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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Iraq: Moving forward after the 'Three Week's War'.

Discussion in 'Archive: The Senate Floor' started by Red-Seven, Apr 24, 2003.

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  1. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    That's sad news. One of the reasons this war seems so "easy" on Americans is that relatively few people know someone who has been killed or injured. Most of us don't feel the cost in terms of human life lost, because frankly most of the people dying are Iraqis. And most of us don't feel the econommic impact because much of the cost of the war has been transfered generationally to our children/grandchildren.
     
  2. SWBob

    SWBob Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2003
    how do you get impeached twice
     
  3. Kimball_Kinnison

    Kimball_Kinnison Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 28, 2001
    It's off topic, but he was impeached and convicted in his first year (he refused to let the legislature pay themselves twice for the same time period) and convicted, but the conviction was overturned by the State Supreme Court. (Specifically, it was overturned on the basis that the legislature did not have enough members in attendance to constitute a quorum.) His lieutenant governor tried to take over the government, and had to be removed from the capitol at gunpoint.

    For the next two years, there were more attempts to impeach him that failed.

    Finally, his last year in office, he was impeached again, but then it was election time, so the legislature packed up and went home to campaign, leaving him in charge. Specifically, he was never convicted of the charges.

    We have a news article from the late 1970s that describes the legislature Harrison Reed faced as the most corrupt legislature ever.

    Kimball Kinnison
     
  4. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    As a soldier, I'm gonna have to disagree with that. Our optempo might be crazily high, but frankly, it's leading to more experienced soldiers more quickly. And that's definitely a good thing.

    When I first joined, exactly 3 guys in my company had Combat Infantryman badges (the Infantry award for being fired on and firing back). Now it's only new guys right out of Basic who don't have them.
     
  5. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    I'm not going to argue with you that combat is what gives a military and its soldiers combat experience.
     
  6. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    Then quit saying that the military has been damaged as an institution. That's not accurate.
     
  7. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    You seem to have honed your order-barking skills to a razor sharp edge.

    The Army Times said that: Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

    The value of Iraq combat experience aside, it doesn't sound as though "uniformed leadership" believes Rumsfeld has helped the army institutionally.

     
  8. DarthBoba

    DarthBoba Manager Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2000
    I'd agree that he hasn't helped matters any. But suggesting that we're institutionally damaged isn't accurate; it's flatly not true.

    And I see your sarcasm skills are poorly developed, so long as we're getting into personal insults. ;)

     
  9. Mr44

    Mr44 VIP star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 21, 2002
    Jabba, it's kind of a moot point, because Rumsfeld is out, but I'd have to agree with Boba here.

    First off, maybe it is difficult for civilians to understand, but the Military Times series of papers aren't connected to the military. Mostly, the troops read them to find out the latest promotion cut off scores, or after the budget is passed, to compare the pay scales.

    The Army Times can certainly run its own editorial, but it should never be taken as a substitute for the word of the boots on the ground.

    Certainly, the point is raised about the difference between the uniformed leadership and the regular troops, but there has always been a difference, by design, between these groups as well. When one hits the Colonel ranks, (0-4 and 0-5) and has any designs of rising any higher, the position takes on a political aspect.

    A line Captain can focus on commanding his troops. A LTC has to be concerned about getting himself noticed in the political scene. At any rate, a Captain and a Colonel still represent the "Uniformed Leadership," but the two have vastly dfferent concerns.
     
  10. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    And I see your sarcasm skills are poorly developed, so long as we're getting into personal insults.

    Then I'll have to use the "botched joke" defense and run for cover.
     
  11. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Well, Mr44, the Military Times editor who wrote the op-ed piece that called for Rumsfeld to go has indicated that he'd recieving feedback of dissatisfaction with Mr Rumsfeld from the troops, though their tradition of deference to authority precluded them from saying as much.

    But, on Mr Rumsfeld's departure - why is it I can only recall criticism of Mr Gates' tenure at the CIA? ;)

    E_S
     
  12. Mr44

    Mr44 VIP star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 21, 2002
    Yes, I realize all of that.

    However dissatisfaction from the troops can mean many things, especially depending on if one is in the military or looking at it from the outside.

    It's a long-held and steadfast tradition for the troops to complain about their surroundings, the "higher ups," and generally everything. Food, boots, barracks, football games, you name it.

    The main reason for this is to build espirt-de-corps. The person who is standing guard with you on a cold, rainy, muddy night at 0300hrs, is going through the exact same experience as you, and it brings you both closer together as a team through cartharthis. This doesn't automatically mean there is anything wrong with the boots, or uniforms, or football game, etc...

    Secondly, if the complaining is coming from the upper level officer ranks, then they have to worry about their poltical future.

    I'm not saying that Rumsfeld was without his problems, he certainly had them. But institutionally, I think he was good for the service.

    Again, any SecDef now is only going to serve about a year a nd a half anyway, and more than anything, is going to act as a placeholder until after the 2008 elections. He isn't going to install all sorts of sweeping changes, or devise some sort of winning strategy in Iraq.
     
  13. SaberGiiett7

    SaberGiiett7 Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 2, 2002
    Is anyone else skeptical about the Bush/Cheney broken record scaring Americans that if our troops withdraw, Osama bin Laden and his dastardly

    minions will turn Iraq into a terrorist state? That rationale leaves one wanting of evidence. Sure, al-Qaida in Iraq during the first phases of

    the war was looked upon favorably among Sunni tribal leaders, now the foreign fighters are hated more than the coalition troops. Wanton bombings

    any seemingly anything they're capable of hitting has apparently become their strategy. Now, al-Mujahir and his gang have falling out of favor

    with not only the Shi'ites, Americans, and the Kurds but with almost all other Sunni resistence groups and with each other! Abu Osama al-Iraqi, a

    contender with al-Zarqawi's successor, recently had a letter intercepted demanding that Osama bin Laden repudiate the savage tactics of al-

    Mujahir (an Egyptian) and put al-Qaida in Iraq in Iraqi hands. This is the same pattern we saw in Algeria, Afghanistan, and other targets of

    Islamic totalitarians: they are so obsessed with exclusion and purity that they eventually turn on each other believing their own rank and file

    to be infidels. To assume a band of (by liberal estimates) 3,000 strong can conquer a country that 25,000,000 of the people despise is laughable

    if the context were not so egregious. Please, President Bush and Party, please spare us the convenient nightmare scenario; we're not not that

    stupid.

    Establishing that as a straw man, where does that leave the "stay-the-course" zombies as far as tolerating more IEDs and flag-drapped coffins?

    Civil war? You mean U.S. troops havn't already engaged death squads in Baghdad, the Sunnis and Shi'ites already aren't practicing

    tit-for-tat bombings of each other, and the Shi'a majority government doesn't have links to Tehran, the crown jewel of the Axis of Evil?

    We ousted Saddam for them, let them sort out their own country now. Celebrating our GIs dying hasn't persuaded most American they're grateful.

    Our job's done. Oh, and when we leave, it will be business as usual with the al-Qaida scumbags. "One day, when the Americans have gone, we will

    need to fight another war, against these jihadis," Abu Qaqa al-Tamimi, an insurgent leader, recently told Time.

    <[-]> Saber
     
  14. dizfactor

    dizfactor Jedi Knight star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 12, 2002
    Allow me to crosspost my most recent blog entry:

    Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

    "As most of you already know, Bush has tapped former Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates, to replace Donald Rumsfeld.

    Like many of the people Bush has appointed to crucial positions during his administration (Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, and John Poindexter), Robert Gates is an Iran-Contra alumnus, part of the shadowy cabal that subverted the Constitution, defied Congressional authority, sold crack in the ghettos of Los Angeles fueling the escalation of gang violence there, supported particularly brutal terrorism in Nicaragua, and was otherwise involved in black ops of dubious value and even more dubious morality during the days of Ronald Reagan.

    He was also instrumental in providing intelligence support to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980s, when he was a key US ally in the Middle East. From his nomination hearings (for the DCI position) in 1991:

    "Robert Gates served as assistant to the Director of the CIA in 1981 and as Deputy Director for Intelligence for 1982 to 1986. In that capacity he helped develop options in dealing with the Iran-Iraq war, which eventually involved into a secret intelligence liaison relationship with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gates was in charge of the directorate that prepared the intelligence information that was passed on to Iraq. He testified that he was also an active participant in the operation during 1986."

    1986, mind you, was when Saddam Hussein began the al-Anfal Campaign, an ethnic cleansing program conducted against the Kurdish minority in Iraq, which went on for three years and killed at least 50,000, and possibly as many as 180,000, Kurds. The program was headed by Ali Hasan al-Majid, who earned his nickname "Chemical Ali" by using chemical weapons against Kurdish peshmerga militiamen and the civilian population.

    US intelligence helped the Iraqi regime by providing helicopters and logistical support used in the campaign, as well as helping them acquire the necessary chemical components of the gas used. Gates also passed on satellite photos and other intelligence information to Saddam Hussein's regime, which they used to camouflage their own nuclear program until it was dismantled after the Gulf War. The US also worked to suppress information about the regime's genocidal activities, until 1991, when it became politically expedient to bring them up to justify the Gulf War.

    Oh, and it gets better. In his memoir, From the Shadows, Gates admitted that American intelligence services began a program of covert aid to the mujahideen rebels fighting the communist government of Afghanistan in early July of 1979, nearly six months before the Soviet invasion in late December of that same year. The plan was to lure the Soviets into invading to support the crumbling regime of Hafizullah Amin, and it worked exactly as planned. An intelligence aide to President Carter summed it up like this in a 1998 interview:

    "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap..." [...]"The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."

    (emphasis added)

    Gates was on the National Security Council at the time, moved back to the CIA later that year and was involved in operations to support the mujahideen during the Reagan administration. Among the leaders of the mujahideen was a young Saudi militant named Osama bin Laden, who turned the connections, funding and experience he developed during the Afghan conflict into his more well-known later venture, al-Qaeda.

    The US plan worked exceedingly well. The Soviets were bogged down in Afghanista
     
  15. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    From Reuters: President George W. Bush, signaling a more conciliatory approach after suffering electoral losses this week, said on Thursday he was "open to any idea or suggestion" on the Iraq war.

    Let's start by convening an international summit on Iraq, hosted jointly by George Bush and the new Congress.
     
  16. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    lol international summit sounds kinda ridiculous when we're the ones who started this mess in the first place. If we really need outside help to deal with Iraq then things are truly sad indeed.

    As much as I was against the decision to invade to begin with, I feel that now that we're in, we can't just leave. Even if there weren't Al-Qaeda terrorists running around, there's still way too many idiots that have no concept of reconciliation. Yeah, it's true that they're in a civil war now, but what's there to say that the violence won't get even worse once we're out? Unless a huge proportion of the violence is motivated by anti-American sentiment, pulling out might not necessarily help things.

     
  17. Nightowl

    Nightowl TFN Timetales Writer star 4 VIP

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 1998
  18. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
  19. Darth Mischievous

    Darth Mischievous Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Oct 12, 1999
    I think Buchanan has it exactly right here. When we withdraw, it will be a mess. However, Americans are simply tired of the pointless exercise that is Iraq, and we don't have unlimited patience and perserverence like the imperialist powers of history did.

    I listened to noted historian Douglas Brinkley on local radio today, and he made excellent points. WW II was an aberration versus our other historical wars (Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War, etc) in that the country has been sharply divided over taking action in certain conflicts. Americans will tolerate only short-term intervention in wars of choice.

    I admit personally that I made a mistake in my support of the intervention initally, and that I didn't see the underlying sectarian tensions that would lead to such a disaster along with propping up Iran's influence in the region.

    Buchanan does elaborate on the American psyche which was historically anti-interventionist, and he is right that both Parties have served us poorly. It's too bad W didn't have the insight of his father Bush 41:

    Looking for the exit ramp
    By Patrick J. Buchanan
    Tuesday, November 14, 2006

    It appears the Beltway bombing halt agreed upon at the Bush-Pelosi summit is over.

    The incoming chairmen of the Senate's armed services and foreign affairs committees, Carl Levin and Joe Biden -- and Majority Leader Harry Reid -- say a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will be their first priority. Troop redeployment, says Reid, "should start within the next few months."

    White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton counters: "I don't think we're going to be receptive to the notion there's a fixed timetable at which we automatically pull out because that would be a true disaster for the Iraqi people."

    John McCain says we need more troops to crush the Mahdi Army and militias, and achieve victory. If we set a deadline for withdrawal, said McCain, we risk a Saigon ending, with Americans being helicoptered off the roof of the U.S. embassy. McCain appears to be adopting the George Wallace stance of 1968 -- "Win, or Get Out!"

    And so we come to the endgame in a war into which we were plunged by Bush Republicans and those neoconservatives now scurrying back to their think tanks, and the Clinton-Kerry-Edwards-Biden-Reid-Daschle Democrats, who voted Bush a blank check in October 2002 to get the war issue "out of the way" before the elections.

    America has been horribly served by both parties. And as the Democrats have now captured Congress, they assume co-responsibility for the retreat from Mesopotamia. Which is as it should be.

    While our leaders never thought through the probable result of invading an Arab nation that had not attacked us, we had best think through the probable results of a pullout in 2007.

    We are being told that by giving the Iraqis a deadline, after which we start to withdraw, we will stiffen their spines to take up greater responsibility for their own country. But there is as great or greater a likelihood that a U.S. pullout will break their morale and spirit, that the Iraqi government and army, seeing Americans heading for the exit ramp, will collapse before an energized enemy, and Shias, Sunnis and Kurds will scramble for security and survival among their own.

    Arabs are not ignorant of history. They know that when we pulled out of South Vietnam, a Democratic Congress cut off aid to the Saigon regime, and every Cambodian and Vietnamese who had cast his lot with us wound up dead, in a "re-education camp" or among the boat people in the South China Sea whose wives and children were routinely assaulted by Thai pirates.

    In that first year of "peace" in Southeast Asia, 20 times as many Cambodians perished as all the Americans who died in 10 years of war.

    In Iraq, a collapse of the government and army in the face of an American pullout, followed by a civil-sectarian war, the break-up of the country and a strategic debacle for the United States -- emboldening our enemies and imperiling our r
     
  20. Jediflyer

    Jediflyer Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2001
    WW II was an aberration versus our other historical wars (Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War, etc) in that the country has been sharply divided over taking action in certain conflicts.

    This is what my professor in my military history class constantly stresses and I think it is a very valid point.
     
  21. KnightWriter

    KnightWriter Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 6, 2001
    game, set and match to buchanan.

    on a related note, this thread must be a singular rarity in all of the web. it was started when the major combat operation ended, and is a journal of sorts into this country's activities in iraq.

    i doubt that many threads like this one exist on the web, with both excellent insight and rhetorical nonsense filling in the gaps of and for history.
     
  22. Jediflyer

    Jediflyer Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2001
    That just prompted me to go back and look at when I stopped taking the Administration claptrap. It appears I was still firmly in their grasp in August and slowly waned so that in December I had an interesting discussion with DM that you can find here (assuming 25 posts per page). Even then, however, I was hardly in the same place I am now in terms of my views on the war, the Administration, and International Law.

    *Edit*

    AAARGGH. I jumped tracks into the Iraq Retrospection thread and I found that even though I had dismissed the WMD justification in December, I was still arguing the war was justified (I still do think that is a legitamate point of view, but that just because something is justified doesn't mean you should do it) and posting Steven den Beste links, the king of pro-war claptrap.

    I got back into this thread so that you can see still more progress by April and May 04. This really was a slow evolution to my current position.

    Oh. I also found out I can be annoying as hell. :oops:

     
  23. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    One point of view that should not be overlooked is that "you broke it, you own it" remains true in Iraq. Americans simply do not have a right to be "tired of Iraq" because ultimately we're the ones responsible for empowering George Bush-- through the mechanism of our post 9/11 irrational and cowardly cultural fear of "terrorism"--to launch a war under a doctrine that never made sense to begin with even given the implausible assumption of a good faith belief in Saddam's WMD.

    "We're bored of unsuccessful nation building - so let's go home" just doesn't cut it.
     
  24. Mr44

    Mr44 VIP star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    May 21, 2002
    Why were we even involved at all then?
     
  25. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    I explained why were we involved: 1) the hubris of evil men + 2) national cowardice.
     
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