Iraq: Why did We get it wrong? [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

07-27-2006, 12:17 PM

I'll take a brief shot at the list, FWIW:

10 We failed to keep the Iraqi army in one piece-had we kept them on, and paid them, much fewer weapons would be available to attack Us troops.

In rhetrospect probably one of the biggest fuckups of the war. At the time I suppose they just wanted those folks out of uniform and felt that disbanding the army was a good way to get it out of the field. I don't think they forsaw the insurgency, nor what a bunch of bored soldiers could or would do with time and their hands and nothing much to do...and no jobs in the short term. Short sighted of them...

2)we failed to forge links with Shiite, sunni, and Kurd leaders

I'm not sure how valid this one is. We DID forge links with all those groups. Also, forging links is a two way street. I'm not sure what more could have been done that wasn't attempted in this reguard.

3) we never had a plan to impose a government

Um...why would imposing a government on the Iraqi's be a good idea? How would this have worked in any case? Hell, if they are shaky about the government they elected, how much more pissed off would they be about a government we imposed on them by fiat? I think this, had Bush done it (and I'm surprised he didn't as it would have been a disaster), would have been one of the major disasters of the whole sorrid mess.

4) we did not immediately secure all the ammunition scattered around the country

No, we didn't. Again, in rhetrospect this would have been a smart move for us to do...and we've certainly paid for it. That said though, the original plan, knowing what they knew then, was reasonable. It was to drive to Baghdad as fast as possible and depose Saddam and his regime. The thinking being, if the government falls the military would fold its hand as well. Then there would be time for going back and sorting out all those other issues (like this one).

The MAIN problem, IMHO, is related to this. It was that we tried to do this invasion on the cheap, with minimal forces. I think Bush and Chaney were looking at the bottom line, and wanted to do this thing without spending any more money than was absolutely necessary (thus making the burden on the American people lighter...and so, making the administration more popular for not only winning the war but for doing it without harming the economy). Rummy I think was just facinated by the thought of taking out a regional military power like Iraq with as little US force as possible...sort of a military intellectual excersize. Whatever their real motives, it was (IMHO) a major fuckup by not going in with sufficient force initially to do the job right.

5) we destroyed the baath party

I disagree this was a mistake.

Finally, as we continue to see the insurgency grow, we have NO exit or backup plan-just (apparently0 what Rumsfeld dreams up from day to day.

Well, its untrue (or at least there is no way for you to prove) that we absolutely have no exit strategy or back-up plan. Its also not true that the insurgency is growing...at least not that I've heard. If you have some evidence to back this up, I'd love to see it.

That said, we are certainly hip deep in Iraq for the forseeable future. I had HOPED that we would be able to start seriously turning things over to the Iraqi's this year and begin pulling out (not least because my son is over there). This has turned out to have been a false hope on my part however.

So how will this mess play out?

In theory we are buying time for the Iraqi's to get their shit together, politically, economically and militarily. Even with all the fuckups the Iraqi's ARE (slowly) getting their shit together. EVentually they WILL be able to take up their own defense and we can start pulling back...assuming the whole country doesn't fly apart in a bloody civil war. I'm starting to think that maybe...just maybe...this isn't going to happen now and that they will hold together after all.

1) Stay the course-accept 5-10K more dead, billions in costs

5-10k 'more' US dead? Or just dead, including Iraqi and US, civilians, soldiers and insurgents? Even then, you are talking years (5-10) at the current casualty rates and I don't see the US being there for that long. Billions though...yeah, its still going to be billions and billions at this point.

2) "cut and run"-leave immediately

Not going to happen in this reality. Its sort of like the wishful thinking of some to impeach Bush for incompetence (or because of his grin or monkey face). Bush is committed to staying the course and all that...and frankly things just aren't that bad in Iraq that there is a general movement in the US to get out right this minute. Given a couple more years of whats been happening though, and given a new administration and all bets are off...but cut and run ain't happening as long as GW is in the White House.

And I'm not convinced that it would be a good idea right now to 'cut and run'. We aren't at the point where the writing is on the wall and the thing is obviously a failure. There is still some hope and potential that things may work out. When the militia groups from the various sides start squaring off to go at it hammer and tongs...THEN we'll be at that point.

30Remove the army to strong points in the south(near basra), and announce that attacks will be met by total destruction

No idea where you are going with this one at all, or why you think its a viable option.

-XT

Captain Amazing

07-27-2006, 12:24 PM

- the US shouldn't have installed Saddam in the first place

The US didn't install Saddam. He was the previous leader's cousin, who made him vice-president, and Saddam eventually squeezed him out and then went on to arrest or kill everyone in the Baath party who he thought might challenge him.

elucidator

07-27-2006, 12:27 PM

...(not least because my son is over there)....

Tell him his Uncle 'luci wants him home safe.

Loopydude

07-27-2006, 12:29 PM

Why? I'd say the main mistake was attacking Iraq in the first place. Everything else is just a product of that gargantuan error.

rjung

07-27-2006, 02:31 PM

Aside from invading Iraq in the first place, the biggest mistake was placing ivory-tower conservatives (http://www.newamericancentury.org/) in charge.

(Though "ivory-tower" is probably redundant; putting conservatives in charge of anything is usually a Bad Idea anyway.)

Least Original User Name Ever

07-27-2006, 02:37 PM

http://www.shalomctr.org/node/647 This is where we went wrong. We took them right out of their own government. Msde ourselves into occupiers instead of liberators and planted the seeds of terrorism.

zamboniracer

07-27-2006, 03:41 PM

http://www.shalomctr.org/node/647 This is where we went wrong. We took them right out of their own government. Msde ourselves into occupiers instead of liberators and planted the seeds of terrorism.

We deluded ourselves into thinking that liberators and occupiers are the same thing. Compare and constrast our liberation of France with our occupation of Japan and West Germany in WW2 with Iraq.

Ryan_Liam

07-27-2006, 03:49 PM

http://www.shalomctr.org/node/647 This is where we went wrong. We took them right out of their own government. Msde ourselves into occupiers instead of liberators and planted the seeds of terrorism.

I don't understand this terminology of 'occupiers' as if its a negative connontation.

For instance, Germany after WWII was occupied by the Allied Powers and they had final say on the use of German security forces in the way they conducted themselves and operated, even the structure of Government was changed. All of which was done by an Allied 'Occupation' Of that example, I see the same being done in Iraq, with the exception that there is a large scale insurgency.

Now, considering nearly the entire population of Iraq couldn't vote or disagree with the main governing body which ruled them (Baathists) how does Occupation translate into something negative if we've enabled those people to elect who they want into office? Although the US Coalition have final say on their military operations, and Iraqi Army operations, it only makes sense due to the fact that the IA and Iraqi Police are 'works in progress' which need oversight. Also, since the country is fracturous on ethnic and religious grounds, it also makes sense for US diplomatic efforts to be involved in Iraqi affairs, in order to ensure that progress is made on reconcilation and building unity between them.

In addition, the thinking that even if we made the right moves that there wouldn't be terrorism, thus blaiming the MNF (100%) for the insurgency is wrong, since there were people from all over the Arab world who were more than willing to perpetuate conflict in order to impede on progress we could of made in rebuilding the country.

Captain Amazing
The US didn't install Saddam. He was the previous leader's cousin, who made him vice-president, and Saddam eventually squeezed him out and then went on to arrest or kill everyone in the Baath party who he thought might challenge him.

Actually Bakr was dying from Cancer and Saddam took over day to day operations of running Iraq, and I think stepped down and thus Saddam took on the reins.

Loopydude

07-27-2006, 03:52 PM

We took them right out of their own government.

Engaging the Iraqi govt. prior to the invasion, outside of hostilities, was no longer possible. Iraq may have collapsed on its own into sectarian chaos and war, but all we have done, all we could possibly have ever done, short of a massive occupation require a draft, is hasten that collapse. Since we were unwilling (for good reason) to embark on such a daunting course of action, instead of doing the prudent thing, which would have been keeping the Iraqi govt. intact but defanged, we toppled it without any feasible means of replacing it responsibly.

I repeat, the entire enterprise was doomed from the outset, and our leadership should have known better. We never, ever should have even considered invading and occupying Iraq, especially whilst attempting to secure Afghanistan. They destroyed the only stabilizing force in the country without the resources or necessary will to replace it, and the entirely predictable has been the result. Again, civil war in Iraq may have been likely, but now we own it. A disaster.

07-27-2006, 04:12 PM

Tell him his Uncle 'luci wants him home safe.

Why, thank you my friend. I appreciate that. And I will certainly tell him...he actually knows who you are (well, as much as I do...he follows this board somewhat, or did when he was at home, looking over my shoulder :)). He'll appreciate the sentiment...and get a kick out of the Uncle thing too.

-XT

furlibusea

07-27-2006, 04:17 PM

I do not remember where I heard it, but someone said, “The definition of a bad government policy is one that leaves no good options.” We entered bad policy the second we attacked Iraq. I do not know that this was ever winnable, but there were some pretty serious mistakes, which sealed the deal.

#1 The assumption that we would be universally hailed as the heroes, freeing them from the evils of Saddam, complete with parades and flowers, was naïve at best. No matter how noble the cause is or how desperate the population, some petty dictator or local despot has been able to use our presence to shore up his cause. (Somalia comes to mind)

#2 There seemed to be no plan for policing once we had control. Any population has a percentage of people who revel in chaos, especially when they have been clamped down for a long time. The looting of the museum and the known nuclear sites was completely predictable, and the resulting humanitarian and public relation disasters are inexcusable.

#3 No one who any knowledge of the culture and the language seems to have been involved in the planning stages or even the occupation, unless you count Chalabi, who had his own agenda. Even high school football teams study their opponents. Once upon a time our inelegance communities studied the Soviet Union to the point they knew more about it than the Soviets themselves. This sure seems kind of basic.

# 4 Tolerating torture in any way shape or form is wrong. Even if it was not the official policy, there seem to have been a whole lot of blind eyes and winks going on. Especially when we really do need to “win hearts and minds”, there should have been a prompt clamp down by the military the moment rumors started circulating. Even if good information could come from it, it can’t make up for how much it turns the population from us.

Those seem to be the top mistakes. They mostly seem to be a product of arrogance and ignorance, which leaves us with no options that are not horrific. Cut and run leaves a civil war and bloodbath, which we created. Stay the course leaves our troops as an irritant to keep the insurgency going, so it stays a bloodbath.

elucidator

07-27-2006, 04:22 PM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14046789/site/newsweek/

Read this. Now. At once. Tremble and obey.

The Hamster King

07-27-2006, 04:42 PM

As others have said, our big mistake was invading in the first place. Iraq under Saddam was stable, defanged, and secular. It was not an ally of Al Qaeda, had no weapons of mass destruction, and utterly lacked the means to harm Americans or American interests in any significant way. In addition it provided a useful regional counterweight to Iran.

Even if we'd done everything right we'd still be scarsely better off than we are now. We would still be facing a costly, long-term occupation of a broken state. We still would have pissed off the Arab street. Iran and Al Qaeda would still have benefitted. There wouldn't be open warfare in the streets so our failure wouldn't be so glaringly obvious, but the damage to American interests would have been virtually the same.

elucidator

07-27-2006, 04:48 PM

...and get a kick out of the Uncle thing too....
So, you never told him?

Voyager

07-27-2006, 05:15 PM

#1 The assumption that we would be universally hailed as the heroes, freeing them from the evils of Saddam, complete with parades and flowers, was naïve at best. No matter how noble the cause is or how desperate the population, some petty dictator or local despot has been able to use our presence to shore up his cause. (Somalia comes to mind)

And no back up plan if they started throwing bombs instead of flowers.

#2 There seemed to be no plan for policing once we had control. Any population has a percentage of people who revel in chaos, especially when they have been clamped down for a long time. The looting of the museum and the known nuclear sites was completely predictable, and the resulting humanitarian and public relation disasters are inexcusable.

And not enough troops to start policing when we needed to. Though enough to protect the oil ministry.

#3 No one who any knowledge of the culture and the language seems to have been involved in the planning stages or even the occupation, unless you count Chalabi, who had his own agenda. Even high school football teams study their opponents. Once upon a time our inelegance communities studied the Soviet Union to the point they knew more about it than the Soviets themselves. This sure seems kind of basic.

Worse than that. The State Department had a plan for the occupation, done by experts. Rumsfeld and the neocons rejected it, and did not allow the people who did have this knowledge to participate. It was not that they didn't have the facts, it was that they aggressively protected themselves from the facts.

Those seem to be the top mistakes. They mostly seem to be a product of arrogance and ignorance, which leaves us with no options that are not horrific. Cut and run leaves a civil war and bloodbath, which we created. Stay the course leaves our troops as an irritant to keep the insurgency going, so it stays a bloodbath.
I'd add the unwillingness to change course in any significant way over the past three years, so that they don't have to admit they screwed the pooch.

griffin1977

07-27-2006, 05:18 PM

Unbeleivable incompentence IMO... This goes way beyond groupthink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_think) (compentent people making incompentent decisions as a group). Given the number, and degree, of the errors made during this fiasco the only conclusion you can come to is that those in charge just do not have a clue.

Firstly, as plent of other people have pointed out, the biggest mistake was invading in the first place. Even without all the other SNAFUs, and if everything had gone exactly the way the people who planned this war had said it would. The end result would at still have been a win for Al Qiada (and a BIG win for Iran).

The other mistakes are to many to list here. The highlights being...

Not sending enough troops to properly occupy the country (and generally planning for the BEST not the worst, an absolute rookie mistake)
Laying of the entire Iraqi army without pay or pensions.
Putting faith in the reliabilty of handful of Iraqi exiles close to the US state department.

Voyager

07-27-2006, 05:18 PM

A lack of professionalism in the officer corps. We had a decade to prepare for this war. Why were we unprepared? Not enough Civil Affairs, not enough Arabic-speakers, not enough armor. Not enough anything.

I hope the fact that officers at a high level who spoke the truth were punished by the civilian leadership will change this judgement. Civilians are far more culpable than the military for this mess.

Squink

07-27-2006, 05:33 PM

We entered bad policy the second we attacked Iraq.Actually, a litle before that, when we made it our policy to obfuscate the difference between preemptive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-emptive) and preventative attacks. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventive_war) Once the situation on the ground started failing to comply with our expectations, that confusion left us without clearcut moral guideposts as to what to do about it. Remember how we spent the first year or two having to redefine why we attacked in the first place? That hurt us badly.

RickJay

07-27-2006, 05:48 PM

I hope the fact that officers at a high level who spoke the truth were punished by the civilian leadership will change this judgement. Civilians are far more culpable than the military for this mess.
In a democratic society run by civlians, civilians are ALWAYS more culpable than the military.

However, the military must be held to account for the rather ghastly lack of discipline being displayed in Iraq.

Paul in Qatar

07-27-2006, 10:53 PM

I hope the fact that officers at a high level who spoke the truth were punished by the civilian leadership will change this judgement. Civilians are far more culpable than the military for this mess.

No general officer has resigned rather than carry out a presidential decision since my old boss, Fred Worner. Gosh I miss Uncle Fred.

ExTank

07-27-2006, 11:16 PM

It is a truism amongst us officers that 'The Troops Never Let You Down.' This time they did. The brutality and casual savagery shown by our young soldiers has stained the honor of the American military. We will need centuries to live it down. Worse yet, I suspect they are simply reflecting the society from which they came.

This is my only contention with your comments (hence, the only one quoted). Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen (and wimmin), and Marines are human beings, subject to all the same foibles and quirks the rest of the non-military society is. To expect that there would be no instances of the conduct you are deploring is unrealistic.

Where I do agree with you (sort of) is the lack of firm leadership and diligence on the part of the Command structure in identifying this behavior when it occurs, and making fine examples out of the perpetrators in a quick and forthright manner.

Paul in Qatar

07-27-2006, 11:35 PM

This is my only contention with your comments (hence, the only one quoted). Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen (and wimmin), and Marines are human beings, subject to all the same foibles and quirks the rest of the non-military society is. To expect that there would be no instances of the conduct you are deploring is unrealistic.

Yes, that contention is bound to cause excitement. In fact I may be willing to withdraw it, if you can convince me.

What the heck kind of soldier makes human pyramids of prisoners? Can we really blame others for not foreseeing this and preventing it? What kind of person kills a family after raping a girl?

Which is scarier? That the military allowed these moral deviants into the service, or the idea that these people are not deviant, but true reflections of American society?

On the other hand, perhaps I am getting old. I am complaining about young people and that is a sure sign.

David Simmons

07-27-2006, 11:41 PM

I don't believe that you can point to specific things that caused the failure. I believe that the aim that was finally arrived at, i.e. to establish a democratic government in Iraq that would serve as a model for the Mideast was a pipedream from the beginning.

The mind boggles at the effrontery of assuming that you can overthrow a dictator and the people will be so ecstatically grateful they will immediately set up a democratic government that will be your friend.

To look for specific mistakes in the process is to go down the path of assuming that we would be successful next time if we just correct some mistakes.

Instead we need to make sure there isn't a next time. I'm almost to the point of believing that every single member of Congress who voted for that damnable resolution should be kicked out by the voters. How could they be so careless as to give any executive virtually carte blanche?

Paul in Qatar

07-27-2006, 11:50 PM

We managed to set up democracies in Germany and Italy. (Yes, I know, the parallels are not perfect. They never are.)

Failure I can live with. Unprofessionalism I cannot. What really gripes my grits is that the unprofessionalism of the American increased that chances of failure. That is not what we pay soldiers to do.

ExTank

07-27-2006, 11:58 PM

Yes, that contention is bound to cause excitement. In fact I may be willing to withdraw it, if you can convince me.

What the heck kind of soldier makes human pyramids of prisoners? Can we really blame others for not foreseeing this and preventing it? What kind of person kills a family after raping a girl?

Which is scarier? That the military allowed these moral deviants into the service, or the idea that these people are not deviant, but true reflections of American society?

On the other hand, perhaps I am getting old. I am complaining about young people and that is a sure sign.

I've known more than one soldier who would've glady raped someone and then killed their family had their been no sergeants to watch over them, and unequivocal command directives that this sort of behavior will not only not be tolerated, but will be swiftly and brutally punished.

The "military discipline" is more about getting out of bed on time and doing your job with efficiency and precision under horrible circumstances, rather than "don't rape people and kill their families afterwards," because that's a pretty goddamned basic human and societal more, and the Army has enough on its hands teaching basic and advanced soldiering without getting into, "don't rape people and then kill their families." They sort of take that as a given.

Yet it happens, around the world, in just about every society, at some point or another.

The Army I joined didn't submit me to a morals test. Yet I never raped anyone and then killed their family. Hell, the closest I came to killing anyone was laying down suppressing fire during a breaching operation in GW 1, and if I hadn't fired (and possibly killed someone), the Army would've had some pretty harsh words (and actions) to convey to and upon me.

I take rapists/murderes to be the darkest aspects of human nature; it's out there, you pray it never happends, especially to you and yours, you hope the cops catch 'em when they do it, and at least lock them away for a long, long time.

To expect that any sufficiently large slice of humanity is without these people is unrealistic. To expect that the U.S. military would act swiftly and surely to prosecute such instances should be a given. I believe it is.

That it might not have is what truly scares me.

BrainGlutton

07-28-2006, 12:15 AM

Investigative journalist Greg Palast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Palast) (an American expat, now working for the BBC) addresses this in his new book: Armed Madhouse: (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525949682/sr=8-1/qid=1153966129/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9161653-5447225?ie=UTF8)

There are kooks and cranks and conspiracy nuts out there who think George Bush, from the moment he took office, had some kind of secret plan to invade Iraq and grab control of its oil. They're wrong.

There were two plans. I've got them both. One is 323 pages long, the other 101 pages. . . .

"Plan A:"

In February 2001, a meeting organized by Colin Powell's State Department was held in Walnut Creek, California, in the home of Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi-born consultant on Iraq's oil industry. The "Three-Day Plan" they came up with was "an invasion disguised as a coup," "kind of a Marine-supported Bay of Pigs." Saddam was to be replaced by some Ba'athist general cashiered by him, possibly the exiled General Nizar Khazraji -- "the secret group was already contacting Saddam's generals to switch allegiance. Then, according to their playbook, there would be snap elections, say within 90 days, to put a democratic halo on our chosen generalissimo."

Crucially, the quickie coup-cum-invasion had friends where it counted. "The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry," Aljibury told me. "They'd hoped that Iraq would go for a revolutiojn like other revolutions that have occurred in the past and government was shut down for two or three days" . . .

The idea was that no matter which strongman the Bush team designated, they would "bring him in right away and say that Iraq is being liberated - and everybody stay in office . . . everything as is." And by "everything" he meant, first and foremost, the key thing, the oil ministry and state oil company. While the Walnut Creek committee was busy-busy with many topics, Aljibury said, "It quickly became an oil group."

Thus, the State Department.

"Plan B:"

But, following the U.S. victory in Afghanistan, the Pentagon, dominated by PNAC members Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams, had other and very different ideas:

It was nothing like State's three-day quickie. The neo-cons' 101-page confidential document goes boldly where no invasion plan had gone before: the complete rewrite of the conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's a sample:

* Pages 8 & 21: A big income tax cut for Iraq's wealthiest and complete elimination of taxes on business revenues.

* Pages 35 & 73: The quick sale of Iraq's banks, bridges and water companies to foreign operators.

* Page 45: The application for Iraq to join the World Trade Organization, kindly ghostwritten by U.S. government contractors.

* Page 28: A "market-friendly" customs law -- a kind of super-NAFTA -- aiming for complete wipeout of tariffs that had protected Iraq's industry from cheap foreign imports.

* Page 44: New copyright laws protecting foreign (i.e., American) software, music and drug companies.

Odd to attach to an invasion plan. It was more like a corporate takeover, except with Abrams tanks instead of junl bonds. There wasn't a whole lot of thinking going on about strengthening the borders against insurgents, disarming private armies or securing Baghdad from looters; and not a thing about elections or "democracy." . . .

<snip>

. . . Selling off banks and bridges was just the beginning. The would-be conquistadors left nothing to chance -- or to the Iraqis. At page 74, the plan's authors required Iraq to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) "all state-owned companies." . . .[/i]

<snip>

Especially the oil: complete and total sell-off of Iraq's oil assets from the pipes to the pumps to the crude in the ground.

But it goes deeper than that: The core of the neocons' plan was to use Iraq to break the back of OPEC! Privatize the state-owned oilfields among several small companies, let them compete with each other, and they'll up production and drive down the price of oil and even Saudi Arabia will have to follow suit! That was Ari Cohen's baby, and he called it a "no-brainer."

Thus, the Pentagon.

After the invasion, the first American viceroy was General Jay Garner, who was committed to neither plan but inclined strongly towards Plan A. His own view was that Iraq's value to the U.S. was as a "coaling station," a base for projection of American power in the MENA, the role the Philippines once played in the South Pacific. As for the oil, that would be left to the Iraqis to decide. Garner wasn't much committed to democracy in Iraq, for its own sake, but regarded it as an urgent necessity:

In his rush to democracy, Garner had planned what he called a "big tent" meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders to plan national elections. Garner knew these characters well and figured he had only those 90 days to keep the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions under the tent from slitting each other's throats. The general planned to seal a deal before a slighted group would launch an "insurgency."

All that was unacceptable to the Pentagon neocons. Rumsfeld fired Garner on 4/21/03 and replaced him with Paul Bremer, who put off elections indefinitely -- even municipal elections -- while proceeding to implement almost every economic and legal element of Plan B by his own fiat. Order 37: Flat tax on corporations, individual income tax capped at 15%; to apply "for 2004 and all subsequent years," meaning any later Iraqi government would be powerless to change it. Order 40: Iraqi banks sold off to three foreign financiers with no bidding process. Order 12: Iraq to become the only country on Earth with no tariff barriers or import quotas at all. Iraqi industry, limping along after 12 years of sanctions, was shattered by this. Agriculture too; Cargill flooded Iraq's market with wheat, driving Iraqi farmers out of business. Hussein's prohibition on public-sector labor union activity, however, remained in place; 12/03, Bremer arrrested the entire board of the Iraqi Workers Federation of Trade Unions. While this was going on several billion dollars in Iraqi oil revenue and U.S. reconstruction funds simply disappeared, but investigation is hampered by the Coalition Provisional Authority having been, according to some lawyers, neither an Iraqi nor a U.S. government agency -- and later on, it was dissolved. "The perfect getaway car -- one that simply disappears." In fact, some lawyers argue the CPA never had any legal existence in the first place, so there. (See this thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=306538) and this one. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304863))

Every element of Plan B was implemented, except privatizing the oil industry. There were two big problems with that plan that had somehow escaped the notice of the neocon ideologues, and which I'll explain in the next post because this one is getting too long.

Paul in Qatar

07-28-2006, 12:18 AM

Military discipline (seems to me) is ebbing. In fact standards have slipped ever since I retired. But at this point even I realize I am geezing out.

The standard has been set. If you torture prisoners, you cop a walk. If you help lose the war by building human pyramids, you could be sentenced to months is jail. (Months I say!) If you disband the Iraqi Army you get the Medal of Freedom.

Any wonder why we are loosing?

BrainGlutton

07-28-2006, 12:59 AM

Barriers to the neocon plan to privatize Iraq's oil industry, up production, and break the back of OPEC:

1. As Saudi-born economist, think-tanker and member of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project explained it to Palast:

. . . The globe is littered with the economic skeletons of nationsl that flagrantly busted their OPEC quotas. There's the skeleton of Venezuela. In 1973, Venezuela broke the first Arab oil boycott. But in 1997, when Venezuela again ramped up production, punishment was swift. Saudi Arabia, which can live without big oil revenues for up to a year, opened its spigots and drowned the market. The price of oil dropped to $8 a barrel and Venezuela went bankrupt. Its government fell. The current President of that nation, Hugo Chavez, is now a very good member of OPEC, indeed its most frantic adherent to the quota system.

The Soviet Union was also givena price-cut whupping. In the 1980s, the Saudis dropped the price of oil to punish Russia for its wild expansion of oil-pumping capacity and for the Soviets' invading Muslim Afghanistan. This choking loss of oil income had a lot more to do with the Soviet Union's collapse than Ronald Reagan's crooked smile.

Saudi Arabia has kept its economic knife sharp for Iraq if, under neo-con influence, Iraq were to exceed its OPEC quota. The war-stoked jump in oil prices put $120 billion in Saudi Arabia's treasury in just one year (2004), triple its normal take. This gives the kingdom the cash to hold its breath economically should it need to drop the price of oil for a year to bring Iraq, or any quota-busting nation, to its knees.

2. The international oil companies don't want OPEC busted.

The five big international oil companies own some oilfields of their own, but they have to buy most of the oil they refine from the nationalized oil industries of the OPEC nations. You might think they would want to buy it as cheap as they can, so they can pocket the difference, or else charge less at the pump and sell a lot more gasoline, but it's not that simple:

. . . When OPEC raises the price of crude, Big Oil makes out big time. The oil majors are not simply passive resellers of OPEC production. In OPEC nations, they have "profit sharing agreements" (PSAs) that give the companies a direct slice of the higher price charged. More important, the industry has its own reserves whose value is attached, like a suckerfish, to OPEC's price targets. Here's a statistic you won't see on Army recruitment posters: The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil alone by just over $666 billion. The devil is in the details.

Maintaining the status quo for the oil companies requires holding down oil production, and Iraq has been assigned that sorry role since it was founded (it has 74 known oil fields and only 15 in production). In 1927, the major oil company execs met at a hotel room in Belgium and signed an agreement: The Anglo-Persian company (now British Petroleum) would pump almost all its oil from Iran; Standard Oil, under the name of the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), would limit almost all its drilling to Saudi Arabia; Anglo-Persian would drill in Iraq’s Kirkuk and Basra fields but it would drill very little.

When the British Foreign Office fretted that locking up oil would stoke local nationalist anger, BP-IPC agreed privately to pretend to drill lots of wells, but make them absurdly shallow and place them where, wrote a company manager, “there was no danger of striking oil.”

In the early ‘60s, the frustrated Iraqi government canceled the BP-Shell-Exxon concession and nationalized the oil fields, but that didn’t solve the problem.

. . . The OPEC cartel, controlled by Saudi Arabia, capped Iraq’s production at a sum equal to Iran’s, though the Iranian reserves are far smaller than Iraq’s. The excuse for this quote equality between Iraq and Iran was to prevent war between them. It didn’t.

To keep Iraq’s Ba’athists from complaining about the limits, Saudi Arabia simply bought off the leaders by funding Saddam’s war against Iran and giving the dictator $7 billion for his “Islamic bomb” program.

When Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he was hoping to increase Iraq’s OPEC production quota by adding Kuwait’s to it.

So why did Hussein, finally, have to go?

The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he’s going to “support the Palestinian intifada” and cuts off all oil shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week, Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was out of control.

“Control is what it’s all about,” Lapham told me. “It’s not about getting the oil, it’s about controlling oil’s price.”

But neither could zealous neocon ideologues be allowed to upset the oil companies' apple cart. In May 2003, Phillip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, former CEO of Fluor corporation, flew to Baghdad and confronted Bremer. Palast interviewed Carroll in March 2005 and got the story:

The double-CEO laid down the law to Bremer. Carroll told me: Neo-con plan be damned, "I was very clear that there was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved. End of statement." Furthermore, Carroll would permit no "De-Ba'athification" purge in "his" ministry -- oil.

The diminutive Bremer did not have the political testosterone to reply that, on paper, it was Bremer's ministry and as chieftan of the Provisional Authority, Bremer, not Carroll, was in charge. But Bremer understood that in the Great Game, a well-placed pawn, even one who used to play Kissinger's game, does not overrule a knight of the oil industry. Carroll's orders stood.

Top global oil execs, including no Iraqis, met in Houston, 11-12/03, and drafted a 323-page plan, Options for a Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry. Iraqis were to be offered seven options, all essentially the same: "seven flavors of state-owned oil companies." Privatization was not an option.

Ahmed Chalabi, a University of Chicago-educated neocon who fully supported the privatization plan and whom the neocons intended for Iraq's new president, was purged, and sought for arrest on espionage charges. His "governing council" was replaced by a new government headed by a Ba'athist blessed by the State Department. Bremer was booted out and the new Ambassador John Negroponte arrived to represent the U.S. in Iraq.

But it's not over yet. In February 2005 there was another shift in power, Negroponte was replaced by PNAC favorite Zalmay Khalizad, and Chalabi returned to power with the Shi'ites and became temporary oil minister. He fired Big Oil's favorites in the ministry -- but still did not dare try to privatize.

So there you have it. Why the U.S. invaded Iraq, and why we fucked it up: We went in with three incompatible agendas: Plan A, Plan B, and the stated aim of establishing a democratic government -- a promise that had to be honored in some form eventually, and was, with utterly disastrous results. With all that jerking back and forth, plus all that venality and corruption, plus the utterly intractable political, religious and ethnic divisions among the Iraqi people themselves, how was it to be expected any good would come of it? Maybe if Garner had been allowed to do it his way, the situation could have been saved, but it's too late now.

And that's why American troops are still in Iraq and still killing and still getting killed. And that's why the Iraqi people are still suffering from high unemployment, destroyed infrastructure, and insurgent violence.

Where was W in all this? Who knows? But it appears Cheney backed both the Plan A and the Plan B team at different times or maybe even at the same time.

Askance

07-28-2006, 01:18 AM

To expect that any sufficiently large slice of humanity is without these people is unrealistic. To expect that the U.S. military would act swiftly and surely to prosecute such instances should be a given.And when your commander-in-chief indicates humiliation and torture is acceptable, you can hardly be blamed for taking him at his word.

David Simmons

07-28-2006, 02:07 AM

We managed to set up democracies in Germany and Italy. (Yes, I know, the parallels are not perfect. They never are.)Parallels are hardly even on the same planet. The 80 millions of German people were exhaused by 6 years of war against an alliance with a population of over 350 millions. I think were also afraid that the Russions were coming and passively accepted whatever happened. I also believe that many were shocked when the full extent of what they had allowed their leaders to lead them into step by step came to light. Like the Jews they might have said "never again."

In addition, I think it's highly misleading to posit that because it worked once with a nation whose background and culture we semi understood that it's anything but a pipedream in a place like Iraq.

I firmly believe that its risky to assume that if we had just kept the Iraqi army intact, or installed a different leader, or put in more troops we could have pulled it off.

Paul in Qatar

07-28-2006, 02:17 AM

FRDE

07-28-2006, 03:54 AM

Having read through this thread, I'm thoroughly depressed, the only positive thing is that there seems to be a general consensus that it was both a balls-up and completely muddle headed.

From my view, the situation was caused by a total lack of cultural understanding, confusing secular Ba'athists with Islamisists is unpardonable.

Also, even pro-USA Arab leaders were bound to get nervous when an invading army lands up on their doorstep.

The saddest thing is that a lot of the problems with Saddam were because he had little cultural understanding of the West. He could not speak English, he knew that he was sitting on a powder keg, and that brutal suppression of /dissidents/ was his only course.

Rather like Chavez, he did not understand that 'grandstanding' would create serious discomfort in the West - he thought he was jerking peoples chains, but reckoned as long as he did not invade a neighbour again, he was pretty safe.

He was foolish appearing to support 9/11, but just following that idiotic principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'.

The only people that he was a threat to was the Israelis, and they were keeping a very close eye on him, which is probably why no WMD turned up, it was simply too dangerous to have any.

If the West had been a little more understanding they would have found a way of boosting his kudos and keeping a lid on things, that actually benefitted everyone.

For example a carefully engineered USA made documentary highlighting the shortage of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment (including a statesman-like vignette of Saddam saying how he would like to buy such needed things for his people, but was prevented by sanctions) would have enabled the USA to say that they had been too harsh, with a little subtlety Bush et al could have acted embarressed and apologetic.

With a little coaxing, like Qaddaffi, he could have been encouraged into condemning 9/11, which would not have been difficult for him.

A little publicity about the Kuwaiti cross drilling, and the curious antics of an American woman in 1990 or 91, would have allowed the USA to go in for a bit of revisionism, 'admit' that the first Gulf war was the result of a mis-understanding, but it had established the principle that /nobody/ invades other sovereign territory except in retalliation.

A wild extrapolation would be a mutual defence pact.
Saddam was nervous of Iran, and he disliked the idea of them having a nuclear capability more than most people.

Personally I think he was a brutal tinpot dictator, very ignorant, and an egotistical grandstander, but he could have been turned into an ally.

We make too much fuss about 'democracy', which in the West is just a carve up between members of one political class. Lecturing other people just gets their backs up, after all, the penalty for losing power in many places is death, while for Westerners the worst is making a good living on the lecture circuit.

RTFirefly

07-28-2006, 05:31 AM

I would argue with you David (and the arguement would point out you are dancing very close to the 'Arabs can't make democracy work' line) if not but for the fact that your line of reasoning has been proven by events.I don't think he's dancing anywhere near that line. What he's saying is less "Arabs can't make democracy work" than "because we don't understand Arabs, their language, their culture, their predominant religion, etc., etc. in the least, we haven't a hope in Hades of imposing democracy on an Arab nation by fiat and force of arms."

jjimm

07-28-2006, 05:57 AM

Many tactical errors, in my observation as armchair tactician - all driven by one big error - which is the thought:

"They already hate us; we can't possibly make it any worse".

This, I feel, is severely erroneous; as I've said before, it's not the degree of hatred that's important, it's the spread. If you convert formerly sympathetic people to antipathetic, you simultaneously convert formerly antipathetic people into supporters of violence, supporters into insurgents, insurgents into terrorists.

The other huge error is misinterpreting human nature. Amongst myriad other factors, humiliation (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=113769) (GD thread I started in 2002) is a huge driving force to tip people over this edge. And US military behaviour has imposed humiliation on the country and its people, countless times.

E.g. 1 Shock and Awe. This was so clearly designed for TV broadcast, morale at home, and to cow the enemy. It was a gigantic, noisy, smoke and flame-coloured sledgehammer to crush the clearly ineffective Iraqi army. But think of the effect it must have had on the 'liberatees'. Think how you'd feel - whether you like your leader or not - if your country's capital was subject to such a spectacular display of military domination. Look at how formerly neutral Lebanese are currently reacting to something way less showy: fear, horror, humiliation, and ultimately hatred. If someone did that to London, I'd probably take up arms.

E.g. 2 Total failure to win hearts and minds on the street - "they hate us enough already" - so drive around in HumVees, kicking down doors and interning young men with little or no motivation, but often great brutality. It's like making a box of Betty Crocker Terrorist Mix - guaranteed perfect results every time. Contrast with the British Army which, while also guilty of its own criminal incidents, have not matched them in severity, and were walking round Basra unarmed until about 18 months ago. A more sympathetic area (at least it was), certainly, but I cannot imagine the US military ever doing this, anywhere in Iraq.

RTFirefly

07-28-2006, 06:01 AM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14046789/site/newsweek/

Read this. Now. At once. Tremble and obey.OK if I just obey, but skip the trembling?
Reading "Fiasco," Thomas Ricks's devastating new book about the Iraq war, brought back memories for me. Memories of going on night raids in Samarra in January 2004, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, with the Fourth Infantry Division units that Ricks describes. During these raids, confused young Americans would burst into Iraqi homes, overturn beds, dump out drawers, and summarily arrest all military-age men—actions that made them unwitting recruits for the insurgency. For American soldiers battling the resistance throughout Iraq, the unspoken rule was that all Iraqis were guilty until proven innocent. Arrests, beatings and sometimes killings were arbitrary, often based on the flimsiest intelligence, and Iraqis had no recourse whatever to justice. Imagine the sense of helpless rage that emerges from this sort of treatment. Apply three years of it...I get the impression that this utterly obvious fact of human nature still doesn't register with the Bushies. They still seem to think we'll get our way over there by being forceful and demonstrating 'resolve.'

Their lack of the most elementary insights into how people work has to be one of the defining characteristics of the Bush regime. Just because they can buffalo the Dems and the press (who they genuinely do understand how to play), doesn't mean it'll work on people who are very differently situated.

at cafes and around kitchen tables throughout the Arab world, good-hearted Muslims can no longer defend America against their more hate-filled brethren. They have fallen silent; they have no arguments left. Everything we've done since 9/11 should have been geared towards undermining the persuasiveness of the radicals' arguments. We've done that to our would-be friends, instead.

We have lost the War on Terror. To ourselves.

Nava

07-28-2006, 06:27 AM

I don't understand this terminology of 'occupiers' as if its a negative connontation.

"Occupier" is an outsider come to tell you how to run your own life. An invader.

I know a lot of people who would rather be beaten by their own than given massages by strangers. Being beaten by strangers will get them to defend themselves where being beaten by their own would not.

glee

07-28-2006, 06:47 AM

The US didn't install Saddam. He was the previous leader's cousin, who made him vice-president, and Saddam eventually squeezed him out and then went on to arrest or kill everyone in the Baath party who he thought might challenge him.

'In 1959, there was a failed assassination attempt on Qasim. The failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein. In 1963, a CIA-organized coup did successfully assassinate Qasim and Saddam's Ba'ath Party came to power for the first time. Saddam returned from exile in Egypt and took up the key post as head of Iraq's secret service. The CIA then provided the new pliant, Iraqi regime with the names of thousands of communists, and other leftist activists and organizers. Thousands of these supporters of Qasim and his policies were soon dead in a rampage of mass murder carried out by the CIA's close friends in Iraq.'

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html

'Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a
bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their
instrument for more than 40 years, according to former
U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
...
While many have thought that Saddam first became
involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start
of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts
with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part
of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with
assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-
Karim Qasim.'

http://www.rise4news.net/Saddam-CIA.html

'Last night the Lebanese weekly 'YA LAL-AJAB' revealed some startling information about the relationship of governments of President Saddam Hussein and King Hussein with CIA. The paper claimed that few months after Saddam took power in Iraq, CIA took him off direct payroll and instead paid him in lumpsum every now and then. At the same time CIA with the help of Saddam recruited more than three quarters of Tekriti clan and placed them on direct payroll. '

http://www.eng.morgan.edu/~salimian/humor/timArestAn/knee-use_14.html

"Working with Saddam made sense to the CIA on two important levels. Number one, he was not an Islamic fundamentalist along the lines of the Iranian ayatollahs. Secondly, he was not a communist and perhaps was an anti-communist."

http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/cia_iraq.htm

glee

07-28-2006, 06:54 AM

We managed to set up democracies in Germany and Italy. (Yes, I know, the parallels are not perfect. They never are.)

Germany and Italy already had democracy before WW2. This had come about after centuries of gradually combining city-states and independent provinces, with common religion and language.
Certainly the system had been abused, but it had existed. People understood their voting rights.
There is not a parallel with the artificially created Middle East states, which had been dictatorships all their lives.

RTFirefly

07-28-2006, 08:03 AM

Many tactical errors, in my observation as armchair tactician - all driven by one big error - which is the thought:

"They already hate us; we can't possibly make it any worse". The Bush Administration and its supporters have made it abundantly clear that they see the world in starkly Manichean good-v.-evil terms, where you're either for or against us. (I've seen plenty of instances of it on this message board, during the past five years.) And if your world is truly divided into good-guy supporters and evil adversaries who hate freedom, then this Administration's behavior makes complete sense: you need to stomp on the freedom-haters, and your supporters will see it as good.

Unfortunately, as you point out, reality isn't quite that dualistic: people tend to be arrayed along a spectrum in their attitude towards many things, and our acts potentially push and pull them in different directions along the spectrum.
If you convert formerly sympathetic people to antipathetic, you simultaneously convert formerly antipathetic people into supporters of violence, supporters into insurgents, insurgents into terrorists. And unfortunatly, practically everything the U.S. has done beginning with the "Axis of Evil" speech has pushed Arabs and Muslims away from us and towards the terrorists.
The other huge error is misinterpreting human nature. Amongst myriad other factors, humiliation (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=113769) (GD thread I started in 2002) is a huge driving force to tip people over this edge. And US military behaviour has imposed humiliation on the country and its people, countless times. We all but simulposted with this thought.

David Simmons

07-28-2006, 09:03 AM

I would argue with you David (and the arguement would point out you are dancing very close to the 'Arabs can't make democracy work' line) if not but for the fact that your line of reasoning has been proven by events.I don't think that necessarily, but I'll step a little closer to that line. I am far from an expert in either Islam or Christianity but I do think that Islam is about where Christianity was 800 years ago. That is, barely able to tolerate any other religion in its midst. Maybe after a few hundred years of being forced to live as only one among many religions Muslims will come to accept the others. This idea is on somewhat shaky ground because there do seem to be Muslims who only want to practice there religion and don't want to convert others. However they seem to be in a definite minority among Arabic muslims.

It seems to me we made two fundamental mistakes. The first is that we accepted GW's premise that the Iraqis were among the "huddled masses yearning to be free" to be like us. And that we could win a war and easily impose the form of government we favor. The second was that if that worked the result would be a nation that would be an ally of ours through gratitude.

I doubt that any tinkering with the details of how the plan was implemented would have turned it into a good plan.

jjimm

07-28-2006, 09:12 AM

We all but simulposted with this thought.Yes, and I'm glad you also said "human nature", not "Arab culture".

Merijeek

07-28-2006, 09:15 AM

[QUOTE=Voyager
And not enough troops to start policing when we needed to. Though enough to protect the oil ministry.
[/QUOTE]

Yet, strangely enough, not enough to protect the oil industry.

What good is the former without the latter?

-Joe

Ryan_Liam

07-28-2006, 11:41 AM

"Occupier" is an outsider come to tell you how to run your own life. An invader.

I know a lot of people who would rather be beaten by their own than given massages by strangers. Being beaten by strangers will get them to defend themselves where being beaten by their own would not.

Wow, so that by that analogy, the Occupiers of Germany and Japan were invaders who ultimately became liberators due to the processes they put in place, same thing happening in Iraq.

elucidator

07-28-2006, 11:45 AM

BrainGlutton

07-28-2006, 11:45 AM

Wow, so that by that analogy, the Occupiers of Germany and Japan were invaders who ultimately became liberators due to the processes they put in place, same thing happening in Iraq.

Ermm . . . No, Ryan, that was the idea,* but . . .

*That is, of the three main and conflicting ideas behind the invasion (see posts #32 and 34), that was the one they were willing to talk about publicly.

RTFirefly

07-28-2006, 12:42 PM

Yes, and I'm glad you also said "human nature", not "Arab culture". Can't see anything peculiarly Arabic about rage and hatred as a response to humiliation.

Der Trihs

07-28-2006, 12:57 PM

Wow, so that by that analogy, the Occupiers of Germany and Japan were invaders who ultimately became liberators due to the processes they put in place, same thing happening in Iraq.No, Germany and Japan started the fight and they knew it; one by declaring war on us and the other by bombing. They knew that they were to blame. The Iraqis, however, know we are pure predators; we invaded for no honest reason, and have laid waste to their country out of pure selfishness and malice. They know that they are in the right, and we aren't. They know that we are evil, and surrendering to or cooperating with evil is both immoral and stupid.

07-28-2006, 01:36 PM

No, Germany and Japan started the fight and they knew it; one by declaring war on us and the other by bombing. They knew that they were to blame. The Iraqis, however, know we are pure predators; we invaded for no honest reason, and have laid waste to their country out of pure selfishness and malice. They know that they are in the right, and we aren't. They know that we are evil, and surrendering to or cooperating with evil is both immoral and stupid.

Dude...don't you ever get tired of this hyperbolic bullshit you are constantly spewing out in this forum? Even your characterization of Germany and Japan is simplistic at best wrt WHY they attacked us or declared war (though I give you points for what it must have cost you to not say the US was evil there too). These are complex issues and you attempt to put them into comic book like stories of good vs evil...especially wrt the whole Iraqi mess.

It, you know, gets a bit tiring after a while. Could you at least TRY and tone down the (stupid) rhetoric and hyperbole? Just as an experiment for a few days?

-XT

Voyager

07-28-2006, 02:38 PM

Wow, so that by that analogy, the Occupiers of Germany and Japan were invaders who ultimately became liberators due to the processes they put in place, same thing happening in Iraq.
A few minor differences. We occupied them in force. There were no civilian or military officials so fucking stupid that they thought we'd be greeted with flowers. We rebuilt the infrastructure (which was even in worse shape than Iraq's) with a fair degree of competence.

So a question - so you think the postwar Iraqi occupation, and prewar planning, was done competently?

ExTank

07-28-2006, 05:36 PM

And when your commander-in-chief indicates humiliation and torture is acceptable, you can hardly be blamed for taking him at his word.

Not that I'm defending that policy, but the President's position hardly condones wanton rape and murder of civilian non-combatants. If you think it does, please provide me the relevant quotes that led you to that conclusion, and I'll consider revising my position.

Voyager

07-28-2006, 06:18 PM

Not that I'm defending that policy, but the President's position hardly condones wanton rape and murder of civilian non-combatants. If you think it does, please provide me the relevant quotes that led you to that conclusion, and I'll consider revising my position.
Gee, I thought Askance was talking about torture. The scandal about the crimes is not that they were committed (crime happens all over) but that they were covered up by the chain of command. Now perhaps the president's claim of never making a mistake contributed to that. Certainly the lack of punishment for the chain of command that either knew or should have known about the torture, and the greater anger at the publication of the pictures as opposed to the acts themselves, might have contributed to some in the chain of command not wanting to make waves by exposing murder by their men.

The lack of concern about civilian casualties might give that impression also. When your boss gets away with something (and I mean lack of consequences, not rape or murder) you tend to think you can get away with stuff also.

Ryan_Liam

07-28-2006, 06:37 PM

A few minor differences. We occupied them in force. There were no civilian or military officials so fucking stupid that they thought we'd be greeted with flowers. We rebuilt the infrastructure (which was even in worse shape than Iraq's) with a fair degree of competence.

So a question - so you think the postwar Iraqi occupation, and prewar planning, was done competently?

Personally I didn't think so, however, I do think that if without the violence, it would of been far more successful.

Absolutely! Who can ever forget Berlin, with mobs of fanatical Lutherans attacking Catholics... Why, the parallels are uncanny!

No but plenty of Slavs and Jews were executed.

Ermm . . . No, Ryan, that was the idea,* but . . .

*That is, of the three main and conflicting ideas behind the invasion (see posts #32 and 34), that was the one they were willing to talk about publicly.

Yes I read the usual *Haliburton (tm)* tirade you again posted. Now I know energy supplies had a factor to play in it, however in my analysis, it seems to have played a very small role, overshadowed by the strategic and propaganda value it has which is

The USA invades Iraq thus;

It is situated right smack in the middle of the most strategically valuable real estate in the Middle East, which gives the US the ability to exert enormous influence within the Area than it currently does.

US helps bring about a Democratic government, which would undoubtebly require US protection in order to defend itself from Iran and Syria.

New Iraqi State establishes itself multiparty democratic state within the most strategically vital area of ME, influencing the states around it and their subject populations.

Well, that was the plan anyway, I hope it works out. However, even if the country splits apart and then all the seperate entities have democratic governments, then we've still attained most of the objectives and since most of the political parties are Islamist in nature, thats an added bonus and shows how a Western invasion brought about political parties they wanted to elect into office.

Ale

07-28-2006, 06:43 PM

Why didn´t the US use Afghanistan as a sample of how good democracy can be in the ME?
I, mean, it was already invaded and stuff, if the goal of the US would be to plant a shining beacon of democracy smack in the middle of the ME why start a new war for that?

Der Trihs

07-28-2006, 06:54 PM

These are complex issues and you attempt to put them into comic book like stories of good vs evil...especially wrt the whole Iraqi mess.It's not complex; the people in charge are too stupid/narrow minded/malignant to make them complex. We invaded a country that was no threat to us; we've killed, raped, and tortured tortured it's people, and done a great deal of property damage in the process. We are the bad guys. I call America evil because that's what evil people do. Am I not allowed to call our side the evil side until our troops eat the Iraqis after raping and torturing them ? Calling my attitude a "comic book" one ignores the fact that we are rather more a clear cut villain than quite a few comic book supervillains; no moral ambiguity here.

Why didn´t the US use Afghanistan as a sample of how good democracy can be in the ME?
I, mean, it was already invaded and stuff, if the goal of the US would be to plant a shining beacon of democracy smack in the middle of the ME why start a new war for that?Because neither Afghanistan nor democracy was the goal. America has always been the enemy of democracy outside it's own borders, and Afghanistan was simply an inconvenient stepping stone to the conquest of Iraq.

ExTank

07-28-2006, 09:32 PM

elucidator

07-28-2006, 10:23 PM

Because Afghanistan was a total success! That's why a substantial diversion of materiale was possible, because everything was utterly peachy.

We established a functional Green Zone in Kabul, with an entirely decent fellow as mayor of Kabul, with a mandate that extends as much as 10 km. on any given day. The agricultural efforts that are the mainstay of the Afghan economy are thriving, bumper crops are anticipated with glee. Many former bandits and warlords have been rehabilitated and found new careers as civil servants, ministers, and the like. Here's a picture of a school!...

Ryan_Liam

07-28-2006, 11:03 PM

Very good question. One, I have to admit, that's had me stumped since big talk started about going into Iraq.

Because Afghanistan was a total success! That's why a substantial diversion of materiale was possible, because everything was utterly peachy.

We established a functional Green Zone in Kabul, with an entirely decent fellow as mayor of Kabul, with a mandate that extends as much as 10 km. on any given day. The agricultural efforts that are the mainstay of the Afghan economy are thriving, bumper crops are anticipated with glee. Many former bandits and warlords have been rehabilitated and found new careers as civil servants, ministers, and the like. Here's a picture of a school!...

Because Afghanistan is not in the Middle East! It's in Central Asia! And to think that after 5 years compared to the 30-odd years that you'd dismantle all the warlords tribal militias and get rid of the Taliban whilst also reconstructing the country and then training its army and the drug farms viable or even sensible prediction. That conflict is very much a multi generational affair, whether the Coalition UN mandated presence (I cannot stress UN mandated enough, since some of these folks are considering even Afghanistan a lost cause, even though hundreds of thousands of women have gone into education and 3 million refugees returned back to Afghanistan) will make a success of it is too early to tell.

Ryan_Liam

07-28-2006, 11:05 PM

going after the drug farms*

BrainGlutton

07-29-2006, 02:38 PM

going after the drug farms*

What would you propose to do about those? At present, opium farming seems to be the biggest and most profitable economic activity Afghanistan has got. You can't just go in and burn the fields without offering something to replace them.

Ryan_Liam

07-29-2006, 03:25 PM

What would you propose to do about those? At present, opium farming seems to be the biggest and most profitable economic activity Afghanistan has got. You can't just go in and burn the fields without offering something to replace them.

Make it legal. By doing this, trade of the drug can be restricted. Or you can provide the farmers/villages with infrastructure which can provide a viable alternative.

BrainGlutton

07-29-2006, 03:49 PM

Make it legal. By doing this, trade of the drug can be restricted.

Legalizing opium in Afghanistan would not solve the problem -- the crop is grown for export, mainly to countries where it is not legal, which accounts for the fat margin of profit.

Or you can provide the farmers/villages with infrastructure which can provide a viable alternative.

Excellent idea -- but expensive.

Ryan_Liam

07-30-2006, 03:47 PM

Legalizing opium in Afghanistan would not solve the problem -- the crop is grown for export, mainly to countries where it is not legal, which accounts for the fat margin of profit.

Which is why alternative infrastructure investment is needed. They only grow it because it's the only business which brings in large amounts of money.

Excellent idea -- but expensive.

Well considering it's the only alternative, and 13 billion has been pledged to the Afghan Government, it seems the only option.

vibrotronica

07-30-2006, 04:14 PM

Afghanistan doesn't have any oil.

David Simmons

07-30-2006, 05:30 PM

Excellent idea -- but expensive.Not nearly as expensive as wars. Marshall and Truman, and the Congress of the day, recognized that leaving Germany and most of Europe in shambles after WWII would only lead to a lot of grief down the line. Hence, The Marshall Plan. Even the Soviet Union was invited in but Stalin's paranoia got in the way.

And this doesn't mean that I now buy the argument that "we established democracy in Germany so why not Iraq."

It simply does not follow that success in doing procedure A with country B means that the same thing will happen with country C.

Wallenstein

07-30-2006, 05:31 PM

Germany and Italy already had democracy before WW2. This had come about after centuries of gradually combining city-states and independent provinces, with common religion and language.
Certainly the system had been abused, but it had existed. People understood their voting rights.
There is not a parallel with the artificially created Middle East states, which had been dictatorships all their lives.
Germany and France had both had the crap blown out of them during 5 years of heavy warfare.

I imagine that in 5 years' time, were the Russians / Chinese* to enter Iraq and

1) throw the yanks out
2) try democracy again

the Iraqi people may well be much more receptive.

The US involvement in Iraq / Afhanistan is (IMO) part of a long-term strategoc goal to ensure a stable world ecomony in America's favour.

The real worry for the US is Inda, Pakistan and China - all of whom will challenge the US economically in the next 20-30 yrs. The US now have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, perfect for exterting control should either I, P or C flex their muscles.

*hypothetically, not like it's really gonna happen

BrainGlutton

07-30-2006, 08:01 PM

Afghanistan doesn't have any oil.

But it is well positioned for a natural gas pipeline (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline) from Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean.

Askance

07-30-2006, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by Askance
And when your commander-in-chief indicates humiliation and torture is acceptable, you can hardly be blamed for taking him at his word.Not that I'm defending that policy, but the President's position hardly condones wanton rape and murder of civilian non-combatants. If you think it does, please provide me the relevant quotes that led you to that conclusion, and I'll consider revising my position.It didn't condone it but, until made public it didn't condemn it either. There was definitely a "whatever it takes" mentality to the whole enterprise, fed by the explicit American Exceptionalist beliefs this administration has adhered to from the start.

Organisational culture filters down from the top. If the rules do not apply to Them Up Top, they don't apply to Us Down Here either. Explicitly abnegating the Geneva Convention where convenient, setting up Camp X-ray so as to deliberately be outside your own and international jurisdiction, and extensive use of rendition to outsource your torture, all send the same message to the troops. I guarantee that each and every one of those Abu Graib people thought they were doing what their ultimate bosses wanted.

BrainGlutton

07-30-2006, 11:19 PM

The US involvement in Iraq / Afhanistan is (IMO) part of a long-term strategoc goal to ensure a stable world ecomony in America's favour.

Very ill-considered, then.

The real worry for the US is Inda, Pakistan and China - all of whom will challenge the US economically in the next 20-30 yrs. The US now have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, perfect for exterting control should either I, P or C flex their muscles.

Only if the U.S. still has U.S. troops there 20-30 years from now. They might be planning for that but I don't think it's gonna happen. We will live to see our "enduring bases" in Iraq either handed over to an Iraqi government, or overrun by Iraqi insurgents.

monavis

07-31-2006, 06:19 AM

The biggest mistake Bush made was not listening to his father and why he didn't go into Baghdad in the Gulf war, he was warned that was is going on now would happen. But Wolfawitz,Chaney, and Rumpsfeld wanted to go into Baghdad then, and didn't approve of the older Bush's not going, so they use Dubya as a puppet, and used the war on terror as an excuse, instead of concetrating on getting Afghanistan and Bib Laden's group taken care of first. There would have been plenty of time to take care of Iraq should it have become a problem and the rest of the world would more likely have helped; as it sees the US now they think of us as a bully and rather than using us as a hope for a better life see us as the bully on the block imposing it's ideas on them.

Monavis

Ryan_Liam

07-31-2006, 08:35 AM

We will live to see our "enduring bases" in Iraq either handed over to an Iraqi government, or overrun by Iraqi insurgents.

Sorry but I see the premise of Iraqi insurgents overrunning 'Enduring bases' quite simply laughable.

Only if the U.S. still has U.S. troops there 20-30 years from now. They might be planning for that but I don't think it's gonna happen.

Well I do, they don't have to be in the amount that they have now, and they don't have to be on active duty.

BrainGlutton

07-31-2006, 08:39 AM

Sorry but I see the premise of Iraqi insurgents overrunning 'Enduring bases' quite simply laughable.

Remember the Saigon Embassy? And don't forget, by that time the insurgents might be backed up by a new Iraqi government -- or by the Iranians.

Well I do, they don't have to be in the amount that they have now, and they don't have to be on active duty.

Of course they have to be on active duty. Every soldier at every U.S. base in Western Europe or Japan or anywhere in the world is on active duty.

Der Trihs

07-31-2006, 09:54 AM

Remember the Saigon Embassy? And don't forget, by that time the insurgents might be backed up by a new Iraqi government -- or by the Iranians.Or the "insurgents" might be the Iraqi government by then.

Beware of Doug

07-31-2006, 10:13 AM

...maybe everything is going according to plan.

WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

ExTank

07-31-2006, 04:43 PM

It didn't condone it but, until made public it didn't condemn it either. There was definitely a "whatever it takes" mentality to the whole enterprise, fed by the explicit American Exceptionalist beliefs this administration has adhered to from the start.

Organisational culture filters down from the top. If the rules do not apply to Them Up Top, they don't apply to Us Down Here either. Explicitly abnegating the Geneva Convention where convenient, setting up Camp X-ray so as to deliberately be outside your own and international jurisdiction, and extensive use of rendition to outsource your torture, all send the same message to the troops. I guarantee that each and every one of those Abu Graib people thought they were doing what their ultimate bosses wanted.

I would be hard pressed to argue against anything you've said, but I have a few questions: how does this relate to straight up criminality of rape/homicide? Are you trying to say that the perpetrators thought they were conducting ad hoc field interrogation? Or somehow thought the higher-up's nudge-nudge-wing-wink attitude towards "interrogation techniques" gave them carte blanche to act like the Mongol hordes?

glee

07-31-2006, 05:09 PM

Germany and France had both had the crap blown out of them during 5 years of heavy warfare.

I imagine that in 5 years' time, were the Russians / Chinese* to enter Iraq and

1) throw the yanks out
2) try democracy again

the Iraqi people may well be much more receptive.

The US involvement in Iraq / Afhanistan is (IMO) part of a long-term strategoc goal to ensure a stable world ecomony in America's favour.

The real worry for the US is Inda, Pakistan and China - all of whom will challenge the US economically in the next 20-30 yrs. The US now have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, perfect for exterting control should either I, P or C flex their muscles.

*hypothetically, not like it's really gonna happen

Sorry, I don't agree. My point was that democracy was restored in Germany and Italy.
Iraq has lost two wars recently - its economy is certainly weaker than either Germany or Italy after WW2 (even allowing for oil revenues).

The Chinese don't bring democracy. See Tibet.

The invasion of Afghanistan was to capture Osama Bin Laden. Remember him? That's now been abandoned, and the Taliban now control more of Afghanistan than the US. Heroin production is back up to massive levels.

Wars, especially those which are seen as unjust, don't ensure a stable World economy. Once you factor in the increased terrorism, there certainly is no reason to hope for profits.

Since the US can't even control a bunch of tribesman in Afghanistan (the Russians couldn't either and they sent in far more troops), it's ludicrous to assume those troops will be able to stop the Chinese army.

Der Trihs

07-31-2006, 05:34 PM

I would be hard pressed to argue against anything you've said, but I have a few questions: how does this relate to straight up criminality of rape/homicide? Are you trying to say that the perpetrators thought they were conducting ad hoc field interrogation?Of course; we've been encouraging that sort of thing for decades, like with the "School of the Americas". Rape as an interrogation technique, and so on.

BrainGlutton

07-31-2006, 08:23 PM

Of course; we've been encouraging that sort of thing for decades, like with the "School of the Americas". Rape as an interrogation technique, and so on.

But our troops didn't go to that school. (Did they?)

07-31-2006, 08:40 PM

Of course; we've been encouraging that sort of thing for decades, like with the "School of the Americas". Rape as an interrogation technique, and so on.

Do you have a cite for this...or is this yet another example of you pulling bullshit out your ass?

I will await with bated breath...

-XT

elucidator

07-31-2006, 08:56 PM

But our troops didn't go to that school. (Did they?)

No. Our troops taught at that school. Welcome to Cold Comfort Farm.

BrainGlutton

07-31-2006, 09:06 PM

Do you have a cite for this...or is this yet another example of you pulling bullshit out your ass?

Here's one. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_manuals) Nothing about rape, but the stuff that's been declassified is still pretty hair-turning.

Der Trihs

07-31-2006, 09:24 PM

Do you have a cite for this...or is this yet another example of you pulling bullshit out your ass?

I will await with bated breath...

-XTAm I the only one who bothers to use google ? Google ! (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec99/sotamericas_9-21.html)

REV. ROY BOURGEOIS, School of Americas Critic: We have discovered-- actually documented-- not a few bad apples who have come out of this school, but over... right now, over 500 soldiers who have been involved in massacres, torture, rape, the disappearing of many people in their countries. It's hardly something new, or all that obscure. Just google "School of the Americas" "Rape" and you'll get all the other cites you like.

AFAIKT, it's not that I "pull bullshit out my ass"; it's that you live in a bubble where you've never heard anything you disagree with.

Askance

07-31-2006, 09:28 PM

I would be hard pressed to argue against anything you've said, but I have a few questions: how does this relate to straight up criminality of rape/homicide? Are you trying to say that the perpetrators thought they were conducting ad hoc field interrogation? Or somehow thought the higher-up's nudge-nudge-wink-wink attitude towards "interrogation techniques" gave them carte blanche to act like the Mongol hordes?Basically the latter, although I would have said they thought they had carte blanche, rather than actually having it.

07-31-2006, 09:41 PM

Here's one. Nothing about rape,

Yeah, I noticed that too. I noticed something else also (from the first line of the cite):

The Torture manuals was a nickname for seven training manuals which had excerpts declassified to the public on September 20, 1996 by the Pentagon.

These manuals were prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). The manuals were also distributed by Special Forces Mobile Training teams to military personnel and intelligence schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. [1]

I suppose its possible that the new manuals have similar stuff in it...but I tend to doubt it after a congressional hearing on the subject.

While appalling and repellent (to me), I have to say that nothing in there seems TOO over the top (I only skimmed the cite though...maybe I missed the really hair raising stuff).

The manuals advise that torture techniques can backfire and that the threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself. The manuals describe coercive techniques to be used "to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist." These techniques include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion, extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disrupting routines, solitary confinement, threats of pain, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or placebos. [3] [4]

After all, at least in theory the folks who we (or our allies) would be dealing with aren't exactly happy go lucky kind of guys. And of course nothing on teaching rape techniques...

It's hardly something new, or all that obscure. Just google "School of the Americas" "Rape" and you'll get all the other cites you like.

Um, no. Thats YOUR job, as its YOUR bullshit assertion. BTW, I read through your 'cite'. Even if I swallow it whole and take it at face value, no where in there does it say that rape techniques are taught at this school. So...push on my man. Lets see a credible cite that rape is taught there. Oh...and it would be nice if what you cited wasn't pure speculation but had some facts in it.

AFAIKT, it's not that I "pull bullshit out my ass"; it's that you live in a bubble where you've never heard anything you disagree with.

AFAICT you have a wide eyed, knee jerk acceptance of any anti-America propaganda that comes your way. What ever critical skills you may (or may not) possess seem to desert you if the subject is the US...well, the US being evil, blah blah blah.

-XT

BrainGlutton

07-31-2006, 09:59 PM

While appalling and repellent (to me), I have to say that nothing in there seems TOO over the top (I only skimmed the cite though...maybe I missed the really hair raising stuff).

You might want to look at at this:

Editing of 1983 CIA manual

In 1985 a page advising against using coercive techniques was inserted at the front of KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. Handwritten changes were also introduced haphazardly into the text. For example, "While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use them," has been altered to, "While we deplore the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them so that you may avoid them." (p. A-2) But the entire chapter on coercive techniques is still provided with some items crossed out.[6]

Sounds kinda CYA SOP.

Least Original User Name Ever

08-03-2006, 11:28 AM

We didnt get it wrong. The intelligence agencies are getting unfairly blasted.Everything Colin Powell said was disproved before he said it. The aluminim tubes were a joke. The mobile labs were cartoons and didnt exist. The yellowcake was disproved and they lied. The weapons of mass destruction were disproven by the inspectors. The nuclear program was disproved. it was long before the decision to go to war had been ratified. The administration made a decision to ignore the data and go to war.

BrainGlutton

08-03-2006, 12:10 PM

We didnt get it wrong. . . . The administration made a decision to ignore the data and go to war.

I know, I know. But the question under debate here is not whether the invasion was justified, or a good idea, in the first place, but why we have bungled the occupation so badly.

Voyager

08-03-2006, 01:19 PM

I know, I know. But the question under debate here is not whether the invasion was justified, or a good idea, in the first place, but why we have bungled the occupation so badly.
They do kind of go together. The obstacles to invading included both the lack of justification for the invasion and the consequences of invading. The Administration ignored both. Throw in Rumsfeld's do it on the cheap strategy and you get the mess we see today.

Malienation

08-03-2006, 02:02 PM

Wow, in spite of the heat I still feel a nasty draft coming...

BrainGlutton

08-03-2006, 02:24 PM

Wow, in spite of the heat I still feel a nasty draft coming...

Not unless W decides to go to war with Iran or Syria.

Squink

08-03-2006, 03:00 PM

Not unless W decides to go to war with Iran or Syria.
Michael Ledeen Answers the OP: (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2RlNjNjZWNlOTQzNTVjMTRjMWY4MzRkMDQzYmY5ZjM=)
The greatest failure of our leaders, with rare exceptions, is their refusal to see the war plain, which means Iran and Syria (might as well call them “Syran,” since they operate in tandem, with Tehran pushing most of the buttons). It was never possible to “win in Iraq” so long as we insisted on fighting in Iraq alone. You can not win a regional war by playing defense in one country. It was, and remains, a sucker’s game. Syran pays no price at all for killing our kids and our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Gaza and Lebanon/Israel.

sqweels

08-03-2006, 04:08 PM

We have lost the War on Terror. To ourselves.

We have seen the enemy in the War on Terror and he is BUSh.

Squink

08-03-2006, 05:04 PM

Another public take on the OP:
Bonner (R-Ala) suggests U.S. mission in Iraq could fail (http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/115451055632571.xml&coll=3) "We may look back and say we gave it our best shot and we did everything we could do to make it a success. And at the end of the day we could not make people accept the gift of freedom."In other words, It's all the Iraqi's fault.

BrainGlutton

08-03-2006, 08:01 PM

Another public take on the OP:
Bonner (R-Ala) suggests U.S. mission in Iraq could fail (http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/115451055632571.xml&coll=3) In other words, It's all the Iraqi's fault.

Someone needs to explain to Congressman Bonner that freedom and democracy are not the same thing.

Bob55

08-04-2006, 03:16 AM

We never should expected a country that was a false construct to survive intact. You have 3 groups that despise each other, the only way to hold it together was through a dictatorship.

I actually believe we're doing better than is presented in Iraq (from my own talks with marines in my family who have been there), but have to say that this is right on the money. Iraq is a bunch of tribal warlords, and Sadam was the biggest and baddest of all warlords who ruled everyone. Likely it would be best for Iraq just to break apart now.

But that being said I have to have faith that deep down everyone desires to be free, and hope that these people can overthrow their dictatorial ways and form some sort of free government.

Least Original User Name Ever

08-04-2006, 03:06 PM

There was in my estimation a time to make it right. First, I believe going there was a stupid idea and grounded in a pack of lies. But,once the ugly deed was done we had a clean chance.
If we had stopped the looting and saved the museums it would have made the Iraqis feel safer. Then if we would have fixed the electricity ,gas and water the people would have had to admire our interest in making their lives better. To this day the electricity is not turned on for significant periods. I bekieve it cpuld have been done if the desire was there. Bloggers from Iraq that I have read,are unanimous in the disghust for us not fixing the infrastructure. Summer in Baghdad without AC can be brutal. Remarks like they put a man on the moon but cant fix the electricity abound. None of them believe the will was there. If we had taken care of business we may have created allies ,at least people willing to wait and see. But for most of them the time is way past.

slaphead

08-06-2006, 08:05 AM

They do kind of go together. The obstacles to invading included both the lack of justification for the invasion and the consequences of invading. The Administration ignored both. Throw in Rumsfeld's do it on the cheap strategy and you get the mess we see today.
My expectation was that the first trucks into Basra/Baghdad after the shooting stopped would have been dumper trucks filled with MREs, candy and first aid kits, with GI's flinging them over the side using snow shovels. Shortly followed by a lengthy convoy of 18-wheelers loaded down with air conditioners, water filters, lengths of plumbing, hand tools, and a few billion in small change - for the purpose of paying any able-bodied male $5 per day to help piece the country together. After all, surely EVERYONE had figured out that buying cooperation was cheaper than trying to coerce it? Guess not.
:smack:

I vividly remember watching the BBC reports from Basra - a TV squad had gotten into the warehouses where the UN food aid was stored and started off with clips like "the fighting is still ongoing in the city, but any moment now we expect to see coalition forces arriving to secure these crucial warehouses, which contain virtually all the food in the city and will be vital to the occupation. Shots of Our Boys Being Heroic real soon now"
A day or so later the reports were "well, for some reason the troops still haven't shown up here, but now looters are beginning to plunder the food. Someone had better show up soon to guard all this stuff, otherwise the city will have no food and that's going to make the coalition pretty unpopular".
Another few days and the reporter was basically saying "Everything's been picked bare by looters, still no troops here, what the hell are these idiots playing at?".
:smack:

It was at that point I realised that someone somewhere in the chain of command was a total bloody numpty. It wasn't long before I realised it was the people at the top.
Disbanding the army? WTF? It would have been better to give them all shovels, pay half of them to dig holes in the desert and the other half to fill them in, at $10 per day. Would certainly have been a damn sight cheaper than fighting them.

RickJay

08-06-2006, 08:51 AM

My expectation was that the first trucks into Basra/Baghdad after the shooting stopped would have been dumper trucks filled with MREs, candy and first aid kits, with GI's flinging them over the side using snow shovels. Shortly followed by a lengthy convoy of 18-wheelers loaded down with air conditioners, water filters, lengths of plumbing, hand tools, and a few billion in small change - for the purpose of paying any able-bodied male $5 per day to help piece the country together. After all, surely EVERYONE had figured out that buying cooperation was cheaper than trying to coerce it? Guess not.

But they did do that sort of thing - maybe not literally the way you descibe, but certainly the U.S. has been pouring the aid in. Iraqis are human beings, not dogs; their loyalty cannot be bought with treats.

Look, the U.S. has killed what, 10,000 civilians? More? Let's put ourselves in their position. What would YOU do if a foreign power invaded your country and killed your neighbours? Your best friend? What if they killed your aunt? Your mother? What if they killed your child? Could you then be bought off with MREs and water filters?

If a foreign power invaded my country and killed a member of my family I would swear an oath of eternal revenge that no amount of blood would ever repay.

I'm sure you know from real life experience that one bad deed outweighs a hundred good ones in the eye of most folks. Every time an Iraqi hears or reads about a raping, a murder, someone being tortured, an airstrike that kills a whole family, that's going to harden their hearts against anything GOOD the Americans do. Invasion and occupation is not a friendly act and you ain't gonna fool anyone otherwise.
w

Paul in Qatar

08-06-2006, 09:34 AM

I wonder if this would have worked.....

What if after the first month of occupation we gave each Iraqi US$500? Tell them it is half of the money earned by the export of oil. Then we do that each month for a year. Sometimes the amount is less if the oil pipelines are attacked.

Then we leave. God help the Iraq politician who wanted to go back to the old way of doing things.

slaphead

08-07-2006, 05:49 AM

But they did do that sort of thing - maybe not literally the way you descibe, but certainly the U.S. has been pouring the aid in. Iraqis are human beings, not dogs; their loyalty cannot be bought with treats.

Not really. It has been pissing away billions on foreign contractors and allowing local VIPs to squirrel away fortunes. It has delivered very little in terms of additional income and quality of life to orderinary iraqis.
And loyalty can't be bought - but make sure the bulk of the population benefit from the occupation, and they will be much more likely to tolerate it.

The trouble didn't really start until it became obvious that the US:

Had no interest in maintaining law and order
Were not going to deliver electricity, running water, medical care, or anything else for the population
Threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Baathists out of work

Don't you remember the footage of soldiers rioting after the army was disbanded, the fatal mob scenes outside coalition bases when there were roumors that labourers were being hired? They looked to be pretty keen on earning a days wage from the coalition back then.

Oh yeah - and one other classic :smack:. The coalition 'liberators' moving into Saddam's palaces. Nice. Excellent message that sent out.

Merijeek

08-07-2006, 08:19 AM

RickJay

08-07-2006, 09:44 AM

Not really. It has been pissing away billions on foreign contractors and allowing local VIPs to squirrel away fortunes. It has delivered very little in terms of additional income and quality of life to orderinary iraqis.
And loyalty can't be bought - but make sure the bulk of the population benefit from the occupation, and they will be much more likely to tolerate it.
Oh, I'm sure the U.S. has pissed a lot of money away on corruption and payback; I mean, it's the government, of course they've wasted money. But yes, they have put a lot of effort into winning hearts and minds.

You cannot repay someone for killing their relatives by giving them stuff.

Oh, I agree this could have been handled better, especially the idiotic "De-Ba'athization" program dedicated to rooting out an ideology that doesn't really exist anyway. But a resistance was inevitable all the same.

gonzomax

08-07-2006, 12:52 PM

In one incident 9 billion came up missing. It was the innefficient government auditors that have found out the financial shinnanigans that the corporations are into. They are looting the money and not providing the services. Bechtel is finally getting rapped for their theft . There has been reports of unclean drinking water given to our troops. Many meals charged for that werent served. Vehicles left for loss with flat tires. We have not fixed the electric and water after 3 years. We have not made the streets safe or supplied jobs. Promised hospitals jhave not been provided long after promised yet the entire budget is gone. It is many things plus we went in as America the efficient can do country. They actually thought we would fix things up in a short time.

Merijeek

08-07-2006, 05:51 PM

In one incident 9 billion came up missing. It was the innefficient government auditors that have found out the financial shinnanigans that the corporations are into. They are looting the money and not providing the services. Bechtel is finally getting rapped for their theft . There has been reports of unclean drinking water given to our troops. Many meals charged for that werent served. Vehicles left for loss with flat tires. We have not fixed the electric and water after 3 years. We have not made the streets safe or supplied jobs. Promised hospitals jhave not been provided long after promised yet the entire budget is gone.

Exactly.

Ungrateful bunch of little bastards, aren't they?

-Joe

Couch Regent

08-07-2006, 11:48 PM

You folks do yourselves no credit. The answers were provided in advance of the disaster, sometime in late winter or early spring of 2003 in a thread here in Great Debates. It was entitled "The Middle East Prediction Thread" or something similar.

In that thread, readers of the SDMB were challenged to predict the outcome of the war that nobody was bothering to predict would happen or not. They were also challenged to guess what Iraq would look like five years in the future, which could provide additional entertainment.

If one were to dig that thread up and post the link to it here, I think that you will find that collectively, in that single thread, the readers of the SDMB correctly identified every major problem which has since occurred in Iraq, or came remarkably close.

One unusually modest participant in this very thread apparently still fails to heap scorn on the rest of you for failing to heed his elucidations. That person may have been so bold as to have offered his guess in that prediction thread. If not, a quick survey of his contemporaneous observations shows that one of you, at least, guessed exactly what was going to happen, and how, and when. Many of the rest of you didn't do so bad, either.

And then there are some of you who should remove yourselves from the gene pool for being such gullible idiots--or worse, shills. You know exactly who you are.

The short answer, of course, is that selling our national soul to the devil has reaped its just rewards. The shorter answer is that the Bush Administration should have listened to elucidator.