Hi All,
Sometimes it is hard to admit and accept responsibility for tragic mistakes and the inevitable consequences. Nevertheless this must be done, and those responsible must be held accountable. Reading, between the lines and connecting the dots, sheds light on who is to blame in Iraq.
In a frank admission, couched in bureaucratic cover words, we learn that the Bush administration was totally unprepared for what has become in post-invasion Iraq. From the Washington Times,
------
Top Bush administration officials grudgingly acknowledge that their post-Saddam Hussein plan for rebuilding Iraq has been substantially flawed on the security front.
Some defense officials said privately in interviews that the plan in place for security after Baghdad's fall has been an utter failure. They said it failed to predict any significant resistance from Saddam loyalists, much less the deadly combination of Ba'athist holdouts and foreign terrorists preying daily on American troops.
"Every briefing on postwar Iraq I attended never mentioned any of this," said a civilian policy adviser.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030827-114516-5938r.htm------
Besides being a little late, the fact that a guerrilla war was never considered is staggering. History alone would dictate a consideration of this possibility.
On the justification for the invasion of Iraq, we learn that the Bush administration is flummoxed by their inability to find WMDs. Couched in equally bureaucratic weasel words, an article in the LA Times all but openly admits that WMDs will probably never be found and blames crafty counter intelligence for the failure. In other words we were duped.
------
One U.S. intelligence official said analysts may have been too eager to find evidence to support the White House's claims. As a result, he said, defectors "were just telling us what we wanted to hear."
The current focus on Iraqi defectors reflects a new skepticism within the Iraq Survey Group, the 1,400-member team responsible for finding any illicit arms. In interviews, several current and former members expressed growing disappointment over the inconclusive results of the search so far.
"We were prisoners of our own beliefs," said a senior U.S. weapons expert who recently returned from a stint with the survey group. "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-wmd28aug28,1,2697529.story?coll=la-home-headlines------
So there you have it, an administration, blinded by the events of 9/11 and driven by political motivation to find all possible suspected terrorists, became prisoners of our their own beliefs! Unbelievable!
Probably the most poignant comment on Iraq came this week in the continuing Lord Hutton Inquiry. Ann Taylor, former cabinet minister, had the following to say.
------
"Hardest question not answered. Why Saddam Hussein and why now," Mrs Taylor wrote in the email, which was disclosed to the Hutton inquiry yesterday.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,13747,1030561,00.html------
Ms Taylor that is the question. Many argued last summer and fall why Saddam suddenly became a threat when so little had been mentioned previously by the Bush administration.
We may never know why, but we do know the cost and the profit. The Christian Science Monitor tallies the cost and an article in the Washington Post the tallies some of the profit.
------
The costs of the Iraq war are escalating for the United States.
They are enlarging an already serious federal-budget deficit. The October-through-July deficit hit a record $324 billion, the Treasury reported last week. The Congressional Budget Office projects the red ink will reach $401 billion by the end of September.
Moreover, because restoration of Iraqi oil production has been slowed by sabotage and other problems, US consumers and business are paying probably an extra $100 million a day for gasoline and other petroleum products.
Estimates of the cost of the war are rough. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has told the Senate the "burn rate" runs about $3.9 billion a month. Afghanistan, together with Noble Eagle, the protective overflights of military jets in the US, costs another $1.1 billion a month.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0825/p16s01-coop.htmlHalliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56429-2003Aug27.html------
In the end, all wars become human. Hidden by bureaucratic double speak and buried under withering statistics, the human toll and suffering is real. Unlike reality TV, so loved by Americans, the situation on the ground in Iraq is visceral and bloody. There is no respite from death. A NY Times story tells the tale.
------
Any of Ali Muhsin's neighbors can describe the scene after he was shot by the Americans.
First he stumbled around the corner, dripping blood, and collapsed near the front door of his home. His neighbors hailed a taxi to take him to the hospital, but then a Humvee roared down the street and blocked the way.
An American soldier leaped out and ran up to Ali, firing a shot in the air to scatter the crowd, then aiming his rifle at the boy. The boy's mother, Rajaa Yousif Matti, implored the soldier not to kill him. She wept and wailed. She pleaded in Arabic that he had done nothing wrong and begged to put him in the taxi. She kissed the soldier's boots. But she could not get through to the American.
"If they had let us take him to the hospital, my son would still be alive," she said two days later, at Ali's funeral, weeping once again as she accused the soldiers of killing her son by letting him bleed on the pavement for hours. "It does not matter if you are a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew. How could anyone treat a human being this way?"
The soldiers' answer is that they could not and did not. In their version of the scene, they feared for their own lives when they entered that narrow, crowded street in a tough neighborhood, yet they still did their best to save a young man who had just tried to kill them with a grenade. But, just like Ali's mother, they could not make themselves understood.
Snip ....
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/27/international/worldspecial/27CIVI.html?pagewanted=1------
Why were US soldiers and young Ali forced into confrontation? Why Indeed?
The stickiness of America's new quagmire can be illustrated by the recent interview of an Iraqi resistance fighter. Motivated by revenge more than zealotry, the Iraqi fisherman takes aim at any target of opportunity, aka US soldiers. The following AP story makes it clear that the US is not fighting a definable enemy.
------
The fisherman had just decided to take up arms, and he shook with fear as the American convoy approached his hiding place. As he later told it, he fired a rocket-propelled grenade into a Humvee and ran away as fast as he could.
Nobody gave chase, he said, and in the time that has passed since that April attack, his band of seven guerrillas has slipped into an easy rhythm of attacking American convoys every few days.
"I catch fish in the morning and Americans at night," he said. "Catching Americans is easier than catching fish."
He insisted he wasn't motivated by any loyalty to Saddam Hussein or principled Islamic opposition to the U.S. presence. He said he was driven by what he sees as the Americans' heavy-handed treatment of ordinary Iraqis during anti-guerrilla operations.
Snip ....
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAJT59PVJD.html------
The emerging picture and story of Iraq is still murky. Yet we know innocent people have been thrust into harm's way for dubious reasons and possibly sinister motives. That the justification for invasion, WMDs, was sufficient, we now know this to be hollow and untrue.
Personally, one has only to look at the photo of a young Iraqi girl, killed by coalition forces the first week of fighting, to know the invasion was immoral. Her vitality and innocence were ripped from her body all too soon. Just imagine the anger you would feel in the untimely death of a daughter or son similarly killed.
For those unwilling to face war's horror head on, don't look!
http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpubimage.asp?id_=4590365&selected=456200Yet, the damage has been done. What then of accountability? As Truman so aptly said "the buck stops here." We know that "here" is the desk of one George Bush, and in the larger sense a nation blinded by anger, fueled by fear, and bent on revenge. Maybe then, a nation as well as a president should jointly hold accountability.
In the final analysis, one question remains, how were so many led astray so easily? Maybe the inimitable Forrest Gump knows best "stupid is as stupid does."
(note to moderators - a few small liberties were taken with the article posting rules, please do not delete)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
