Well shit, even Babe Ruth would be happy to hit .333 :rolleyes:
"Militarily, we succeeded in Vietnam. We won every engagement we were involved in out there. "
William Westmoreland
I’m in this camp.
And also, don’t forget that the US isn’t the only country fighting in Afghanistan. This is a UN-sanctioned mission. The majority of Afghans do, in fact, want us (the coalition) there. I have spoken to Afghans in Canada. They are appreciative of our efforts.
Your claim was that they “wrote a letter to Clinton suggesting he invade Iraq to secure its resources for the US.” But that wasn’t what the letter said.
It also didn’t say to invade for the sake of specifically US interests. Hell, regime change includes assassination in any case, so invasion wasn’t even a necessary part of the equation.
No, it doesn’t.
Because as pointed out, even when we could have taken from Iraq we didn’t.
Not to mention that the letter you referenced, the one that started this tangent, has nothing at all to conquering Iraq for its resources.
I am only ignoring your wild speculation that the only reason the US’s dastardly plans to steal Iraqi oil were foiled because the US decided to transfer power to a native Iraqi government and because the insurgency managed to at least twice temporarily stop the export (not the production) of oil for a period of about a week. If the US was primarily (and only) concerned about looting Iraqi oil, there is no reason why it would take a decade or more to actually do so. Or that the US would allow and foster the creation of one of the key impediments for this plan (an Iraqi government). Please address this point with something other than speculation.
Not complicated and perfectly well documented.
The NeoCons’ had no grasp whatsoever of the post-invasion landscape and assumed Iraqi would rush to grasp the free market opportunities, opportunities that had been denied them previously and which they all longed for.
It went pear-shaped immediately and the rest is all about desperately recalibrating to situations increasingly out of the control of the occupying forces.
I’ve already pointed out the reasons why, you are simply choosing to ignore them, along with distorting what I have been saying.
As for why they fostered a government that was willing to oppose them, it appears to be yet another example of their utter incompetence; the Bushies couldn’t even set up a proper puppet government.
Actually, is it not that the Iraqi US puppet Govt decided to honour previous contracts of its Oil to Russia that pst the USA off so greatly?
Seems to me, cant be pretending to ‘offer’ ( sic) democracy on one hand then totally acting like a dictator on the other.
Well, you can pretend the United States occupied the Oil Ministry building and had the Iraq Petroleum Law drafted in order to facilitate the search for WMD’s if you like, but I suspect more obvious motives. Which lie would you prefer I believe, the one about WMD’s or the one about fighting Al Qaeda over there so you don’t have to deal with the consequences of war over here or the one about how Iraq was free?
As pointed out, no one said their plan was a good one. Maybe they counted on being greeted as liberators by a native workforce happy to work for the US. Maybe they thought the world would be on their side. Why guess about what they did not do when what they did do was plain to see?
I see no reason to pretend the authors are honest about their motives in light of their actions five years later. If Rumsfeld can defend looting and burning as a sign of freedom with a straight face, for instance, he can say anything. And we all know what a bastion of integrity William Kristol is, right?
What have I distorted? You have completely sidestepped the question by saying that the US planned to be in Iraq for decades and therefore did not plan on seizing oil fields or oil supplies until much further down the road for some reason. It’s everything after “therefore” in the previous sentence that you have supplied zero facts to support. Thus, it’s just speculation, and it’s speculation that doesn’t even make sense since power abhors a vacuum and the precise time when the US would have had the perfect opportunity to seize oil fields and oil supplies is when no one or thing could stop them. Not a decade or more down the road when things, according to the US line of thinking at the time, would have completely calmed down.
This doesn’t make sense. The US had an intricate plan to invade Iraq, topple its dictator and government, seize Iraq’s oil fields as part of a plan to stay in Iraq for decades, yet at the same time completely voluntarily set up an interim Iraqi government and helped schedule elections for early 2005 that guaranteed the US would not have free and unlimited reign? Your answer to things that do not fit your pre-conceived narrative seem to be either the US had a master conspiracy theory or that the US was incompetent, which caused the conspiracy to fail. This is circular logic.
Actions which included, btw, having the invasion troops bypass and ignore virtually every site where their “intelligence” said the WMD’s that they’d used as a pretext for their war were located, going straight for the oil facilities instead, after claiming prior to it that the war and reconstruction would be entirely paid for revenues from seized oil.
But one can believe whatever lies one wants to, however transparent; that’s your right - as long as one accepts responsibility for the consequences.
what concerns me most is reports just starting to circulate of US Forward Bases, in Afghanistan, that have zilch to do with the destabalisation and control of preparing for the eventual war with Iran, then Russia,
Sorry, should read.
what concerns me most is reports just starting to circulate of US Forward Bases, in Afghanistan, that have zilch to do with the destabalisation and control of Afghanistan,
instead are preparing for the eventual war with Iran, then Russia,
If you’re going to refer to a report or article, link to it. But you don’t seem to know what forward operating bases are. They are not staging grounds for massive invasions. They are relatively small (and often times in Afghanistan, very crude) bases that serve as a small fort and depot far from any primary base or city that allows forces stationed there to conduct local operations.
Camus, two documents to illustrate the point:
Project for the New American Century’s report, Rebuilding America’s Defenses
Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia, Naomi Klein
its early days yet,
time will tell, meanwhiles.
try this
more specifically this.
http://rt.com/Best_Videos/2010-07-06/us-bases-war-russia.html
Two very dated and therefore irrelevant articles.
This is the same guy that advocated invading Iraq with 50,000 soldiers – yes, one-third of what we actually sent in, which was far below what was called for. He then criticized the conduct of the war, saying that the generals in charge of it were trying to pin the blame on poor ol’ Don Rumsfeld. Link.
Believe this guy at your own risk.
Okay, again. What are the consequences if we just packed up and came home? All hell breaks loose how?
He explains how current officers are under political pressure. i am sure you have noticed military brass are much more honest when they retire. That is unless they work for a defense contractor, then they sell out their souls.