Related Information to Post War Iraq

Post War Iraq - Page 115

I am not sure how we can speak of realities when we haven't pulled the military out yet. However, I am sure that when we do, a body count chart might suffice to make the final determination. What I was saying is that since we will inevitably be blamed for all the bad that has and will happened post-overthrow, and we justly will, most americans would at least like to have the opportunity to try and make it better, even if it does not. You know, it is that "never say die" attitude we yanks have. So, just giving up is not something we are really good at. It has actually come in handy in some wars.

The best part of this is that you are talking about pulling out the US military and simply replacing them with another. Within your own statement, you acknowledged that no one likes an occupying force, so why would Iraq ever agree to a international or specific-national occupying force? The UN has already stated that it wants nothing to do with Iraq and I don't blame them at all. The UN voted not to go to war Iraq and was happy with the meaningless sanction route and it helps their budget if the US pays for it, so why get involved? Plus, why will another color uniform make it better?

Do we scrub the current Iraq government? If we did, how would the new one be formed? Can a new government be formed that represents the people evenly? I doubt it, as it will be impossible for that person to be Kurd, Sunni and Shite all at the same time. This is where I continually look back to Japan. They had to be totally dominated in order to set up an entirely new system of government. I have though a lot about this over passed several months and I cannot remember or find a time when a government was successfully established in this manner. The people never revolted against the dictator successfully. There was never a unifying act that brought all groups together against a common foe or a resolved civil war. Throughout history either coups by the people, total domination by an outside force or civil war has brought about lasting changes in government. Even the puppet governments were propped up by the people and not directly installed by an occupying force. This was basically tried in Vietnam and S. Korea. Vietnam fell apart immediately and S.Korea had military coups to steady its government. Unfortunately, I think a civil war and the establishment of another strong leader (hopefully more like Tito than Hussein) is going to have to happen here to bring stability, but that is my conclusion.

Arvhic, your "love" for Bush and all that is Bush has been well documented in a great many threads!

This is the ultimate catch 22. Leave and potentially watch the country go into a totally uncontrolled civil war. And if that happens, it will make the daily body count today look like simple traffic accident counts. Stay, and only delay the inevitable for the time when we leave. Absolutely no win here, regardless of what nations or conglommeration of nations forces is in Iraq.

There is no winning situation in any of this and that is very unfortunate.

The invasion actually went very well to plan. Hussein was overthrown quickly, but that is where things started to go wrong. It appears as though the plan was to simply overthrow him, shake the hands of all the democracy craved civillians, find the few that were ready to lead them to capitalistic bliss, give them month or two course on how to do it and a kiss on each cheek and say "good luck". I agree that the "after" part was incompetent at best and irresponsible, ignorant, reckless, naive are probably a good word to throw in there as well. Fear not, america will not be spearheading any conflicts soon and will have to be dragged into anything else other than Afghanistan.

The politicians who claim they were fooled into this war just amaze me. If they have access to all this data that shows how fooled they were...why didn't they ask for it before sending troops? Better yet...why didn't they demand it! Are they that spineless or simply blind followers? If so, would they really make a good president, senator or representative? In my job, if I agree with and buy off on what a engineer wants to do and it goes badly, I am held responsible. Should I claim that the engineer duped me into agreeing to his proposal, there will be little understanding in that from my superiors or the ones I report to - like a constituency. And I don't get paid nearly as well as they do! YOU made a bad decision and it was YOURS to make, so acknowledge it and maybe your constituency will be foolish enough to vote you back in or to a higher position.

The unfortunate part to the political portion of this discussion is that it does have a impact on Iraq. Democrats could simply shut large parts of the operation down now with refusal in send cash to cover the cost. Get all their members in line and they have the votes to do it. They do that and troops have to come home. Why don't they do this...they are concerned over the soldiers safety right? NO...at least not until after the first tuesday in November. So until then, the Democrats are happy giving Bush a little bit but not all of what he wants, so they can claim that they helped some (one way or another) and Iraq gets the status quo for the better part of a year.

Rather off topic, but... As I am only one american, this may not mean much, but I don't feel fooled or duped about getting into the war. I do feel ultimately let down by my government on the post-invasion preplanning that was poorly done at best.

Iraq War Post

I think the presence of US troops in Iraq is making very little difference. If anything, it is giving some insurgents a reason to exist. I don't think US troops should be totally pulled out, but most of the forces should be scaled back. The US is not liked in Iraq and most of the Middle East for that matter. This is reality. I know that is hard to accept for some people. It is even unfair, because the US troops have only tried their best to help the situation. But it is reality at the present time, just ask Iraqis how they feel about it.

I admire the "never say die attitude", I feel Australians have a similar attitude. But that isn't making Iraq any better. That is the problem. The intention isn't matching the result. Therefore, you have to consider other strategies.

I didn't say that at all. I said replace them with an International peace-keeping force that is acceptable to the local population. There is a massive difference between peace-keeping forces and occupation forces. Unfortunately, the US military is perceived as an occupying force. There is no amount of propaganda that will change this perception in Iraq. The security of that country needs to be supported by a peace-keeping force that plays a far less forceful role. Will this solve the Iraq crisis? Probably not, but I think it is a necessary first step.

The UN voted against war with Iraq because there was no evidence to go to war. The UN was right, the US lied. Furthermore, the UN sent in weapons inspectors to try and find evidence to support US plans. Because they couldn't find any, the US tried to discredit Hans Blix and went to war anyway. The UN, because it is largely controlled by the US, would send in a peace-keeping force if it was leaned on.

There is no sympathy here for the amount of money the US government is wasting in Iraq. They wanted this mess and they should pay to clean it up. But don't worry, you will find a lot of US companies are doing very well out of this war, least of all Halliburton. Their wealth is partly being paid for by the Iraqi people who never had a choice in the matter. Why did the US need to destroy so much infrastructure to remove a lame Army?

It's not our role to tell other countries how they should run their government. That was the problem in the first place, the US wanted to install its own stooges. The Iraqi people should ultimately decide this. Unfortunately I can't see that happening for a while. You say there could be a civil war, I would argue there already is civil war. You say it will take another hard man to rule again, I totally agree. I don't think Iraq is ready for democracy, it may well be in time, but not now. That is the problem when you wage an ideological war. What the US wants in the Middle East isn't necessarily what the locals want.

You can say the invasion went well, but I wouldn't describe it that way. Who actually resisted? A few Iraqi soldiers fought against their own will? A lot fled. Saddam's Army was crippled, to put it mildly. There was never going to be anything but a crushing defeat and the US knew that, despite their claims Saddam had WMDs, nukes or whatever. The post-overthrow was a disaster of epic proportions, we can both agree on that.

I am not sure if Congress had access to highly sensitive CIA intelligence. I know in Australia and the UK, opposition parties have limited power to access this information. So they tend to rely on the intelligence released or declassified by the government. And all the intelligence that was released was dressed up to paint war. Most of the credible intelligence was dismissed. This wasn't just in the US, it also spread to the UK and Australia. So in the end, all these governments blatantly lied.

I don't hold it against other politicians or the people for believing a Government lie. You have to have some trust that your government wouldn't lie about something as important as war. Of course, being a journalist I am naturally very skeptical, but I wouldn't expect or hope others to be like that. Most countries were opposed to the war. Sure, the UK and Australia and a handful of paid off countries joined the invasion, but the people never supported it. Opinion polls in the US leading to the invasion show that quite a large number of people were also opposed, but the majority supported invasion. I put a lot of this down to patriotism and trust that the US Administration was doing the right thing. Now I don't for one second blame anyone here, I accept that people were deliberately mis-lead by a few neo-cons desperate to go to war.

But anyway, this is all in the past and my opinions about this aren't adding anything useful to this debate.

I agree the Democrats are using Iraq as a political football, but perhaps they are doing this because the Republicans dropped the ball ages ago and the other team has woken up. I think this is deplorable on the part of the Democrats, but can you blame them? The same thing is happening in Australia and the UK.

Post War Iraq History & Civil Business Politics

US marine 'justifies' Iraq deaths

A US marine, charged with the murder of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, says he would do the same again.
Ref. BBC

Page 115 Iraq War Post

Breaking News

Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was hanged early Tuesday for his role the 1982 killings of 148 men and boys in Dujail, a government official told The Associated Press.
Ref. CNN

Iraq War Post

Okay, so it is official now, 2008 they need to be out of there, but that is still about 19 months away - a long time if you are serving in Iraq.

Post War Iraq

I guess you haven't been paying attention to what's happening with Iran!

Post War Iraq - Page 115

Actually, I have been and still stand by what I have said. The US is not going into Iran. They are going to let the UN come to whatever arrangement they can get, which will be nothing and Iran will have a nuke fairly soon, potentially, by the time we are scheduled to leave Iraq. The only satisfaction the US will have is that the UN was unable to do anything about it, because they were unable to agree to do anything.

19 months and we are out of Iraq. Well, that is a long ways away and certainly not the immediate withdrawl that was promised by the Democrats. If I use their own campaign rhetoric, they are willing to sacrifice another approximate 2000 lives for the cause. There was no way that the US could just pull out of Iraq immediately. We can look at this in 2 ways. First, we can hope that the sectarian violence ends and the government takes strong holds throughout the country in 19 months, thus making the exit a non-event. This would be nice and I really hope it happens. However, this could just be buying 19 more months until a undesirable decision has to be made. That decision could be to leave a unstable government that will fall into civil war with sectarian violence or genocide being the result. Really do hope we just aren't buying time.

Post War Iraq Politics Business Civil & History - Page 115

As has been mentioned before, circling a date on a calendar is just buying time. They will be shooting at us as we retreat, every step of the way. It's not going to be pretty, and I personally believe that the entire region will fall into war before the US troops are gone.

Rather off topic, but... Part of the problem is that the US wasn't ever "there" enough; the military presence has not been a big enough show of strength. That can be blamed on several issues, but mainly the fact that the military budget is now so limited as to be ridiculous. Back in the 1950s, the military budget was 60% of total government spending; now it's 20%. What's 60% now? Welfare and other entitlement payments.