September 27, 2006It Was Surreal....I worked for the Coalition Police Assistant Training Team during my tour in Iraq, in half of 04 and 05. The second writer, Gen. Eaton, pretty much lays it on the line. I'm the farthest thing in the world from a moonbat. I supported the decision to invade Iraq and still do, 100%. But many of the entering assumptions at the outset were proven wrong. When I got there the place was chock a block full of cops, and god bless em, from podunk Iowa who wanted to teach Iraqis how to investigate domestic violence disputes and do crime scene investigation. They were in no way, shape, or form able to teach them to fend off multi-pronged machine gun and RPG attacks on their police stations. For christ's sake, I'm a freaking senior chief supply guy from the submarine force. There's me and some reserve Army Captain trying to un-fuck, equip, and baby-sit a mechanized (what in fuck do I know about old soviet BTRs!?!) battalion of internal security forces, and we spent half our time trying to teach them that it wasn't acceptable to shit wherever they wanted and why it was important to test fire weapons they had just gotten out of the crate. We had shit for support, and relied almost exclusively on Iraqis who had a little grade school english to act as terps. It was surreal. More: OK, so you're Donald Rumsfeld and it's 2 months after the statue in Baghdad falls, and the road to the airport still isn't secured. What do you do? You call up the force commander and you say, what's the story with the airport road. And he says, we're working on it. So you say, do you have enough troops? Do you have everything you need? And he says yes. So you diary it for 120 days. Then you call again, and you say, it's been 6 months and the president wants to know what the deal is with the airport road. And he says, we're working on it and yeah, we got everything we need. So you're thinking, this motherfucker is shining me on. But, what the fuck, this is only the global war on terror, this is only a clash of civilizations, this is only a situation where failure is not an option. So you give him another six months. And you get the same story. So you say, let me see if I got this right. You have enough troops, you have everything you need, but after a year you haven't secured the road to the airport? Right. So, are you telling me that the troops are of low quality? NO. Are you telling me that they're poorly trained? NO. Are you telling me that they're poorly led? NO. SO WHAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM? No answer, and you don't press for one, and you wait another fucking year before the road is finally secure. And from this we are to draw two conclusions: one, Rumsfeld is a smart, tireless, hands-on, detail-oriented leader; and two, we have enough troops in Iraq. And we do draw these conclusions, but only if we're as clueless as George Bush. --Various comments left at this rabidly pro-Bush blog (via Sullivan). It appears even some patronizing the hard-core denialist precincts of the blogosphere are beginning to acknowledge the profound incompetence and mammoth recklessness manifested by Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq. Of course to not be able to so acknowledge, especially at this late juncture, would mean that one is either blind (willfully or otherwise) or alternately a total apologist for this Administration. Posted by Gregory at September 27, 2006 06:51 PMComments
Along these lines, there was a post at Lawyers, Guns and Money, which I hope they don't mind if I reproduce: http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/09/instalink.html Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a story at Strategy Page that, if I may summarize, said that things are going great in Iraq and our troops are "mystified" that the media reports otherwise. Setting aside any effort to evaluate that claim, I had to wonder how many times, in the last three years, that Reynolds has linked to a story that was in all essentials identical to this one. I'm not masochistic enough to dig through his archives, but a quick glance at my memory seems to indicate "hundreds of times". I wonder, are there bloggers on the right who do nothing but say "things are fine, and the troops wonder why the media says differently" in new and exciting ways in the hopes of an Instalaunch? Posted by: Clambone at September 27, 2006 07:48 PM | Permalink to this commentThese two comments ring so true to me. I've spent 18 months in Iraq, and not just the Green Zone. I last took the airport road in May, believe me every time it's a harrowing experience. From what I hear from friends, mortar attacks are way up now, it's like 2004 again, when we'd take multiple rockets and mortars in the Green Zone every night and sometimes in the daytime. All you have to know about Rumsfeld is that he has fought expanding the size of the Army. He has never acknowledged that more troops are needed for the commitments we have, even if force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan stay steady. His happy horseshit is why someone on a 4 year enlistment will do two or even three 15 month tours in theater, with about a year in between. Believe me, being in Iraq sucks, even as a highly paid contractor who does not go out as a bullet magnet every day. If you have to go out on fire and IED-drawing patrols I am retired military, so I really felt for those young troops, especially the ones on their second tour. A reasonable SOD would have recognized that these multiple lengthy tours are an intolerable burden on many if not most soldiers and families. This is taking care of our troops? He's the worst kind of fool - the kind convinced of his own brilliance - and one whose foolishness leads to cruelty. The cruelty is against our troops, their families and the Iraqi people as a whole. Posted by: Green Zone Cafe at September 27, 2006 08:08 PM | Permalink to this commentI've commented at more length below on Rumsfeld and the workings of the Bush administration, and their intentions with respect to war in general and the Iraq war in particular, but can we be hard on Rumsfeld, in terms of competence, if FAILURE WAS THE PLAN? I've seen a binary analyis of Rumsfeld, either: 1. Failure in Iraq was preordained, and Rumsfeld (and others) should have foreseen this; or 2. Some kind of victory was possible in Iraq, and post-combat planning and execution was so poor that the US snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. But, as noted, I propose a third alternative to explain Rumsfeld's behavior: Failure was, and is, the plan. And by failure, I don't mean defeat, or rout, or surrender. I mean the current no-go, quagmire situation of "stay the course." I listed below several advantages to this "plan." There is of course another, keyed to the Middle East and the presence or absence, and relative influence, of the US and the US military in the Middle East. Congress recently felt compelled to enact a law prohibiting the Administration from establishing "permanent bases" within Iraq. But, if the US is engaged in a permanent war in Iraq, such legislation is fairly futile and irrelevant, is it not? And it's long been something of a dream of Israeli expansionists to smash Arab nationalism, and reduce Arab nation states into dispersed, small, powerless tribal affiliations. This seems to be happening in Iraq, somewhat less so in Afghanistan (at least for the moment, although an argument can be made that the Taliban represents the best organized political organization that could actually unite Afghanistan under a unitary government). And if Iraq flies apart into various, shifting tribal and regional power centers, it seems a simple matter for the US to play one off against the other, and to make marriages of convenience over time (bribery, pay-offs, protection, extortion, etc). This has all been done before by Imperialists; it seems it's almost intinctive. Posted by: MD at September 29, 2006 09:01 PM | Permalink to this commentOf course, this leaves out the fact, that the airport road, was eventually secured with Iraqi forces, I think Lara Logan, had Now at this point, you're saying, well those are Saudi, the President's golfing buddy, former investors. future business > I know of people who really aren't It is a constant joke that the US citizens have such poor geographic skill that they think all those 9/11 Saudi Arabian terrorists came from a province called "Saudi Arabia" inside Afghanistan, and then when their clown-in-chief explained to them that "Saudi Arabia" is a province inside Afghanistan, which is a province inside Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was the nasty al-Quaeda leader of that province, that they happily agreed to attack this Iraq province... Posted by: henry james at October 2, 2006 01:45 AM | Permalink to this comment |
Reviews of Belgravia Dispatch
"Awake"
--New York Times
Recent Entries
A Brief (and Belated) Word on Chas Freeman
What Would Real--Rather Than Rhetorical--Change in U.S. Foreign Policy Look Like? Of War, and Tent Hospitals The Obama Imperative Some Addt'l Thoughts Re: Georgia McCain: Let's Compound the Blunder! Georgia On My Mind Should We De-Emphasize The Terror Threat in U.S. Foreign Policy? (Very Belated) In-House News Straits of Hormuz
Search
English Language Media
New York Times
Financial Times The Economist The Times The Spectator Daily Telegraph The New Yorker Washington Post New Criterion New Republic National Review The Atlantic The American Conservative Harpers The Week The Guardian Weekly Standard The Nation WSJ Opinion Matt Drudge Real Clear Politics
Foreign Affairs Commentariat
Non-English Language Press
The Blogs
Across the Aisle
Marc Ambinder America Abroad American Footprints The American Scene Armavirumque Bainbridge Jack Balkin Becker-Posner Balloon Juice &C (TNR) Phil Carter Chequer-Board Steve Clemons Juan Cole The Corner Crooked Timber Cunning Realist Clive Davis Brad DeLong Democracy Arsensal Daniel Drezner Kevin Drum James Fallows Glenn Greenwald Nikolas Gvosdev Hendrik Hertzberg Huffington Post Mickey Kaus Mark Kleiman Joshua Landis Daniel Larison Josh Marshall Eric Martin Obsidian Wings Oxblog Foreign Policy's Passport The Plank Post Global Gideon Rachman Romenesko Laura Rozen Andrew Sullivan James Taranto Katrina vanden Heuvel Volokh Conspiracy James Wolcott Matthew Yglesias
Law & Finance
Barron's
Bloomberg Bull and Bear Wise Calculated Risk CBS Marketwatch Contrary Investor Corporate Counsel Blog Corp Law Blog DealBreaker Deal Lawyers Blog Financial Sense Forbes Fortune Hussman Funds Bruce MacEwen Gretchen Morgenson Floyd Norris Barry Ritholz Nouriel Roubini Safe Haven SCOTUS Blog The Street 10b-5 Daily Yahoo Finance
Think Tanks
Security
Books
The City
Curbed
Eater Gothamist NY Magazine NY Post NY Press New York Observer On The Inside Tribeca Trib Vanishing NY Village Voice
Archives
March 2009
January 2009 November 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006
|
|||