When Incompetence and Cronyism Merge

[SHRED]

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The Bush plan for Iraq was, and is, fraught with disaster.
We pay the price through wasted tax dollars that could have benefited our citizens while the troops pay with their lives.

This has got to be the biggest foreign policy blunder in our Nation's history.

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Insider: Missteps soured Iraqis on U.S.

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special CorrespondentMon Apr 9, 2:08 AM ET

~snip~

What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis, steps Allawi and many others see as blunders:

• The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

• Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party — from government, school faculties and elsewhere — left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

• An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

• The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

Continued:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070409/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq...

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[Demeter]

1. It Was Never Intended As "Foreign Policy"

Foreign policy implies something other than invasion, occupation, rape, pillage and destruction, which is all we get out of Iraq.

[SHRED]

3. Can't argue with that!

[MasonJar]

2. We, the people, must stop the further pillage of Iraq; we must NOT

let these oil barons give away the Iraqis most important commerce to Exxon et al.