21 February 2005

Why isn't Bush looking for a way out of the greatest strategic blunder in American history?

Because, as Paul Craig Roberts writes, the neconservatives' goal is the same as Osama bin Laden's — to foment instability to justify more U.S. invasions.
President Bush's invasion has turned Iraq into a recruiting and training ground for anti-U.S. terrorists, according to CIA Director Porter Goss in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 16. Goss' report was supported by Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the the Defense Intelligence Agency. Jacoby told the committee that "our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment." The Iraq insurgency, Jacoby reported, has grown "in size and complexity over the past year" with daily attacks increasing 240 percent.

The situation, in other words, is out of control. One hundred fifty thousand American troops are tied down by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents. The recent Iraq election was won by Shi'ites allied with Iran. U.S. casualties continue to mount, and our troops can seldom tell friend from foe.

And they'll twist the truth, employing the enourmous propaganda resources eager to perform their bidding, to create a climate for expanding into more wars.

Comments

"One hundred fifty thousand American troops are tied down by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents" from >>Why isn't Bush looking for a way out of the greatest strategic blunder in American history?<<
or

"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," from >>Iraq's insurgency counts more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers<<

which is it? if the later is true we are outnumbered wouldnt you say. I dare to say that if Porter Goss had something posative to say about iraq it would be conservative propoganda???
democratic talking points from another blog:

"Tactics and Strategy in Iraq
Submitted by JoshGreen on Mon, 06/28/2004 - 07:57.
Tactical stroke of genius to transfer sovereignty early. Gotta give Bremer credit for that.

But has this whole Iraq thing been one of the great strategic blunders of all time? An "Anonymous CIA Guy" seems to think so. According to cnn.com, Anonymous CIA Guy -- in his soon-to-be-released book -- labeled "the invasion of Iraq a 'Christmas gift' to Osama bin Laden and said the country has become a 'Mujahadeen magnet' attracting Muslims from around the world to fight the occupying U.S. forces."

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http://www.2020democrats.or...

real blunders vs. iraq:

"About this time 60 years ago, six weeks after the Normandy beach landings, Americans were dying in droves in France. We think of the 76-day Normandy campaign of summer and autumn 1944 as an astounding American success — and indeed it was, as Anglo-American forces cleared much of France of its Nazi occupiers in less than three months. But the outcome was not at all preordained, and more often was the stuff of great tragedy. Blunders were daily occurrences — resulting in 2,500 Allied casualties a day. In any average three-day period, more were killed, wounded, or missing than there have been in over a year in Iraq."

"Pre-invasion intelligence — despite ULTRA and a variety of brilliant analysts who had done so well to facilitate our amphibious landings — had no idea of what war in the hedgerows would be like. How can you spend months spying out everything from beach sand to tidal currents and not invest a second into investigating the nature of the tank terrain a few miles from the beach? The horrific result was that the Allies were utterly unprepared for the disaster to come — and died by the thousands in the bocage of June and July."

also:

"Everything went wrong in the days after June 6, and 60 years later the carnage should still make us weep. The army soon learned that their light Sherman tanks were no match for Nazi Panthers and Tigers. Hundreds of their "Ronson-lighters" — crews and all — went up in smoke. Indeed, 60 percent of all lost Shermans were torched by single shots from enemy Panzers. In contrast, only one in three of the Americans' salvos even penetrated German armor."