Thursday, July 24, 2003
War News for July 24, 2003
Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers killed in ambush north of Baghdad.
Bring ‘em on: US troops ambushed in central Baghdad.
US troops mistakenly kill two Iraqis in central Baghdad. This incident occurred at the same place and just before convoy ambush reported above. Incidents like this will inflame the Iraqi revolt far more than killing Baathists will subdue the revolt.
Revenge attacks promised.
US intelligence receives more reports of Saddam Hussein sightings.
France warns of more attacks, tells Bush to get a mandate. Bush hasn’t had a mandate since January 20, 2001.
Wolfie concludes Magical Mystery Tour.
"We fooled ourselves into thinking we would have a liberation over an occupation. Why did we do that?" said a US official.
As this article makes clear, we did it because ideological war hawks Wolfie, Perle and Cheney repeatedly placed conservative dogma above prudent contingency planning:
“Preliminary planning for the occupation began in August (2002)….
“By early October, officials drawn from agencies across the government were beginning to meet, amid speculation that the United States could be at war by year's end. Considerable attention was focused on a potential humanitarian crisis, and how relief and reconstruction would win Iraqi support for the occupation.
"’The whole operation is going to rise or fall on whether Iraqi people's lives are materially improved,’ said one committee member who reckoned that the Americans would have to deliver visible results within weeks of an invasion.
“Veterans of other conflicts soon identified security as the most important requirement for early relief and long-term stability. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell emphasized the need in talks with Bush last fall, aides said, as he urged the president to seek U.N. approval for the war. With U.N. assent, Powell believed, would come troops and contributions from other nations.
“Similarly, the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, were ‘utterly consistent in arguing that reconstruction rather than war would be the most problematic segment of overthrowing Saddam,’ a senior administration official said. In classified written and oral reports, the official continued, the intelligence community warned the administration ‘early and often’ about obstacles U.S. authorities were likely to face.
“In particular, the agencies repeatedly predicted that Hussein loyalists might try to sabotage U.S. postwar efforts by destroying critical economic targets, the official said. One analysis warned that Iraqis ‘would probably resort to obstruction, resistance and armed opposition if they perceived attempts to keep them dependent on the United States and the West.’
“Those concerns, however, were secondary among the principal architects of the Iraq policy, who were concentrated in the Defense Department, the White House and Vice President Cheney's office.”
- snip –
“Wolfowitz turned not to the roster of career specialists in the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau, but to a political appointee in the bureau: Elizabeth Cheney, coordinator of a Middle East democracy project and daughter of the vice president; she recruited a State Department colleague who had worked for the International Republican Institute.”
- snip –
"There's been a lot of talk that there was no plan," Wolfowitz said yesterday. "There was a plan, but as any military officer can tell you, no plan survives first contact with reality."
Wolfie don’t try to hide behind the uniforms. You and your neo-conservative friends, including Cheney’s daughter, need to take responsibility for your utter failure to provide realistic planning. And you’re wrong about what military men say. “No plan survives the first contact with the enemy” is what military men say, and it’s meant as a warning that staff officers should plan for every contingency, not just the best-case scenario. You are trying twist that adage into an excuse for failure. You’re still not listening, are you?
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