Religions > Atheism > Bush's Iraq occupation failure - almost 800 US troop KIA's, billion $, no end in sight
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Bill Case" |
| Date: |
31 Aug 2004 10:02:38 AM |
| Object: |
Bush's Iraq occupation failure - almost 800 US troop KIA's, billion $, no end in sight |
The Bushies are putitng out a new ***** line about why the occupation of
Iraq turned into murderous chaos.
From Professor Juan Cole's website http://www.juancole.com/ Read on...
Bush is characterizing the Iraq war as a "catastrophic success". This is the
line that the US military succeeded so well so fast against Saddam's army
that chaos naturally ensued.
Democrats are having a lot of fun with the phrase, but the real problem is
that that analysis of what went wrong is incorrect. The Bush administration
simply mismanaged Iraq. It dissolved the Iraqi army, throwing the country
into chaos. That army was not gone and would have gladly showed up at the
barracks for a paycheck. It pursued a highly punitive policy of firing and
excluding members of the Baath Party, which was not done in so
thorough-going a manner even to Nazis in post-war Germany. It canceled
planned municipal elections, denying people any stake in their new
"government," which was more or less appointed by the US. It put all its
efforts into destroying Arab socialism in Iraq and creating a sudden free
market, rather than paying attention to the preconditions for
entrepreneurial activity, like security and services. It kept changing its
policies-- early on it was going to turn the country over to Ahmad Chalabi
in 6 months. Then that plan was scotched and Paul Bremer was brought in to
play MacArthur in Tokyo for a projected two or three years. Then that didn't
work and there would be council-based elections. Then those wouldn't work
and there would be a "transfer of sovereignty." All this is not to mention
the brutal and punitive sieges of Fallujah and Najaf and the Abu Ghuraib
torture scandal, etc., etc.
So it wasn't a catastrophic success that caused the problem. It was that
Iraq was being run at the upper levels by a handful of screw-ups who had all
sorts of ulterior motives, and at least sometimes did not have the best
interests of the country at heart. And Bush is the one who put them in
charge.
xx end
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