A woman adopts Iraq as her country, she marries an Iraqi, she works for humanitarian causes her whole career, and this is the thanks she gets. Stupid kidnappers are hurting themselves and their country, stupid Bush and Blair caused the conditions that led to this.
War & Peace: October 2004 Archives
If you were resolved to win a war in Iraq, would you
3) Ignore a request from the top U.S. civilian running Iraq for more troops?
4) Allow Abu Ghraib to happen and not do a damn thing about it?
Hey, but as long as you have a strong will and a clear vision, and you're really resolved and shit, good job! Let's stay the course!
WASHINGTON - In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.
The slide said: "To Be Provided."
A Knight Ridder review of the administration's Iraq policy and decisions has found that it invaded Iraq without a comprehensive plan in place to secure and rebuild the country. The administration also failed to provide some 100,000 additional U.S. troops that American military commanders originally wanted to help restore order and reconstruct a country shattered by war, a brutal dictatorship and economic sanctions.
In fact, some senior Pentagon officials had thought they could bring most American soldiers home from Iraq by September 2003. Instead, more than a year later, 138,000 U.S. troops are still fighting terrorists who slip easily across Iraq's long borders, diehards from the old regime and Iraqis angered by their country's widespread crime and unemployment and America's sometimes heavy boots.
"We didn't go in with a plan. We went in with a theory," said a veteran State Department officer who was directly involved in Iraq policy.
From Post-war planning non-existent, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, October 17, 2004
"Stay the course"?
Lemming leadership...
As little as 27 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq's reconstruction has actually filtered down to projects benefiting Iraqis, a statistic that is prompting the State Department to fundamentally rethink the Bush administration's troubled reconstruction effort.Between soaring security costs, corruption and mismanagement, contractors' profits, and U.S. governmental costs, reconstruction funding is being drained away, leaving little left to improve the lives of Iraqis, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. Senior administration officials and congressional experts on the reconstruction effort called the analysis credible. One senior U.S. official familiar with reconstruction suggested as little as a quarter of the funding is reaching its intended projects.
Man. Do we really have to wait a whole month to fire these people's asses?
Given these two stories:
It appears that the rationale for the invasion of Iraq was wrong.
Given this story:
It appears that the planning for "winning the peace" was extremely poor.
Given these stories and many more like them:
- More car bombs target Iraq's green zone
- Bomb found at cafe inside Baghdad's well-guarded Green Zone
- Police foil plot to kidnap US officials in Green Zone
- Baghdad's Green Zone 'island' prepares for rough seas
It appears that we're not even controlling the "safe zone".
So who want to let the jackasses in the Bush administration have another five minutes, let alone four more years, to screw things up?
Lest you believe the old saw about not changing horses in midstream, please understand that to reelect Bush is not playing it safe. It is to flat-out state: "I approve of the job Bush has done and I wish to reward him with a second term."
So one of the things that really irks me about this presidential race is how the Bushies have successfully equated criticism of the government's policies and conduct of a war with criticism of the soldiers fighting in the war. Thus, we get people saying things like "I don't vote for traitors." "I remember what Kerry did during Vietnam." or, more mildly, as one friend of mine wrote me, "I've chatted with military guys (who have first hand knowledge of working in Iraq) who tell me about the good that is being done in Iraq. There's a lot of rebuilding that's going on and making some headway, but our airwaves are filled with just the violence, another soldier dead, yet another kidnapping, so we don't see this." I don't doubt that she, and they, are right, that the soldiers are good people doing good work. But if your boss sucks and makes bad decisions, your good deeds cannot reverse his disasters.
And what kind of boss treats his employees like this, when they've put their lives on the line for him?
Robert Acosta, 21, of Tustin, Calif., said he relies on his disability checks of $2,332 a month to survive, but the VA is now reevaluating his case. Acosta's right hand was blown off and his left leg was shattered when he was ambushed at the gate to Baghdad International Airport on July 13, 2003. The passenger in a Humvee, he grabbed a grenade that had been lobbed through the window, saving his driver.
Acosta said he cannot work because his prosthetic right hand has been giving him trouble, his left leg has not returned to normal and he suffers from nightmares. Initially, he was rated 70 percent disabled -- the medical board did not want to account for his leg injury, his PTSD claims and his hearing loss. After accepting those claims and rating him 100 percent disabled, the VA is questioning them again, asking Acosta to prove that some of his disabilities are service-related.
"They said there was no proof of it," Acosta said, referring to his PTSD claim. It took two months after he left the service for him to get his first disability payment, he said, and he spent his savings in the meantime. "I'm going to therapy every week. I'm working on it. I have bad dreams, I don't sleep at night and I get really jumpy. I don't know what they want me to do."
The VA system is reeling under the strain:
Thousands of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical injuries and mental health problems are encountering a benefits system that is already overburdened, and officials and veterans' groups are concerned that the challenge could grow as the nation remains at war.
The disability benefits and health care systems that provide services for about 5 million American veterans have been overloaded for decades and have a current backlog of more than 300,000 claims. And because they were mobilized to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly 150,000 National Guard and reservist veterans had become eligible for health care and benefits as of Aug. 1. That number is rising.
At the same time, President Bush's budget for 2005 calls for cutting the Department of Veterans Affairs staff that handles benefits claims, and some veterans report long waits for benefits and confusing claims decisions.
Yes, I know, it takes two parties to botch a government agency. But you'd think that in a time of national crisis, in a time of war, Bush would make taking care of the soldiers a higher priority than giving people tax cuts. No such luck.
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