Intel experts: 'We are repeating every mistake we made in Vietnam'

[Roland99]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Intel_experts_tell_Time_We_are_repeating_every_mistake_we_made_in_Vi_0918.html

Time Magazine's Joe Klein reports in the magazine's paid-restricted online edition that senior intelligence officials increasingly believe that the Bush Administration's focus on finding WMDs dramatically reduced their ability to stave off an Iraq insurgency, RAW STORY can reveal.

"Five men met in an automobile in a Baghdad park a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in April 2003, according to U.S. intelligence sources," TIME's Klein begins. "One of the five was Saddam. The other four were among his closest advisers. Now a U.S. coup had taken place, and Saddam turned to al-Ahmed and the others and told them to start "rebuilding your networks." Excerpts follow.
#

More than two years into the war, U.S. intelligence sources concede that they still don't know enough about the nearly impenetrable web of what Iraqis call ahl al-thiqa (trust networks), which are at the heart of the insurgency. It's an inchoate movement without a single inspirational leader like Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh--a movement whose primary goal is perhaps even more improbable than the U.S. dream of creating an Iraqi democracy: restoring Sunni control in a country where Sunnis represent just 20% of the population. Intelligence experts can't credibly estimate the rebels' numbers but say most are Iraqis. Foreigners account for perhaps 2% of the suspected guerrillas who have been captured or killed, although they represent the vast majority of suicide bombers. ("They are ordnance," a U.S. intelligence official says.) The level of violence has been growing steadily. There have been roughly 80 attacks a day in recent weeks. Suicide bombs killed more than 200 people, mostly in Baghdad, during four days of carnage last week, among the deadliest since Saddam's fall.

More than a dozen current and former intelligence officers knowledgeable about Iraq spoke with TIME in recent weeks to share details about the conflict. They voiced their growing frustration with a war that they feel was not properly anticipated by the Bush Administration, a war fought with insufficient resources, a war that almost all of them now believe is not winnable militarily. "We're good at fighting armies, but we don't know how to do this," says a recently retired four-star general with Middle East experience. "We don't have enough intelligence analysts working on this problem. The Defense Intelligence Agency puts most of its emphasis and its assets on Iran, North Korea and China. The Iraqi insurgency is simply not top priority, and that's a damn shame."

Fucking PNAC ideologues have all but destroyed our nation.

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Who should we believe, America - Rove or the real experts?

Hint: It ain't Rove.

[Skink]

2. There's no more good targets in Iraq..

Who's next.

[babylonsister]

3. We're aware of this, but it's still very depressing.

I guess this admin never heard of learning from previous mistakes.

[greenman3610]

4. These guys, to a man

avoided Vietnam, and obviously didn't spend any
time thinking about what might have
gone wrong. So it's no surprise they would
be blindsided by the reality of Guerilla war.

[Warren Stupidity]

11. many of them bought the bullshit

that somehow the liberals sabatoged the war effort and that if only the military didn't have its hands tied they could have whipped those vietnamese in a day or so.

How they fit that in with Johnson and Nixon throwing everything short of nukes at everything even remotely identified as a vietnamese enemy is an exercise in reality avoidance that, if it weren't for the 100,000 or so dead from this war, would be amusing.

[NYC]

16. They didn't read the Pentagon Papers.

If they had, they would know about the futility of bombing, and would not believe that "one hand tied behind its back" nonsense.

[shanti]

21. that's it - there's no "mistake" about this

it was in the plans all along.

[maxsolomon]

34. we DID sabotage the war effort

we insisted on saving america's soul.

[Roland99]

14. Bingo...that should be something America should be ashamed of...

supporting a cabal of chickenhawks.

[stepnw1f]

5. Repeating the Biggest Lie

Fighting an enemy.

Where there is a war, the military industrial complex makes a profit. High Demand brings a higher profit.

All ya need to do is create a war=create your market.

[NYC]

17. War profits.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, page 60.

The war had brought glory for the generals, death to the privates, wealth for the merchants, unemployment for the poor."

That was around 1760, the French and Indian War. Nothing changes.

[stepnw1f]

35. Thanks... When I Read the Four Books Waiting for Me...

I'll check it out.

[daleo]

6. The invasion was supposed to be about WMD

So, naturally they had to divert some resources to that purposeless task.

[libodem]

7. we will never win

it's a sand trap, tar pit, quagmire, sink hole mess. All the supporters of Viet Nam believe if we'd just gone in and bombed Hanoi and the rest of the north into the ground, we could have won. I think that's why Shock and Awe was so bloody....to bomb these people into submission....Already I am hearing people like Michael Savage say we are only loosing our boys over there because we haven't resumed bombing night and day. I expect they will exterminate the whole country soon. Hope it doesn't get too radio active over there someone has to 'mine' the oil and provide democracy. Our young men and women are being exposed to high concentrations of depleted uranium by being in the country. They must expect that the next generation of Iraqi's to be cretins. Hope it doesn't backfire onto our next generation.

[despairing optimist]

8. Not repeating every mistake: Iraq leads Vietnam in dead journalists

and embedded ones. Back then reporters could go on their own a little more easily. Saigon was more secure than Baghdad, at least until the final pullout, and I think US bases weren't as vulnerable to attack, but others more knowledgeable will correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Iraq and Afghanistan are in worse shape than Vietnam was, especially this early in the occupation process. That's why I think the characterization "Vietnam on steroids" or on fast track is pretty apt. Also, the Powell Doctrine (any US military intervention must have clear goals and an exit strategy) was developed after Vietnam precisely to avoid situations like Iraq and Afghanistan, and even the doctrine's author--a key player in the * administration--neglected to apply it here. Things are definitely far worse now than they were then.

[TOOLZ]

9. There is no war

it is an occupation. we stay in another country and wait for attacks. we opened the floodgates for civil war knowing exactly what would happen. we now just call them "insurgents," the broadest possible term.

if saddam was still there, not only would this not be happening, but we'd still have a chance to remove him properly.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. delete the "all but" and you have it right.

Also there is a reasonable analysis that views the massive incompetence of the occupation as at least partially deliberate: that an insurgency was required in order to justify a prolonged occupation. In other words, as screwed up as it seems, things are pretty much going according to plan.

Some plan, huh? So basically take your pick: incompetent bunglers who should be jailed for criminal negligence, or evil bastards who should be jailed for crimes against humanity. I vote for all of the above.

[goforit]

12. US Foriegn Policy = Total oppression/suppression

What do you expect with GHWB policy?

[Just Me]

13. Well, hell, WE don't trust them,...why would the Iraqi people.

It's common damn sense!!! If someone who does NOT belong in your house comes in and imposes their will over your life and property,...are you simply going to say, "okay",...or are you going to find a way to have them removed?

The BushCo/neoCON regime have not only wreaked hell on another nation, they've stolen OUR treasure to go on an exploratative exploitation plan that was destined to fail. EVERYONE PAYS EXCEPT THE BUSHCO/NEOCON REGIME WHICH PROFITS!!!

It's sick as shit!!!!

[barb162]

15. 80 attacks a day...very impressive

I wonder why the "2%" foreigners (suicide bombers and such) align themselves with the Sunnis. Most of the time they are attacking not Americans but Iraqis.

[wickerwoman]

22. That jumped out at me as well.

I wonder why this is the first I'm hearing of it.

Oops, no I don't.

[madmark]

37. Al Quada is sunni wahabist based; and Baathist are smarter than

fundamentalist air head martyrs coming over the border and able to manipulate them and take advantage of them for their own purposes. If there is any silver lining to this, is that if there is US pullout I think the Baathists can and will brutally suppress these Al Quada's just as they suppressed any other non-Baath group in the country.

[Amonester]

39. Don't worry: they're in their last throws.

No, wait! That was Cheneyourself's last excuse! :+

I wonder which other new excuse he might be about to puke out this time... :mad:

The truth is: as long as the rivers of blood flow, the barrels of oil fly out and away... :grr:

[TroubleMan]

18. Who wants to be the last person to die for a lie? Raise you hand.

Anyone?... anyone?.... Bueller?.......Bueller?

[TygrBright]

19. You REALLY don't have to be an "intelligence expert"...

...to figure out that we're running the Vietnam playbook, line by line, and getting the same results.

What was that definition of insanity again?

disgustedly,
Bright

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. but, but but all of them are foreigners I tell yuo

a little while ago I had a discusion with a Freeper who claims he is in ROTC (If he is to his credit he will be 0'er there), anyhow I told him a US Air Force Colonel told us this at a brief recently, he retired, and he also told us some other amazing stories, but intel calcuated the tops of the foreigners was 10%... of cousre he does not beleive me and was brinngking up very old MSNBC propaganda stories... now the truth is emerging.

Oh and among the stories, the warplan was war gamed to death, leading to good and valid changes, Franks sent the post war plan to other offices in the government insteand of war gaming it himself... so by meeting number 3 the military was dismissed as the contractors were splitting the goods... oh and by the way this was an off the record story, so don't ask me for name... ok

[bleedingheart]

23. Because those running this war ran from Vietnam...they didn't learn

the lessons that war would have taught them.

[Roland99]

25. And some of them were in the Nixon administration. You'd think they'd have

learned from actually BEING A PART OF IT.

I guess they figured they knew better.



:eyes:

[DS1]

24. Won't somebody think of the troops?

:eyes:

[genieroze]

26. Two quotes come to mind

George Santayana:

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

George Wilhelm Hegel:

What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles.

[Roland99]

27. They're even starting to engage in the "body count war"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9395462/

BAGHDAD - Using enemy body counts as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest attacks on Iraq's capital.

But by many standards, including increasingly high death tolls in insurgent strikes, Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, could claim to be the side that's gaining after 2 1/2 years of war. August was the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops.

Zarqawi's guerrillas this spring and summer showed themselves to be capable of mounting waves of suicide bombings and car bombings that could kill scores at a time and paralyze the Iraqi capital. Insurgents have also launched dozens of attacks every day in other parts of Iraq and laid open claim this summer to cities and towns in the critical far west, despite hit-and-run offensives by U.S. forces.

Last week, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, declared "great successes" against insurgents. But Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, where Lynch briefed reporters, was under stepped-up security screening and U.S. guard for fear of suicide bombings. Insurgents for three days running last week managed to lob mortar rounds into the Green Zone, the heart of the U.S. and Iraqi administration.

Great success? Umm...WTF?!?!


And I thought the US didn't "do body counts"? Are they flip-flopping on *that*, too? Appears to be they are but only in a way that would be politicall beneficial (in some fvcked-up ideological way)


Saturday, May 3, 2003
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/05/03/MN98747.DTL

"We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy Franks, who directed the Iraq invasion, has said.

[genieroze]

28. Are they flip-flopping on *that*, too?

Yup, they are the flip flop administration.

[madmark]

38. There are 10's of thousands of these martyrs being groomed the wahabi

clerics in Saudi, JOrdan, and elsewhere in the islamic world. In this situation the the Body Count feeds on itself. It is very ironic that the military would try to drag it out again as any kind of measure of success.

[killbotfactory]

29. I don't know if it's out of incompetence or intentional

I guess looking at where the money is going will answer that question.

[Roland99]

30. Intentions masked under a veil of icompetence and propaganda.

[PurityOfEssence]

31. Sunnis are the overwhelming majority of Muslims

It's not such a stretch for 20% of the population to fight for continued control of the country. Most of the rest of the Muslim world is of the same sect.

[Lindacooks]

32. Well, you know, Bush* wasn't IN Vietnam, he dodged it, so how

can he be blamed for repeating the mistakes?

:grr:

[barb162]

33. it isn't "winnable" as if everyone didn't know

[zara]

36. That's because the people in charge don't seen any mistakes...

in Vietnam. Except their cry of treason that the left pulled us out.

[UTUSN]

40. Ha-HA! That Would Be Because Our So-called CIC

didn't learn from the FIRST time in VN, because he WASN'T THERE!

[RaRa]

41. 'We are repeating every mistake we made in Vietnam' and then some n/t

[Massacure]

42. It's a winnable war, but at high costs.

With the way Bush has squandered all his political capital, the game is pretty much over.

You cannot win against an insurgency militarily. Politicians don't want to hear that though, and so the military ends up lacking an ability to police an occupied area.

[Roland99]

43. The only way to win involves massive loss of life on both sides

And then, is it really a victory?