If our legislators would only say; we want the region pacified in 3 months and we understand there will be abuses and excesses which we will deal with after the fact. For now concentrate on routing the insurgency. It’d be done.

Of course stuff like Haditha would happen, but on the whole, is even a 5% bad apple rate of 100K soldiers really that bad?

Here’s a thot exercise. Rewind back to the fall of Bagdad and word came down, impose martial law, tamp out any insurgency. If in doubt, shoot first, ask questions later.

Let’s say 5K soldiers overreacted or whatever and on average causing 10 collateral casualities.

That’ll be 50K Iraqis that were ‘victimized’ at US hands, but Iraq ‘d be pacified and the 5K soldiers can look forward to their day in court. The upside is we wouldn’t be looking at 3K dead US soldiers and thousands more maimed. Now the rebuilding can start in earnest and any would be insurgent knows there’s no point in hanging around. If the US don’t get him, the locals will. And this is all before 2004.

Pathetically, we’re so concerned about collateral damages and appearances, that we don’t mind sacrificing more Iraqis needlessly, as long as it didn’t happen directly at our hands. Political deniability trumps the actual consequences. Unfortunately, that might work at the upper strata inhabited by Jim Baker et al. To the man on Arab street, it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger, it’s the US’s fault. So why piddle around with nuances and measured target plotting/strategizing by the politicals, when we can just do the job and get it over with ASAP. Then you’ll see the accolades from the masses in homage to the strong. Witness Somalia vis a vis Ethiopia.

What I see day to day, is an administration that refused to listen to the people with the know-how. Why do you think Powell quit after the first term. He told them what would happen, and Rummy and George refused to listen. You cant fight a religious war, on the terms that we are trying to do it on.

Almost every one in position of authority I dill with here…..police, army, nat. guard….are all corrupt. They refuse to mix shia, and sunnies in a unit…every unit I dill wit is one or the other. Naturally they are going to be racist towards each other.

A week ago, Gates came to visit, and sat with solders in a very large charade…any one of you that thinks those solders talk what was on there mine, need never vote again. That hole show was rehearsed. And to top that off, those where support people, who don’t go out and fight the insurgents. A hard day for them, is when the internet goes down.

I’ve been here 6 months, lost one solder, and sent 6 more home with injuries. 3 of witch, will never walk, or see out of one eye again.

I am a disgruntled employ. Right now we are fighting on rules as to not offend any on at home. The rules need to change, and let us do what we do best. We can stop the violence, but a lot of people will die, and it won’t be Americans. But we won’t do that. Some bleeding heart might get offended, because a school, hospital, or religious center was destroyed because its used to store weapons, and house insurgents. The use these places because they know we damage them, some American would tell we are bad for doing that.

Don’t believe most of what the government tells you, (hi, I’m from the government, where here to help……) and dames sure don’t believe the press.

The Bush administration has all of the available intelligence about Iraq, while you and I only have access to what they chose to reveal to the public and what has leaked out. Based on what we now know about pre-war intelligence, the level of certainty did not approach a reasonable standard to invade, even in a post 9/11 world. The informants were unreliable (Curveball), self-interested (Chalabi), and their credibility should not have been relied upon in matters of life and death.

We could possibly have “wrapped up Iraq” had we sent in a large enough force after the invasion, kept some Baathists in the government, gave Iraqis decision-making power, etc. Or possibly not, we’ll never know. However, the idea that once the insurrection took hold we would have won had it not been for “the politicians and the media” is ridiculous. The Shia who are taking revenge against the Sunnis for their mistreatment under Saddam couldn’t care less what American politicians and media spokesmen say, not could the Sunnis who are resorting to violence to avoid being dominated by the Shia. The war was lost because of the copious displays of incompetence we have demonstrated following the invasion. Blaming the media is like having your team down 45-0 and blaming the scorekeeper for posting the score.

Had you been President, would you have ignored these wanings from prominent Democrats, world-wide intelligence agencies, and your own intelligence apparatus, and done nothing? Especially after 9-11? Our major mistake was getting the useless UN involved. Ethiopia’s approach to Somalia’s Islamist threat got immediate results. They scattered like the cowards they are. We are WAY too damn PC in trying to fight a war.

We could have wrapped up Iraq in a much more efficient manner, had Bush gotten the backing from politicians and the media to help us win. The “insurgents”, no matter their stripe heard the discord and Bush-bashing here in America and figured all they had to do was hang on a while longer. Zawahiri told us so in his last message. Believe him, and get on our side and ssupport the effort so we can win.

True enough that quitting Iraq is a view held by those in both parties, I didn’t mean to disparage, just wanted to point out that quitting Iraq will happen on the Democrats’ watch and so they will be responsible for it and any resulting effects.

I think it worthwhile, as an exercise, to think about what might have happened in the time since 9/11 had we followed the international community, as headed up by Koffi Annan, France, and Russia, and the approach preferred by Reid, Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Dodd, et al, and, even, elected John Kerry in ’04. We’ve seen how effective their preferred approach has been with another belicose regime, Iran, so I think we can speculate that the world would have a third rogue regime freely pursuing nuclear weapons. Imagine the destabilization possibilities were Iraq and Iran to be nuclear.

Even knowing all the mistakes and missteps I’d still vote for George W. Bush in 2004. For the record, I think we should have left after we toppled Saddam and once we were convinced there were no (stockpiles) of WMD in Iraq.

We can win, and I define winning as the establishment of a relatively safe, democratic, and functioning, Iraq. I just don’t believe the Democrats, and those Republicans that agree with them, are willing to make the commitment to do so. Clearly they don’t agree that it is worthwhile.

As for history’s verdict on Bush – that is for historians to decide 25 or 30 years from now. And how can you impeach a President for doing what the Constitution and the oath of office requires?

However, I supported the war with the expectation that there would at least be a minimal level of competence in planning for the post-war period (or indeed any plan at all outside of Iraqis greeting our troops with flowers). I thought that this was the A-Team – Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell have been through this before – and I was truly shocked at the ineptitude and partisanship in managing the occupation. I also supported the war because I took the administration’s (and especially Powell’s) explanation of our intelligence at face value.

So it is certainly possible that we would view the war very differently if, for example, it was Douglas MacArthur and not Paul Bremer running the show. We’ll never know. I think that the results of our invasion were so disastrous that (rightly or wrongly) the concept of pre-emptive attack will be discredited for a very long time. The Iraqi experience was so bad that I doubt the neo-con’s hypothesis will be tested again within our lifetimes.