| A. This war was started for the wrong reasons |
a. The war was a continuation of the Gulf war because Saddam broke the treaty.
The president said that anyone that from now on there would be no difference between the terrorist and those that harbored them. Saddam was providing safe haven for the terrorist to the point of bringing in people to train AQ people.
| 1. Intel that wasn't good enough to know for sure about WMD. Expecting to find tons and tons of bad stuff, including a rebuilding nuclear program. All that was found was 500 canisters of degraded chemical munitions, about as effective as 500 bottles of battery acid. Lethal but not of military quality. |
1. The intelligence did not matter because we were going off of what Saddam said he had. The UN destroyed most of it but not all of it and that was a threat to the US and the world. because he said he would give or sell them to the terrorist he was training in Iraq.
| 2. Not enough coalition partners |
2. Even one is more than we need. We are in a war with an enemy that has promised our destruction as the minimum acceptable goal. We have world wide support even if that support does not include military manpower.
3. The Gulf war was the mandate needed to go into Iraq. The US policy of attacking anyone that harbors terrorist is a clearly stated policy made in his speech to Congress, the nation and the world giving fair warning to everyone. At the end of that speech even Iran started helping us out of fear of our anger. Political in fighting has weakened our position on the world stage not the failure of finding WMD. Once it was seen that we as a nation were not united the best chance for the enemy was to drive a wedge in to help kill support for a war they are clearly losing. When that was seen as working Iran backed out and then other nations started to do the same. Look at the press releases from AQ touting victory when the Democrats won. Or them parroting all the Democrat talking points. It is not that they believe them, it is a way of getting what looks to the outside world as support inside the United States for the terrorist not for the Democrats. The Democrats were being used as a propaganda tool. Will the Democrats fight any differently than the Republicans? No! They don’t care as long as they look strong in order to recruit more people.
| 4. "You break it you own it" |
We did not break it but we do own it.
| No clear measures for success beyond setting up government elected by Iraqis |
You are looking at only one piece of a very large picture. Success is the enemy not taking over Iraq. We have driven them out of 2 thirds of the country so far that sounds like we are on the road to success to me.
| B. The war planners never had a winning post war plan, the postwar plan was to be a subcontracted operation, with big gun support from the US military. |
b. The war planners are not supposed to plan for the post war that was what the civilians were supposed to do. The ones the president trusted failed to do this causing a mess but not a bad one, or one that we can’t recover from. Since the change in civilian managers we went from holding 1 third to two thirds. The elected civilian leadership now in place is walking a fine line in order to stay in power and keep us happy. They have been in power for 9 months and you expect a fully working government with our maturity and abilities that took us 200 years of hard fought experience and if not then it is a failure. The first 9 months of our government we were still fighting if we should have a king or a president and our capital was New York.
| C. The terrorists had other plans, and a head start in country. |
They did not have a head start they had us arguing about troop levels and lies causing our people to die and all the other irrelevant crap, in short we distracted ourselves instead of allowing us to do our jobs in the field. Stupid distractions caused by our own ignorance and political gamesmanship where the opposition party values winning political victories more than winning a war of destruction. We let them get ahead of us by playing politically correct games and worrying if people that were trying to kill us are being treated nicely.
| Borders weren't secure, aid from Syria, Iran, mixed in with Saddam loyalists, corrupt new government officials and service people at all levels, along with terrorists to create an unmanageable security situation. |
It is not unmanageable. The game plan works but every time it does people scream bring the troops home. The generals said they did not need more troops but a change in the rules of engagement. Now they are getting more troops and a change in the rules of engagement. People are still bitching that we are losing and the new plan has not even started yet.
| E. "Stay the course" No admittance by the President/administration that things were bad until long after it was too late to correct them. |
If you understand war then you know you can’t admit those things during a war. It makes for great propaganda for our enemies, it demoralizes the troops. When did Roosevelt admit mistakes were made? When we lost 6000 people in a training accident in one day do you think it was admitted until the end of the war? Every time we lost a battle during WWII it was covered up and minimized none of that has happened in this war. Wake up and smell the crap you are trying to shovel.
| F. Abu Ghraib Prison damaged our image as well as gave the arab world, Al Jazerra, and terrorists propaganda that played right into their hands. |
f. Yes, it did and if the press played along like they did during WWII it would not have come to light until after the war. Hundreds of soldiers were hung during WWII because of acts like this and it was all covered up until after the war so it would not hurt the war effort. Remember that when the news broke the people were already in custody and facing trial. So it did not help anyone to print it and let our enemies make political hay over it.
g. The IED’s are part of the war on terrorism not the war in Iraq. That war is over and done with. The IED’s we are facing we are facing now are from terrorist units sent in from Iran, Syria and the malcontents that straggle into any conflict for stupid reasons off manhood, pride of belonging and the real stupid ones fight for God.
| H. Removal of generals from command but not Rumsfeld. |
Rummy was the one who streamlined the military enabling us to fight a war in two countries and win with less men than we used during the Gulf war. He was the one that forced the generals to work smarter. Because Congress was crying about the military wasting money that should go to the social security lock box. By the way that argument happened in the pentagon breakfast meeting on September 11 2001 where Rummy said we needed to restructure our forces to deal with terrorist. How nice that you want to get rid of the one person in government that connected the dots enough to know we need to fight a new way and was doing something about it. Yeah, lets get rid of that person.
| I. Extended deployments in order to meet the need for additional troops. |
This is something new that rummy was trying. In WWII the rule was you were in for the duration meaning that all military personnel are required to stay and fight till the war was over. In Vietnam they rotated every 13 months but we had a military of over one million troops now less than half a million. Why so low? Because every peace loving person in Congress wanted to save money and use the saved money to spend on social programs. Now we need those people but we are still getting by because of rummy restructuring the military in order to deal with what we are dealing with now.
| J. Improper usage of troops, i.e. artillery batallions used for jailer duty. |
Putting them on duty where they are needed is better than putting them where they are not needed. When I was in the service we were told that every Marine was a basic rifleman. We have cooks out on the front line fighting along side the grunts when needed. It is called being smart, doing the best you can with what you have.
| K. Poorly equipped troops |
We have the best Congress would allow. Ramping up for war takes time. The equipment they have gets used up and the factories can only produce so many at a time no matter how many you use up. That has been corrected through the normal procurement procedures nothing special was done just practical.
Seemed to be enough troops to wipe out the 4th largest army in the world.
Sure there is. We win we exit.
It takes 3 months to train ground troops to fight a war, it takes 40 days to train a policeman. It takes 3 years to properly train an NCO, it takes 10 years to train a major and 20 year to train a Colonel. Iraq has had a standing army for three years with a government that is a whopping 9 months old.
To be honest that is a huge mistake. It is like throwing fresh meat to wolves. At the end of WWII we stayed until the nations of Germany and Japan could stand on their own. We are just starting to pull our troops out 60 years later. What makes you think that Iraq is in better shape than Germany or Japan?
We were losing WWII from 1941 until 1944 we are winning this war from the time we started to today and there seems to be the same news blackout only this time it is supporting the enemy.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying Mr. Bush was perfect, or that he did no wrong. But he is the president and we have not been attacked like AQ promised. When was the last AQ attack on US soil after 2001?
