Endgame
 

From Capitol Hill Blue


The Rant
Field commanders tell Pentagon Iraq war 'is lost'
By DOUG THOMPSON
Jun 5, 2006, 07:13


Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war "is lost" and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month. Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is "just the tip of the iceberg" with overstressed, out-of-control Americans soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally.
"We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has clamped a tight security lid on the increasingly pessimistic reports coming out of field commanders in Iraq, threatening swift action against any military personnel who leak details to the press or public.
The wife of a staff sergeant with Kilo Company, the Marine Unit charged with killing civilians at Haditha, tells Newsweek magazine that the unit was a hotbed of drug abuse, alcoholism and violence.
"There were problems in Kilo company with drugs, alcohol, hazing [violent initiation games], you name it," she said. "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha."
Journalists stationed with the unit described Kilo Company and the Third Batallion of Marines as a "unit out of control," where morale had plummeted and rules went out the window.
Similar reports emerge from military units throughout Iraq and even the Iraqi prime minister describes American soldiers as trigger happy goons with little regard for the lives of civilians.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki says the murder of Iraqi civilians has become a "daily phenomenon" by American troops who "do not respect the Iraqi people."
"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. This is completely unacceptable," Maliki said. The White House tried to play down Maliki's comments, saying the prime minister was "misquoted" although Maliki himself has yet to made such a public claim.
''Can anyone blame Iraqis for joining the resistance now?'' Mustafa al-Ani, an Iraqi analyst living in Dubai, told The Chicago Tribune. ''The resistance and the terrorists alike are feeding off the misbehavior of the American soldiers.''
As the resistance mounts and daily violence escalates, the overstressed U.S. units are unable to control the mounting violence and conclusions escalate that the war is lost.
"Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," says Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa.
The former commander of American forces in Northern Iraq admits incidents like Haditha add to the impression that the U.S. cannot win the war.
"Allegations such as this, regardless of how they are borne out by the facts, can have an effect on the ability of U.S. forces to continue to operate," says Army Brig. Gen. Carter Ham.
Others say the incident just shows the U.S. has lost he "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people.
"When something like Haditha happens, it gives the impression that Americans can't be trusted to provide security, which is the most important thing to Iraqis on a day-to-day level," says Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It tends to confirm all of the worst interpretations of the United States, and not simply in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and in the region."
© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artma...ter_8790.shtml

Don't tell George Bush that one and not forgetting Tony Blair. :doh:

it's 70's northern ireland on a massive scale--Jim
but not as we know it...

I agree 100% Neal.

Have these reports been coming from the officers in the field? I see it diffrent. so far, the pentagon was spreading optimism. And bush did. And Rumsfeld as well. and his generals, too. Different suggestions so far were coming from people that were not within this apparatus, and from opposing politicians. that now those who should know it best also are reported to admit strategical defeat is new, to my best knowledge. But maybe I have missed the reports on the military saying it had lost the war, that is absolutely possible, of course. I do not scan all world medias day in, day out.However, the question now is what will be done? Waiting after the lections, when another Republican government could pull out and have four years time left to correct the negative prestige coming from that, or when a Democratic government is a thankful target to be held responsible then for having lost the war by pulling out too early? Field commanders have given it up, and they probbaly know ebtter than anyone else what they are talkiong about. so what consequences will be drawn from this? Business as usual?

I agree on what should be done. Like you, I have said a longer while now that it is time to pull out since nothing more can be accomplished (whereas in the early phase of the war, ignorring any political disputes and seeing it strictly militarily, I said that far more forces should be send into Iraq than what the pathetic Rumsfeld plan had prepared for). But something tells me that this administration will spend many more months with hesitating.We probably all agree in this: what a damn mess it all now is.

I would agree with what Neal has said and I would also agree with Skybird to a degree that Iraq is a mess, but then it was once named Mesopotamia many years ago. ;) However I won't judge Iraq now as a total failure or that nothing good can come out of what has transpired over the last few years. I believe that Iraq's future is not set. There are still different paths to which Iraq can go down both positive and negative. Time will tell.

just give the Iraqi government an insane amount of money let them fix a few things and the the people might start being gratefull--sure most of it will end up in some corrupt guys back pocket but that's nothing new--
if the actual iraqi goverment gets the credit for fixing the electricity water etc etc etc--then it will start to seem like they are sorting out their own problems and every one can quietly go back to sleep--

What have we done for them? Booted out a dictator and turned their country into a killing field. Funny, if I was an Iraqi I don't think I'd be feeling too grateful right now.
The problem with us (Americans) is that we try to be a noble country and free these poor oppressed people and expect them to love us. What we got is a kick in the balls.
Nothing good has been accomplished and nothing good is going to happen. We made a bad situation worse. Screw the noble cause. We are breeding terrorists by being their. Time to cut our losses, pull out and let them slaughter each other. It's time to get ready for the next world war that our granchildren will have to fight or become ragheads.

I think another point in this "appreciation for all that was done for them" is "at what cost?"

I would say that both for the US and especially for Iraq, what has been accomplished has come at a disproportionate cost. I for one am not sure it was worth it.

Do you really think the Iraqis are worse off now and forever than they were under the tryannical rule of Saddam and his henchmen?

I think the Sunnis might agree as they were the ones who benefitted the most, but the Shiites and especially the Kurds certainly wouldn't. I firmly believe that things over there will eventually stabilize but people seem to have little tolerance for the patience this process will require.

Just look at their constitution for example. Many people here in the west were complaining it took them a year to come up with a working constitution. We forget that even here in the US with the advantage of peace and prosperity it took our founding fathers over a decade to come up with something everyone could agree to and even that lasted only 60 years before a civil war erupted over what the details really meant.

what i can't undertsand is why America still considers it self to be at war with Iraq???

it's done we won..what your doing is losing is the peace...
beats me--

We booted out the dictator, they are turning it into a killing field. Blame us for their lack of sense?


Yeah, that's pretty much what I said.

Agreed.

The Sunni and Shi'a have been killing each other since the *start* of the religion. Saddam was just keeping the Shi'a population beat down so they didn't organize a revolt. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have the same problem: a Sunni minority ruling a Shi'a majority.

My point is that it was already a killing field. CNN just wasn't reporting on it, because Saddam would've denied them entry to the country and MSNBC would've had absolutely no moral compunction about picking up the "slack" in Iraq coverage. Iran is a killing field, as well as Pakistan. Not to even mention Indonesia and Kashmir. The only thing that is different is that media organizations feel it is now "good business" to report all the things which had previously been deemed "good business" to repress.


What I don't understand is why we didn't pull our 38,000 troops out of South Korea, and task them with defending the borders. Japan, Spain, Italy, and Germany don't want our military there either, so pull those ~25,000 troops out and rotate them through Iraq as well. Having 50,000 devil-dogs out running random patrols, hunting the jihadists crossing the borders from Syria and Iran, would have made all the difference in the world.

"Losing the peace" is the reason why I didn't want us to go there in the first place. Another being that we were aiming to accomplish something that would have been more practically accomplished in 1991 (IMO). But nevertheless we went; I think we made the best of it to a point (removing the tyrant). But we never had (not to my satisfaction, at least) a clear idea of what our political dog would do if and when it actually caught the car it was chasing.

Yes; I think we're already on that slippery slope, unfortunately. Past time for Iraq to start becoming a product of self-determination, IMO. We're squandering any political capital the military victory may have earned us, and the longer we stay, the harder it will be to find political leverage with Iran, Korea, etc.

Just my opinion.

Have to disagree with you Neal, point by point:



Only the UN security council has the authority to enforce security council resolutions. The usual retort to this is that the UN doesn't have the capability to enforce its own resolutions, but history says otherwise: the Persian Gulf War of 1991 was done on a UN mandate. To the other typical retort that the US doesn't need the UN to 'defend' its sovereignty, two points: (1) US Sovereignty wasn't being threatened by Iraq, and (2) Iraq didn't need the UN to invade Kuwait back in 1991, either.

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made sure there were no WMDs

UN inspectors were on the ground looking for these WMDs when the US had them abruptly yanked to begin its invasion.

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deposed the dictator

Only to setup an interim dictatorship of its own under the helm of Viceroy Paul Bremer that, during its short reign, privatized Iraqi industry, destroyed the country's economy, and disbanded the Iraqi army - all of which arguably poured fuel over the emerging insurgency.

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helped the natives set up a democratic government

I would characterize it instead as powerless government presiding over a failing state that resembles an anarchy more than a democracy.

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Plus we killed a lot of terrorists

Estimates I've seen put the number of killed civilians between 35,000 to 100,000 - so far. Undoubtedly some of them were terrorists. I suppose you could chaulk the rest up to "collateral damage", or even argue under the ideology of pre-emption that they've been pre-emptively killed to ensure they don't become terrorists. In either case I'm not sure this is the best way to fight terrorism.

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No one will ever appreciate all we've done for them.

Depends on who the "them" is. If its Halliburton you're referring to who's making a killing off this through their no-bid contracts, then I'm sure you have their gratitude ($3/gallon gas may be a funny way to show it, but maybe they'll send you a xmas card); if you've had your life turned upside down by this though, losing friends, family members, your job or your business then you probably appreciate that too - after all, to quote Rumsfeld from 3 years ago, "freedom is messy".

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The longer we stay there, the more it will look like we "lost" when we do pull out, just like Vietnam. Let the Iraqis have what they say they want, control of their destiny.

To have that you need opportunity and for that you need some measure of economic prosperity (no matter how meagre) and security. Since Iraq has neither, I don't see them having control over their destiny any time soon.

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Iraq, you're on your own. Best of luck to ya!:up:

I think they'll need more than luck. ;)

I do not share some people'S relative optimism on Iraq's future, and that this future is not decided. It very much is. The only question is to what degree American companies that tried to secure a foothold in the Iraqi oil business and other sectors they seized during the massive privatization wave under Bremer (as Scandium referred) can keep that foothold and preserve their influence.The argument that it was worse under Saddam I find to be almost insane. No, it has not been as bad under Saddam as it is now. There was not that ammount of murder and torutre as we see now, there was not that ammount of organized crime, there was not that masisvely climbing influence of religious ultraorthodx wings (in Baghdad people now get shot for selling Falafels on the street - for in Muhammad'S time, so is the argument, there were no Falafels). Under Saddam there has nopt been an industry of orgnaized kidnappings (couting by the thiusands poer quarter of a year), there has not been such a lack of water, eletcricity, sec urity on the streets. and last but not least, it was Saddam keeping the Iranian Mullahs and Taleban-style extremists out. Saddam is gone, fine - but that is only of concern for Saddam. If I had to choose in what Iraq I had to live, before or after 2003, my vote would clearly go for "before 2003".But all that is decided now, it is history, and the future will be a logical conseqeunce of the current state. I am not surprised by the outcome, how could I. The important question now is if and when Bush will bring home his people's sons and daughters. It's high time, and every further death is an even more useless one. For many of them a diffrent kind of battle will begin once they arrived back "home" - if they are able to think of it as that anymore. I repeat what I said repeateldy before: psychological consequences of traumatitzation by war action and stress in war can be very very massive and can ruin the whole rest of your life. American casualties are without doubt in the high tens of thousands, if not higher.the only winner of this is the American defense industry. They get payed for replacing detsroyed equipement, and repair and maintain all the equipement that after three years action must be very much worn out. the looser: the Iraqi people, and the American young generations. The taxes that are spend on Iraq are those taxes that not only are not available for their education and future life, but who are added to the monumental debt bill that has been added to the already high debts of the US, and that future generations will need to serve.Or should we assume that it never was planned to pay back national debts? :smug: Saw a movie yesterday, where one man said: why borrow money, if one has the intention to pay it back? :smug:Crazy planet this is. The older one gets, the less fun it makes.