Iraq has made us less safe, end of story

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Bob Woodward has a new book coming out on Bush and Iraq, he'll be on 60 Minutes Sunday

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/28/60minutes/main2047607.shtml

"President Bush is absolutely certain that he has the U.S. and Iraq on the right course, says Woodward. So certain is the president on this matter, Woodward says, that when Mr. Bush had key Republicans to the White House to discuss Iraq, he told them, "I will not withdraw, even if Laura and Barney are the only ones supporting me."

Barney? :rolleyes: I bet even Barney can see what a messy mistake Iraq has become.
 
Irvine511 said:
no one is saying it's new, we're saying it's getting worse because of American policies in the Middle East.
And I disagree that it's getting worse because of our policies. Which ones - I assume you mean Iraq here. I disagree because Islamic Jihad was inevitable, and we all knew that on 9/11.


Irvine511 said:
[q]However, when Al Qaida declared a Jihad - translated "struggle" in Arabic (ahem, Mein Kampf, anyone?) against the United States, the warriors packed up from both sides. Americans joined the military with a boost of patriotism that motivated them to fight for their nation's survival. Jihadists spewed out anti-Western hatred in order to recruit more terrorists.[/q]

is this a novel you're writing? i don't understand what you're talking about here at all.
Mein Kampf - translation is "My Struggle."
Jihad - translation is "Struggle."

Hatemongers attract an audience as long as they play the victim.

Irvine511 said:
[q]...we disagree on how to ADDRESS this threat...
Apparently the Democratic Party disagrees with itself too. They haven't made it clear on what needs to be done in order to win. All they've done is bash the president and use death tolls to their advantage. They've proposed immediate withdrawl/surrender. For this, they deserve to be criticized.

Irvine511 said:
[firstly, you are probably 40,000x more likely to die in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist, so let's not go around overestimating our own importance.
Tell that to those who you knew that died on 9/11.

Irvine511 said:
the REAL threat we face is not the jihadist, but WHAT THE JIHADIST CAN FORCE US TO DO UNTO OURSELVES THROUGH THE PERCEPTION OF THREAT AND THE FEAR IT CAUSES.
How can you say this!? How can you go on believing that we're taking Islamic Jihad too seriously?
 
:slant:

I'd like to think we can get beyond these nonstarter, "terrorist-loving librul/dick-swinging warmonger" jabs, but if not, this discussion can't continue.

Personally, I'd like to see an explanation of how the war in Iraq has made us safer, and also what some better strategies for fighting terrorism (both domestically and internationally) than the Bush Administration's might look like. Something other than soundbites and finger-pointing.
 
i think great starting off point would be for posters to directly connect their points using logic and reasoning to the quotations they are responding to.
 
Macfistowannabe said:
It influenced Capitol Hill Democrats to turn against Hubert Humphrey - who also pledged to win the war honorably, and it gave Lyndon Johnson all the more reason to keep the troops in guerilla warfare rather than bombing military targets. Once the Watergate Scandal broke out, the Democrats used it as an excuse to surrender in Vietnam and turn their backs on a faithful Ally - South Vietnam. As a result, we got Khmer Rogue.

So really, it depends on whether or not Pol Pot's massive slayings would be considered "wrong."

The ambiguities of the Cold War containment policy included not doing anything to provoke direct confrontation with the Soviets and China...so it was truly an unavoidable rock and hard place between military leaders telling the politicians what needs to be done to win and everyone in Washington jockeying for position.

Sound familiar?

Macfistowannabe said:
History is repeating itself in the sense that we don't have the balls to defend ourselves. What history could tell you from WWI (Vote for Woodrow Wilson, he kept us out of war!) and WWII (the naive public who believed that WWI was a hoax) is that we should have stopped the Nazis in the 1930s, rather than waiting until 1941 to get involved. Nearly 300,000 US soldiers lost their lives in that war, in case you like death tolls.

Ohhhh I loooove death tolls :|

Does the 300,000 include those who died after the US purposely baited Japan to attack Pearl Harbour?
 
20060929RZ1AP-DemsFairyTale.jpg
 
[q]Military Officials Add to U.S. Criticism of Iraq’s Government
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 — Senior American military officials are warning that time is growing short for Iraq to root out militias inside and outside the government and purge ministries of corrupt officials who are diverting large sums of money to their own political parties.

“We are now at a time when we have a little bit of influence there,” a senior military official said. Referring to the problem of militias, he added, “There is going to come a time when I would argue we are going to have to force this issue.”

The official said political parties who were plundering ministries were squandering chances to make progress that could reduce sectarian violence.

“I can tell you in every single ministry how they are using that ministry to fill the coffers of the political parties,” the official said. “They are doing that because that is exactly what Saddam Hussein did.”

Another sign of how acute Iraq’s security woes have become emerged Wednesday: the past week saw the highest number of suicide bomb attacks of any week since the American-led invasion in 2003, according to the chief United States military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV.

“This has been a tough week,” General Caldwell said. “This week’s suicide attacks were at their highest level in any given week.” But such attacks, he said, are still not the No. 1 killer of Baghdad civilians. “Murders and executions are,” he said.

In recent weeks American and Iraqi officials have privately voiced concerns that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki might not have the will or the political dexterity to bring the country together and avoid a full-scale civil war. Mr. Maliki, they say, is hamstrung and beholden to rival political parties with their own large militias.

Comments offered by senior United States military officials in the last few days have been even more pointed and take in not only the Maliki administration but also the whole of the Iraqi government bureaucracy. The senior military officials agreed to speak only without being identified, because of the delicate nature of the issue.

Another senior military official said Mr. Maliki needed to move quickly to rid ministries of death squads and militiamen. “I think the time is short for them to deal with that over time, ’cause this can’t go on like that,” the official said. Speaking about the militias and other problems, he added that “people will get tired if they don’t see any action on this.”

The Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said Mr. Maliki had little support within his own government to take action.

“The situation is really serious,” Mr. Rubaie said. “There is no cohesion in the government to help him. There are so many circles he needs to take into consideration when he wants to make a decision. There is a lack of will to stop the violence among the politicians.”
[/q]



so let's get this straight: suicide bombing -- an act so heinous and unthinkable to the Western mind that is used to justify any steps Israel takes to defend itself -- is at an all-time high, but this isn't the biggest problem!?!?!?!?

stay the course.
 
Originally posted by Irvine511 [



so let's get this straight: suicide bombing -- an act so heinous and unthinkable to the Western mind that is used to justify any steps Israel takes to defend itself -- is at an all-time high, but this isn't the biggest problem!?!?!?!?

stay the course. [/B]


Remarkable ain't it? Iraq has now become a hotbed of terrorism when it wasn't before and is a great recruitment tool for extremists to appeal to the moderates in society. AND scariest of all, the sectarian violence is growing day by day reaching deaths in the thousands each month. And the Kurds have yet to declare their autonomy which we all know is comng soon. Stay the course, Georgie ? Yeah, good luck with that!
 
Irvine511 said:
i think great starting off point would be for posters to directly connect their points using logic and reasoning to the quotations they are responding to.

I think I am going to run out of space on my Ignore list!!:mad:
 
Re: Re: Re: Iraq has made us less safe, end of story

Irvine511 said:



yes, because nothing has changed in 4 years? so you believe it in 2002, but ignore it in 2006 because you don't want to fess up to a massive failure?


[q]That shows that Democratic party plans to abandon Iraq are indeed a step in the direction that would help the Jihad movement as opposed to hindering it. [/q]

you're taking a step here that i'm not taking. i haven't advocated a withdrawal from Iraq. i think there are several options to consider, from the "three state" solution to the moving of all American troops to the Kurdish north where they can make tactical strikes akin to how they got Zarqawi. and only some Democrats are advocating full withdrawal. what everyone IS advocating is that the present strategy, or, more accurately, non-strategy, is clearly not working. that going into Iraq in the way that we did, and with the lack of postwar plan, has spurred the cause of Jihadism and given us very little in return. very little.


[q]The report does NOT say that invading Iraq and removing Saddam from power has made the United States "less safe". It says the that the Jihad movement has spread and Iraq is one of the underlining factors, but it cannot measure that this is the case with precision.[/q]

wow, you're really splitting hairs here. what more do you need for the report to say? does it say that the removal of Saddam Hussein has made us more safe? does it say that the removal of SH has lessened the Jihadist movement (the only true threat to the US mainland, as SH was NEVER a threat to new yorkers or washingtonians going to work on a Tuesday morning)?


[q]But Afghanistan, is just as much a rallying point for extremist Muslims as Iraq is, and if the United States were not in Iraq at the moment, you can be sure that these extremist elements would be focused on Afghanistan just as they did in the 1980s when the Soviet Union was there.[/q]

and? so give them TWO rallying points? give them TWO muslim countries under American/Western occupation? why didn't we actually stop and deal with Afghanistan and get the job done there?


[q]Saddam and the Taliban were both threats that had to be removed despite the obvious recruitment advertisment it would give the extremist elements in the region.[/q]

and around and around and around we go. i'm so sick of hashing out the same arguments and you giving off the same lines with the obligatory exclamation points.

Saddam is gone, but violence and, more importantly, TORTURE in Iraq is as bad as it ever was under SH and Iran wields far more influence than it did, and it is in the process of becoming nuclearized. the Taliban is not gone, in fact, it is resurgant.

so until we actually deal with these problems, you should stop listing them as accomplishments.




almost as absurd as the gratiutious World War 2 comparisons.

I did not ignore either the 2002 NIE or the 2006 one. No where in the 2006 NIE does it say that Iraq is "a massive failure" or that the "United States is less safe because of Iraq". It only says that the Jihad movement has grown and spread based on the information it has, although they cannot state this with any sort of precision.

Anytime the United States acts in the middle east, it becomes an advertisement for the radical Jihad movement. Based on your logic, the United States would have been safer if it had not deployed troops to Saudi Arabia in 1991 and removed Saddam's military from Kuwait. What do you think the Cause Celebre was for Bin Ladin and Al Quada back then?

If the United States were not in Iraq at the moment, the NIE report would be talking about Afghanistan.



I've never suggested abandoning Iraq, thats what Democrats and as well as yourself are suggesting. What is often refered to is the "Kurdish North", is only a small 50 mile area along the Turkish and Iranian border. The big cities, Mosul and Kirkuk are not in that zone and are nearly 50% Sunni Arab. The United States already had troops in the "Kurdish North" prior the the March 2003 invasion. So pulling back to the "Kurdish North" is essentially abandoning the entire country to Sunni insurgents and radical Shia militia's. If you think things are unstable and bloody now, put that plan into action and see what happens.

The tatical strike that took out Zarqawi came from combat aircraft operating out of Kuwait. Most US aircraft in the air over Iraq every day fly out of bases in Kuwait or Carrier's in the Gulf. But what really got Zarqawi was on the ground intelligence, the type of intelligence that will dry up if the United States pulls all of its troops out except for a the small "Kurdish North" that only extends 50 miles into the country.

At this point, without US forces in the country, it would fall apart. Attempting to set up states that have never existed, like Kurdistan, Sunnistan and Shiastan will not make the fundamental problems go away. Its recipe for creating more conflict and makes Iraq overall weaker and ripe for foreign intervention by neighbors with self serving intentions.

Far better to continue the current plan which builds an Iraqi military that will one day be able to handle the insurgency on its own and unites the various political parties and interest of the entire country. Its better to have these leaders talking and negotiating rather than isolated in new states preparing for an endless war. In addition, a united Iraq will be in a better position to protect against the unwanted intervention or influence of neighbors like Iran and Syria. Cut the country up into little pieces and you do the same to its ability to withstand such intervention and influence.



As for workers in New York and Washington going to work on a Tuesday morning, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would be more impacted by a global economic depression brought on through the seizure or sabotage of Persian Gulf Oil supply. Hell, those commuters would not be able to afford the the price of Gas to get them to work, that is if they still had a job in such an environment.

Whats more and unlike Al Quada, Saddam did have WMD and knew how to make it. No other country on the planet has used WMD more times than Iraq. In terms of money, and the ability to produce and use WMD, Saddam's abilities vastly exceeded anything that Al Quada has had in their department to date. Saddam's on record of using WMD thousands of times as well as killing thousands of people with it. How many times has Al Quada used WMD and how many people did they kill with it?


As far as Afghanistan, the United States does not have the luxury to simply ignore all the threats to it except one, so it can concentrate on that one and get the job done before going on to the next threat. In a disneyland setting, I suppose that would be possible, but in the real world, no country has the luxury to simply deal with one threat while the others grow and materialize.

Iran started trying to develop nuclear weapons back in the 1980s because of Saddam's program and use of WMD's. If you want to thank someone for Iran's push for a nuclear weapon, thank Saddam. Leaving Saddam in power would not slow Iran's push and desire to have nuclear weapons, it would have only increased it, especially after the massive casualties it suffered in the 1980s.

The Taliban is gone from power in Afghanistan and is no more in power there than elements of Saddam's regime are in power in Baghdad.
 
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STING2 said:
As for workers in New York and Washington going to work on a Tuesday morning, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would be more impacted by a global economic depression brought on through the seizure or sabotage of Persian Gulf Oil supply. Hell, those commuters would not be able to afford the the price of Gas to get them to work, that is if they still had a job in such an environment.

Well said - and certainly if that threat was a clear and present danger then it would warrant SIGNIFICANT action.

In what way exactly would you say that Saddam posed an immediate and significant threat to the Persian Gulf Oil supply in 2003 that the US didn't prove being able to handle effectively in 1991?


STING2 said:
Whats more and unlike Al Quada, Saddam did have WMD and knew how to make it. No other country on the planet has used WMD more times than Iraq. In terms of money, and the ability to produce and use WMD, Saddam's abilities vastly exceeded anything that Al Quada has had in their department to date. Saddam's on record of using WMD thousands of times as well as killing thousands of people with it. How many times has Al Quada used WMD and how many people did they kill with it?

Yes indeed, Saddam killed thousands mercilessly with chemical weapons which, in light of 911, made it the obvious selling point for the removal of Saddam.

As it turns out, he posed no real WMD threat to Americans.

Iraq, prior to the invasion had no real connection to al Qaeda.

Yet, a few years ago Iraq somehow posed a significant, immediate threat to Americans that outweighed the potential significant rise of Islamofacsim and jihadism throughout the whole region that has now come to pass.

If the Persion Gulf Oil supply was under seizure or sabbatoge threat, people all ove the world could relate to and support effort to protect it. In fact they did in 1990-91 so there would have been no need for all the WMD, War on Terror bullshit.

What else could change in oil markets that could potentially trigger a global economic depression that made it necessary to occupy Iraq...
 
If we only wanted oil then we should have just cut a deal with Saddam, he was willing to sell and the world was willing to buy.

The Bush administration has taken a half-hearted approach, on one hand they take out Saddam and support democratic government to emerge but on the other they stifle change by backing the some of the less bad dictatorships who crack down on their own democrats - it's bad policy to sit on the fence it helps nobody and leaves you exposed on all fronts.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
The Bush administration has taken a half-hearted approach, on one hand they take out Saddam and support democratic government to emerge but on the other they stifle change by backing the some of the less bad dictatorships who crack down on their own democrats - it's bad policy to sit on the fence it helps nobody and leaves you exposed on all fronts.


true.

either send 500,000 troops, raise taxes, and start a draft, or don't do it at all.

it's crystal clear that, with 7,000 Iraqis dead in July and August alone, the present course isn't working, and the present course was dictated by a combination of politics, personal vendettas, ideology, and just plain incompetence.
 
Im not sure that it is just the troop numbers, more soldiers on the ground equals more targets which equals more dead.

Being hesitant in the early stages; not going into the Sunni triangle with a large show of force, holding off the assault on Fallujah during an election year (and thus allowing AQ in Iraq to have a base of operations) and

The rhetoric of both staying the course and the present course isn't working is partisan bullshit on both sides; there is truth to both, the decision to cut and run from rebuilding and allowing the process to have been such a black hole for money (why not have a colonial office to hand nation building? people who can do it right?)

The early mistakes are coming to fruition, they have been poltical and not military - not bringing the material to rebuild Iraqs decaying infrastruture that we had been keeping run down for a decade was one, allowing Muqtada al Sadr to gain power another big one.

the coalition has done brilliantly on the military front; it has been a magnitude beyond Vietnam, but on the flipside the perception shows that the US never kicked the Vietnam syndrome - it just became even stronger and hyperbolic.

Everybody should be supporting Iraqi democrats and the Iraqi people against the religious nihilists and the fascists who are murdering them daily. These groups will be defeated by the Iraqi's -doing this and keeping the country a democracy should be a framework for this goal.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq has made us less safe, end of story

AliEnvy said:


Well said - and certainly if that threat was a clear and present danger then it would warrant SIGNIFICANT action.

In what way exactly would you say that Saddam posed an immediate and significant threat to the Persian Gulf Oil supply in 2003 that the US didn't prove being able to handle effectively in 1991?




Yes indeed, Saddam killed thousands mercilessly with chemical weapons which, in light of 911, made it the obvious selling point for the removal of Saddam.

As it turns out, he posed no real WMD threat to Americans.

Iraq, prior to the invasion had no real connection to al Qaeda.

Yet, a few years ago Iraq somehow posed a significant, immediate threat to Americans that outweighed the potential significant rise of Islamofacsim and jihadism throughout the whole region that has now come to pass.

If the Persion Gulf Oil supply was under seizure or sabbatoge threat, people all ove the world could relate to and support effort to protect it. In fact they did in 1990-91 so there would have been no need for all the WMD, War on Terror bullshit.

What else could change in oil markets that could potentially trigger a global economic depression that made it necessary to occupy Iraq...

I'm afraid you don't realize how close events came to total disaster back in August of 1990. Most of the Persian Gulfs oil supply, both production and known reserves, is located in a small area clustered around Kuwait. Kuzusistan in Iran, right next door to Kuwait has most of Iran's supply and was the initial objective of Saddam's invasion of Iran in 1980. Kuwait has more, but the real prize is Saudi Arabia. Most of the reserves are located in area starting only a few dozen miles south of the Kuwait border.

Had Saddam pushed his troops forward after taking Kuwait in 12 hours, he could have overrun this area in Saudi Arabia and then moved in significant reinforcements to take the rest of the country and close of the ports, prior to the arrival of any US troops. No one had ever believed that Saddam would actually attack another Arab country, except for a single young CIA officer at the time named Kenneth Pollack, but he did and if he had continued further south, there would have been little that could have been done to stop him at the time.

Whats more, the United States was massively reliant on Saudi Ports and cities to help build up the force that eventually re-took Kuwait. Without the staging area of Saudi Arabia, the ability to respond to the Persian Gulf being overrun like this by an army the size of Saddam would have been extremely difficult and taken much more time, time enough for Saddam to effectively ruin the global economy with his new prize.


That is why after the 1st Persian Gulf War was over, the criteria for whether or not there would be further military action against Saddam would not be based on a new attack on his neighbors but his compliance with UN Security Council Resolutions that required him to completely and verifiably disarm of all WMD, repair the damage he did to Kuwait as well as account for missing Kuwaiti civilians, etc. It also required and unbroken string of Sanctions and a Weapons Embargo to ensure that Saddam could not rebuild his military capacity with modern weapons in the future that could threaten the military balance and the ability to stop him if military action broke out.

Another key factor in when to use military force again in the future was the fact that the United States could not indefintely base large numbers of troops in either Kuwait or Saudi Arabia because the regimes there wanted to keep the US presence low for political reasons. A few hundred troops were allowed to be stationed in Kuwait and a few thousand were were allowed to be stationed in Saudi Arabia. Such forces though on their own were far from being enough to repel an attack by Saddam and even in Saddam's weakened state, CIA computer similiations showed it was still potentially possible for him to overrun Kuwait even with a rushed US response to the Persian Gulf region.

So given all those factors above, the United States and its Allies could not afford to allow Saddam not to comply on disarmament when it came to WMD and be able to get out effectively from sanctions and the Weapons Embargo.

Saddam failed to verifiably disarm, and the sanctions and embargo crumbled, giving Saddam the ability to re-arm, an showing that he had every intention of trying to dominate the Persian Gulf again as he had done in the 1980s and early 1990s. That was the red line that could not be crossed and Saddam crossed it. The World was not going to wait for Saddam to rebuild the capacity he had prior to 1990 so he would have the opportunity to successfully menace the world in a way he missed his opportunity to do in 1990. It was hoped after his defeat in the 1st Gulf War that he would have cooperated and stopped his madness, but he didn't. The only way to ensure that the serious threat did not materialize again was to remove him. This is what the world approved in the 17 UN resolutions that were passed and the UN Ceacefire Agreement that ended the 1st Gulf War. Saddam would be forced to comply with military force if needed, the risk of non-compliance and combined with the failure of sanctions and the embargo would be too great.

The coalition that was on the ground in Iraq in 2003 was nearly just as large in terms of countries as the one that was on the ground there in 1991 as well as in terms of the ratio between the US number of troops and other countries numbers of troops. In 1991, the United States made up 75% of the force and in 2003 it made up 85% of the force, not much of a difference at all.

The United States and coalition allies successfully dealt with the threat of Saddam when it became necessary to do so. Waiting for another event like August of 1990 before acting again would have been crazy given the potential risk.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
If we only wanted oil then we should have just cut a deal with Saddam, he was willing to sell and the world was willing to buy.

And that was all well and good until he changed the payment terms. In 2000, he made deals to sell oil in Euros.

The first thing the US did in 2003 when they took control of the Iraqi oil fields was immediately revert back to sales in Dollars.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq has made us less safe, end of story

STING2 said:
The United States and coalition allies successfully dealt with the threat of Saddam when it became necessary to do so.

He had no WMD...what was the urgency?
 
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AliEnvy said:


He had no WMD...what was the urgency?

Take time to actually read what I posted, I explain the urgency given a variety of factors both past and present.

No WMD was found, but that does not prove he never had any WMD because Saddam never accounted for 1,000 Liters of Anthrax, 500 pounds of Nerve Gas, 500 pounds of mustard gas as well as 20,000 Bio/Chem capable artillery shells.

US and coalition intelligence abilities prior to the 1st Gulf War and prior to the 2003 war showed that we did not have an effective way of being able to tell what Saddam did or did not have. Saddam's cooperation through the process of Verifiable Disarmament was the only effective way short of regime removal to insure that he did not have or build new WMD. The process failed to verifiably disarm Saddam because Saddam never fully cooperated with the process. The only way then to insure that he did not have, or build new WMD was to remove him from power.

Verifiable Disarment by Saddam, not whether the coalition or inspectors actually found some WMD at building x, or site B was the criteria for military action. The goal here is to prevent the Crises of August 1990, not wait to re-live it.
 
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AliEnvy said:


He had no WMD...what was the urgency?



Saddam was set up.

he could never comply to the satisfaction of the US interpretation of UN Resolutions, and there was never an expectation that he would have, or could ever, have complied.
 
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STING2 said:
Had Saddam pushed his troops forward after taking Kuwait in 12 hours, he could have overrun this area in Saudi Arabia and then moved in significant reinforcements to take the rest of the country and close of the ports, prior to the arrival of any US troops.

Then why didn't he?

Btw, do you prefer Kenneth, Kenny or Ken? :wink:
 
Irvine511 said:





either send 500,000 troops, raise taxes, and start a draft, or don't do it at all.

it's crystal clear that, with 7,000 Iraqis dead in July and August alone, the present course isn't working, and the present course was dictated by a combination of politics, personal vendettas, ideology, and just plain incompetence.

7,000 dead, mainly from a single province of over 5 million people does not make it crystal clear that the process has failed. If the situation was not working, the elections and passing of the constitution would have been impossible. There would be no Iraqi government in place out all. In a country the size of Iraq, a disasterous Civil War as you so often describe it would have involved 80,000 dead through out Iraq in July and August.

You can't site single casualty figures from one or two provinces in a country with 18 provinces and claim that it is representive of what is going on everywhere.

There is a government in place and process to negotiate and work at the problems of sectarian violence in Baghdad and some Sunni Arab's refusal to join and support the new government. Abandoning the process for which so many Iraqi's and Americans have worked in sacrificed for would be a terrible mistake. Nation Building takes years and you can't throw up your hands two years into a 10 plus year process and claim because a two month casualty figure from mainly a single province in the country means the process has failed and that its time to leave. You can't be claiming total victory or total defeat in a process like this until 5 to 10 years of constant and seriously engaged work has transpired.

The cost of the war in dollars is relatively small to past wars the United States has been involved in. The United States is currently spending a smaller percentage of its GDP on the military and reconstruction and war fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq, than it did on the military alone in the 1980s or any time during the Cold War, peacetime or wartime.

The United States military has 89 ground combat brigades. It has 17 in Iraq at any given time, plus another 10 deployed to other hotspots or potential hotspots in other parts of the globe. Given the longterm nature of the reconstruction, counter insurgency, and nation building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, the maximum number of total brigades that can be deployed to these efforts cannot exceed half of the total force so that units can be withdrawn to rest, refit and train before being deployed again. This means that the force in Iraq could potentially be doubled given the longterm effort required, but no more given the size of the ground combat force the United States has. The Army is being restructered to create more combat brigades in the coming years with more of the support and non-combat tasks being taking over by civilians. In addition, the Army chiefs have just agreed to expand the authorized level of the Active Duty Army by 70,000, which will take several years to complete.

The real and longterm solution is not more US troops on the ground, although I agree at the current stage it would defintely help, but building the Iraqi military and police force in size and capability. What will ultimately end and defeat the insurgency is the Iraqi military/police force and the political process now in place since June. The Iraqi police and military forces once they are trained and increased in size, will be more effective at counterinsurgency operations just as the Police in Northern Ireland were more effective than the British Army in ultimately defeating the IRA. Both have important roles to play, but intelligence is best gathered by locals in their communities, and good intelligence is usually the more important factor than large numbers of police or troops when it comes to cracking down on insurgencies. The political and economic aspects are just as important as the security aspect. Running from the political and economic accomplishments of the past 3 years instead of strengthening them is an excellant way to make the security situation worse.
 
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STING2 said:
US and coalition intelligence abilities prior to the 1st Gulf War and prior to the 2003 war showed that we did not have an effective way of being able to tell what Saddam did or did not have.

Yet the policy on taking further military action after 1991 was predicated on Verifiable Disarmament when really, it wasn't verifiable at all...so pretty much free license...
 
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Irvine511 said:




Saddam was set up.

he could never comply to the satisfaction of the US interpretation of UN Resolutions, and there was never an expectation that he would have, or could ever, have complied.

The process was no different than the verifiable disarmaments of countries like Kazakstan, Ukraine, Belarus, or South Africa. All of those countries fully accounted for their stockpiles of WMD and dismantled or removed them under UN surpivision. Saddam had the opportunity to do the same and he refused to cooperate. He spent the mid-1990s blocking UN inspections of key sites, while trucks lined up removing unknown materials from the back. If there was nothing to hide, why bother playing the game? Come clean, create an opportunity to lift the sanctions and make more money for yourself. Its what any rational person who had no desire to have WMD or invade other countries would have done. Supposedly dismantling weapons in secret and not recording when and where it happened is not evidence of disarmament.

Every UN inspector agreed that Saddam never fully complied with UN Security Council Resolutions in regards to WMD, despite the fact he strung the process out 12 years with his game, a process that was only supposed to take 2 years at most as it had done in other countries with large sophisticated nuclear stockpiles like the Ukraine.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq has made us less safe, end of story

AliEnvy said:


Yet the policy on taking further military action after 1991 was predicated on Verifiable Disarmament when really, it wasn't verifiable at all...so pretty much free license...

Not from the point of intelligence agencies outside the country, but from the point of UN inspectors on the ground Saddam's full cooperation, and a tight set of sanctions and weapons embargo, it was possible to achieve verifiable disarmament and a process to monitor it after it was completed. Unfortunately, this never happened.
 
STING2 said:
The real and longterm solution is not more US troops on the ground, although I agree at the current stage it would defintely help, but building the Iraqi military and police force in size and capability. What will ultimately end and defeat the insurgency is the Iraqi military/police force and the political process now in place since June.

Wasn't that the plan in South Vietnam?
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Iraq has made us less safe, end of story

AliEnvy said:


Then why didn't he?

Btw, do you prefer Kenneth, Kenny or Ken? :wink:

It was a serious strategic blunder that he himself alluded to later in documents that have been found since the invasion. Its not the first time Saddam mis-caculated and it would not be the last either.
 
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