200 Billion for blowing them up, versus 200 Million to buy them off?

Great Debates
21

Are you sure you’re interpreting the Times article correctly? If I’m intepreting your OP correctly, you seem to think we could have bribed the army * prior * to the war. The impression I get from the Times article is that paying the Iraqi Army * after the fall of Baghdad * is the issue in question.

Which would possibly have saved much trouble and quite a bit of money, but not the 200 billion of the title. Funds for reconstruction and occupation would still have been needed. And it would have raised many an issue of how to control that army.

Before the fall of Baghdad, it’s not like the Iraqi government was running short of cash with which to counter any attempted bribery of the armed forces (not to mention sterner methods). Remember that US troops were finding hundreds of millions of dollars essentially lying around the Baghdad suburbs in the month after the war (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm).
(If you think the Iraqis could have been bought off for $200,000,000, then you’re not really giving them much credit. There are 25,000,000 Iraqis, more or less. Think they’d sell out their country for $8 each?)

22

First of all let me say this. We are American’s. We do not purchase foreign governments. And Sadaam’s government was never for sale. On NBC or ABC the other night they did a story on Sadaam’s French lawyer. They reported that Sadaam is worth tens of billions. How could we possibly purchase the government for a mere 200 million? Impossible.

If indeed the Iraqi government was for sale we would not have purchased it. This is America not France. We don’t run from our enemies and we don’t try to buy them off. If we purchased the Iraqi government who would run it? Wouldn’t we have to have an enormous “security force” over there anyway? Or would the Iraqis be happy we bought them out?

This argument is ridiculous. It holds no merit.

Lastly, I would like to say I am 100% against the war in Iraq. Anyone who actually believes we could have purchased the government of Iraq is ignorant.

23

(alas for imprecision, once more the evil outcome of my bad habits…)

I thought the cite set the context for the “purchase” as post invasion.
The dollar cost comparison was informed by rhetorical rather than balance sheet considerations. it is meant to relfect the ultimate OVERAGE that will result from the strategic blunder.

ie, because of the looting period that is laid directly at our door, we had, within three weeks of “winning” the war, made 95% more difficult our success vis-a-vis the stated goals of our enterprise.

The ancillary tactical catastrophe that flowed from providing the ex security apparatus free time to while away in idle chatter and the fabrication of improvised explosive devices (they knowing where the old armament stockpiles are, and all…) is really more of a blip. By the time the copper wire had been stripped from the government buildings, the cost of Iraqi “reconstruction” was up by an order of magnitude (or two!).

The longterm political catastrophe, ie, the strategic damage, was that the iraqis came to understand that their personal security was not high on our list of priorities. This is FATAL to a successful impersonation of Wyatt Earp

 There's a new sheriff in town folks.  This announcement will be followed by three weeks of unrestrained rape, pillage, looting, burning, and score-settling.

The sheriff’s complaint office will be available when personnel are free to provide the quality service that this sheriff is committed to…

The “cost” of not keeping the security people in place for at least the first critical months of transition (hence, three months) is that the whole fuckin’ enterprise goes down the tubes.

In other words, bottom line, the proposition is that if Bandar’s advice were followed, the scenario comes closer to the Wolfowitz Fantasy. So by this time, things would have been fundamentally different than as they are today .

That’s why it’s a strategic blunder. A strategic blunder means you pay ten times as much to fail as you would have paid to succeed.

A tactical blunder means you pay more to succeed, but you still succeed.

24

How about–Sadaam government being forced to pay 20 million per month for weapons inspection. Then the price doubles every two months.

25

You’re joking, right? We flew in half of the exiled militias and installed them in the IGC. The only mistake we made was not buying off al Sadr. Half of those militias are now rampaging across Iraq raping and pillaging and doing their milita thing. The police are a joke, there is no army that will do anything. Iraq is controlled by militias. We would have been better off buying the Iraqi military - they certainly didn’t put up a fight when we invaded, which suggests that they could have largely been bribed.

This leads to the problem of being blatantly obvious reinstalling thugs, but we’re doing that anyway, only in a more covert manner. Anyone who doens’t see long term ill effects from this is blind.

26

It is worth noting that since this posting, we have “solved” tghe falluja problem by putting in charge a former REPUBLICAN GUARD GENERAL!!!

Rembember back (before the Fedeyeen Saddam became the nightmare-of-the-week) when the RG was the “hard core inner circle yada yada”?

This would not be a “flip-flop”, would it? Because I wouldn’t want a president whp changed his mind because he got new information.