does anyone still believe the strategy for iraq has ever been anything but making sure it's a total mess?
this site doesn't do 'articles' and does change, but:
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/
October 18, 2006
Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK Policy
As the catastrophe in Iraq continues to unfold, an unresolved question remains on the role of Bush, Blair, and the US/UK military. To what extent were they passively incompetent in facilitating the decline into civil war, and to what extent were they actively pursuing policies that promoted that outcome?
Murray also cites a newsweek article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/
Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.
...
Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and *****e militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.
John Negroponte is on the case, just like El-Salvador.
training death squads... yeah that'll solve the problem.
how can ANYONE believe this absurdity?
the neo-con rags have been 'slipping this one in' for awhil now, licking their chops at the possibilities:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3423
It also implies the need for a lowering of coalition goals. I cheer the goal of a "free and democratic Iraq," but the time has come to acknowledge that the coalition's achievement will be limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement. There is nothing ignoble about this limited achievement, which remains a landmark of international sanitation. It would be especially unfortunate if aiming too high spoils that attainment and thereby renders future interventions less likely. The benefits of eliminating Saddam's rule must not be forgotten in the distress of not creating a successful new Iraq.
Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden. The damage done by Saddam will take many years to repair. Americans, Britons, and others cannot be tasked with resolving Sunni-*****e differences, an abiding Iraqi problem that only Iraqis themselves can address.
...
Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.
unreal.
unreal that you have to peruse the 'conspiracy' sites to get any real news these days.
http://www.infowars.net/articles/Oct...181006Iraq.htm
In a remark he made last year about the constant attacks on US troops in Iraq, Bush said: "The insurgents are being defeated; that's why they're continuing to fight." This stunning Orwellian reversal of all logic epitomizes the worsening situation in Iraq. Measuring success in terms of how far you are from success.
the left wing gatekeepers that continue to insist this is some kind of perverse comedy of errors... is really starting to **** me off.
THIS IS NOT A MISTAKE.
if people don't figure out quick what the neo-cons are really aboot and where they are going with this, we are in real trouble.