> "We just didn't know [about the insurgency]."

That runs contrary to everything I have heard from anyone in the US military over the last 20 years. Since Vietnam, the military has run by several princples: intensive study of the history and psychology of potential conflict areas, "train the way you will fight", and "prepare for the worst, hope for the best". Army officers in particular tend to be very well informed about the sociology and politics of regions they serve in.

So, if Franks' statement is a true picture of how the high command was thinking, then I believe some courts martial may be called for - because the top brass absolutely failed in their duty to their country and their soldiers.

OHOH, if Franks is just parroting a party line to protect President Bush, that is another kettle of fish...

Cranky

> The Vietnam War was the Right War at...

Note that this comment is being posted this morning on every blog to the left of John Birch. Take it for what it is worth.

Cranky

Actually Franks' comments about Arab Politics are spot on.

Ask King Abdullah and Hosni Mubarak what they think of the Iraq war? They'll probably tell you it was the right war for the wrong reasons. But what they won't tell you is that domestically they both had immense political pressure to support the war at least through diplomatic back channels.

The quick retort from spokespersons in Jordan and Egypt is as uncommon as an afternoon rainshower in Miami. They denied everything Franks said? Does shit stink?

There's tons of money to be made in Iraq. Both leaders know it. The ruling Abu Dhabi family of UAE knew it. Some Arab leaders were more willing than others to support the Coalition's cause celebre.

I don't think their support for the war was necessarily about money. A lot of it probably had to do with Saddam's defiance and his resulting popularity in the Arab world. The impact of the sanctions as portrayed on Arab satellite TV was making them look bad as well.

I'll simply stay with what I said.

Yeah, like when he testified under oath before the Senate Committe that the torture at Abu Graihb was caused by a few bad apples. Disgraceful.

"We had a hope the Iraqis would rise up and become part of the solution,"

"We just didn't know [about the insurgency]."

Almost a thousand US troops dead, thosands more maimed for life - all because of Frank's and his superiors' wishful thinking and willful ignorance.

"I think there was not a full appreciation of the realities in Iraq--

Understatement of the decade.

> Actually Franks' comments about Arab
> Politics are spot on.

Um, I was thinking more of /Iraqi/ politics and the possiblity that the post-war transition would not go smoothly.

I was also being a bit too cute. Everything I have heard is that the Army had plans for a realistic post-war occupation, and that Rumsfeld canned them and submitted his own.

Cranky

I think one should be skeptical about all these books about the Iraq War, although there may be some interesting information in them. General Franks might sell more books if he criticized President Bush and/or Secretary Rumsfeld. Then, General Franks might have lost consulting work or corporate board memberships if he had criticized them in his book.

"Almost a thousand US troops dead, thosands more maimed for life - all because of Frank's and his superiors' wishful thinking and willful ignorance."

_All_ because? There would have been zero US casualties in this campaign had someone had a crystal ball? What about all the disaster scenarios that were avoided? What about the tens of thousands of casualties in urban fighting for Baghdad? Keep moving the goalposts. There were more casualties on a single day at Antietam than there have been in a year and change in Iraq, but its still some sort of unmitigated disaster. How about some credit to Tommy Franks for designing a military campaign that saved thousands of US and Iraqi lives because of its audacity?

praktike: Which Arab media would that be? The same Arab Media owned by the political friends of the Arab ruling families?

It's ok. Catch up.

Two observations on the Tribune story:

- The reason that they expected more international support than the thirty countries already involved was that they lacked information about...the UN oil for food scandal. How could they have known that Germany, France, and Russia were Saddam's business partners?

- The insurgency was greater than expected. And...military planners should be able to predict the future? These are mostly foreign fighters, and the vast majority of Iraqis oppose them. I'd like to know exactly what level of presience is required of our leaders.

RightMakesRight

Franks says "the mix of the Sunnis, the Shiites, ... and the Kurds ... I don't know that we made willful assumptins with respect to ..."

That sounds like "our postwar plans didn't take into account even the most elementary facts of Iraqi politics."

Perhaps in subsequent interviews the Bush people will be able to get Franks to eschew such damaging confirmations of what seemed too bad to be true. But my own hunch is that when the Commander in Chief decided on war, he literally did not know the difference between Sunni and Shiite.

The leftists have exhibited plenty of imagination and dynamism in their opposition to the liberation of Iraq.

They have become veritable rhetorical contortionists in their continued justification of a fatally flawed analysis.

However, they are intellectually unable to grant that same capability to the forces which oppose the Bush Doctrine, although it is being clearly demonstrated by the insurgency in Iraq, it's state sponsors, and their well wishers within the international community.

The "we would have had a better plan" argument is specious at best, ignorant at worst.

I think we all hoped for an easier transition to sovereignty in Iraq, but in the larger perspective, we have just kicked the door in on a culture which has for the most part, languished since the middle ages.

Rather than deal with their own internal cultural and religious conflicts regarding modernization, and how to cope within that context, the extremist Islamist factions have declared war on the future.

We are now the symbol of that future, and were for the most part willing to let them sort things out at their own pace, before we were attacked.

It's a different deal now. To put it in everyman terms, on 9/11 these folks and their enablers purchased a lifetime subscription to "Woopass Daily".

We are simply not in a position to willingly turn back the clock on western civilization by a thousand years in order to accommodate certain elements of a culture once among the world's greatest, but which today brings comparatively little to the world table.

Hint:
If the leftists were really on the ball they would bemoan the fact that we are learning and adapting as we march toward imperialist world domination, not that we are screwing it up.

How about some credit to Tommy Franks for designing a military campaign that saved thousands of US and Iraqi lives because of its audacity?

You should actually give the Iraqis themselves a lot of the credit for the relatively light casualties on both sides in the early weeks. We know now that the reason Franks was able to roll so easily into Bagdad was because many of the best Iraqi troops - knowing they couldn't win in the open - traded in their combat boots for sandals and melted into the cities.

General Franks now candidly admits that he simply "didn't know about" this at the time. In other words, when Franks entered Bagdad, he thought he had won. So instead of making any contingency plans whatsoever to deal with the fairly obvious possibility that the Iraqis were not actually defeated, but were in fact baiting us into a low-intensity conflict, Franks just relied on the 'hope' that the Iraqis would accept us.

Unfortunately for Franks, and especially our troops, these same Iraqis Franks thought he had defeated were indeed baiting us. The result has been an astonishingly guerilla campaign so effective that now we no longer have much, if any, military presence in Bagdad: THAT is the legacy of Franks' great drive to the capital.

Any general can take a city. Great generals know how to keep it. Frank's criminally negligent failure to plan for a guerrilla contingency has resulted in what, by any standard of military history, is an ignominious defeat on par with Crassus in Parthia.

There were more casualties on a single day at Antietam than there have been in a year and change in Iraq, but its still some sort of unmitigated disaster.

Even one soldier who dies because of his commander's ineptitude is a disaster. How many more thousands of young men and women have to sacrifice their lives before you are satisfied that this war was a terrible mistake?

> it wasn't only western intelligence agencies who were fooled on the WMD question

Doesn't the evidence by now fairly scream out that NO intelligence agencies were fooled on the WMD question? Ours was merely inept (and/or inappropriately pressured by external influences) and Egypt and Jordan were most likely "pulling a Chalabi," and using our military to do their dirty work. How did you make the leap from Franks reporting what they said to believing that they were actually fooled? They're not as dumb as you'd have us believe.

"praktike: Which Arab media would that be? The same Arab Media owned by the political friends of the Arab ruling families?"

Actually, Al Jazeera is pretty much anti-Saudi, ditto for Al Arabiya. It's the Gulf states' subtle way of sticking to the House of Saud.

"Unfortunately for Franks, and especially our troops, these same Iraqis Franks thought he had defeated were indeed baiting us."

Yeh, theyve managed to get thousands of themselves killed, kill thousands of innocent Iraqis, turn the vast majority of the country against the insurgency, while killing less than a thousands Americans. Brilliant work. Sure to go down in the annals.

"The result has been an astonishingly guerilla campaign so effective that now we no longer have much, if any, military presence in Bagdad: THAT is the legacy of Franks' great drive to the capital. "

Your buying into your own bullshit. Try reading up on the Russian campaigns in Chechnya or Afghanistan, Vietnam, a dozen others. This has been extremely innefective, in fact counterproductive in every way aside from firing up the old American Vietnam-protestors for one last romp.

A"ny general can take a city. Great generals know how to keep it."

We havent kept it?

"Frank's criminally negligent failure to plan for a guerrilla contingency has resulted in what, by any standard of military history, is an ignominious defeat on par with Crassus in Parthia"

You dont have a clue what you are talking about. You're out of your depth. Do you see American troops running for the exits? Supply lines cut? Thousands of fighters surrounding entire armies like Dien Bien Phu? Tens of thousands of casualties like the Russians in Afghanistan? Is there a single region of the country where guerillas can operate freely? Get a grip, go read some history. We had more trouble holding onto Okinawa.

"How many more thousands of young men and women have to sacrifice their lives before you are satisfied that this war was a terrible mistake?"

How about 1,000 more, that be double. If this war was a terrible mistake, every other war we ever fought was a calimity of unparalleled proportions. Get some perspective.

> Do you see American troops running for the exits?
> Supply lines cut?

Um, have you been reading the news from Iraq lately?

BTW, I wish the 101st Fighting Keyboarders would give up on this "you're out of your depth" business. Arrogating to yourselves the right to judge who has "depth" without displaying any particular amount yourself gets a bit annoying after a very short time.

Cranky

praktike: Thanks. You made my point.

But I did qualify my statement in terms of friends of the monarchs rather than the monarchs themselves. They've learned from their colonial caretakers.

"Um, have you been reading the news from Iraq lately?"

Constantly. Have you heard any rumor of our troops being withdrawn any time soon, much less retreating per force? Kerry claims he'll have them out in _4 years_. Some rout. There were days in Vietnam we lost 100 men a day. There were firebases and outposts surrounded and cut off for days and weeks. Do you hear anything remotely like that? Have we lost so much as a squirmish?

"Arrogating to yourselves the right to judge who has "depth" without displaying any particular amount yourself gets a bit annoying after a very short time."

Not annoying you isnt at the top of my priorities. What is annoying is listening to rank amateurs prattle on about military history and theory based on the in depth study theyve done of reading the NY times every once in a while. When I hear something that isnt wildly ridiculous i'll show some respect.

You guys would be writing "we're losing" or "we've lost" in Germany in 1946, too.

For those who want to say the war was a mistake, make the case that we'd be better off is Saddam was still in power & sanctions were lifted - because that's about where we'd be right now if there'd been no war.

Hey Mark - what's a squirmish?

Yeh, theyve managed to get thousands of themselves killed, kill thousands of innocent Iraqis, turn the vast majority of the country against the insurgency, while killing less than a thousands Americans. Brilliant work. Sure to go down in the annals.

Your buying into your own bullshit. Try reading up on the Russian campaigns in Chechnya or Afghanistan, Vietnam, a dozen others.

Your examples really don't help your argument that we are somehow winning this thing. In both Afganistan AND Viet Nam, the insurgencies ALSO managed to get thousands of themselves killed, kill thousands of innocents, (not so sure about the 'vast majority against' part).

Yet they both still WON.

Such a well read historian as yourself should know that the track record of guerrilla wars lies decidedly in favor of the insurgents.

How about 1,000 more, that be double. If this war was a terrible mistake, every other war we ever fought was a calimity of unparalleled proportions. Get some perspective.

How about some perspective on the benefits versus the costs? We've had a thousand troops killed FOR NOTHING. NO WMD, NO al-quaeda ties, LESS security, NO democracy in Iraq - now or in the forseeable future.

Go tell the thousand more families you so callously condemn to a lifetime of sorrow that they should 'get some perspective'. Dying in a just cause is one thing. Dying for a lie is something entirely different.

"He was critical of former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, saying in the book he "was better at identifying a problem than at finding a workable solution."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It seems the White House could have used this talent, even lacking a solution producing ability. Part of the problem was not seeing coming problems, right?

"Such a well read historian as yourself should know that the track record of guerrilla wars lies decidedly in favor of the insurgents."

Agreed, to a point. However you will find its the wars the insurgents win that get all the press, places like Malaya, Madagascar, the Moro wars, or the Punjab insurgencies just arent on many peoples radar screens. You will also find that at best insurgencies require years and untold casualties to push out the occupier. Not many occupiers want nothing more than to set up a stable, independant, democratic government and get out (the British did in Malaya, and it was a hugely successful enterprise).

"We've had a thousand troops killed FOR NOTHING"

Easy on the hyperbole. Its statements like that that tell you you are dealing with a zealot, not a rational opponent displaying intellectual honesty.

We can debate the merits of the case made for the war by the Bush admin, but the fact remains that overthrowing Saddam was a just cause.

It's possible in the real world to admit that Bush and his team overhyped the WMD threat, botched the postwar planning-- and still did the right thing.

The Iraqis and Kurds despereately trying to put down the fascists in their midst recognize this. So do the soldiers on the ground in Iraq. They, not those of us here at home pissing on each other, deserve the last word.

One doesn't have to praise the failures of Reconstruction or overlook the colossal errors of Grant's predecessors to support the rightness of the war that preserved the Union.

One can condemn the disastrous mistakes of the Pentagon's civilian leaders while still supporting the war that they launched. Those killed or maimed in Iraq have served a cause as noble-- and as flawed in its execution-- as Lincoln, Grant and Sherman's cause.

Lex, slavery was doomed to end with or without the Civil War being fought. So too Saddam would have eventually died without our intercession in Iraq. Yes, Lincoln, Grant and Sherman were brave, intelligent, patriotic men but their efforts resulted in the North and South remaining in one union. A strong case can be made the North got the short end of that deal. If poor health, poverty, lack of education, wingnut interjection of religion into our private lives, homophobia or NASCAR are present you're likely south of the Mason-Dixon.

"One interesting bit from this Nightline interview is that it wasn't only western intelligence agencies who were fooled on the WMD question"

Well, yeah. You'd expect a country to want its neighbors to think it is stronger than it really is, wouldn't you?

Just like Bush wants other countries to think the Potemkin Missile Defense works.

I was born and raised a Yankee, in an affluent N.Y. metro suburb, and I like living in the south now; fewer trendbot wankers.

Post-British Malay was an unstable mess that only got better BECAUSE the British left. As far as freedom is concerned, even today it is against the law to chew gum in Singapore.

As for the rest of your historical examples of Pyrric foreign-occupation victories, they are worse than your examples of defeats. The insurrections in Punjab, Madagascar, the Spanish-Moro wars and the US-Moro wars lasted years, decades, even centuries (in the case of the Spanish-Moro wars). In all of these countries, the bloody cycle of resistance and reprisal resulted in the deaths of sometimes hundreds of thousands of people.

In none of these countries did the resolution of the conflict result in a stable, democratic republic. Instead, each 'victory' left the occupier in nominal control of a sullen, resentful populous chafing under the yoke of an oppressive regime.

Is this what you want for our country? A decades or even centuries-long colonial occupation in which we slaughter hundreds of thousands of people and lose thousands more of our own? Because that is the only historical example you offer.

Easy on the hyperbole. Its statements like that that tell you you are dealing with a zealot, not a rational opponent displaying intellectual honesty.

Spare me the condescension. Instead, why don't you respond with an intellectually honest appraisement of exactly what our troops ARE dying for. Remember, be honest.

Before the war.

What we said before the war, in no particular order.
1. The invasion of Iraq will cause, not prevent, terrorism.
2. The Bush administration was not to be trusted when it warned of the WMD threat.
3. Going in without the U.N. is worse than not going in at all.
4. They were asleep at the switch pre-9/11 and have been trying to cover this up ever since.
5. And they manipulated 9/11 as a pretext for a long-planned invasion of Iraq.
6. Any occupation by a foreign power, particularly one as incompetently planned as this one, will likely create more enemies than friends and put the U.S. in a situation similar at times to Vietnam, and at other times, similar to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon; both were disasters.
7. An invasion of Iraq will draw resources and attention away from the genuine perpetrators of the attack on us, and allow them to regroup for further attacks.

"Post-British Malay was an unstable mess that only got better BECAUSE the British left. As far as freedom is concerned,"

The British promised to leave when the communist insurgents were put down, which they did. Had they left before that you would have seen something akin to the communist takeover of south vietnam, slaughter.

"even today it is against the law to chew gum in Singapore."
Its illegal to own a dildo in Alabama, so what? Does that make it comparable with Khmer Rouge Cambodia? Back to the wild accusations I see.

"The insurrections in Punjab, Madagascar, the Spanish-Moro wars and the US-Moro wars lasted years, decades, even centuries (in the case of the Spanish-Moro wars)."

Yes, but you forget we arent interested in staying in Iraq for centuries. You make it sound like bloody wars and civil wars have been the exception to the nations of the world and not the norm. That wasnt the question. You argued that the record of guerilla wars are highly in favor of insurgencies. That isnt true. The only reason we know the exceptions are because they are extraordinary by definition. God is on the side with the bigger guns.

"In all of these countries, the bloody cycle of resistance and reprisal resulted in the deaths of sometimes hundreds of thousands of people. "

Perhaps but the bloodshed varied directly with how hard the colonial power fought to keep their prize and how high and dry they eventually left the colonies. You make the vapid assumption that we are 'conquering' Iraq in some traditional sense. That is absurd, it is in our best interest to get our troops out as soon as Iraq is stable. It is also in our interest to assure a democratic Iraq, hence stabalizing Iraq and getting our troops out is in a vital interest to all involved. That doesnt remotely resemble most of the uglier decolonial episodes.

"In none of these countries did the resolution of the conflict result in a stable, democratic republic"
Malaysia formed a constitutional democracy. But that was the only one where that was the intention. It cannot be understated that what we are attempting has never been tried before, but we _have_ installed lasting democracies in any number of defeated enemies. And we _have_ put down insurgencies (or at least endured them when necessary). To claim it is impossible is silly.

"Instead, why don't you respond with an intellectually honest appraisement of exactly what our troops ARE dying for. Remember, be honest"

Our troops are dying for a strategy which removes an active enemy and major question mark as to his capabilities from the chess board, and forms the first democratic Arab nation. This forces AQ, the Mullahs, and our other fascist enemies to divert resources from targetting the US to at all costs preventing any sort of successful progressive democracy from forming in Iraq, which the captured Zaquari letter proves would be a death blow to their movement. Such an event would spur a democratic reinassance in the ME as we saw in Eastern Europe following the Cold War. This combined with the destruction of the Taliban and imminent overthrow of the Mullahs by democratic reformers is an assault on the Islamo-fascist center of gravity without invading every Arab nation in the world. It has the added benefit of freeing the US from Saudi dependence on oil and security, killing of thousands of unreformable jihadis that have streamed into Iraq, not to mention saving thousands of Iraqi lives from the perpetual enslavement by Hussein and his offspring. All of these things play into the strategy, and I refuse to be pulled into a childish debate over why our strategy must have only a single reason, WMD. That has never been the case, although the strategy is formed largely to avert the ultimate risk of suicidal Islamo-fascists deploying nuclear weapons. The only long term way to ensure that is to reform the entire region, and there are multiple excelllent reasons for doing so.

"I think we all hoped for an easier transition to sovereignty in Iraq, but in the larger perspective, we have just kicked the door in on a culture which has for the most part, languished since the middle ages."

Who are you referring to? Not the Iraqis, the bulk of whom live urban lives. Yes, there are areas of isolation from televison and other trappings of modernity, but overall, Iraqis are among the most educated group in the Middle East. If anything useful is to be gained from Frank's statements, it's that people have to differentiate. There are numerous angry groups in Iraq. There are some nationalists who don't want foreign troops. There are some followers of al Sadr who are a mix of unemployed youths from the ghetto and some religious extremists. There are some people who are targeting Pakistani, Indian, Phillipino and other low wage workers because they resent the fact that they are unemployed and these foreigners are brought in to work. There are some Kirkuk Arab, Turkmen, and others who are angry at the Kurds who are attempting to regain areas that were taken from them and blame the coalition.

I resent it when people say 'who could know'. We're not some third world nation with one university. You think if anyone had asked Juan Cole, or any number of people who have studied and lived in the Mid East what to expect, Franks and company could have had a more successful occupation phase?

I don't understand why republicans aren't pushing someone to compete against Bush. Do you honestly believe he is the best you can do when you have half the country to choose from? Seriously. Do you really want to support a man who portrays his supporters as people who don't support or have higher education? Who thinks only in black and white terms? Who can't differentiate? I mean, because he has a learning disability, he creates this anti-intellectual/higher ed persona and everyone has to tow the party line> So even people like Dan who clearly value facts and subtleties and education, have to hold their nose and pretend this man represents them. You can't think of one person to put up against this guy??

Mark Buehner has a valid point here.

The iraqis can't win until we give up. All we have to do is be resolute enough and they cannot win, sooner or later they will give up and we will win.

Over the last couple of weeks we've been losing 20 men a day, killed and wounded. This is insignificant, we could do that for 50 years.

Say the iraqis ramp up their attacks and we lose 50 men a day. Likewise insignificant. That level of casualties is unfortunate for the men themselves and their relatives, but it simply doesn't matter to anybody else. So then say they ramped up until we were losing 300 men a day. That would start to test our political will. We'd have to be resolute. But if we lost 300 men a day and they lost 3000 a day, in a year they'd lose more than a million men. There's no possible way they could sustain that. In ten years they'd be gone.

Further, the violence that keeps western reporters from reporting the situation is an unmixed blessing to the military occupation. It makes us look a little bad that there's so much violence, but it means we can break out the napalm and not worry about reporters. If insurgents attack us on the road we can go to the nearest village and kill ten people at random and have a translator tell the survivors we'll do it again unless they warn us. If we run into an insurgent platoon we can cluster-bomb the nearest village because there's no way that could happen without them knowing. Kill enough people and eventually the survivors will knuckle under because they don't want to die.

We can do it. All it takes is the will, and the money, and the troops. We lost tens of thousands of casualties in vietnam before we quit, and if we hadn't quit maybe we'd have won by now. We were a lot worse off in vietnam before we quit than we are in iraq so far. All our problems in iraq now are *potential* problems. We haven't yet had a single problem in iraq that we can't ignore. It's all just worry about it getting worse.

If we're willing to raise the troops, and supply them, and give them a free hand, and keep the media away, sooner or later we will win.

I figure we can do it with half a million troops if enough of them learn arabic, and a trillion dollars a year. I can't say how long it will take for the iraqis to give up. That depends on them. And it will be harder if the russians or somebody important supplies the iraqis with tank-killers and such, the way we did the afghans against the russians. But we are the USA, the only superpower, and we can maul the iraqis year after year until they give up, all we need is the will to keep doing it.

The people who argue whether it's a good idea or not are impeding the war effort in the only way that really matters. If you argue that it isn't worth doing and you get enough others to go along, we will leave, and lose. That's the only way we can lose. If we're willing to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes we cannot lose unless our economy collapses. We have ten times the population of iraq and a thousand times the production. We can't lose until we give up. Anybody who spreads bad news is sapping our will and making us lose.

Almost a thousand US troops dead, thosands more maimed for life - all because of Frank's and his superiors' wishful thinking and willful ignorance.

Yeah, and if we take al Qaeda's word for it, 3000 dead Americans and many more wounded and sick because the Clinton administration chose the wrong containment strategy for Iraq. Given how many lives we lost due to containing Iraq, the costs of taking Saddam out are still much less.

Its illegal to own a dildo in Alabama, so what? Does that make it comparable with Khmer Rouge Cambodia? Back to the wild accusations I see.

Boy if that isn't calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.

You argued that the record of guerilla wars are highly in favor of insurgencies. That isnt true. The only reason we know the exceptions are because they are extraordinary by definition. God is on the side with the bigger guns

No, I'm arguing that a guerilla war is a no win situation for the occupying power. What's more, the occupiers (especially in this day and age) DO usually LOSE guerrilla wars (see Viet Nam and Afganistan).

Yes, but you forget we arent interested in staying in Iraq for centuries.

Just until the oil runs out, huh?

Our troops are dying for a strategy which removes an active enemy and major question mark as to his capabilities from the chess board

I'm sure its truly a comfort to the troops to know they're still dying for a question mark which has since been answered. Also, Saddam was not an 'active' enemy. He was in a box with no ability to threaten even his closest neighbors, let alone us.

Saddam did have one utility however - he kept fundamentalist al-quaeda (a truly active enemy) OUT of secular Iraq. Now we don't even have that.

This forces AQ, the Mullahs, and our other fascist enemies to divert resources from targetting the US to at all costs preventing any sort of successful progressive democracy from forming in Iraq, which the captured Zaquari letter proves would be a death blow to their movement.

More like, this war gives al-quaeda fertile new ground to recruit members from a desperate Iraqi citizenry who, because of our invasion and bloody occupation, now hates our guts. Divert resources? We are giving them new resources on a silver platter.

Such an event would spur a democratic reinassance in the ME as we saw in Eastern Europe following the Cold War.

Whatever democracy flourished in Eastern Europe only happened AFTER the foreign occupiers LEFT.

This combined with the destruction of the Taliban

The Taliban have not been destroyed, and won't be as long as we're bogged down in Iraq.

and imminent overthrow of the Mullahs by democratic reformers

In what Islamic country are the Mullahs about to overthrown by democratic reformers? And what on earth does this have to do with overthrowing the secular dictator of Iraq?

is an assault on the Islamo-fascist center of gravity without invading every Arab nation in the world.

Iraq was never the "Islamo-fascist center of gravity" (whatever that is) prior to our invasion, but give them a few more years of occupation and you just might create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It has the added benefit of freeing the US from Saudi dependence on oil and security,

Ah . . . now we're being intellectually honest.

killing of thousands of unreformable jihadis that have streamed into Iraq,

Tell me. How do you tell an unreformable jihadis from a reformable jihadis, or from a secular Iraqi civilain defending his home for that matter? How is it possible to be so selective in a war zone?

not to mention saving thousands of Iraqi lives from the perpetual enslavement by Hussein and his offspring.

An estimated 37,000 Iraqis have died from this war in the last year alone. But at least now they don't have Saddam to worry about, do they? Is this what you mean by saving lives? Death shall set you free?

Not to mention the violence, chaos and crime that has flourished in the power vaccuum we ourselves created. Are the Iraqis better off now without Saddam? Very debatable given that we utterly failed to create anything remotely approaching a stable governing environment after his overthrow.

All of these things play into the strategy,

What strategy?

and I refuse to be pulled into a childish debate over why our strategy must have only a single reason, WMD. That has never been the case, although the strategy is formed largely to avert the ultimate risk of suicidal Islamo-fascists deploying nuclear weapons.

WMD was the lynchpin of the President's argument to go to war, because he falsely claimed that Saddam's fictitious ties to al-quaeda would result in an Iraqi supplied WMD attack on this country. By promoting fabricated and misleading evidence of WMD, Bush was able con the American people into supporting a war that had absolutely no relation to 9/11, was NOT related in any way to the fight against al-quaeda, and indeed sapped precious resources, materiale, and, (lest we forget) personnel from the fight against a REAL enemy who had already proven to be a clear and present danger.

But now that the Administration's claims about WMD have been shown to have been false, you claim that WMD was never the reason we went to war. How intellectually honest of you!

Are you really saying that without the alleged threat of WMD, the American people would have gone along with your cockamamie 'strategy' of destabilizing an unrelated, secular Arab dicatorship in order to turn it into a beacon of democracy? Oh sure.

The only long term way to ensure that is to reform the entire region, and there are multiple excelllent reasons for doing so.

True democratic reform can only come from within. It certainly can't be imposed at the point of a gun by occupiers whose leadership believes the only way to reform the indigenous people is by slaughtering, torturing, and humiliating them.

"Given how many lives we lost due to containing Iraq, the costs of taking Saddam out are still much less."

??? As far as I am aware, we didn't lose any lives containing Saddam. I don't believe he ever managed to shoot any of our planes down. Is this incorrect? Are you referring to deaths in Gulf War 1? Are you referring to Iraqi lives?

"The iraqis can't win until we give up. All we have to do is be resolute enough and they cannot win, sooner or later they will give up and we will win."

What exactly do you think our goal for this Iraq incursion was/is? I don't believe anyone, including the President, claimed that the average Iraqi citizen was any danger to the US. In fact, the main thrust of the Admin's argument was that 25 million Iraqis were basically hostages of a mad regime. To make any sense of this you simply must separate bin Laden's al Queda group, based in Pakistan and Afghanistan, from the secular country, Iraq, that we invaded. They are not related and in no way should we be treating the Iraqis as if they had anything to do with 9/11.

You asked me for the strategy, I gave it to you. It is militarilly sound. We _have_ forced AQ to divert forces and attention to Iraq. We _are_ creating a democracy as the elections in January will prove. The reprisals have come against Madrid and Amman, not Boston and Chicago. There is a _clear_ track record of installing democracy, mainly because democracy doesnt need to be forced, it is every people destiny (hear that 90% of Afghanis are registered to vote?). People like yourself either have no faith in self determination, or the Arab people to be as advanced as ourselves. Either racism, or a fundamental lack of faith in what we claim to hold self-evident. I dont have to prove anything to you, history will do that in the next few years, just as it has around the world despite all the quasi-socialist and Anglo-centric claims to the contrary. Waiting for those under the fascist thumb to claim their own freedom is no different than condemning them to perpetual slavery, and it is the ultimate act of cynicism to downplay it as though it is inevitable. Ask Americas blacks freed by the civil war how inevitable freedom was without bloodshed. I answered your question. You can disagree with the premises, but you cant deny there is a strategy at all. If you wish to live with you petty dillusions of empire and oil, that is up to you. Just as Reagan was redeemed by history, so shall this case. 10 years from now you will be hiding from your words just as the anti-cold warriors hide from theirs. Sadly for you the internet is our new posterity, you can explain to the next generations of free Iraqis and Afghanistanis how you had no interests in seeing them free.

Bottom line is that Franks strategy and tactics were brilliant.

We won the major combat in three weeks (note that nobody is talking about America being overrated militarily anymore either);

There were dozens of doomsday scenarios which did not come true;

The cost in American lives is about on par with the murder rate in the city of Chicago, which is phenomenally low considering a full-scale invasion and occupation;

The cost in Iraqi lives has been lower than some of Hussein's prison cleansings;

The world is rid of a genocidal tyrant who invaded and/or threatened every single one of his neighbors, who had used WMDs in wars and police actions and had clear intention of doing so again, who provide support and shelter to a variety of terrorist groups (Abu Sayyaf, Abu Nidal, Ansar al-Islam, etc etc), and who was in continual violation of the terms of his cease-fire agreement with us and the UN.

The people of Iraq have free markets and governance, the necessary components towards being able to pursue happiness in the first place; and

We have a new ally in the Middle East.

Well done, General Franks!

i think kerry could be hurt by questions about his military service

here is an article
deepthoughtswithtyler.blogspot.com

"We _have_ forced AQ to divert forces and attention to Iraq."

I'd like to point out that this is a logical fallacy twice over.

First, the use of the word "divert" implies, quite falsely, that we can guarantee the Iraq war did not increase AQ's total resources worldwide by more than they have devoted to Iraq. Because political considerations are limiting the size of the American military, Iraq is a diversion of our resources better spent elsewhere, but the situation is not symmetrical.

Second, the use of the word "forced" implies, quite falsely, that we somehow compelled AQ to support guerrilla warfare in Iraq, and that it is not the case that they desired and decided to do so, seeing it as a positive opportunity. I guess if they hadn't, Pres. Bush would have called them out as wussies and AQ would have to disband in cowardly shame.

It isn't easy to pack so such poor reasoning into such a short sentence. I'm perversely impressed.

"The iraqis can't win until we give up. All we have to do is be resolute enough and they cannot win, sooner or later they will give up and we will win."

>What exactly do you think our goal for this Iraq incursion was/is?

I have no idea. But whatever it was/is, we cannot achieve it until the insurgency is crushed. And Mark has correctly pointed out that we cannot lose unless we give up.

We can maintain a kill ratio of 10:1 indefinitely. Using airstrikes, FAEs, cluster bombs, etc we can do better than that. And our population is more than ten times the size of iraq's. Other things equal, we would lose less than 1% of our population to kill them all. We have money to pay for advanced weapons, the insurgents do not. We have advanced medical care, they have only civilian hospitals that we can raid whenever we like and carry off the wounded for interrogation.

We cannot lose unless we give up. If we merely maintain half a million men in iraq and spend a trillion dollars a year, indefinitely, sooner or later the insurgents will give up and we will win. Then we can achieve our goals for iraq, whatever they are. Or at least we can deal with the next obstacle.

"First, the use of the word "divert" implies, quite falsely, that we can guarantee the Iraq war did not increase AQ's total resources worldwide by more than they have devoted to Iraq. "

I cant prove a negative. You are making an assertion, so one would think you are required to prove it. All we have is evidence, and we have seen no surge in AQ activity you are suggesting. We have certainly seen AQ resources devoted to thwarting our Iraq campaign (Madrid). Show me some evidence AQ is gaining more resources then it is losing.

" Because political considerations are limiting the size of the American military, Iraq is a diversion of our resources better spent elsewhere, but the situation is not symmetrical."

Its not? Al Qaeda resources are infinite? Now who's proposing a logical fallacy? The problem is that your logic taken to its end suggests that all the foriegn fighters that have poured into Iraq would be peaceably sitting home, no threat to the US. That is a dangerous assumption. If the Madrid bombers didnt strike Spain to force them out of the coalition, it is madness to think they wouldnt have chosen another target, one of their choosing. Quite possibly one more grave to the security of the West. We have forced them to respond to our actions, which is a major goal of war.

"Second, the use of the word "forced" implies, quite falsely, that we somehow compelled AQ to support guerrilla warfare in Iraq"

We compelled AQ to dedicate resources and effort to Iraq. Had they not done so they would have lost all credibility with their supporters. What you are suggesting is akin to saying the invasion of Sicily didnt compel the Nazis to defend Southern Europe. Perhaps theoretically they could have chosen not to defend the front, but in reality its a silly question, pragmatically they had no choice. We placed them on the horns of a dilemna. Your semantic argument doesnt interest me.

"It isn't easy to pack so such poor reasoning into such a short sentence. I'm perversely impressed."

Strange, I was thinking the same thing about your post. But then again i'm looking at this war seriously, not as some fun puzzle meant to spin up a 'get Bush' scenario with semantics and unrealistic reasoning.

You asked me for the strategy, I gave it to you. It is militarilly sound.

No. I asked what our soldiers are dying for. Your answer is a bizarre, disingenuous, ex-post-facto rationalization for starting the wrong war against the wrong enemy.

History will certainly prove one of us right Mark, but given the catastrophic results of your Grand Strategy so far, I wouldn't bet on you.

Mark - What if many Iraqis are pissed off that the jobs they think should be theirs, are farmed out to foreigners and paid for with their oil revenues? (Remember, for the past 6 mths or so our $18 billion in reconstruction money has been tied up in the bureaucracy. We've only spent roughly $340 mil. Everything is being paid out of the Iraqi Oil Fund.)Our lack of a clear goal for this enterprise is really obscuring our ability to discern what strategies should be employed. I mean, if these angry, unemployed Iraqis are expressing their anger through violent means, is it appropriate to kill them or simply give them the jobs their oil revenues are paying for?

This isn't the whole story but from what I've read it's becomming a big part. You can't lump the above discription into some us vs. al Queda battle.

Mark, I think you have the burden of proof wrong, and the facts. You are claiming that AQ resources are not only finite (obvious, in the loose sense), but frozen at their pre-Iraq War level, a far stronger (and probably false) claim. And you complain that I am not providing evidence to the contrary? Where is your evidence in favor of your claim? You work from an epistemology in which every assertion you make than can not be refuted immediately is automatically true, and proceed to rely upon it to draw further conclusions. AQ has had ample resources to commit terror attacks in Spain and Africa since the start of the Iraq War. Terror attacks and fatalities are up, which the State Department tried to hide by mysteriously forgetting to add in a few months of the year.

We are much closer on the second claim. I said, and you agree, that the Bush/Buehner theory is that AQ was compelled to go into Iraq so that we wouldn't call them wussies. Psychological projection, anyone? Perhaps you really mean that we had to go into Iraq out of your fear that without a follow-on to Afghanistan, AQ would start to think we were wussies?

The Nazis had to help defend Fascist Italy because (1) Italy was their ally, while Saddam was not AQ's ally; and (2) Italy provides a route for a traditional military campaign against Germany, while AQ is a dispersed terrorist network whose operations are unlikely to be impeded by replacement of Saddam with a tenuous American puppet-government. The flypaper theory, but we're the fly.