In Iraq, U.S. military forgot the lessons of Vietnam

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4070723.html

The real war in Iraq — the one to determine the future of the country — began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.

That bombing came almost exactly four months after the U.S. military thought it had prevailed in Iraq, and it launched the insurgency, the bloody and protracted struggle with guerrilla fighters that has tied down the United States to this day.

There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein's government knew it couldn't win a conventional war, and some captured documents indicate that it may have intended some sort of rear-guard campaign of subversion against occupation. The stockpiling of weapons, distribution of arms caches, the revolutionary roots of the Baathist Party, and the movement of money and people to Syria either before or during the war all indicate some planning for an insurgency.

But there is also strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been.

The very setup of the U.S. presence in Iraq undercut the mission. The chain of command was hazy, with no one individual in charge of the overall American effort in Iraq, a structure that led to frequent clashes between military and civilian officials.

[bryant69]

1. I think they and the Conservatoids bought the myth

that they lost the war in Vietnam because of the press. They focused pretty hard on controlling the press; not so much on the other things.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[NNN0LHI]

3. I think you are right

Our media calls our Iraqi puppet a "free and fairly" elected Prime Minister with no shame.

All the while that country is still under US occupation.

I would say they control the press pretty well.

There are some people who actually believe Iraq is a democracy now. Fox news watchers I suspect?

Don

[tanyev]

2. I don't think they forgot. I think they learned a different lesson than

everyone else. They think all they have to do is control the media better, wage a better propaganda campaign, and then they will create the reality they want.

[Jim__]

4. A number of analysts have tied the flare up of the insurgency to Bremer's

firing of the Iraqi army. Maybe the single biggest blunder we made in Iraq.

We seem to have made any number of big mistakes, most of them due to an arrogance that was exceeded only by our ignorance. But, even without the mistakes, I'm not sure how differently things would have turned out.