“The continuous assault on Sarah Palin is not so difficult to understand. In fact, it can be summed up thusly: she’s a woman opposed to abortion. You see, when a man says he’s opposed to abortion, women who disagree can accuse him of trying to control a woman’s body and/or simply not understanding how a woman feels about dealing with pregnancy, career achievement and defeating the “good ole boy” network. But, how are they going to justify that to a Sarah Palin, who has raised a family, been elected to the highest office in her state and has gained a reputation as a corruption fighter? And a woman decided to keep, raise, and love a Down syndrome child, her son Trig.

Governor Palin represents a stake in the heart of the abortion movement and for that reason alone, she must be sniped at, ridiculed and trashed until her name becomes a scarlet letter on the bosom of every woman who dares to challenge the inner sanctum of liberal orthodoxy. “

Who would bother reading tired old armchair general after the event crap from Washington Post and NY Times losers other than some mired in the past dipshit suffering from the worst case of Bush Derangement Syndrome on Kiwiblog. See a psychiatrist nutjob. Its ancient history. The Iraq war is over and Bush won. Suck on it.

———————–

An inability to separate wheat from chaff transforms The Assassins’ Gate into an echo chamber for conspiracy theories. Packer bases his treatment of the Office of Special Plans, the Pentagon policy shop to which I belonged, on secondary sources cherry-picked from Rozen and Cole’s blogs, who themselves drew their stories from Bob Dreyfuss of The American Prospect. Dreyfuss long served as Middle East columnist for a magazine belonging to Lyndon LaRouche, a discredited American conspiracy theorist and convicted felon.

Packer wrote The Assassins’ Gate to elucidate the Iraq war. He succeeded, but unintentionally: in trying to illustrate the human element of the Iraqi enterprise, his book instead becomes a monument to the tendentiousness undercutting U.S. Iraq policy. While his descriptions are rich and his character portraits compelling, style trumps substance and politics supplant honesty. Those critical of U.S. intervention have already seized upon Packer’s narrative, but, ultimately, historians will dismiss it as venal. It may reflect current progressive sentiment, but it will not survive the test of time.

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.23528,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

———————

In other words, just more Bush hating bullshit from the usual BDS nutjobs. Yawn.

Mistakes are made in all wars. It’s the gross negligence and incompetence that is the hallmark of the Iraq war that is most unforgiveable. If you were to read any of the three books that I linked to, you would read that the CPA was too focused on privatising the state owned companies, and not on providing security and electricity to the Iraqis. They wanted to transform their economy before they made them safe to walk in the streets. Anyone with a higher IQ than Redbaiter’s would know that security must be ensured first, then work on everything else. Plus, the people that got jobs for the CPA were not experts, they were Republican loyalists. The twenty-something kid put in charge of getting the Baghdad Stock Exchange up and running had no experience in markets or running companies. But he did know someone in the Whitehouse. That is just one of hundreds of examples. It was a case of “jobs for the boys” writ large. Add to that that the CPA were serverly under manned. When the Berlin wall came down, the Germans sent 8,000 people to transform all the East German state-ownded companies into efficient enterprises, while to do the same job in ALL OF IRAQ, the CPA had 3 people. When history is written, as it is being now, the invasion and occupation of Iraq will be a blueprint for how not to invade and stabilise a country, and all the village idiots who think that it went well, that no mistakes were made, and that no fault lies at the feet of the genius George W Bush, need to start reading news sources other than Newsmax, Human Events, and FOX, in order to learn some reality.

The other point you entirely ignore is that despots and tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Hussein are only ever removed from power through brutal force. You laud the ‘stability’ of pre-war Iraq. Kind of like the stability of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia huh. I note you never answer the question – is Europe a better place without Hitler and use the usual smokescreen of why doesn’t America remove every dictator. The simple answer is that even super powers have limits. Mugabe is a thug but he has limited power to threaten regional African stability. I would love for some larger power (Britain or the US) to overthrow him. Saddam Hussein proved by his actions over 15 years that he was a threat to regional peace and he had previously shown his propensity to develop and use WMD (gassing the Kurds). Millions died in his war with Iran, he invaded Kuwait, he fired medium range missiles into Israel when Israel had no part in his decision to invade Kuwait and played a limited role the Coalition forces decision to retake Kuwait.

“Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis raped, kidnapped, murdered in the interim.” You throw this emotive truth as if this was the first and only war where these terrible things happened. Since you enjoy memos – here’s a memo: war is brutal, it usually involves substantial collateral civilian casualties and often the destruction of vital infrastructure. Part of Britain’s victory over Germany involved the controversial night boming raids over German cities where sometimes there were no military targets at all with the only goal being the destruction of the morale of the German people. All armies of various ideological stripes throughout all recorded history commit atrocities. Those committed by the Allies in WW2 were rare and infrequent as were US or British atrocities in the Iraq war. You cannot remove brutal dictators easily and without bloodshed. Bush frequently referred to regime change as one of the reasons for the invasion. The primary reason given was the Iraqi regime’s blatant and continuous breaches of numerous separate UNSC resolutions.

Post war clean up and reconstruction is time consuming and costly. Rebuilding democracies in defeated nations even more so. When you compare the condition of the infrastructure of Iraq (both physical and governmental) at this point post the invasion and compare it with the equivalent point in the reconstruction efforts in Germany and Japan post WW2, Iraq is miles ahead. Similarly with the establishment of Constitutions and elections. It was 5 years before Germany or Japan ever managed either. It took decades to rebuild South Korea. And yet if we look at Germany, Japan and Korea today many years after brutal devastating wars they are thriving democracies with vibrant modern capitalist economies.

Sorry for the threadjack people but the Iraq war is unlikely to come up in a post.

It was in fact one of the main issues arising in the post-WWII world, where during the war, an important aspect of the American Grand Strategy was to keep Britain from re-establishing her pre-war power base. This of course led to the rapprochement between Stalin and Roosevelt and then Truman, and importantly also to the broad front strategy which eventually led to the Soviets taking Berlin and half of Europe.

A very interesting story for those interested is the establishment of British colonial power in India. The difficulties of the venture across such a wide continent with no communications, and the elegance and skill with which the British accomplished the task is a great read.

If only the Americans could focus just on taking the place then leave it to the British to keep it, I think it might be a different world we live in.

Exactly the situation at Pearl Harbour. The Pacific fleet comander ignored all warngings from British intelligence that Pearl was in dire danger. America thinks big and the lives of 10,000 men is insignificant.

“Sacking of many of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party, even though many of them held relatively junior posts.”

Be interesting to see how Iraq deals with that. there’s no reason why those men can’t get their positions back under Iraqi rule. I wouldn’t be surprised if the yanks made it a pre requisite in negotiations to give them life time
bans. Americans think big, but they can also be very petty.

The state dept will become the Billary dept and somehow,, there will be a glitch in the system that has Bill authorised to speak on behalf of the White House in foreign affairs.

Don’t think we’ll see another visit to NZ.

Wonder if Chelsea swears like a trooper

Some one leak it to you tube

Plleeeeasseeee!

* Detail the diplomatic strategy that the Bush administration failed to do that would’ve suceeded.

“As democracy scholar Thomas Carothers puts it:

“[T]he hope of advancing a regional democratic agenda has been deeply undercut by the Iraq war. . . . Day after day Arab citizens see on their television sets tens or even hundreds of Arabs dying as a result of a ‘democratic experiment’ in their region.”

He goes on to say that “over the past four years President Bush has closely associated democracy promotion with a military intervention in Iraq that is widely viewed as illegitimate, illegal, and the cause of tremendous human suffering. . . . The Iraq war has . . . effectively rebrand[ed] democracy promotion as a tool of hegemonic interventionism – this time with militaristic coloring.””

What bureaucratic infrastructure? There wasn’t one except the Baath party that functioned like a modern day Nazi Party

Umm, the schools, the govt depts, you know, the things that make up a nation. Iraq had it. Didn’t you know that?

Disbanding the Iraqi security forces was problematic but the one in its place is now functioning…

Who cares what’s happening now KIA? Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis raped, kidnapped, murdered in the interim. That was my point as you well know. And see my last quote below from the British. It was well known, it was a deadly mistake. It was dumb. Why can’t you admit it?

Getting the regional nations on board – which ones do you mean? Surely not Iran and Syria

Yep, also Israel, as well as the others you point out. If you don’t understand how that could have worked I suggest you don’t really understand ME politics.

What local government – you mean Baath party lackies. A “non-factional environment” – what planet are you living on. Newsflash – Shi’ites and Sunnis have hated each other since well the 7th century when their respective interpretations of Islam split. Iraq is factional – always will be. Is the fact that this factionalism is difficult to manage a reason to say well lets leave the dictator in power?

See the memo below.

What about the blood of the 100,000’s of Iraqi citizens it is known that Saddam murdered? Was that to go on? Hitler murdered millions and the war to remove him guess what, it cost the lives of millions of innocent German civilians and hundreds and thousands of fine British and American soldiers. Was it worth it? Is Europe a better place with the removal of Adolf Hitler?

Yeh but geez KIA, that WASN’T why Bush SAID he was going into Iraq. I mean it would be great if the US would invade every single nation run by a despot, including Zim, Congo and all the others. That would be excellent. But it wasn’t about that, was it? So your point is irrelevant.

Happy to get really really deeply into every single detail if we ever get a dedicated thread on Iraq on this blog but until then, here’s that memo. Also, please bear in mind I’ve been decrying the Iraq war since very early in 2003 on this blog, I’m hardly speaking after the event, so as for being a Monday Night Quarterback, leave it for those late-comers who take awhile to catchup. Here’s that memo….

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/mar/14/uk.topstories31
“Senior British diplomatic and military staff gave Tony Blair explicit warnings three years ago [2003] that the US was disastrously mishandling the occupation of Iraq, according to leaked memos.

John Sawers, Mr Blair’s envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 cataloguing US failures. With unusual frankness, he described the US postwar administration, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as “an unbelievable mess” and said “Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals” were “well-meaning but out of their depth”.

That assessment is reinforced by Major General Albert Whitley, the most senior British officer with the US land forces. Gen Whitley, in another memo later that summer, expressed alarm that the US-British coalition was in danger of losing the peace. “We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be ‘yes’,” he concluded.

The memos were obtained by Michael Gordon, author, along with General Bernard Trainor, of Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, published to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion.

The British memos identified a series of US failures that contained the seeds of the present insurgency and anarchy.

The mistakes include:

· A lack of interest by the US commander, General Tommy Franks, in the post-invasion phase.

· The presence in the capital of the US Third Infantry Division, which took a heavyhanded approach to security.

· Squandering the initial sympathy of Iraqis.

· Bechtel, the main US civilian contractor, moving too slowly to reconnect basic services, such as electricity and water.

· Failure to deal with health hazards, such as 40% of Baghdad’s sewage pouring into the Tigris and rubbish piling up in the streets.

· Sacking of many of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party, even though many of them held relatively junior posts.

Mr Sawers, in a memo titled Iraq: What’s Going Wrong, written on May 11, four days after he had arrived in Baghdad, is uncompromising about the US administration in Baghdad. He wrote: “No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis.”

For this one, the Bush Administration takes 100% of the blame thus far

How about Clintons sanctions? Bush seniors targeting of power stations and sanitation plants during the defense of Kuwait? I don’t think it’s as clean cut as you say.

* Detail the diplomatic strategy that the Bush administration failed to do that would’ve suceeded.
* What bureaucratic infrastructure? There wasn’t one except the Baath party that functioned like a modern day Nazi Party.
* Disbanding the Iraqi security forces was problematic but the one in its place is now functioning to the point that the Iraqi Govt itself has asked the US to drawdown its forces because it now has the growing capacity to defend itself. The alternative was what – Saddam’s hopeless and corrupt troops to stay on.
* Getting the regional nations on board – which ones do you mean? Surely not Iran and Syria who are anti-American to the core and were happy for Saddam to remain in power to keep the heat off them and make mischief with Israel. Kuwait and the UAE supported the US. Do you mean the Saudis? The same Saudis who persuaded Bush 1 to leave Saddam in power – surely not.
* What local government – you mean Baath party lackies. A “non-factional environment” – what planet are you living on. Newsflash – Shi’ites and Sunnis have hated each other since well the 7th century when their respective interpretations of Islam split. Iraq is factional – always will be. Is the fact that this factionalism is difficult to manage a reason to say well lets leave the dictator in power?
* What about the blood of the 100,000′s of Iraqi citizens it is known that Saddam murdered? Was that to go on? Hitler murdered millions and the war to remove him guess what, it cost the lives of millions of innocent German civilians and hundreds and thousands of fine British and American soldiers. Was it worth it? Is Europe a better place with the removal of Adolf Hitler?

Well KIA I don’t imagine the people who live in one of the oldest civilisations in the world are terribly pleased with the results of the US invasion.

Maybe it wasn’t great under Saddam but at least there was stability. Now those poor souls have experienced the worst of all possible worlds: utterly brutal attacks on anyone without mercy, decimation of infrastructure and functioning institutions, the strong possibility of a warlord like regime arising from the ashs of the occupation if/when the occupiers withdraw, I could go on but we all know.

If anyone can possibly argue that, on balance, the US invasion has been at all beneficial then go ahead.

Frankly, the military did what was asked of them. They disarmed the enemy and stabilised the situation, in a very short time. Then, it was time for the rest of the strategy to swing into place: diplomatic and bureaucratic. Newsflash: the poor souls are STILL freakin waiting for both of those things. The fact is, the Bush Administration made massive strategic errors starting with the wholesale disarmament and disbandment of the Iraqi security forces. That left a vacuum and a lot of well trained well armed people with nothing to do. Hull-freaking-lo.

Next thing the Bush Administration UTTERLY failed to do was to use the freely available power of the US to implement a diplomatic solution. To get the regional nations on board and to keep regional trade working, to get local govt up and running in a non-factional environement. Newsflash: HE DID NONE OF THAT.

You know, to go on about how this solution was better than the past is just fucking ignoring the fact that this is an example of the second most badly handled regional conflict the US has ever been involved in. The first of course being Vietnam. Who knows, it may turn out to be Number One, because the final acts are yet to played out. At least in Vietnam, the blame could be fairly apportioned across several Administrations. For this one, the Bush Administration takes 100% of the blame thus far, and you can absolutely and unequivocably lay at the door of that Administration the blood of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians and thousands of very fine US troops.

And P.S. Still no WMD.

Bill Clinton found it hard to think clearly in the oval office when he was denigrating it by having a brain damaged intern give him blow jobs while he was talking on the phone.

Ah so that explains it!

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: “Mr President, we could always just fire a few warning shots across the border…”
Clinton: “No, harder! Harder!”
CJCs: “You want a firmer response? But the only target we have identified is an aspirin factory. Surely you’re not suggesting we bomb that?”
Clinton: “Yes, yes, god yes!”
CJCs: “Okay Mr President, we’re bombing it now. But it appears to be full of civilians.”
Clinton: “Uh oh, I made a mess. Better get something to clean that up”.
CJCs: “Well I did warn you sir. You want us to avoid the press discovering this?”
Clinton: “Yeah we can’t have them finding your dress”.
CJCs: “My…what…?? Uh oh…”

All Bush Administration efforts to restrict Iran’s nuclear development via diplomatic channels or the UN have been thwarted by the Chinese and the Russians with the tacit looking the other way by the French – all whom profit from trade with Iran. Even reasonably tough sanctions and banking restrictions from the US are undermined in all directions by these same enabling countries. Prey advise us what Rice didn’t do that would’ve prevented Iranian nuclear development.

North Korea has given up its nuclear weapons programme – something it was allowed to develop under Clinton’s watch thanks to the hapless “Agreed Formula” decided by that great lover of despotic rulers – Jimmy Carter.

When even its opposition praise it (that’s the same site which a widely circulated anti-Snopes email, which I bet is the source of your critique, recommended right wingers use instead), as does the About.com urban legends website – while simultaneously debunking the “flaming liberal” allegation – I’ll believe them over a guy who fantasises about Hillary holding a penis – even if it is in the form of a Christmas tree decoration.

Pear shaped people have been clinically tested and found to naturally tell more lies and be more abusive than thin people. Look that up on Snopes.

Nah, this whole “believing whatever your prejudices tell you is fact” thing is quite rewarding. Who needs fact checking?! Several of my ex-girlfriends were want could only be called “pear shaped” and that description fits themperfectly. So, with no research or attribution whatsoever, I think I’ll write a book – “Inside the mind of a fat arsed woman: How checking her pants size now can save you on alimony later”.

Should sell at least as well as Alridge’s effort

Yes, exactly. Like everything in this: http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Gate-America-Iraq/dp/0374530556/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227334042&sr=1-1

and this: http://www.amazon.com/Fiasco-American-Military-Adventure-Iraq/dp/B001E96KKK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227334042&sr=1-2

and this: http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Life-Emerald-City-Vintage/dp/0307278832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227334151&sr=1-1

I am willing to bet my house that Redbaiter has never read a book about the invasion and occupation of Iraq that was not written by a neocon. Facts hurt.