| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Black Elk" |
| Date: |
01 Dec 2005 08:52:40 PM |
| Object: |
Bush's victory speeches vs reality. |
Analysts See Bleak Road Ahead
Associated Press | November 30, 2005
Two senior Army analysts who in 2003 accurately foretold the turmoil that
would be unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq offer a bleak assessment in
a new study of what now lies ahead in that bloodied land.
They advise, however, against setting a timetable for U.S. troop
withdrawal - unless Washington finds the situation "irredeemable."
A timetable "is an excuse for allowing the system to collapse," the Army War
College's W. Andrew Terrill and Conrad C. Crane write.
Political pressure is building in Washington for a concrete plan to
extricate U.S. forces from Iraq. On Tuesday, on the eve of an important
address on Iraq at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Bush told reporters he
wants the troops home, "but I don't want them to come home without having
achieved victory."
In a February 2003 report, a month before the U.S. invasion, Crane and
Terrill had warned that the United States might "win the war but lose the
peace" if it attacked Iraq. They suggested armed resistance to an occupation
would grow, a harsh American response would further alienate Iraqis, and
establishing political stability would prove difficult - all predictions
that were borne out.
They warned in particular against disbanding the pre-invasion Iraqi army, a
step that was nonetheless taken and is now viewed as a blunder that fed the
anti-U.S. insurgency.
In their new 60-page report, veteran Middle East scholar Terrill and Crane,
director of the Army Military History Institute, say a U.S. troop presence
in Iraq probably cannot be sustained more than three years further.
Meantime, they write:
-"It appears increasingly unlikely that U.S., Iraqi and coalition forces
will crush the insurgency prior to the beginning of a phased U.S. and
coalition withdrawal."
-"It is no longer clear that the United States will be able to create
(Iraqi) military and police forces that can secure the entire country no
matter how long U.S. forces remain."
-And "the United States may also have to scale back its expectations for
Iraq's political future," by accepting a relatively stable but undemocratic
state as preferable to a civil war among Iraq's ethnic and religious
factions.
"U.S. vital interests have never demanded a democratic state in Iraq before
2003," they note.
As for Iraqi security forces, Terrill and Crane reason it may prove
difficult to build "multiethnic and multisectarian" police and military
units, and suggest factional militias may come to the fore instead.
The Army scholars devote their closest analysis to the current debate over
whether Washington should set a predetermined, step-by-step schedule for a
troop pullout. They see "catastrophic" dangers in that approach.
For one thing, they say, as soon as a timetable is announced, some Iraqis
cooperating with the Americans "will calculate that U.S. protection is a
declining asset" and ally themselves with the insurgents, or seek protection
of a militia. For another, the insurgents might do what the North Vietnamese
did in 1973: bide their time, build up their forces, and attack all-out once
the Americans leave.
Thirdly, with an inflexible timetable, "the United States may end up
abandoning a potentially hopeful situation and instead allowing that nation
to plunge into civil war."
They see one circumstance in which a timetable is useful, if "the Iraqi
government may have only a small chance to survive, but the U.S. leadership
does not wish to announce publicly that we have basically given up on Iraq."
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,81607,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl
--
Doomed to defeat by the superior Allied forces, it was thought that the
forces of fascism had been routed and that the world was safe for democracy.
The irony is that the intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government saved
many of the most hardened Nazi war criminals from a certain execution in
order to recruit them as scientists, spies and guerrilla warriors in the
anticipated war with the Soviet Union. And this had dire effects on our
country's democracy.
Many Americans may not be aware of this wide spread recruitment of SS and
Gestapo alumni into our intelligence agencies but it has had a profound
effect on the shaping of our domestic and foreign policy, often with ruinous
consequences. The legacy of this incorporation of Nazis into the CIA and
U.S. military has been a half a century of support for fascist regimes,
juntas, death squads, torture and the overthrow of democratically elected
governments around the world.
http://archive.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=9099
--
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Bush's victory speeches vs reality. |
02 Dec 2005 04:42:21 AM |
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Black Elk wrote:
Analysts See Bleak Road Ahead
Associated Press | November 30, 2005
Two senior Army analysts who in 2003 accurately foretold the turmoil that
would be unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq offer a bleak assessment in
a new study of what now lies ahead in that bloodied land.
Conservatives are what deserve to be. Shell's Real Estate brokers.
Florida is what is was destined to be.
An idiot Christopher Columbus musean, funded by Chinese
fortune cookie bakers.
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