Iraq: War & Mess

   “My goal, should I become the president, is to keep the peace. I intend to do so by promoting free trade, which in my judgement, promotes American values across the world. I intend to do so by strengthening alliances, which says, ‘America cannot go alone.’ We must be peacemakers, not peacekeepers.” GW at the debate in Manchester New Hampshire in 2000
   “Iraq is a part of the war on terror. Iraq is a country that has got terrorist ties, it’s a country that trains terrorists, a country that could arm terrorists.”   GW Bush
   “About half of Americans have some simple facts wrong. In January before the war 68 percent of Americans surveyed said Iraq played an important role in the 9/11 attacks. After the war the polls reported that half of Americans thought the U.S. had found evidence that Saddam had worked closely with al-Qaida. A poll in June showed 52% believed we had clear evidence Iraq was supporting al-Qaida. In August another poll found that 69% thought Saddam was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to have been personally involved in 9/11. In late September another poll found that 43% believed that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks.
   These beliefs are important because they closely correlate with whether one approved of unilateral action against Iraq. In February unilateral action was supported by 58% of those who believed Iraq was directly involved in 9/11, by 37% of those who believed Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaida, and only 25% of those who believed Iraq had no link to 9/11. The puzzling thing is our own intelligence services never believed Saddam was involved in 9/11 or supported al-Qaida or that there was significant evidence that he had weapons of mass destruction.... So why do so many Americans believe these things in the absence of evidence? The most important is the Bush administration, by means of an intense propaganda campaign, caused Americans to believe Saddam had sponsored al-Qaida and 9/11, and that he threatened us with weapons of mass destruction... by constantly mentioning Saddam and terrorism in the same breath. They implied Saddam “sponsored terrorism” and that terrorists were “clients” of Saddam. Invading Iraq, they said over and over, was an integral part of the war on terrorism. And it worked. In the election campaign Bush will be judged by his record and part of that record is the integrity of the reasons given for the war.” Andrew Oldenquist, Cols Dispatch 12/23/03
   “I analyzed a through body of intelligence – good, solid intelligence – that led me to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.” GW Bush July 2003 press conference
   “We know the outcome. Iraq will be disarmed.... History requires... the defeat of a terrible danger... If Saddam uses weapons of mass destruction, it will just prove our case.” GW Bush
   “Iraq will be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction...our aim is to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and make our world more secure... we wanted to take a stand against what I believe to be the dominant security threat of our time, which is the combination of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of unstable, repressive states and terrorists groups.” Tony Blair
   “The president doesn’t want to use troops to rebuild Afghanistan,” Card cautioned. Bush had said repeatedly during the presidential campaign: No troops for nation building, the American military did not exist for that purpose. In the second of the three presidential debates he had declared ‘Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war.’ He had eased off slightly in the debate, ‘There may be some moments when we use our troops as peacekeepers, but not often.’ Everyone in the room knew they were entering a phase of peacekeeping and nation building... on a huge scale.” Woodward, Bush at War
   “I don’t believe the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction” of Iraq after the war. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before Congress on a request for funds, 90% of which the Pentagon asked be in a “reserve fund” that could be spent without out getting approval from Congress. In this hearing Rumsfeld said while “we want to participate in the reconstruction,” other nations would be encouraged to join the effort, and much of the money would come from seized Iraqi assets and oil revenues. NYT 3/28/03
   “The British soldiers are better than the Americans. We watched the Americans kicking open the doors and ordering people around. The British are polite. I think they understand this country much better." Abdul Dayim quoted in the Boston Globe 11/11/03
   "We have a different mentality than the British. We like to be aggressive." First Lieutenant Chris Arne, in Boston Globe 11/11/03
   "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react." W. Bush explaining the increase in American and other deaths in Iraq. "By this terrifying blithe logic, we should soon be celebrating yet higher body counts…. If we ask whether the Iraqi people are better off, despite all the death and destruction, the answer must certainly be yes…. But it's not enough to ask whether we have made Iraq better for the Iraqis. We spent precious lives and resources invading Iraq not to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe – as in, say Kosov – but to secure a safer world. We are acting primarily in our interests, not theirs. And so the scorecard must answer whether the price we've paid made the world commensurably safer. And the discovery that the weapons inspections that lasted from 1991 to 1998 had been far more effective than we thought means we might have purchased our security at a far lighter cost…. The threat was less grave, and to the gain, though still very considerable, proportionally smaller. What of the losses? The expense in blood and treasure is hardly trivial: as many as 246 American soldiers, as well as thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, have died since the conflict began, while our costs have been running about $4 billion a month….   “With Saddam now gone, there are no more excuses for the political drift there. We are now going to get the answer to the big question I had before the war: Is Iraq the way it is because Saddam was the way he was? Or was Saddam the way he was because Iraq is the way it is – ungovernable except by an iron fist? Thomas Friedman NYT 12/18/03
   “The Bush administration has repeatedly declared its resolve to stay the course in Iraq. At the same time, Bush and his top advisors want to bring back the troops as soon as possible. These goals are difficult to reconcile. E. Thomas & J Barry, Newsweek 12/22/03
    The former top American official in Iraq has acknowledged what in retrospect now seems obvious: We did not deploy enough troops, and we should have acted to stop the looting that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein. "We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We did not have enough troops on the ground," Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation authority until June, said this week. In the spring of 2003, it was an article of faith in the Bush administration that the number of troops was adequate for the job, and it lashed back harshly at those, like Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who suggested otherwise.
   As for the looting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed it: "Stuff happens." "Freedom's untidy," he said. "And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." The newly freed Iraqis destroyed valuable infrastructure that we're spending billions to restore, and some Iraqis are still committing crimes and doing bad things, mostly against us.
"I know it sounds funny but it hadn’t occurred to me this could happen..." A 28 year old American squad leader on deaths of two members of his company.
GW Bush sends a personal letter of sympathy to the family of each deceased soldier.
Chuck and Tom Hagel served in Vietnam willingly and during some of the most fighting. Between them they won 5 Purple Hearts and numerous other medals. When they returned, brother Tom bitterly opposed the war while brother Chuck supported it. But now as a republican Senator and a senior member of the Senate Foreign relations Committee, Chuck has become increasingly critical of the president’s handling of the war, much to the displeasure of the White House. “I went through a war once. Tom and I know what it is like, what it does to families. It’s not an abstraction, not a policy made by clever people at the Pentagon whop have nothing to risk. They commit a nation to war when they don’t know a thing about war.” Once a month Sen. Hagel visits wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. “It’s too easy to deal in abstractions. I need to get grounded in reality and see these kids with no arms and no legs.” Now older and wiser and with an eye on the big picture, the Hagels agonize as young Americans go to fight and die far away from family and friends. “The people calling the shots have no experience in war, have no appreciation what it means down on the ground to the people that fight it. Tom Hagle said. “What happened to Tom and I and others should not happen again. The Senator says, and so he speaks out. “I don’t want to look back on this time when maybe I could have made a difference and could have something and regret that I didn’t.” Cols Dispatch 10/04/04
“Bricks and plaster blew inward from the wall as the windows all shattered and I fell to the floor – whether from the shock wave or just fright.... Toaster sized chunks of twisted metal fell in the yard and banged off the roof; later they’d be identified as pieces of a U.S. Army Humvee blown up by a suicide car bomb a full block away.... At least one U.S. soldier was killed and 3 badly wounded, and 3 Iraqis were incinerated in their car.... Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the incident was that it scarcely made the news. It was just another among a surge of terrorists attacks that day in the Mandour neighborhood of Bagdad. Besides everyone was focused on the discovery of the headless corpse of American Jack Hensley found floating in the Tigris River only 5 blocks away from his home in an upscale Mansour neighborhood. In a way that bombs and bullets don’t, the agony of the 23 hostages now being held hits hard with Westerners here. It’s not difficult too imagine yourself blindfolded and kneeling in a jihadi snuff film. The 140 hostages taken since April include a score of nationalities and people of many professions.... Many hostages have ben released, but not recently. Of 28 people killed, 24 had their final screams recorded on tape and bandied about the Web. It’s a form of terrorism that’s deeply personal and disproportionately effective.... much of the media, ourselves included, were in virtual hiding last week, as were nearly all foreign civilians.... Heavily armed convoys of contractors’ SUV’s, once a common sight, have all but disappeared from busy roads. ‘The only serious reconstruction going on now,’ said one Western businessman, ‘is inside the Green Zone....” ‘We’re trapped in a rat’s cage,’ said an ambassador from a non-coalition country who no longer leaves his bunkerlike residential compound. Iraqi’s suffer most. In the same week the American hostages were taken and killed, at least 300 Iraqis died from terrorists attacks.... the State Department has had a hard time staffing the U.S. embassy in Bagdad which is only 50-60% of authorized strength. ‘The only thing that will get people there is money,’ said an official in Washington.” Rod Nordland, Newsweek 10/04/04
    “We were expecting the bombing so we prepared the children psychologically. We were playing count-the-explosions yesterday and taught them to recognize the air raid sirens from the all-clear.” Um Hiba, Baghdad mother of 4 talking about preparing her children for US airstrikes in 2003.
    The Seidens had just returned from errands at around four o’clock in the afternoon on January 2nd – midnight in Bagdad – when the doorbell rang. Gail was upstairs; Jack opened the door to find two officers in dress uniform – q woman and a man a silver cross pinned to his collar. “Are you Jack Seiden, father of Specialist Marc Seiden?” the woman asked. “I have an important message to deliver from the Secretary of the Army. May I come in, Mr. Seiden?” In shock Jack refused. “We’d been told if one person comes to the door, he’s wounded; if two people come, he’s dead,” Jack told me. “I thought , if I don’t let them in then it can’t be happening. But she kept saying, “Mr. Seiden, we have to come in, we have to come in.” She was crying. Jack backed away, yelling for Gail. From the top of the stairs, Gail saw a pair of uniformed legs and thought Marc’s home early! As she ran down the stairs she saw the second pair of legs.
    Do not touch the NOK (next of kin) in any manner unless there is shock or fainting. Casualty notification guide
    At first glance military funerals seem cold and mechanical; every service is alike and everybody moves in jerky tin-soldier fashion. But in its exaggerated solemnity – the slow motion way the general salutes the casket, the crispiness with which the flag is folded into a triangle   – a military funeral movingly conveys the grief of the institution. New Yorker, 8/9&16/04