials. As a result the Iraqi army has had to rely on cast-offs from the US military, and even these have been slow in coming.
Mr Allawi says a further $500m to $600m has allegedly disappeared from the electricity, transport, interior and other ministries. This helps to explain why the supply of electricity in Baghdad has been so poor since the fall of Saddam Hussein 29 months ago despite claims by the US and subsequent Iraqi governments that they are doing everything to improve power generation.
The sum missing over an eight-month period in 2004 and 2005 is the equivalent of the $1.8bn that Saddam allegedly received in kick- backs under the UN's oil-for-food programme between 1997 and 2003. The UN was pilloried for not stopping this corruption. The US military is likely to be criticised over the latest scandal because it was far better placed than the UN to monitor corruption.
The fraud took place between 28 June 2004 and 28 February this year under the government of Iyad Allawi, who was interim prime minister. His ministers were appointed by the US envoy Robert Blackwell and his UN counterpart, Lakhdar Brahimi.
Among those whom the US promoted was a man who was previously a small businessman in London before the war, called Hazem Shaalan, who became Defence Minister.
Mr Shalaan says that Paul Bremer, then US viceroy in Iraq, signed off the appointment of Ziyad Cattan as the defence ministry's procurement chief. Mr Cattan, of joint Polish-Iraqi nationality, spent 27 years in Europe, returning to Iraq two days before the war in 2003. He was hired by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and became a district councillor before moving to the defence ministry.
For eight months the ministry spent money without restraint. Contracts worth more than $5m should have been reviewed by a cabinet committee, but Mr Shalaan asked for and received from the cabinet an exemption for the defence ministry. Missions abroad to acquire arms were generally led by Mr Cattan. Contracts for large sums were short scribbles on a single piece of paper. Auditors have had difficulty working out with whom Iraq has a contract in Pakistan.
Authorities in Baghdad have issued an arrest warrant for Mr Cattan. Neither he nor Mr Shalaan, both believed to be in Jordan, could be reached for further comment. Mr Bremer says he has never heard of Mr Cattan.
revel said
"Maybe right after the elections there was a little window of hope "
agree but we didnt work hard enough to keep it open. But more importantly imo, we did not work hard enough immediately after the fall of Baghdad to demonstrate that we really did want a free democratic and prosperous Iraq. There was a chance to defeat the insurgency by stopping it ever getting going. And that meant working hard and honestly for the benefit of the Iraqi people. With hindsight I get the impression that was never part of the plan.
...
Ican keeps saying that we got to keep trying because failing is unthinkable. (words to that effect) How long do we have to keep trying to win in Iraq? Until everyone in Iraq that is not an insurgent is dead?
...
> Four Years On:
> Who is Winning the War, and How Can Anyone Tell?
> 'By George Friedman
>
> Four years have passed since al Qaeda attacked the United States. It is
> difficult to remember a war of which the status has been more difficult to
> assess. Indeed, there are reasonable people who argue that the conflict
> between the United States and al Qaeda is not a war at all, and that thinking
> of it in those terms obscures reality. Other reasonable people argue that it
> is only in thinking in terms of war that the conflict makes sense -- and
> these people then divide into groups: those who believe the United States is
> winning and those who believe it is losing the war. Into this confusion we
> must add the question of whether the Iraq war is part of what U.S. President
> George W. Bush refers to as the "war on terrorism" and what others might call
> the war against al Qaeda. Even the issues are not clear. It is a war in which
> no one can agree even on the criteria for success or failure, or at times,
> who is on what side.
>
> Part of this dilemma is simply the result of partisan politics. It is a myth
> that Americans unite in times of war: Anyone who believes they do must read
> the history of, for example, the Mexican War. Americans are a fractious
> people and, while they were united during World War II, the political
> recriminations were only delayed -- not suspended. The issue here is not
> partisanship, however, but rather that there is no clear framework against
> which to judge the current war.
>
> Let us begin with what we all -- save for those who believe that the Sept. 11
> attacks were a plot hatched by the U.S. government to justify the Patriot Act
> -- can agree on:
>
> 1. Al Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, by hijacking
> aircraft and crashing or trying to crash them into well-known buildings.
> 2. Since Sept. 11, there have been al Qaeda attacks in Europe and several
> Muslim countries, but not in the United States.
> 3. The United States invaded Afghanistan a month after the strikes against
> the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- forcing the Taliban government out
> of the major cities, but not defeating them. The United States has failed to
> capture Osama bin Laden, although it captured other key al Qaeda operatives.
> The Taliban has regrouped and is now conducting an insurgency in Afghanistan.
> 4. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration claimed
> that this was part of the war against al Qaeda; critics have claimed it had
> nothing to do with the war.
> 5. The United States failed to win the war rapidly, as it had expected to do.
> Instead, U.S. forces encountered a difficult guerrilla war that, while
> confined generally to the Sunni regions, nevertheless posed serious military
> and political challenges.
> 6. Al Qaeda has failed to achieve its primary political goal -- that is, to
> trigger an uprising in at least one major Muslim country and create a
> jihadist regime. There has been no general rising in the Muslim world, and
> most governments are now cooperating with the United States.
> 7. There have been no follow-on attacks in the United States since Sept. 11.
> Whether this is because al Qaeda had no plans for a second attack or because
> subsequent attacks were disrupted by U.S. intelligence is not clear.
>
> This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather to provide what we
> would regard as a non-controversial base from which to proceed with an
> assessment.
>
> From the beginning, then, it has been unclear whether the United States saw
> itself as fighting a war against al Qaeda or as carrying out a criminal
> investigation. The two are, of course, enormously different. This is a
> critical problem.
>
> The administration's use of the term "war on terrorism" began the confusion.
> Terrorism is a mode of warfare. Save for those instances when lunatics like
> Timothy McVeigh use it as an end in itself, terrorism is a method of
> intimidating the civilian population in order to drive a wedge between the
> public and their government. Al Qaeda, then, had a political purpose in using
> terrorism, as did the British in their nighttime bombing of Germany or the
> Germans in their air raids against London. The problem in the Bush
> administration's use of this term is that you do not wage a war against a
> method of warfare. A war is waged against an enemy force.
>
> Now, there are those who argue that war is something that takes place between
> nation-states and that al Qaeda, not being a nation-state, is not waging war.
> We tend to disagree with this view. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, but it is
> (or has been) a coherent, disciplined force using violence for political
> ends. The United States, by focusing on the "war on terror," confused the
> issue endlessly. But the critics of the war, who insisted that wartime
> measures were unnecessary because this was not a war, compounded the
> confusion. By the time we were done, the "war on terror" had extended itself
> to include campaigns against animal rights groups, and attempts to prevent
> terror attacks were seen as violations of human rights by the ACLU.
>
> It is odd to raise these points at the beginning of an analysis of a war, but
> no war can be fought when there isn't even clarity about what it is you are
> doing, let alone who you are fighting. Yet that is precisely how this war
> evolved, and then degenerated into conceptual chaos. The whole issue also got
> bound up with internal name-calling, to the point that any assertion that
> Bush had some idea of what he was doing was seen as outrageous partisanship,
> and the assertion that Bush was failing in what he was doing was viewed the
> same way. Where there is no clarity, there can be no criteria for success or
> failure. That is the crisis today. No one agrees as to what is happening;
> therefore, no one can explain who is winning or losing.
>
> Out of this situation came the deeper confusion: Iraq. From the beginning, it
> was not clear why the United States invaded Iraq. The Bush administration
> offered three explanations: First, that there were weapons of mass
> destruction in Iraq; second, that Iraq was complicit with al Qaeda; and
> finally, that a democratic Iraq -- and creation of a democratic Muslim world
> -- would help to stop terrorism (or more precisely, al Qaeda).
>
> The three explanations were untenable on their face. Contrary to myth, the
> Bush administration did not rush to go to war in Iraq. The administration had
> been talking about it for nearly a year before the invasion began. That would
> not have been the case if there truly was a fear that the Iraqis might be
> capable of building atomic bombs, since they might hurry up and build them.
> You don't give a heads-up in that situation. The United States did. Hence, it
> wasn't about WMD. Second, it wasn't about Iraq's terrorist ties. Saddam
> Hussein had no problem with the concept of terrorism, but he was an
> ideological enemy of everything bin Laden stood for. Hussein was a secular
> militarist; bin Laden, a religious ideologue. Cooperation between them wasn't
> likely, and pointing to obscure meetings that Mohammed Atta may or may not
> have had with an Iraqi in Prague didn't make the case. Finally, the democracy
> explanation came late in the game. Bush had campaigned against
> nation-building in places like Kosovo -- and if he now believed in
> nation-building as a justification for war, it meant he stood with Bill
> Clinton. He dodged that criticism, though, because the media couldn't
> remember Kosovo or spell it any more by the time Iraq rolled around.
>
> Bush's enemies argued that he invaded Iraq in order to (a) avenge the fact
> that Hussein had tried to kill his father; (b) as part of a long-term
> strategy planned years before to dominate the Middle East; (c) to dominate
> all of the oil in Iraq; (d) because he was a bad man or (e) just because. The
> fact was that his critics had no idea why he did it and generated fantastic
> theories because they couldn't figure it out any more than Bush could explain
> it.
>
> Stratfor readers know our view was that the invasion of Iraq was intended to
> serve three purposes:
>
> 1. To bring pressure on the Saudi government, which was allowing Saudis to
> funnel money to al Qaeda, to halt this enablement and to cooperate with U.S.
> intelligence. The presence of U.S. troops to the north of Saudi Arabia was
> intended to drive home the seriousness of the situation.
> 2. To take control of the most strategic country in the Middle East -- Iraq
> borders seven critical countries -- and to use it as a base of operations
> against other countries that were cooperating with al Qaeda.
> 3. To demonstrate in the Muslim world that the American reputation for
> weakness and indecisiveness -- well-earned in the two decades prior to the
> Sept. 11 attacks -- was no longer valid. The United States was aware that the
> invasion of Iraq would enrage the Muslim world, but banked on it also
> frightening them.
>
> Let's put it this way: The key to understanding the situation was that Bush
> wanted to blackmail the Saudis, use Iraq as a military base and terrify
> Muslims. He wanted to do this, but he did not want to admit this was what he
> was doing. He therefore provided implausible justifications, operating under
> the theory that a rapid victory brushes aside troubling questions. Clinton
> had gotten out of Kosovo without explaining why signs of genocide were never
> found, because the war was over quickly and everyone was sick of it. Bush
> figured he would do the same thing in Iraq.
>
> It was precisely at this point that the situation got out of control. The
> biggest intelligence failure of the United States was not 9-11 -- only Monday
> morning quarterbacks can claim that they would have spotted al Qaeda's plot
> and been able to block it. Nor was the failure to find WMD in Iraq. Not only
> was that not the point, but actually, everyone was certain that Hussein at
> least had chemical weapons. Even the French believed he did. The biggest
> mistake was the intelligence that said that the Iraqis wouldnÕt fight, that
> U.S. forces would be welcomed or at least not greeted hostilely by the Iraqi
> public, and that the end of the conventional combat would end the war.
>
> That was the really significant intelligence failure. Hussein, or at least
> some of his key commanders, had prepared for a protracted guerrilla war. They
> knew perfectly well that the United States would crush their conventional
> forces, so they created the material and financial basis for a protracted
> guerrilla war. U.S. intelligence did not see this coming, and thus had not
> prepared the U.S. force for fighting the guerrilla war. Indeed, if they had
> known this was coming, Bush might well have calculated differently on
> invading Iraq -- since he wasnÕt going to get the decisive victory he needed.
>
> The intelligence failure was compounded by a command failure. By mid-April
> 2003, it was evident to Stratfor that a
> guerrilla war <http://www.stratfor.biz/Story.neo?storyId=215922> was
> starting. Donald Rumsfeld continued vigorously to deny that any such war
> <http://www.stratfor.biz/Story.neo?storyId=217938> was going on. It was not
> until July, when Gen. Tommy Franks was relieved by John Abizaid as Central
> Command chief, that the United States admitted the obvious. Those were the
> 45-60 critical days. Intelligence failures worse than this one happen in
> every war, but the delay in recognizing what was happening -- the extended
> denial in the Pentagon -- eliminated any chance of nipping it in the bud. By
> the summer of 2003, the war was raging, and foreign jihadists had begun
> joining in. Obviously this increased anti-American sentiment, but not
> necessarily effective anti-American sentiment. Hating the United States is
> not the same as being able to run secure covert operations in the United
> States.
>
> The war did not and does not cover most of Iraq's territory. Only a
> relatively small portion is involved -- the Sunni regions. At this point, the
> administration has done a fairly good job in creating a political process and
> bringing the Sunni elders to the table, if not to an agreement that will end
> the insurgency. But the problem is that American expectations about the war
> have been so strangely set that whatever esoteric satisfaction experts might
> take in the evolution, it is clear that this war is not what the Bush
> administration expected, that it is not what the administration was prepared
> to fight, and that the administration is now in a position where it has to
> make compromises rather than impose its will.
>
> We believe that a war started on Sept. 11, 2001. We believe that from a
> strictly operational point of view, al Qaeda has gotten by far the worst of
> it. Having struck the first blow, al Qaeda has been crippled, with each
> succeeding attack weaker and weaker. We also think that the U.S. invasion of
> Iraq achieved at least one of Washington's goals: Saudi Arabia has behaved
> much differently since February 2003. But the ongoing war has undermined the
> ability of the United States to use Iraq as a base of operations in the
> region, and the psychological outcome Washington was hoping for obviously
> didn't materialize.
>
> What progress there has been is invisible, for two reasons. First, the Bush
> administration had crafted an explanation for the entire war that was based
> on two premises -- first, that the American public would remain united on all
> measures necessary after Sept. 11, and second, that the United States would
> achieve a quick victory in Iraq, sparing the administration the need to
> explain itself. As a result, Bush has never articulated a coherent strategic
> position. Furthermore, as the second premise proved untrue, the failure to
> enunciate a coherent strategic vision began to undermine the first premise --
> national unity. At this point, Bush is beginning to face criticism in his own
> party. Sen. Chuck Hagel's statement, that the promise to stay the course does
> not constitute a strategy, is indicative of Bush's major problem.
>
> The president's dilemma, now, is this. He had a strategy. He failed to
> explain what it was because doing so would have carried a cost, and the
> president assumed it was unnecessary. It turned out to be necessary, but he
> still didn't enunciate a strategy because it would at that point have
> appeared contrived. Moreover, as time went on, the strategy had to evolve. It
> is hard to evolve an unarticulated strategy. Bush rigidified publicly even as
> his strategy in Iraq became more nimble.
>
> Figuring out how the war is going four years after 9-11, then, is like a
> nightmare fighting ghosts. The preposterous defense of U.S. strategy meets
> the preposterous attack on U.S. strategy: Claims that the United States
> invaded Iraq to bring democracy to the people competes with the idea that it
> invaded in order to give contracts to Halliburton. Nothing is too preposterous
> to claim.
>
> But even as U.S. politics seize up in one of these periodic spasms, these
> facts are still clear:
>
> 1. The United States has not been attacked in four years.
> 2. No Muslim government has fallen to supporters of al Qaeda.
> 3. The United States won in neither Iraq or Afghanistan.
> 4. Bin Laden is still free and ready to go extra rounds.
>
> So far, neither side has won -- but on the whole, weÕd say the United States
> has the edge. The war is being fought outside the United States. And that is
> not a trivial point. But it is not yet a solution to the president's dilemma.
