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Author	Topic: The New Iraq, Five Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
Mr44 Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 1/10 12:27pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread - Date Edited: 1/10 1:13pm (2 edits total) Edited By: Mr44
	Again though, if you were to read Powell's actual words, not once did he talk about numbers. He's applying the concept of overwhelming force to the military objective. Powell ascended his ranks starting in Vietnam. Back then, the military operated under a concept of proportionate response, which meant that bombers might bomb only 2 days out of the week, or were prohibited from attacking above a certain line, etc.. It was utterly disasterous for the military, and could be called a textbook lesson on how not to fight a war. As a result of that lesson, the concept of "overwhelming force" was adopted. (Perhaps "returned to" would be a better descriptor, as it was a practice that had become lost) The bombing of Dresden would be a prime example of Powell's doctrine. The complete air domination during the Balkan operations would be another example of Powell's doctrine. What he said was that when the country goes to war, it better reflect national security, have a defined goal, and use overwhelming force to achieve the objective. What Powell loathed was the piecemeal approach to using the military: "Decisive means and results are always to be preferred, even if they are not always possible. We should always be skeptical when so-called experts suggest that all a particular crisis calls for is a little surgical bombing or a limited attack. When the "surgery" is over and the desired result is not obtained, a new set of experts then comes forward with talk of just a little escalation--more bombs, more men and women, more force. History has not been kind to this approach to war-making." The problem is that since the operation in Iraq went South, all sorts of additions have been attributed to the Powell doctrine. If one goes back and re-reads Powell's initial treatise, not once is "exit strategy" mentioned. However, I've noticed a lot of web sources throw in this concept as being part of it. It's part of a larger ret-conning of the overall terms. As an example, earlier in the thread someone posted that "the neocons were HW Bush's greatest critics." Except the same people fall in both groups, and many of the same policies were carried over. The difference being that Desert Storm was a "win," and so far Iraq has been a "loss" so the public needs something to reconcile the difference. -----signature----- Don’t confuse enthusiasm with capability. .............................................................. Peter Shoomaker
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Mr44 Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 1/10 12:54pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	Breaking away from the above long post to address some specific points: 1)What I do think was two critical mistakes was the dissolution of the Iraqi army and de-baathification, both of which created a bunch of angry, bored, poor, and pissed of guys whose only skill was to kill people who also had a bunch of explosives in their garage. Except the flip side to that statement was a lesson taken directly from Bosnia. What an occupying nation absolutely can't do is allow the "oppressors" to return to being in charge of the civilian population they oppressed. In the Balkans, we did the exact same thing and stripped the Serbian police and military of any authority until such time as they fulfilled benchmarks under the Dayton Accords. Think about it. The people in Bosnia just suffered through nearly 4 years of ethnic cleansing, and the same police force who carried out the acts would be given the same authority? Without de-baathification, it would be like creating the nation of Israel in 1948, but allowing all the former concentration camp leaders and SS officers to be in charge. 2)If it was "overwhelming" force, shouldn't the resistance in Iraq have been overwhelmed? No, because you're ignoring the fact that the composition of a resistance force is completely different than a dedicated military force. The difference being the nature of the interaction. Let's say that it takes 3 troops to man a security checkpoint. Adding 5 additional troops isn't going to change the nature of the checkpoint, and in fact, after some point, the presence of additional troops is going to drastically reduce the effectiveness of the operations, not to mention increasing the likelihood of accidental shootings, etc... That's why referring to the operation in a strict numbers game makes no sense. Would the additional troops mean that more checkpoints would be set up, adding to the burden of the population? Station a soldier at every person's house and increase the potential negative interaction? What would the actual makeup and/or role of the troops be? This is why in every other example- from the US Marine presence in Okinawa, to the US Army being stationed in South Korea, to everywhere else in between, the trend is to make the forces there more technically capable while reducing the actual size of the personnel footprint. Just by the law of averages, less troops mean less troops getting drunk in public, less crime, less interaction overall. Instead of flooding Iraq with troops (ie.."Hey, if 180,000 troops are good, 400,000 troops would be better!")customizing the nature and composition of such troops would be much more effective. -----signature----- Don’t confuse enthusiasm with capability. .............................................................. Peter Shoomaker
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Espaldapalabras Registered: Aug '05	Date Posted: 1/10 3:21pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread - Date Edited: 1/10 3:24pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Espaldapalabras
	Without de-baathification, it would be like creating the nation of Israel in 1948, but allowing all the former concentration camp leaders and SS officers to be in charge. This is why they did it, but they were wrong. The problem is that the Baathist people they excluded did not only include the top leaders, which they would have rightly de-baathified, but it also included all sorts of people who were members of the party just because that was the only way to get a decent job in Saddam's Iraq. A good number of Baathist were school teachers. This was something Bremer did on his first day, but Garner who had been in charge before he got there later told Rumsfield this was a huge mistake. It covered roughly 50,000 people, and sent all of the right into the arms of the insurgency, even if they had just joined the party so they could teach. And at the very least even if they weren't going to hire all the people back who worked for Saddam, they weren't able to buy off those workers with temporary payments of $20 to each family, which some of the people on the ground had been trying to do but were unable to get the money. Edit: Oh and one more thing, the army that we recruited was in many instances almost entirely made up of the same people from the old army. We had problems with the Army and police being more loyal to the sects anyways, but it would have solved a lot of problems and didn't even really stop the problem it was meant to solve. -----signature----- A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. Theodore Roosevelt We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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dizfactor Registered: Aug '02	Date Posted: 1/10 3:46pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	In the successful postwar occupation of Germany, de-Nazification was fairly superficial and limited primarily to high-ranking officials. You could argue that we, in fact, went too far the other way, and altered and buried incriminating records to whitewash the past of committed Nazis who were willing to cooperate with the occupation, but it was far less disastrous than what would have happened had we erred the other way, which we did in Iraq. It would have been far better to make an example out of the big party leaders and leave the rank-and-file alone, at least to start with, and then over time start weeding out the people you need to weed out while leaving the institutions intact. You never, ever, ever disband the army or the bureaucracy. Disbanding the first basically creates banditry (or, in modern parlance, an insurgency), disbanding the second leaves you unable to govern effectively. Disbanding both at the same time leaves you with Iraq the past few years. One wonders whether or not anti-war activists like myself would have been forced to eat crow had someone other than Bremer been in charge. -----signature----- "Play is going to be for the 21st century what steam was to the 19th century." Julian Dibbell "You gotta love an elite killing force that you can fool by putting on a hat." Gryph
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Mr44 Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 1/10 4:20pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread - Date Edited: 1/10 4:24pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Mr44
	It would have been far better to make an example out of the big party leaders and leave the rank-and-file alone, at least to start with, and then over time start weeding out the people you need to weed out while leaving the institutions intact. You never, ever, ever disband the army or the bureaucracy. Disbanding the first basically creates banditry (or, in modern parlance, an insurgency), disbanding the second leaves you unable to govern effectively. Disbanding both at the same time leaves you with Iraq the past few years. But this isn't a given. For the most part, it wasn't the big party leaders who the people saw, it was the local district captain, or the precinct sergeant. The same people who actually came into people's homes under orders from above, the same people that required loyalty payments from those who were supposed to be under their watch. So the practice can't be limited to the faceless "man above" because it would do absolutely nothing to change the perception at the basic level. Not only that, but from an allied standpoint, you have to serve along troops you have confidence in. Look at how much difficulty the US has been having with Iraqi troops under the present circumstance, and this is under a policy of certifying and re-training that same personnel. You're going to keep in place a force of 400,000 untrained, patronage-based troops of unknown loyalty and competence just to hang onto a standing army? I realize that my analogies are oversimplified, but what do you think would happen if the Detroit PD hired 500 KKK members just because they were shorthanded in patrol? The 500 "KKK police" would do much, much, more harm than good despite the numbers on the street. The US just didn't disband the army and wash their hands of it, the US disbanded the army and then organized an intensive retraining program to replace the old. The German comparison doesn't fit that well because the former German soldiers shared a common set of customs and backgrounds with the occupiers, and that alone made it easier for both to develop mutual reconstruction goals. The same phenomenon happened in the Balkans. Just as an anecdotal estimate, I'd say that 75% of the former Serbian troops spoke English and shared a similar moral code and cultural background with the US. Remove them from the situation that had spiraled out of control in their country, and the Serbian troops could readily identify with the NATO troops. Back then, it was called the "Baywatch" factor, because everyone involved recognized, and could at least talk about Baywatch. This doesn't exist in Iraq. 99.9% of the US troops don't speak Arabic, and a majority of the Iraqi locals don't speak English. Not only that, but the cultural identity of each group is different, so right away, a wall has to be overcome before the situation can even begin to be solved. That's why building a shared set of training goals and experiences takes longer, but in the long run, it yields a more stable foundation. -----signature----- Don’t confuse enthusiasm with capability. .............................................................. Peter Shoomaker
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Espaldapalabras Registered: Aug '05	Date Posted: 1/10 4:30pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	One wonders whether or not anti-war activists like myself would have been forced to eat crow had someone other than Bremer been in charge. This is something that concerns me because I don't know anymore if I am against the idea of war in Iraq or just was convinced the idea was wrong because they mishandled it so badly. I have learned so much since I was a senior in high school and was about as neocon as you could get, but I just wonder how I would have viewed things without the benefit of hindsight. In other words, even with what I know now would I still have made the same type of mistakes they did? The only answer for me that I can think of is that I was never in the state of denial or hubris that they are still in. One thing I think is always important is to never be as sure of yourself and your policies as they were. I guess a certain amount of caution is needed both to go to war, and to end them. Like right now, the military side of the equation is working better so far, and the surge seems to have achieved its military objective despite my belief that it was pure stupidity to increase the numbers of troops, because that never worked in Vietnam. So even if I were president today, as bad as I think the war is, I think I would let the current tactic play itself out and give one last chance for the Iraqis to make real political progress. The only other option would be a forced federalization. So I guess my current view is that while it wasn't worth the soliders that have been and will be killed in the first place, now that we bought Iraq from this point on it is still worth the lives it is costing us to attempt to prevent any all out civil war or permanent failed state. In a way this is an economics argument. Say you buy an apple and on the first bite you find a worm. In this case, how much you paid for the apple is irrelevant, it is already gone, the only question is: Is the next bite going to provide you with any benefit? If further involvement in Iraq provides us no benefit, we should quit eating, no matter how much we overpaid for the apple. But I think the current situation is more like we bought a rotten apple and if we stop eating it now it might mutate, sprout legs, and beat us over the head. But who knows, if we just left the core when we are done it might still do it, so why make ourselves sick in the process? -----signature----- A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. Theodore Roosevelt We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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dizfactor Registered: Aug '02	Date Posted: 1/10 5:36pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	Mr44 posted: But this isn't a given. Yes, it pretty much is. Mr44 posted: For the most part, it wasn't the big party leaders who the people saw, it was the local district captain, or the precinct sergeant. The same people who actually came into people's homes under orders from above, the same people that required loyalty payments from those who were supposed to be under their watch. So the practice can't be limited to the faceless "man above" because it would do absolutely nothing to change the perception at the basic level. And the events that (inevitably) ensued after we disbanded everything didn't affect perceptions? When you are invading and occupying a foreign country, you don't have the luxury of an ideal solution. You have to pick the least worst option, and any kind of real or perceived rupture in continuity with bedrock political institutions is universally disatrous under such conditions. Stability and what can be salvaged of the rule of law are non-negotiable. You have to change these things by process of incremental reform. Mr44 posted: Not only that, but from an allied standpoint, you have to serve along troops you have confidence in. Look at how much difficulty the US has been having with Iraqi troops under the present circumstance, and this is under a policy of certifying and re-training that same personnel. You're going to keep in place a force of 400,000 untrained, patronage-based troops of unknown loyalty and competence just to hang onto a standing army? Yes. It's a horrible situation, but it's better than any of the alternatives. If you're not willing to put yourself in situations where the choices are that bad, you have no business invading another country. You can't go in to something like this ever expecting that you're going to have good options, that your troops are ever going to be safe, or that you will ever be able to take straightforward military action without subordinating it completely to the political considerations, or really that you will ever be able to separate military and political concerns at all. You have to go in knowing that it's not going to be anything other than a total cluster-** from the beginning, and that it will probably take at least 5-10 years to start seeing positive results. If you do not want to have to make choices like that, and your troops are not ready for that, you need to stay the home. Mr44 posted: The US just didn't disband the army and wash their hands of it, the US disbanded the army and then organized an intensive retraining program to replace the old. There's a world of difference between that and maintaining continuity. You never send the army home, because you will never put it back together again, even if you have a replacement waiting in the wings. It doesn't matter how quickly you act after the plate hits the ground, you're not putting it back together. If you send a large group of men home with their guns, not all of them are going to come back, and the ones that don't will become bandits. Not only that, but the cultural identity of each group is different, so right away, a wall has to be overcome before the situation can even begin to be solved. That's why building a shared set of training goals and experiences takes longer, but in the long run, it yields a more stable foundation.[/quote] All of that can be accomplished through a program of aggressive reform without changing the facade of the old insitution. The perception of continuity is crucial. You can re-brand once you've made all your substantial reforms. Espaldapalabras** posted: One wonders whether or not anti-war activists like myself would have been forced to eat crow had someone other than Bremer been in charge. This is something that concerns me because I don't know anymore if I am against the idea of war in Iraq or just was convinced the idea was wrong because they mishandled it so badly. My initial objections to the war were as follows: 1) It was illegal. 2) It was based on false premises. You had to be a liar or complete idiot to argue that Saddam had had an active WMD program of any consequence, or that he had not satisfied the requirements of the 1991 disarmament resolution a long time ago, or that he had any significant relationship with al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group. Moreover, you had to have rocks for brains to think that foreign invaders would be welcomed with flowers and parades. 3) The administration carrying it out had a distressing record of total disregard for civil rights which I expected to carry over into any occupation. 4) It continued the American policy of blaming tensions in the Middle East on everything but one of the most glaring issues: continued US support for Israel despite its atrocious human rights record. It also fanned the flames of American jingoism and the disturbing, distasteful, and ultimately self-destructive surge of nationalism that occurred in the wake of 9/11. 5) It was a bad idea. Constructive engagement would be both more humanitarian and more effective, especially in the long term. I said at the time that I wouldn't have wholeheartedly supported but I would have accepted a war that had the approval of the UNSC, which was based on actual causes (regime change, on the grounds that Saddam wouldn't currently be in power if it weren't for us, his rule is bad for Iraq and everyone else, and we were correcting that mistake), and a realistic assessment of the costs and dangers. None of those conditions applied, and concerns #2-3 and particular were borne out well beyond my most pessimistic expectations. Furthermore, I expected that in even the worst case scenario, the Bushies would at least be competent. Badly-intentioned, ruthlessly manipulative, totally contemptuous of human rights, but competent. The classic defense of most other (quasi-/neo-)fascists is that at least they make the trains run on time, but Bush and his cronies couldn't even do that. Espaldapalabras posted: One thing I think is always important is to never be as sure of yourself and your policies as they were. True enough. Resolve is only good if you have good judgement. Espaldapalabras posted: Like right now, the military side of the equation is working better so far, and the surge seems to have achieved its military objective The surge is not a military success, per se. It's a political one. We're seeing fewer casualties and more success because we accepted that we had lost. Basically, we worked out a separate peace with local powers (the Shi'ite militias and tribal sheikhs in the Sunni areas), primarily by dropping the condition that they should have to submit to the authority of the central government in Baghdad and . We then treated them as allies, instead of trying to batter them into submission, and focused efforts instead on the relatively small number of foreign fighters and radical groups. It's amazing how many fewer casualties you see when you stop fighting the majority of your enemies. We surrendered to the in the bigger, nastier part of the war (the unwinnable fight with local insurgencies to establish strong central control over the various regions), and focused on the thing which was never a big deal to begin with (foreign elements and al-Qaeda). This is, potentially, a very good idea. Once the central government and the national army were disbanded, de facto authority passed to local organizations, and trying to put that genie back in the bottle was a particularly bloody fool's errand. However, in allying with local leaders to purge their territories of al-Qaeda, and given up on the idea of fully integrating them into the central government, we've basically created something like a de facto partition on the ground and helped local strongmen consolidate their bases. If this window can be used to hammer out some kind of loose federal arrangement that's acceptable to all parties, then Iraq is poised to do very well in the coming years. However, if a political solution to sensitive issues can't be found, chiefly the sharing of oil revenue and the disposition of areas like Kirkuk, then we've basically laid the groundwork for a full-scale civil war the moment we leave, which will spiral into a major regional war very, very quickly. -----signature----- "Play is going to be for the 21st century what steam was to the 19th century." Julian Dibbell "You gotta love an elite killing force that you can fool by putting on a hat." Gryph
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Espaldapalabras Registered: Aug '05	Date Posted: 1/10 6:00pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	2) It was based on false premises. You had to be a liar or complete idiot to argue that Saddam had had an active WMD program of any consequence, or that he had not satisfied the requirements of the 1991 disarmament resolution a long time ago, This is the one point that I don't buy, and actually think it only gives resolve to hawks. Most everyone assumed Saddam had WMDs at his disposal, and there was never a real serious effort to asses the risk. If it had been so clear that he didn't have WMDs, then the administration wouldn't have been able to do what they did. It was more of the fact that they didn't really know, didn't have the human intelligence capability to find out, assumed he did, and only looked for things that showed their assumptions to be correct. Yes it was negligent and stupid for the administration, but everyone thought Saddam had chemical weapons lying around that he could use if he wanted to. Another part was the intelligence failure to realize that the words Saddam was saying were the same as before, but the reasons had changed. The WMDs were a massive intelligence failure, only made worse by an administration that didn't care to really look hard at the facts and saw only wanted they wanted to see. This is the one case where I think it was more the administration fooling themselves than them trying to fool us. And even adding in what everyone thought they knew about Saddam's WMD program, that assesment hadn't really changed very much since the 90s, and I would agree that even the WMD program as we thought it existed didn't pose really that much of a threat to us. Not nearly as much as North Korea or Iranian programs. -----signature----- A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. Theodore Roosevelt We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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Mr44 Registered: May '02	Date Posted: 1/10 7:19pm Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	And the events that (inevitably) ensued after we disbanded everything didn't affect perceptions? When you are invading and occupying a foreign country, you don't have the luxury of an ideal solution. Yeah, this is exactly what I'm saying as well. Let me ask you another hypothetical question. There's a dedicated push to get the international community involved against the genocide that is ongoing in the Sudan. On one side you have the Arab Sudanese government forces and Janjaweed militia groups in conflict with various other ethnically based populations. From the standard you're applying, the international community would come in tell each side to knock it off, but then leave in power the exact same groups who were doing all the killing under authority of the government. After all, the Sudanese military forces represent stability. Except that stability would come from the same forces who were beheading the ethnic population that forms basis for taking action in the first place. The type of stability you're illustrating is the wrong type if the goal is to change the situation. Any solution would have to include the disbanding/disarming of those forces and start fresh under a new mandate. Or let me make the example even smaller in focus. Let's say there was a truly corrupt police officer in your neighborhood. He planted evidence and manufactured testimony that resulted in a loved one being arrested on false charges and sent to prison for decades. The officer's actions are then revealed. Except when it comes time for a reckoning, the individual officer isn't disciplined in any way, and instead, his police chief resigns. Would that help you resolve your own feelings? On a personal level, would you be able to have the cop walk right by your house on patrol like nothing happened? Would you trust that officer in the future to handle your own service? If I understand you correctly, you're saying that once the cop, (or soldier according to what we're actually talking about) is removed, he's gone and it leaves a hole. But that's the entire point, because that person wasn't fulfilling the position anyway. On a related note, this MSNBC article from today represents how the "strong foundation" strategy can take shape, admittedly with a more deliberate pace: ANBAR Iraq's western province of Anbar, hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency for the first four years of the war, will be returned to Iraqi control in March, a senior U.S. general said Thursday. Marine Maj. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, commander of the roughly 35,000 Marine and Army forces in Anbar, said levels of violence have dropped so significantly — coupled with the growth and development of Iraqi security forces in the province — that Anbar is ready to be handed back to the Iraqis. Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue. -----signature----- Don’t confuse enthusiasm with capability. .............................................................. Peter Shoomaker
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yankee8255 Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 1/11 12:34am Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	Kimball_Kinnison posted: yankee8255 posted: If it was "overwhelming" force, shouldn't the resistance in Iraq have been overwhelmed? How do you define "overwhelming"? In order to do that, you need to provide quantifiable criteria (metrics) for it. For example, I gave the criteria of kill ratios earlier. Are you not overwhelming a group if you are killing them ten times faster than they are killing you? If you don't accept that criteria, how would you quantify "overwhelming"? Kimball Kinnison However defined, it had to look past the initial invasion and look at what was necessary to ensure security to the greatest degree possible for the occupation. And that'S where I think numbers, and not technology, are key. Again, whatever the number is, military people at the pentagon were all saying the same thing -- 180,000 troops wasn't enough, not by half or even more. -----signature----- A perfect world: a house in the Hamptons with two solaria and a horse named Prickely Pete, Dr. van Nostrand as my primary care physician, the O-OT legally available on DVD in a quality worthy of its greatness and Luke the undisputed hero of Star Wars
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Kimball_Kinnison Registered: Oct '01	Date Posted: 1/11 3:49am Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	yankee8255 posted: However defined, it had to look past the initial invasion and look at what was necessary to ensure security to the greatest degree possible for the occupation. And that'S where I think numbers, and not technology, are key. Again, whatever the number is, military people at the pentagon were all saying the same thing -- 180,000 troops wasn't enough, not by half or even more. You are missing my point completely. How do you measure if it's enough? Without measurement, you can't have any progress or improvement. You keep saying that 180000 troops wasn't enough, but you won't say how you are measuring that. Without that criteria, there's no support for your argument. You're just pulling numbers out of your rear. Kimball Kinnison -----signature----- You deserve the wrath of Kimball...- OWM Why, Kimball... I didn't know you had it in you.- KW I think that Kimball just made a joke, and a funny joke at that.- Raven Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?
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yankee8255 Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 1/11 4:13am Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	I think our experience there the past 5 years has made it pretty darned clear that 180,000 wasn't enough, but that's hindsight. -----signature----- A perfect world: a house in the Hamptons with two solaria and a horse named Prickely Pete, Dr. van Nostrand as my primary care physician, the O-OT legally available on DVD in a quality worthy of its greatness and Luke the undisputed hero of Star Wars
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Kimball_Kinnison Registered: Oct '01	Date Posted: 1/11 4:33am Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	yankee8255 posted: I think our experience there the past 5 years has made it pretty darned clear that 180,000 wasn't enough, but that's hindsight. Will you please stop avoiding the question. Who do you measure if it has been enough? You are completely avoiding any metrics at all for the entire subject. If you can't measure something, you cannot compare it against any sort of standard or expectations in a fair and impartial manner. If you can't compare it to a standard, then how can you claim that it doesn't meet that standard? So, will you please back up your claims with a way to measure them? And I'm not talking about vague measurements and goals ("Iraq needs to be safe."), but things that can be specifically measured ("Coalition deaths must drop to X per month."). What specific things in the last 5 years have made it clear that 1800000 were not enough? How are you measuring them? Why are those measurements good indicators of the status in Iraq? If you can't answer those simple questions, you have no substance behind your opinion. Kimball Kinnison -----signature----- You deserve the wrath of Kimball...- OWM Why, Kimball... I didn't know you had it in you.- KW I think that Kimball just made a joke, and a funny joke at that.- Raven Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?
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Espaldapalabras Registered: Aug '05	Date Posted: 1/11 5:01am Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	KK, we can't all expect to be war planners. I mean even if we looked at the numbers of soldiers per person in Iraq compared to policemen in a major American city, that still tells us almost nothing as laymen here. Instead of us trying to dissect numbers and figures, it seems the best thing in this case would be to look at what the professional planners said and did. I just got done reading State of Denial so that is what I keep going back to, but in that book it seemed pretty clear that Rumsfield felt they didn't need to use far more troops than what they expected they would need. The man in charge of the post-Iraq planning planned and had Rice and the President initially signed off on using the Iraqi police and military for basic security, which they thought would be around 250,000 men. The planners didn't think the 180,000 troops would be able to hold and protect every major city on their way to Baghdad, and they didn't attempt to. I guess I just don't see the point in arguing about metrics when it is now historical fact that after the invasion we simply did not have the troops to do everything, and basic security for civilians was not achieved. The main problem was that even when we clearly did not have enough troops as the problems were developing, it took a hard domestic political loss to force change, and it was years later than it should have been. I don't know how much fault is Rumsfield's for actually going to war, but he was the one that ran the show after. That isn't meant as an attack on him for it, it was by the President's order to handle post-invasion Iraq. He also neutered the brass at the NSC from standing up to him on any important policies. If he had had more successful policies, we would all be praising him for it. As a public, we were not in a position before the war to understand what troop level constituted "overwhelming," and in many ways unless we are experts it is still difficult for us to tell if they followed that policy. What we can tell clearly is that however many troops they used, it wasn't enough to secure the peace, however effective it was at taking over an already destroyed country. And the war planners are now telling us many of them called for far more troops to be used than we did, and that Rumsfield had an ideological belief in the need for a smaller footprint force. When he calls it himself a "small footprint," that is a different thing than "overwhelming force." Both have different advantages and disadvantages, and I don't really understand how you can point to the force we used as an example of "overwhelming force." Instead of trying to look at numbers that hardly mean anything to us, just look at the statements of the people who made the decisions. Please find me one statement by Rumsfield that he was using overwhelming force, because I've never seen anything where he described it that way. -----signature----- A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. Theodore Roosevelt We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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yankee8255 Registered: May '05	Date Posted: 1/11 5:16am Subject: RE: The New Iraq, Four Years and Counting: Current Discussion Thread
	Thanks, espy, you put that far better than I could have. Whatever the number was, securing Iraq to the greatest degree possible had to be the overriding objective. Military people gave a number. I'm no military expert, nor have I ever claimed to be, but I trust them to come up with a number alot more than I trust Rummy. -----signature----- A perfect world: a house in the Hamptons with two solaria and a horse named Prickely Pete, Dr. van Nostrand as my primary care physician, the O-OT legally available on DVD in a quality worthy of its greatness and Luke the undisputed hero of Star Wars
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