Posted on 07/23/2006 2:41:15 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.
That bombing came almost exactly four months after the U.S. military thought it had prevailed in Iraq, and it launched the insurgency, the bloody and protracted struggle with guerrilla fighters that has tied the United States down to this day.
There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein's government knew it couldn't win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation. The stockpiling of weapons, distribution of arms caches, the revolutionary roots of the Baathist Party, and the movement of money and people to Syria either before or during the war all indicate some planning for an insurgency.
There is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.
The setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission. The chain of command was hazy, with no one individual in charge of the overall American effort in Iraq, structure that led to frequent clashes between military and civilian officials.
On May 16, 2003, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-run occupation agency, had issued his first order, "De-Baathification of Iraq Society." The CIA station chief in Baghdad had argued vehemently against the radical move, contending: "By nightfall, you'll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you'll really regret this."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Iraq is Vietnam, blah, blah, blah...Maybe we at the Wash. Post can win another Pulitzer, blah, blah, blah..."
The only thing the military forgot in Iraq was what they should have done during Vietnam, which was to round up the fifth columnists hiding behind the label "media", lined 'em up against a wall, and then introduced them to "Mr. M-16".
Exactly!!!
Not this crap again...
Amen. What a defeatist POS article.
Wonder what name Bremer posts on FR with?
The lesson of Viet Nam is: never let the press tell you you're losing when you're winning; never take advice from guys who don't have a clue; never let your enemies in the press define you; never give up.
Beautifully said, and I have nothing to add to that but admiration. BTT.
Another lesson of Vietnam is that civilians shouldn't run a war.
Though the Bush administration's conduct of the war hasn't been flawless or without mistakes, it's absurd to compare it to Vietnam.
Oh, do you prix mean just like the military documents of Hussein that say he had WMD? We are still wait for the DBM/Dem reviews on those "documents."
Funny I don't see you asswipes reporting that with the same, shall we say, anti-America vigor. It really doesn't matter, the DBM won't be around in a couple of years anyway to report on anything, people will just tune them all out!
My thoughts exactly.
Where's the 'Barf Alert'?
Oh I don't know. They went in with a volunteer military and that's the best essential qualitative improvement any army can have.
The only area where US capabilities are poorer than Vietnam is rock music. Man, you can't go to war listening to Britney and Timberlake the way you can to Hendrix and the Animals.
This and disbanding the Iraqi Army are what we known as "judgment calls". If the society and Army were not de-Baathified, the organized parts of society/government and the Army would be riddled with characters of questionable loyalty.
If both actions weren't taken, we'd have the media telling us how 'fascist' the Bush regime is, because they didn't remove their 'fascist' cousins in Iraq from power. We'd have massacres and sabotage from within the bureaucracy and Army bought about by the Baathist.
Doing this or not doing this, caused problems both ways. Which would have been the better decision? Who knows? You can't know. You make your decision and move forward the best you can. The Iraqi Army is coming along very nicely, too bad they lost a year in that effort.
The REAL Lesson of Vietnam is this: When you get the first clean shot, kill the reporter and his cameraman first! They will always be your true enemy!
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