I am speaking in hyperbole, but we made lots of operational mistakes on the ground. The biggest mistake was sending in 150,000 troops instead of 500,000 troops, which is what the Army wanted to do. I know the argument that more troops means more targets for suicide bombers, but I don't buy it.
We could have put 100,000 troops in Baghdad alone, which IMHO would have prevented a lot of the subsequent carnage. Keeping in mind that the north and south of the country are mostly peaceful, we could have maintained an iron grip on Baghdad. Ironically, that is exactly what is going on in Fallujah right now, and it is working very well as far as I understand. There were other mistakes, but many of those mistakes were a result of limitations imposed by troop strength (e.g. taking territory and not leaving a significant force in place to protect it). A big part of the mess has also been created by the Iraqis leadership. Iraq needed a national reconciliation program three years ago, and they only just got it this year. The Shias need to convince the Sunnis that Iraq will not become a satellite of Iran. The Sunnis need to convince the Shias that they will not try to re-assert control over the country. And everyone needs to learn how to have political dialogue without resorting to car bombs and death squads. The other thing we have needed to do for a long time is to call Syria and Iran on the carpet for feeding money and weapons into Iraq and fueling the fight. There was an opportunity early on where we could have made a much more forceful point about that and put the beat-down on either country for opposing us, but I believe we have lost that opportunity now. On 8/8/06, DRE wrote: > > On 8/8/06, Robert Munn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > ........ I just can't > > believe the incompetence of the post-invasion force. We seem to have > made > > every possible mistake one could make in a fight like this one. > > > > Robert, every possible mistake? Unbelievable incompetence? Can you give > me some examples. I'm just curious. > > It seems to me they were hozed from the get go. Of course, I'll freely > admit, I'm not hugely knowledgeable in what you would do but I'm not sure > how you would do it so much more differently. > > You might need more people but realistically, You'd need 20x more. You'd > need basically someone living in every house to monitor that family and > even > then the results would be questionable. It certainly didnt work for the > british in this country. I think they did their darndest to train the > iraqi > police. It seems clear to me they use technology amazingly well. I dunno. > But please, I've seen no ideas on how to do it better so let me know if > you > have any. > > Really, the only thing I can conceive is to have a multinational force but > as you can see, its about impossible to get anyone to help on the front > either. Do you really think the french would commit any real help? the > russians? The chinese? God knows the spanish turned tail pretty quick. > People blame bush for not getting a multinational force but is that > realistic? I think it was an impossible pursuit. > > Altho you certainly can blame Bush for doing it in the first place. > > Just curious on how to do it better and what the incompetence. > > -- --------------- Robert Munn www.funkymojo.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:212816 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
