The Iraq / war on terror thread

[Rocket_queen125]

lets talk aboit flip flopping now.. slcpunk  please take a look at the john kerry documentary that i posted on here a few weeks bad or might it scare you to hear john kerry beating the war drum

[loretian]

Have you watched the news?

Do you believe there is peace and democracy over there right now?

 

They are getting ready to go into civil war for Christ sake.

They are hoping to have an election next year, but it is doubtful.

Whatever the situation over there may be, apparently some (or many, seemingly, from the article) Iraqis still consider it a better situation than before.? Hmmm...?

[SLCPUNK]

Have you watched the news?

Do you believe there is peace and democracy over there right now?

 

They are getting ready to go into civil war for Christ sake.

They are hoping to have an election next year, but it is doubtful.

Whatever the situation over there may be, apparently some (or many, seemingly, from the article) Iraqis still consider it a better situation than before.? Hmmm...?

There was no plan. As Kerry said, they replaced a dictator with chaos.

The article can't sum it up for everybody there you know that.

[SLCPUNK]

lets talk aboit flip flopping now.. slcpunk? please take a look at the john kerry documentary that i posted on here a few weeks bad or might it scare you to hear john kerry beating the war drum

You need to be set straight about this so called 'flip flopping' instead of just going around repeating it....


As for agreeing to the bill that allowed Bush to declare war in Iraq, Kerry said: "The vote for authorization is interpreted by a lot of people as a vote to go to war," but it actually gave Bush presidential judgment where Iraq was concerned.

"It wasn't a vote to go today, it was a vote to go to through the process ? go to the U.N. and the allies ... [but] the president made his own judgment," Kerry added. "The fact is, no one could have imagined back then they [administration] would disregard their own State Department," who wanted to take the more diplomatic route longer.

[Danny]

OK...couple things here.  First of all, I never cared weather or not there were weapons of mass destruction, if we're doing this for oil (which I honestly don't understand), or revenge for Sadaam trying to kill GHWB.  I didn't care before the actual war, I don't care now.  What I DO care about is that we truly are freeing these people.  As much as an asshole as I may seem to be, I am a humanitarian first and formost...and very proudly so.  I was very, very happy when this first came up so that eventually, somehow, someway we were going to do our best to liberate those poor people from the rape-rooms, mass graves and general lack of freedom.  I support most of the US's military ventures for that reason.  We have the biggest, baddest ass military ever conceived...if anything, we should be using it MORE to free the poor, repressed people in the world.  I pray nightly that China, North Korea, Africa, and Iran are all next.

As far as the corporate interest thing goes, well...I assume that it's the big, evil Halliburton being mentioned here, right?  You do know that they are by far the largest construction company in the US, right?  Why would'nt they be the go-to company to help in the rebuilding of a torn Iraq?  Should we have used "Bob's Construction and Pit-Bull Breeding" instead?  And as far as the conflict of interest for Cheney since he used to sit on their board of directors: Um, he USED to sit on their board of directors.  You may not have heard, but currently he is is employed in another field.  Vice President.

And one more thing.  Yes the War's aftermath sucks major shit...right now.  BUt dude, this stuff takes time.  Would you have been happy with Bush if we went in there, accomplished the war mission, and then everything would have been peachy keen?  Well guess what?  That would have been impossible.  It's hard and tough and takes a long, long time to liberate a country.  Not to sound like a broken record, but look at Germany after WWII.

[loretian]

There was no plan. As Kerry said, they replaced a dictator with chaos.

The article can't sum it up for everybody there you know that.

I still don't see how you can argue that there was no plan.  You disagree with the plan, fine.  But Bush clearly presented his plan from the beginning, including to the UN.  He brought it up again after we won the war, or at least the first stage of it, to the whole UN and asked for everyone's input and asked that they get involved, clearly stating how he wanted to approach the rebuilding of the country.

How can you even pretend there was no plan?

And yeah, the article can't sum it up for everybody, but as you've been posting articles or links similar to this lately (as in, the opinions of one or several persons about the war), I felt it was fair to hold it up along with them (and to the same scrutiny), since I didn't think you'd be posting this one.   

[SLCPUNK]

There was no plan. As Kerry said, they replaced a dictator with chaos.

The article can't sum it up for everybody there you know that.

I still don't see how you can argue that there was no plan.? You disagree with the plan, fine.? But Bush clearly presented his plan from the beginning, including to the UN.? He brought it up again after we won the war, or at least the first stage of it, to the whole UN and asked for everyone's input and asked that they get involved, clearly stating how he wanted to approach the rebuilding of the country.

How can you even pretend there was no plan?

And yeah, the article can't sum it up for everybody, but as you've been posting articles or links similar to this lately (as in, the opinions of one or several persons about the war), I felt it was fair to hold it up along with them (and to the same scrutiny), since I didn't think you'd be posting this one.? ?

There seems to be no plan for after taking Saddam out I mean.

Fair enough about the article, but at the same time I get counter arguments for the articles I post...don't I?

[loretian]

There seems to be no plan for after taking Saddam out I mean.

I meant that too.? After we took out Saddam, Bush went to the UN asking for help in rebuilding Iraq, and at that time, layed out his entire plan for the interim government and how power would be passed over (apparently in stages).? He also layed out plans for how he thought we should deal with insurgencies, and obviously, that part of the plan hasn't gone perfectly well.

While there is some chaos there, and every day you hear a story of a soldier getting killed, it doesn't mean the whole place is in chaos.? That's simply not true, and Kerry's wording was a great example of FUD type positioning.? I remember a few months ago when Israel was getting a new suicide bomber attack every day.? The country was not in chaos, and the chances of getting killed by a bomb were still miniscule.? Iraq is obviously nowhere nearly in as good of shape as Israel, but after just recently being liberated from an evil dictator, with a lot of people outside the country that supported that dictator coming into to fight against all our efforts, I think it's doing alright.  Remember Russia after the U.S.S.R collasped?  There was certainly some chaos then, too.

These insurgencies are fighting against us and what we intend to do.? If we pull out early, they will have won, and we'll have given them exactly what they want.

Fair enough about the article, but at the same time I get counter arguments for the articles I post...don't I?

Absolutely...I'm just countering your counter argument.? ?

[SLCPUNK]

There seems to be no plan for after taking Saddam out I mean.

I meant that too.? After we took out Saddam, Bush went to the UN asking for help in rebuilding Iraq, and at that time, layed out his entire plan for the interim government and how power would be passed over (apparently in stages).? He also layed out plans for how he thought we should deal with insurgencies, and obviously, that part of the plan hasn't gone perfectly well.

While there is some chaos there, and every day you hear a story of a soldier getting killed, it doesn't mean the whole place is in chaos.? That's simply not true, and Kerry's wording was a great example of FUD type positioning.? I remember a few months ago when Israel was getting a new suicide bomber attack every day.? The country was not in chaos, and the chances of getting killed by a bomb were still miniscule.? Iraq is obviously nowhere nearly in as good of shape as Israel, but after just recently being liberated from an evil dictator, with a lot of people outside the country that supported that dictator coming into to fight against all our efforts, I think it's doing alright.

These insurgencies are fighting against us and what we intend to do.? If we pull out early, they will have won, and we'll have given them exactly what they want.

Well your definition of plan and mine are two totally different things then.


I also would not say Israel is in great shape either. You just see it reported less.

[loretian]

Well your definition of plan and mine are two totally different things then.

What is your definition?

From dictionary.com: 1. A scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective: a plan of attack.

Bush's "plan", or whatever you consider it, fits this definition.  Note that the definition doesn't say anything about the sucess of the plan, which remains to be seen.

I also would not say Israel is in great shape either. You just see it reported less.

Well, I wouldn't either, but it's not like they're about to collapse or anything.   Most of their problems are directly related to the terrorism problems the US faces as well.

[D]

its not peaceful at the moment but in time it will be, there is always a resistance to change, but in 20 years people will forget that Iraq was ever the way it was. It will be a thriving very rich country just like Japan is now.

[SLCPUNK]

its not peaceful at the moment but in time it will be, there is always a resistance to change, but in 20 years people will forget that Iraq was ever the way it was. It will be a thriving very rich country just like Japan is now.

That is what we said about the Jews and the Arabs too.......


You ain't gonna see nothin' like Japan anytime soon bro...sorry.

[SLCPUNK]

WASHINGTON - The small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months.

The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan.

Today, American forces face instability in Iraq, where they are losing soldiers almost daily to escalating guerrilla attacks, the cost of occupation is exploding to almost $4 billion a month and withdrawal appears untold years away.

"There was no real planning for postwar Iraq," said a former senior U.S. official who left government recently.


The story of the flawed postwar planning process was gathered in interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior government officials.

One senior defense official told Knight Ridder that the failure of Pentagon civilians to set specific objectives - short-, medium- and long-term - for Iraq's stabilization and reconstruction after Saddam Hussein's regime fell even left U.S. military commanders uncertain about how many and what kinds of troops would be needed after the war.

In contrast, years before World War II ended, American planners plotted extraordinarily detailed blueprints for administering postwar Germany and Japan, designing everything from rebuilt economies to law enforcement and democratic governments.

The disenchanted U.S. officials today think the failure of the Pentagon civilians to develop such detailed plans contributed to the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq.

"We could have done so much better," lamented a former senior Pentagon official, who is still a Defense Department adviser. While most officials requested anonymity because going public could force them out of government service, some were willing to talk on the record.

Ultimately, however, the responsibility for ensuring that post-Saddam planning anticipated all possible complications lay with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, current and former officials said.

The Pentagon planning group, directed by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, the department's No. 3 official, included hard-line conservatives who had long advocated using the American military to overthrow Saddam. Its day-to-day boss was William Luti, a former Navy officer who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney before joining the Pentagon.

The Pentagon group insisted on doing it its way because it had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with U.S. friends and allies. The problem was that officials at the State Department and CIA thought the vision was badly flawed and impractical, so the Pentagon planners simply excluded their rivals from involvement.

Feith, Luti and their advisers wanted to put Ahmad Chalabi - the controversial Iraqi exile leader of a coalition of opposition groups - in power in Baghdad. The Pentagon planners were convinced that Iraqis would warmly welcome the American-led coalition and that Chalabi, who boasted of having a secret network inside and outside the regime, and his supporters would replace Saddam and impose order.

Feith, in a series of responses Friday to written questions, denied that the Pentagon wanted to put Chalabi in charge.

But Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, who at the time was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board - an influential group of outside advisers to the Pentagon - and is close to Feith and Luti, acknowledged in an interview that installing Chalabi was the plan.

Referring to the Chalabi scenario, Perle said: "The Department of Defense proposed a plan that would have resulted in a substantial number of Iraqis available to assist in the immediate postwar period." Had it been accepted, "we'd be in much better shape today," he said.


Perle said blame for any planning failures belonged to the State Department and other agencies that opposed the Chalabi route.

A senior administration official, who requested anonymity, said the Pentagon officials were enamored of Chalabi because he advocated normal diplomatic relations with Israel. They believed that would have "taken off the board" one of the only remaining major Arab threats to Israeli security.

Moreover, Chalabi was key to containing the influence of Iran's radical Islamic leaders in the region, because he would have provided bases in Iraq for U.S. troops. That would complete Iran's encirclement by American military forces around the Persian Gulf and U.S. friends in Russia and Central Asia, he said.

But the failure to consult more widely on what to do if the Chalabi scenario failed denied American planners the benefits of a vast reservoir of expertise gained from peacekeeping and reconstruction in shattered nations from Bosnia to East Timor.

As one example, the Pentagon planners ignored an eight-month-long effort led by the State Department to prepare for the day when Saddam's dictatorship was gone. The "Future of Iraq" project, which involved dozens of exiled Iraqi professionals and 17 U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon, prepared strategies for everything from drawing up a new Iraqi judicial code to restoring the unique ecosystem of Iraq's southern marshes, which Saddam's regime had drained.

Virtually none of the "Future of Iraq" project's work was used once Saddam fell.

The first U.S. administrator in Iraq, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, wanted the Future of Iraq project director, Tom Warrick, to join his staff in Baghdad. Warrick had begun packing his bags, but Pentagon civilians vetoed his appointment, said one current and one former official.

Meanwhile, postwar planning documents from the State Department, CIA and elsewhere were "simply disappearing down the black hole" at the Pentagon, said a former U.S. official with long Middle East experience who recently returned from Iraq.

[SLCPUNK]

Archaeological experts who were worried about protecting Iraq's immense cultural treasures were rebuffed in their requests for meetings before the war. After it, Iraq's museum treasures were looted.

Responsibility for preparing for post-Saddam Iraq lay with senior officials who supervised the Office of Special Plans, a highly secretive group of analysts and consultants in the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau. The office was physically isolated from the rest of the bureau.

Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired from the Near East bureau on July 1, said she and her colleagues were allowed little contact with the Office of Special Plans and often were told by the officials who ran it to ignore the State Department's concerns and views.

"We almost disemboweled State," Kwiatkowski said.

Senior State Department and White House officials verified her account and cited many instances where officials from other agencies were excluded from meetings or decisions.

The Chalabi plan, fiercely opposed by the CIA and the State Department, ran into major problems.

President Bush, after meeting with Iraqi exiles in January, told aides that, while he admired the Iraqi exiles, they wouldn't be rewarded with power in Baghdad. "The future of this country ? is not going to be charted by people who sat out the sonofabitch (Saddam) in London or Cambridge, Massachusetts," one former senior White House official quoted Bush as saying.

After that, the White House quashed the Pentagon's plan to create - before the war started - an Iraqi-government-in-exile that included Chalabi.

The Chalabi scheme was dealt another major blow in February, a month before the war started, when U.S. intelligence agencies monitored him conferring with hard-line Islamic leaders in Tehran, Iran, a State Department official said. About the same time, an Iraqi Shiite militia that was based in Iran and known as the Badr Brigade began moving into northern Iraq, setting off alarm bells in Washington.

At the State Department, officials drafted a memo, titled "The Perfect Storm," warning of a confluence of catastrophic developments that would endanger the goals of the coming U.S. invasion.

Cheney, once a strong Chalabi backer, ordered the Pentagon to curb its support for the exiles, the official said.

Yet Chalabi continued to receive Pentagon assistance, including backing for a 700-man paramilitary unit. The U.S. military flew Chalabi and his men at the height of the war from the safety of northern Iraq, which was outside Saddam's control, to an air base outside the southern city of Nasiriyah in expectation that he would soon take power.

Chalabi settled into a former hunting club in the fashionable Mansour section of Baghdad. He was joined by Harold Rhode, a top Feith aide, said the former U.S. official who recently returned from Iraq.

But Chalabi lacked popular support - graffiti in Iraq referred to "Ahmad the Thief" - and anti-American anger was growing over the looting and anarchy that followed Saddam's ouster.

"It was very clear that there was an expectation that the exiles would be the core of an Iraqi interim (governing) authority," retired U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney said. He was in Iraq in April to help with postwar reconstruction.

Once Saddam's regime fell, American authorities "quickly grasped" that Chalabi and his people couldn't take charge, Carney said.

However, the Pentagon had devised no backup plan. Numerous officials in positions to know said that if Pentagon civilians had a detailed plan that anticipated what could happen after Saddam fell, it was invisible to them.

Garner's team didn't even have such basics as working cell phones and adequate transportation. And Garner was replaced in May - much earlier than planned - by L. Paul Bremer.

In his e-mail response to questions, Feith denied that officials in his office were instructed to ignore the concerns of other agencies and departments. He contended that in planning for Iraq, there was a "robust interagency process," led by the National Security Council staff at the White House.

Feith repeated a theme that he struck in a speech Tuesday in Washington, when he said planners prepared for "a long list of problems" that never happened, including destruction of oil fields, Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons, food shortages, a collapse of the Iraqi currency and large-scale refugee flows.

"Instead, we are facing some of the problems brought on by our very success in the war," he said.

Feith rejected criticisms that the Pentagon should have used more troops to invade Iraq. That might have prevented postwar looting, he said, but U.S. military commanders would have lost tactical surprise by waiting for extra troops, and thus "might have had the other terrible problems that we anticipated."

"War, like life in general, always involves trade-offs," Feith said. "It is not right to assume that any current problems in Iraq can be attributed to poor planning."

Other officials, while critical of the Pentagon, say it is unfair to lay sole blame on civilians such as Feith who are working under Rumsfeld.

The former senior White House official said Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, never took the logical - if politically risky - step of acknowledging that American troops would have to occupy Iraq for years to stabilize and rebuild the country.

"You let him (Bush) go into this without a serious plan ? for the endgame," the official said. It was "staggeringly negligent on their part."

Still, the Defense Department was in charge of day-to-day postwar planning. And the problems were numerous, the current and former officials said. Key allies with a huge stake in Iraq's future were often left uninformed of the details of U.S. postwar planning.

For example, the government of Turkey, which borders Iraq to the north and was being asked by Washington to allow 60,000 American troops to invade Iraq from its soil, peppered the U.S. government with 51 questions about postwar plans.

The reply came in a cable Feb. 5, more than 10 pages long, from the State Department. Largely drafted by the Pentagon, it answered many of Ankara's queries, but on some questions, including the structure of the postwar government in Iraq, the cable affirmed that "no decision has been made," a senior administration official said.

The response was "still in work, still in work ? we're still working on that," Kwiatkowski said. "Basically an empty answer."

[Rocket_queen125]

W for women

[loretian]

SLC, from that article, I get more that they think it was bad planning, versus no planning.  Yes, the first thing the US official was saying was "there was no planning" but it sounds like he means "there was bad or incomplete planning", and the rest of the article points out what seem like mistakes or failure foresee certain things with the plan.   And that article does make a good argument, but I'd like to know more.  Can you give me the url for it?

I didn't mean to be nit-picky, but there really is a difference between no plan and a shoddy one, and that's what I thought you specifically meant.

[Rain]

And for your information, a conservative in France is more liberal than a democrat in the US.

I won't discuss this issue anymore with you because it leads nowhere .... 


For your last comment and your own information it depends on the french convervative and the US democrat ... 
I can tell you Chirac is a conservative and most of the UMP (you seem to know french politics so here we go ...) are actual conservatives ... Boutin for ex is pretty close to your envangelist republicans on many issues ... So I can't agree with your last statement at all ...
And it's pretty hard to compare anyway because many issues as death penalty, abortion and gay mariage that are central in The United States aren't in France... Death penalty is out since 81, abortion is a right since 74 and even the large majority of the conservatives agree with both these decisions .... Gay mariage, we already have the Pacs and that's not a central issue, unemployment, healthcare are ... and in these fields the governement is very CONSERVATIVE ... 

[GnRNightrain]

And for your information, a conservative in France is more liberal than a democrat in the US.

I won't discuss this issue anymore with you because it leads nowhere ....?


For your last comment and your own information it depends on the french convervative and the US democrat ...?
I can tell you Chirac is a conservative and most of the UMP (you seem to know french politics so here we go ...) are actual conservatives ... Boutin for ex is pretty close to your envangelist republicans on many issues ... So I can't agree with your last statement at all ...
And it's pretty hard to compare anyway because many issues as death penalty, abortion and gay mariage that are central in The United States aren't in France... Death penalty is out since 81, abortion is a right since 74 and even the large majority of the conservatives agree with both these decisions .... Gay mariage, we already have the Pacs and that's not a central issue, unemployment, healthcare are ... and in these fields the governement is very CONSERVATIVE ...?

Well, yah your right.  I didnt mean social liberals, I meant fiscal liberals. 

[gnrvrrule]

This will be my only post on this topic.  The war was not about oil.  I'll say it again and again and again.  Our oil prices are through the roof.  They've been for a year now.  Logic says that if it were about oil, we would have significantly lower prices.  I won't get into the rest of the debate, but I just wanted to make my point on that clear.

[SLCPUNK]

SLC, from that article, I get more that they think it was bad planning, versus no planning.? Yes, the first thing the US official was saying was "there was no planning" but it sounds like he means "there was bad or incomplete planning", and the rest of the article points out what seem like mistakes or failure foresee certain things with the plan.? ?And that article does make a good argument, but I'd like to know more.? Can you give me the url for it?

I didn't mean to be nit-picky, but there really is a difference between no plan and a shoddy one, and that's what I thought you specifically meant.

You are being a bit nit-picky. Next time I'll put no plan in quotes.

A bad plan to me...is no plan.

Picky picky.