Pentagon Study: Iraq War A Debacle
April 19th, 2008, 2:00 PM EDT
Thanks Chris.
The Miami Herald reported Friday that a study released by the Pentagon’s educational institute, the National Defense University, shows that the Iraq war is “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt.” The information in the report is based on interviews with former Pentagon senior defense and intelligence officials who were part of war preparations. Here’s the opening line:
”Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle.”
Other highlights:
- …operations in Iraq have diverted ”manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers” and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.
- “Compounding all of these problems, our efforts [in Iraq] were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.”
- “Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army.”
- “‘For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a `must win,’ but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a ‘can’t win.’ ”
- The report also singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisors, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that “senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.”
“…the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army.”
And that’s the problem, because we do have security interests in the region, which we ignore at our peril, and obviously oil is one of them, because without oil we start out tomorrow by picking berries for breakfast because civilization grinds to a halt, because it’s not simply about gasoline for these bloated absurdities we call “SUVs”.
How many industries rely on petroleum products just to keep up and running? I’m no expert, but I’ll take a wild guess that the answer may be “all of them.”
April 19th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
where does this leave [ret] gen. Colin Powell, hans Bliks,Donald Rumsfeld & FBI intelegence[pre war] or does all the above get to walk away from this?????
And while the pentagon is at it,Define for all us tax payers what “winning the war” exactly means?
April 19th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Do peruse:
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2008/04/pentagon-study-current-events
The Miami Herald appear less than competent.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I keep telling you guys, in a hundred years this’ll all be over and really funny -yup, we’ll all just laugh when remembering there was once a time we questioned voting Mcain into office.
Lots of laughing. Heh…heh.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
The Iraq war is A Debacle? OMG!!!!
After being in Iraq for 5 years and spending trillions of dollars and having over 4,000 soldiers killed and having almost 30,000 soldiers wounded and having no plans to ever leave iraq, who would ever think of iraq being a debacle?
Only to a conservative Republican, the iraq is NOT A DEBACLE!
If a Democrat takes the white house in January and we are still in Iraq, then…. its a debacle.
Ok, i get it now.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Competence aside Chris, we are spending billions a day to sustain this war. How is this not a major war?
April 20th, 2008 at 8:01 am
When your friends sound like your enemy we must be afraid, very afraid. Some conservatives love to hate secular government and the unrelated idea of atheism. This is disturbing when Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the US said in a Frontline PBS interview concerning the war between the Soviet’s and Afghanistan, “Osama Bin Laden would say, Thank you for bringing the Americans to help us get through the secularist, atheist Soviets.” This was Prince Bandar’s recital of a conversation with Bin Laden back in the 80’s, does it sound like the same expression of hatred toward secular government that many conservatives here in the US spew over the airwaves? Yes. When conservatives mention their displeasure of intellectual elitists or liberal college professors they sound very similar to the exact words of some people in Iran (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). Some conservatives like to place the woman in a subservient role in society. They constantly are complaining about the women’s liberation movements of the 60’s and 70’s (Limbaugh). Many complain that a woman’s place is in the home, while the man’s role is that of the sole provider. Some complain about sexual identities being confused by women in the workplace or being dominant to men in some relationships or marriages. This sounds like most of the M. Eastern Islamic States, like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. It may not be as extreme, but it is non the less strikingly similar ideologies. There is a lot of similarities that disturb me, the largest one is that of Biblical Law being added to Constitutional Law here in the US. We can not say, as Condi Rice, that the best hope for a free Iraq is “secular government” (Newsweek quote) and yet claim that the only way to improve the US is more religion in our own governmental system. We have religious freedom only due to our secular government. Secular government is not atheism; rather it is only the removal of religion from government while religion’s existence is respected by government. That is the wall of separation that Jefferson insisted upon and is within the constitution. If we throw our secular government away we will be no better than those Theocracies we seem to fear so much. We are under threat by not only foreign Theocracies (religious governments or nation states); rather we are under the grave threat by our home grown Theocratic movements. When some conservatives mention the need to do away with secular government in the USA, they usually mean only their form of God or religion fusing with the Law. This consequently means a loss of the freedom for all religious belief, the ability to believe in no God, or the freedom to believe that you are not sure if God exists or not. Thus, the people who wish for an American Theocracy, wish only for themselves, and that is a sin in and of its self.
April 20th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
From http://www.m-w.com~
Debacle: a violent disruption; a great disaster; a complete failure
I don’t know if we can call Iraq a COMPLETE failure, but ‘failure’ is an adequate description of the circumstances. We invaded Iraq on a faulty, BS premise that was covering the fact that Bush wanted Saddam out. Was Saddam a threat to the US? Sure. Was he an IMMEDIATE threat to the US? Possibly. Did we have other options, instead of war, before sending our troops in on 03/2003? Hell YES we did. Why weren’t those options reviewed and the best ones executed?
This war has proved to be a failure due to the lack of pre-war planning (that included sending our troops in with bad equipment, increasing their likelihood of injury) and post-war planning.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
the “Invasion” is a failure because bin laden is still laughing his A## off and we americans are paying the bill at $4.00 + a gallon with no resolution in sight! Countries that find themselves at odds such as Iraq will always look back on times when it was founded [this country is no exception] If this democracy were to work, the people of Iraq would have fought for it w/o anyone asking them to put more effort toward the Goal.
April 20th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
What???? Why, I am SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I tell you. Whod’ve thunk the pentagon would have told us something we already knew?
April 21st, 2008 at 2:26 pm