Hagel calls Iraq 'replay of Vietnam' (US Senate Ne)

[Omaha Steve]

Full story (reg req): http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pg=54&u_sid=2214597



Hagel calls Iraq 'replay of Vietnam'

BY JAKE THOMPSON


WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Calling conditions in Iraq "an absolute replay of Vietnam," Sen. Chuck Hagel said Friday that the Pentagon is making a mistake by beefing up American forces in Iraq.

U.S. soldiers have become "easy targets" in a country that has descended into "absolute anarchy," the Nebraska Republican and Vietnam combat veteran said in an interview with The World-Herald.

He said that in the previous 48 hours, he had received three telephone calls from four-star generals who were "beside themselves" over the Pentagon's reversal of plans to bring tens of thousands of soldiers home this fall.

Instead, top Pentagon officials are suspending military rotations and adding troops in Iraq. The Pentagon has estimated that the buildup will increase the number of U.S. troops from about 130,000 to 135,000.


Sen. Chuck Hagel

"That isn't going to do any good. It's going to have a worse effect," Hagel said. "They're destroying the United States Army."

Hagel previously has likened the war in Iraq to Vietnam, but Friday's comments drew a stronger connection.

They followed a speech on the Middle East that Hagel delivered at the Brookings Institution.

In it, he proposed diplomatic steps the Bush administration might take to try to resolve violence between Israel and the militant Arab groups Hezbollah and Hamas, and to help forge a longer peace in the Middle East.

In the speech, he briefly mentioned Iraq.

To an audience of several hundred scholars and diplomats, he called the Pentagon's troop decision a "dramatic setback" for the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

"America is bogged down in Iraq, and this is limiting our diplomatic and military options," said Hagel, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has often criticized the Bush administration on Iraq.

Iraqis ultimately must determine their own future, not the United States, he said.

[Greeby]

1. Funny, Chuck, I don't hear much of you on the Senate floor about it

What's holding you back? You're in bed with the voting machine companies, whats stopping you? :eyes:

[ixion]

2. good point

I hear a lot of talk like this from him, but nary a word where it counts.

[acmavm]

3. The bush** admin & the military have to be so damn desperate as to

cancel all the troop rotations and leaves. Plus sending in more troops.

The only thing after that is the draft.

[HereSince1628]

4. Trapped, believing that ante'ing up one more time will bring the jackpot

and re-establish their image as the best card-players in the world.

It's a well-known psychopathology that makes billions for casinos and destroys families.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Thanks for posting, Steve! nt

[teryang]

6. the balance of power in the middle east has changed

...by expending our discretionary resources in an exhausting and unsuccessful conquest of Iraq, we lost the position of honest broker in the middle east. (I don't know how honest that position ever was.) This was followed by the new spin that "permanent" bases and the largest US embassy in the Universe in Baghdad really meant that the war was a great success and that civil war and chaos is really what we wanted all along. However, Iran has been empowered by our huge strategic blunder in Iraq. The problem with the energy shareholders and defense contractors that the bushistas represent is that as long as there are further billions to gouge from the treasury, failure is a matter of indifference.

Now that failure is redined as success, new war fronts were opened to perpetuate defense contractor and energy profiteering indefinitely, in a totalitarian/colonialist perpetual war strategy. The annoucement of huge new military "sales" which are no doubt US taxpayer financed is the republican version of turning diaster into a private windfall. The Saudi and other Arab sales are window dressing for the US logistic and financial role as the sponsor of the assualt on Lebanon.

[MidwestTransplant]

7. Yeah but a couple of schools reopened that were destroyed in the war.

[TheFarseer]

8. What's wrong, Chuck?

Are the corporations you represent losing money because of the war? Just get your funding from the military industrial complex and oil companies like every other repuke and you'll be a good little patriot in no time.

[Barkley]

9. Hagel delivered a speech on the M. East at the Brookings Institution!?

Isn't Brookings a left-wing think tank?

[leesa]

10. "THEY'RE destroying the US army", Senator Hagel? Seems to me

you've been a willing participant.