American forces losing control in Iraq

[Neo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28ramadi.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=b7994a49fbc6cea1&ei=5059&partner=AOL


RAMADI, Iraq, Oct. 21 - The American military and the interim Iraqi government are quickly losing control of this provincial capital, which is larger and strategically more important than its sister city of Falluja, say local officials, clerics, tribal sheiks and officers with the United States Marines.

"The city is chaotic," said Sheik Ali al-Dulaimi, a leader of the region's largest tribe. "There's no presence of the Allawi government," he added, speaking of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

While Ramadi is not exactly a "no go" zone for the marines, like the insurgent stronghold of Falluja 30 miles to the east, officers say it is fast slipping in that direction. In the last six weeks, guerrillas have stepped up the pace of assassinations of Iraqis working with the Americans, and marine officials say they suspect Iraqi security officers have been helping insurgents to attack their troops. Reconstruction efforts have ground to a halt because no local contractors are willing to work.

Most of the military's resources are channeled into controlling a bomb-infested, four-and-a-half-mile stretch of road that runs through downtown and connects two bases. Insurgents pop out of alleyways, mosques and a crowded market and fire at marines at will, then disappear when the Americans give chase.

Ramadi lies at the heart of rebellious Anbar Province and astride the major western supply route to Baghdad. The city, whose 400,000 residents have at best merely tolerated the foreign military presence, is seen as a crucial part of American efforts to plant a secular democracy in Iraq. But the disintegration of authority puts in jeopardy both the Bush administration's plan to stage nationwide elections by Jan. 31 and any sense of legitimacy such elections might have. It also complicates the American military's plans to invade Falluja, because of the close coordination between insurgents in the two cities.

With a powerful mix of propaganda and intimidation, well-financed guerrillas have turned the people of Ramadi against the American occupiers and their allies, Iraqis and marines here say.

"The provincial government is on the verge of collapse," said Second Lt. Ryan Schranel, whose platoon does 24-hour guard duty at the besieged government center opposite the main bazaar. "Just about everybody has resigned or is on the verge of resigning."

The provincial governor, Muhammad Awad, who doubles as the city's mayor, took office after the previous governor resigned in early August following the kidnapping of his three sons, and after a deputy governor was kidnapped and killed. Mr. Awad is juggling two jobs because no one has come forward to be mayor.

Compounding the problems, guerrillas have been streaming in since the marines stepped up airstrikes against the mujahedeen in Falluja, Marine officials say.

"We hit the deck one and a half months ago, and the area has changed for the downhill very quickly," said Staff Sgt. James Keefer, one of six civil affairs officers attached to the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, which arrived here in early September. "We used to go to civilian areas in one or two Humvees to look at hospitals and other places. Now it's too dangerous, and we need four Humvees for a convoy, and we don't have the resources."

The power vacuum here also muddies plans for an invasion of Falluja, which has about 300,000 people, because Ramadi could well become a haven for retreating guerrillas. Marines here say they have found it impossible to seal off either the highway or the desert smuggling routes between the two cities. Indeed, Marine officials say there is a high level of coordination between insurgent groups in the two cities, with the suspected guerrilla leader in Ramadi, Muhammad Daham, working closely with counterparts in Falluja.

When the marines made their ill-fated push into Falluja last April, they had to battle a ferocious uprising in Ramadi, where 12 marines were killed in a single ambush.

Though members of the former ruling Baath Party are believed to be financing the insurgency here, where loyalty to Saddam Hussein ran high, there is a growing Islamist face to the rebellion, similar to Falluja, local officials and Marine officers say. Calls for resistance emanate from mosque loudspeakers when Marine convoys roll past. In a coordinated raid on seven mosques on Oct. 12, marines said, they found large weapons caches, taped anti-American sermons and DVD's showing beheadings.

Top Marine commanders say they may open an offensive in Ramadi together with one in Falluja. But such an assault would probably have only a limited effect, because insurgents here do not hold well-defined territory, as they do in Falluja. They have instead blended into the population and conduct hit-and-run strikes on Marine patrols and outposts along the main downtown strip.

"It's difficult to describe 'sense of control' in terms of insurgent activity," said Capt. Eric Dougherty, the commander of Company E, which lost four men in the first six weeks here. "The insurgent activity is everywhere. It's at our firm bases here. It's among women and children, those cowards."

Dozens of government employees still come to work every day at the provincial center, a three-story building pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel. Marines sitting watch behind sandbags on the roof get shot at regularly with AK-47's, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

"We're one of the only units that's got bases inside the city," said Lt. Col. Randall P. Newman, the battalion commander. "This is not Falluja. We want to keep this place from becoming a Falluja."

In an interview in his office, Governor Awad attributed the anarchy to the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi security forces and the limited presence of the marines, whom he said had wasted time earlier on reconstruction projects.

"The performance of the police and national guard is very weak in all of central Iraq," Mr. Awad said as he sat behind his desk, two Iraqi guards in civilian clothes hovering near him. "The marines are not protecting us. It's true that they've helped us with some projects such as improving the water supply and sewage disposal and rebuilding schools. But people think all that is worthless. They need security."

None of the dozens of marines interviewed in Ramadi disagreed with Mr. Awad's assessment of the Iraqi police and National Guard.

Even worse, they say, the local forces sometimes aid the insurgency. Marines arrested the police chief of Anbar Province in August on charges of corruption, and Lieutenant Schranel said Iraqi National Guardsmen were suspected of helping insurgents blow up a veterans' building that marines were using as an observation post.

Colonel Newman said the only effective Iraqi troops in Ramadi are 80 or so Iraqi Special Forces soldiers from elsewhere in the country. They live at battalion headquarters and are used for specific operations like mosque raids, not day-to-day security.

On a recent afternoon, two Iraqi National Guardsmen at a checkpoint at the government center watched as a group of marines walked up. "Here come the sons of dogs," one guardsman said to an Iraqi reporter.

Next door, in police headquarters, Iraqi officers tossed around conspiracy theories.

"The Americans gave us nothing more than AK-47's so they could stay in Iraq for a long time," Lt. Abdul-Latif Salim said. "The resistance has the right to fight the occupation. It's an obligation for every Muslim. The Allawi government has no power."

Insurgents have tried discrediting the marines and the local government through widespread propaganda. Clerics regularly preach against the occupation, while guerrillas post the names of Iraqi security officers outside mosques. A marine showed a flier seized from a mosque that depicted a woman in a black robe being raped by men in sunglasses, presumably Americans.

In late September, insurgents began blowing up whole buildings downtown, videotaping the demolitions and giving the tapes to Arab television networks to attribute blame to American airstrikes, Marine officers said. The explosions have destroyed an agricultural center, a veterans' building and the Red Crescent headquarters. Their wrecked facades still scar the city.

As in other parts of Iraq, guerrillas are killing locals working with Americans. An interpreter at a base called Combat Outpost, east of downtown, was found beheaded recently. Insurgents even killed the man who cleaned the portable toilets at the base.

Sergeant Keefer said the marines tried calling a list of 100 potential local contractors when they first arrived. Many of the phone numbers had been disconnected, and people who did answer said the contractors had left town.

Reconstruction "is pretty much at a standstill right now," said Capt. Sean Kuehl, an intelligence officer. "An insurgency cannot be defeated solely by an occupying power. We need the support of the local population."


Well, isn't that nice. It doesn't sound to me like "we're making good progress" as Bush would have us believe.

[Professor S]

This was expected to happen, and the Bush administration has said as much. Violence was expected to increase before the Us election and then even more before the Iraq election. The NY Times attempting to use these already predicted events as an "october surprise" doesn't really surprise me at all.

[Canyarion]

Hah, I read an article about some Dutch squad making sure the police is doing its job right.
The Iraqis said they liked the Dutch, but not the Americans and the Italians, because they pissed in their drinking water.

Never piss in any drinking water. :mad:

[Bond]

If you would look at history you would realize this same scenario and series of events has happened before. It's difficult to transform a country from a dictatorship to a democracy. With time and determination it will work out in the end.

[Ace195]

Hah, I read an article about some Dutch squad making sure the police is doing its job right.
The Iraqis said they liked the Dutch, but not the Americans and the Italians, because they pissed in their drinking water.

Never piss in any drinking water. :mad:
*quickly stops peeing*


But why ?

*Laughs Manically*

[Blackmane]

Yep, rebel uprising in Iraq...

*pisses in water*

Just kidding, but we all knew that it was going to get intense because these insurgents don't want Bush to stay in office. Maybe there's a reason to that, like maybe...they think Kerry is too weak and they hope that enough hardships in Iraq will get Kerry elected and us to immiedietely retreat...

Just maybe...

[DeathsHand]

Just kidding, but we all knew that it was going to get intense because these insurgents don't want Bush to stay in office. Maybe there's a reason to that, like maybe...they think Kerry is too weak and they hope that enough hardships in Iraq will get Kerry elected and us to immiedietely retreat...

Or maybe no, they don't want the guy who started attacking them to be re-elected, but hey, maybe not being in Iraq happens to be better for our country as well (not that the terrorists care about that part of the situation)...

Or maybe

But no, the issue is of course very simple... Black and white, as are most political issues, especially ones as sensitive as those brought up during a time of war...

Obviously if a war on terror is bad for the terrorists, it must be good for america!

Kerry not 100% agree with war? Kerry bad! Kerry let terrorists win!

I for one know that if terrorists wanted me personally to become president, I'd kill myself so it couldn't possibly happen...

[gekko]

Stop looking to the damn news media to see how well this war is being fought. For one, it's the NY Times, who tried to make it seem like we were losing the war and all going to get slughtered entering Baghdad. But more importantly, they don't have any clue what's going on.

The news gets to a big city and makes it seem like that's the only place getting hit, which is why Fallujah made the news, but Ramadi has generally been worse than Fallujah, it just never made the news.

Ramadi is not getting any worse. The only reason we don't have control is that city is because of the gay-ass ROEs that are being put on us, by none other than politicians and anti-war activists. Trust me, ther's enough firepower in Ramadi to level the entire city in minutes, but we're not allowed to use it.

We're only losing control because we're not allowed to fight.

[Typhoid]

Stop looking to the damn news media to see how well this war is being fought.


Unless I misread....but i dont recall seeing any suggestions.

Please indicate any other source other than the news media, where people can learn whats happening in Iraq.

The sports media? The weather department? :p

[BreakABone]

Unless I misread....but i dont recall seeing any suggestions.

Please indicate any other source other than the news media, where people can learn whats happening in Iraq.

The sports media? The weather department? :p

Martha Stewart
There ain't nothing that woman don't know...

[Typhoid]

Martha Stewart
There ain't nothing that woman don't know...


She dont know how to not stay out of jail for commiting insider trading.

[Professor S]

Or maybe no, they don't want the guy who started attacking them to be re-elected, but hey, maybe not being in Iraq happens to be better for our country as well (not that the terrorists care about that part of the situation)...

Isolationist philosophies have never been good for our country or the world for that matter, going all the way back to WW2.

War is never fun. War is never something that you go into joyfully. And the new wars are not truly 100% winable (in a conventional sense) because they are cultural more than they are governmental.

What we are doing in Iraq is finishing the job that Richard the Lionheart should have finshed hundreds of years ago. This is a crusade, but not a religious one and not a cultural one. It is a crusade to pull the Middle East out of Medeival times.

Why do we have a right to do that? Because he culture that their leaders have created has been to create hatred towards the West and inspire fanaticism to take attention away from themselves. They claim cultural imperialism (which is self-inflicted by their own people I might add) and call us the great Satan while their leaders absorb 99% of the wealth, build mansions and live like gods walking the earth while their people live in third world conditions.

Yet they've convinced their people that we are at fault because we are "infidels".

Now its come back to bite their leaders in the ass. This hatred that they've cultivated has gone too far by attacking us on our own soil and now their leaders have to deal with us and we aren't negotiating. We are attempting to create democracy in the Middle East and that scares their leaders more than any number of smart bombs or machine guns. Why? Because it means an end to their life of totalitarianism and Allah ordained priveledge. Why do you think even Saudi Arabia was very much against us going into Iraq, even when Iraq was their biggest threat and was right next door?

Now I understand that many people aren't going to believe that this is a reason. They'll go as far as to say its all about the oil, which is rediculous for several reasons, the most obvious being the price of oil right now and the fact that we're the only advanced country in the world that does not purchase oil from Iran. But I can see how people would want to be against war, any type of war, especially when the goals are so new and untested. This isn't a guarantee and more than a handful of people died during it so I can see how people can become nervous.

The fact is this has to be done. Flat out. The future of the world depends on it. In the next 10-15 years Western Europe will be over 50% muslim/islamic and if democracy is not imbued into their culture it will begin tearing apart ours. Its already started in Canada. In a province ( I think it was a province) in Canada there was a law put to vote that would allow muslims to be tried in a separate court according to the laws set by the Koran. This cannot happen and would only be the first of many changes if it were ever to go through.

You may say that this is a pointless war with nothing but tragic, uneeded dead... I say this war could very well prevent a cultural world war in the next 50 years.

[Crono]

Isolationist philosophies have never been good for our country or the world for that matter, going all the way back to WW2.

War is never fun. War is never something that you go into joyfully. And the new wars are not truly 100% winable (in a conventional sense) because they are cultural more than they are governmental.

What we are doing in Iraq is finishing the job that Richard the Lionheart should have finshed hundreds of years ago. This is a crusade, but not a religious one and not a cultural one. It is a crusade to pull the Middle East out of Medeival times.

Why do we have a right to do that? Because he culture that their leaders have created has been to create hatred towards the West and inspire fanaticism to take attention away from themselves. They claim cultural imperialism (which is self-inflicted by their own people I might add) and call us the great Satan while their leaders absorb 99% of the wealth, build mansions and live like gods walking the earth while their people live in third world conditions.

Yet they've convinced their people that we are at fault because we are "infidels".

Now its come back to bite their leaders in the ass. This hatred that they've cultivated has gone too far by attacking us on our own soil and now their leaders have to deal with us and we aren't negotiating. We are attempting to create democracy in the Middle East and that scares their leaders more than any number of smart bombs or machine guns. Why? Because it means an end to their life of totalitarianism and Allah ordained priveledge. Why do you think even Saudi Arabia was very much against us going into Iraq, even when Iraq was their biggest threat and was right next door?

Now I understand that many people aren't going to believe that this is a reason. They'll go as far as to say its all about the oil, which is rediculous for several reasons, the most obvious being the price of oil right now and the fact that we're the only advanced country in the world that does not purchase oil from Iran. But I can see how people would want to be against war, any type of war, especially when the goals are so new and untested. This isn't a guarantee and more than a handful of people died during it so I can see how people can become nervous.

The fact is this has to be done. Flat out. The future of the world depends on it. In the next 10-15 years Western Europe will be over 50% muslim/islamic and if democracy is not imbued into their culture it will begin tearing apart ours. Its already started in Canada. In a province ( I think it was a province) in Canada there was a law put to vote that would allow muslims to be tried in a separate court according to the laws set by the Koran. This cannot happen and would only be the first of many changes if it were ever to go through.

You may say that this is a pointless war with nothing but tragic, uneeded dead... I say this war could very well prevent a cultural world war in the next 50 years.


Very well said once again Strangler. I shall give you +rep.

[Neo]

The fact is this has to be done. Flat out. The future of the world depends on it. In the next 10-15 years Western Europe will be over 50% muslim/islamic and if democracy is not imbued into their culture it will begin tearing apart ours. Its already started in Canada.

You may say that this is a pointless war with nothing but tragic, uneeded dead... I say this war could very well prevent a cultural world war in the next 50 years.

You make a good point but what I mainly question is the method by which we are going about it. Bush's policies have probably made us less safe from the terrorists we are trying to defeat. I'm not exactly sure what it means to "defeat" terrorism but that's another story. The attack on Iraq has not made us more safe but instead has propagated even more hate for the US. Al Qaeda should have no trouble recruiting new members and obtaining cash as the muslims are constantly fed such images as prisoner abuse and mangled civilians.

We of course had no choice but to go after the terrorists after 9/11 but the war on Iraq is a total distraction from this. Bush said that we would make no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbour them. Well that's all good and well but the 9/11 commission showed there were no direct links between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Even if you believe they did have some communications that's a far cry from claiming they "harbour" terrorists.

In my opinion we went after Saddam WAY too early and in doing so have over-extended ourselves and become less effective on both fronts. We should have hit the terrorists hard in Afghanistan instead of diverting resources to Iraq on questionable intelligence. Now we find ourselves in a huge mess. We don't have enough troops to properly secure both Iraq and Afghanistan and we are unable to keep the people safe, something they are undoubtedly aware of.

Though what's done is done and arguing about what should have happened won't change that. We have no choice but to finish what Bush started. I just don't trust that he's the one to do it.

[Blackmane]

the 9/11 commission showed there were no direct links between Saddam and Al Qaeda

It's fairly obvious you didn't actually read the 9/11 commision report and only listened to news media's soundbites that were useful to them. It is true that they found no direct link between Saddam and 9/11, but they also said that their were definite links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, including possibly giving money to them. They have also harboured these men in the past. The evening news didn't tell the whole story.

I feel that a point is being missed here. See, most people in here listen to the news saying that the war in Iraq is going horrible, but that is just not true. I think gekko is right on about this. It is all the dumb agenda minded politicians that are undermining efforts to win this war and then the media turns it around into stories about incompetance on Bush. The story of the supposed 380 tons of missing explosives at Al Qaqaa under the US watch, which turned out to be only 3 tons that went missing before we got there.

Why doesn't the media show all the good things happening in the war? Do they want to turn everyone against the effort that is underway in the Middle East? Do they want the respect for the troops fighting and dying over there to dissapear? Why not, instead of talking about 3 tons of explosives that went missing, talk about the 400,000 tons of weapons, ordinance, munitions and explosives that have been captured/destroyed? Why not talk about the thousands of other ammo dumps that have been taken care of instead of one that could possibly have been looted?

I can't understand how a group can try to undermine the war effort so badly. These terrorists over in the Middle East hate us not because we attacked them. They hate us because we are us. We represent everything they don't. I doubt that are actions are changing that fact, although I don't have any proof. They attacked us on 9/11 without us having invaded, they have attacked embassies, cruisers, and such without us having invaded, so why should we believe that not going after them would have satisfied them?

[Neo]

The 9/11 commission wrote that they didn't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and the Al Qaeda operatives with regard to attacks on the United States. The terrorists were not being sheltered in Iraq by Saddam. Whether or not the war going badly is ultimately a subjective opinion. One of my best friends served a year and a half over there and has serious concerns about the lack of planning involved.

It's hard to strike a balance between protesting policy and actually undermining efforts. We certainly can't directly impede the war effort but the idea that we should shut up once the war starts is ludicrous. We can't simply roll over and give an administration a green light to do whatever they want.

On a related note, just how are we going to pay for all this? Bush is spending unprecedented amounts overseas and has limited funds coming in because of his tax cuts. He's turned Clinton's trillion dollar surplus into a 445 billion dollar budget deficit. He even dipped into the social security funds. Credit will only take us so far. Yeah it's nice to have these tax breaks but it's ultimately destroying the economy and we will soon be hurting badly.

[Professor S]

Though what's done is done and arguing about what should have happened won't change that. We have no choice but to finish what Bush started. I just don't trust that he's the one to do it.

You would trust Kerry to finish what Bush started over Bush? If there is one thing that Bush has shown is that he is almost single minded in his quest to instill democracy in Iraq, so you are going to trust someone who has a record of being anti-military and has come out against the war and has changed his stance on the war 3 times since the election began?

Please explain...

EDIT: And Neo, if you've seen the video you know that you are manipulating that screen cap in your sig to mean something that it never did. Perhaps we should start calling you Neo Moore?

[Neo]

You would trust Kerry to finish what Bush started over Bush? If there is one thing that Bush has shown is that he is almost single minded in his quest to instill democracy in Iraq, so you are going to trust someone who has a record of being anti-military and has come out against the war and has changed his stance on the war 3 times since the election began?


He hasn't truly changed his stance, he just doesn't agree with the way the war is being handled. Changing position doesn't indicate weakness anyway, it indicates a conscientious thinker who won't blindly follow a path once he's realized he's made a mistake. I don't believe Kerry will be weak on terror, and I don't see how he can muck up things more than Bush has.


EDIT: And Neo, if you've seen the video you know that you are manipulating that screen cap in your sig to mean something that it never did. Perhaps we should start calling you Neo Moore?

Ah yes, much like Bush manipulates the information coming out of Afghanistan to make it seem all nice and rosy, when international experts say the country is still under control by the drug warlords, our forces are insufficient, and women are more scared than ever.

I'm changing it soon anyway to something much better.

[Professor S]

He hasn't truly changed his stance, he just doesn't agree with the way the war is being handled. Changing position doesn't indicate weakness anyway, it indicates a conscientious thinker who won't blindly follow a path once he's realized he's made a mistake. I don't believe Kerry will be weak on terror, and I don't see how he can muck up things more than Bush has.

Uh, how can you say he hasn't changed his stance? First he voted for the war and supported Bush 100%, then when politics came into play he said that Bush did everything wrong, then he says that he'll have troops out of Iraq within 6 months of his presidency, and then changes it to 4 years 2 months before the election. You might say he's a conscious thinker, I say he doesn't have a clue what he's going to do and anything he says now will not be what he does once elected.

Ah yes, much like Bush manipulates the information coming out of Afghanistan to make it seem all nice and rosy, when international experts say the country is still under control by the drug warlords, our forces are insufficient, and women are more scared than ever.

1) Sources please

2) Does Bush own the media? No, in fact most of the news media are pretty blatantly against him, so how is Bush manipulating it considering the media is where we get our information?

3) Afghanistan just had the first ever democratic elections in the history of the middle east, in which the interem president won with a massive majority. Women are voting, which they never have before and there was little violence before or during the elections. But you're right, Afghanistan is failing...

I highly recommend you watch the movie Khandahar. It might open your eyes on why we should be over there a bit more.

[Neo]

He voted for the war because he thought it was the right thing to do. He assumed Bush had a plan to win the peace which it turns out isn't entirely accurate. Also the cost of the war has gone what they promised it would. That shows a severe lack of planning. I believe he said we could reduce our presence by half in six months by replacing with UN troops.



Three years after the US-led invasion, Afghanistan is flooding the world with heroin, warlords reign in the provinces, women are scared and the new security forces are underarmed and undersized, analysts say.

"Bush has painted a rosier picture than exists on the ground... and expressed success prematurely," said Vikram Parekh, Afghan affairs analyst for the International Crisis Group.

"When Bush presents Afghanistan as a country which has made great strides towards democracy, those claims lack credibility," Riffat Hussein, head of strategic studies at Pakistan's Quaid-e-Azam University, told AFP.

Hussein and others cite three yardsticks for improvement in the war-torn central Asian land in the last three years: the creation of a national security force; eradicating opium poppies; and disarming warlords' militias.

"If we take these three or four areas to measure success, you will get a very mixed result," Hussein said.

"Militarily the country is under the control of the warlords and Karzai's government does not run beyond Kabul. Right now it's virtual warlord rule whether you look east, west, north or south of Kabul.

"One litmus test is Afghanistan's progress in setting up its own army. Initial goals were for 90,000 and they've not been able to raise beyond 15,000.
"This lack of a national army is directly related to the failure of the government to reign in opium poppies."

Poppy cultivation is set to jump 40 percent this year, the CIA predicts, after a bumper crop last year supplied 90 percent of Europe's heroin and three quarters of the worldwide supply.

It brought in 2.3 billion dollars to Afghanistan last year, 35 percent of gross domestic product, making it the crippled economy's biggest source of revenue.

Parekh points out last weekend's peaceful and well-attended election was "only half an election". Parliamentary elections are on hold until April, because of insecurity and logistical problems.


"That's still going to be a formidable task to administer," Parekh told AFP. "By postponing it, we haven't addressed the obligations that we the

Post-election claims by the US military that the Taliban are a spent force after failing to sabotage the elections, were "very much a premature conclusion," Parekh said.

Bush capitalised on the first vote on October 9 being cast by a refugee woman in Pakistan, to underscore women's emancipation from Taliban-imposed repression.

Outside Kabul however most are still in all-enclosing burqas, and women are scared to speak out.

Human Rights Watch said a "pervasive atmosphere of fear" persists for women involved in politics. "Many Afghan women risk their safety if they participate in public life," it said in a report this month.

Most Afghans told Human Rights Watch they were more afraid of local military commanders than the Taliban.

The crucial disarmament drive in one year has stripped just over 10,000 militiamen of weapons, but at least 30,000 are yet to surrender them.

Kerry accuses Bush of making "a colossal error of judgment" in diverting resources from the hunt for bin Laden to the war in Iraq



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041016/ts_afp/us_vote_afghanistan&cid=1503&ncid=2043

[Blackmane]

He voted for the war because he thought it was the right thing to do. He assumed Bush had a plan to win the peace which it turns out isn't entirely accurate. Also the cost of the war has gone what they promised it would. That shows a severe lack of planning. I believe he said we could reduce our presence by half in six months by replacing with UN troops.

And yet, Kerry is going out this week, after saying that he would reduce troops in Iraq, now saying that Iraq is more dangerous than ever. How does he intend on removing troops from Iraq without more greatly endangering the troops that are still there. Remember, that France and Germany have already said they will not come to Kerry's aid to replemish troops, and his constant alienation of our allies might end up making them uncommit their troops to the war effort, which would mean we would actually need MORE troops down there longer. Also, remember that Bush has training of the Iraqies moving along well, which is the best way to take care of security down there. The answer is, Kerry does not have a better plan. His only answer in the debate was bringing more allies into it, and we have all seen how good he is at doing that.

Face it, if you look at Kerry's voting record in the Senate, he has been on the wrong side of almost every national security issue that has come up. That is the best indicator of where he will stand on Iraq. My gut tells me that he will do what is takes to RETREAT and be defeated there because he is so strongly against war. It is fairly obvious comparing his speeches to his voting that he is willing to say anything to get the votes he needs.

[Neo]

I read somewhere that we're supposed to have trained 100,000 Iraqies by now but the real figure is closer to 20,000. I'll try to find the source.

From Kerry's own website:

Last February, Secretary Rumsfeld claimed that more than 210,000 Iraqis were in uniform. Two weeks ago, he admitted that claim was off by more than 50 percent. Iraq, he said, now has 95,000 trained security forces. Neither number bears any relationship to the facts. By the administration's own minimal standards, just 5,000 soldiers have been fully trained. And of the 32,000 police now in uniform, not one has completed a 24-week field-training program.

[Blackmane]

I still don't see how you think Kerry will ramp up training while still minimizing troops in Iraq.

See, people can point out lots of problems with Bush's policies, but they can't explain how Kerry can improve on the situation.

[Xantar]

I still don't see how you think Kerry will ramp up training while still minimizing troops in Iraq.

See, people can point out lots of problems with Bush's policies, but they can't explain how Kerry can improve on the situation.

They can believe that Kerry won't continue to make more blunders as Bush will if he remains in office.

As to how this all could have been handled differently, I direct you to the post I made in that other Iraq thread oh so long ago. And I also want to make an observation: in the wake af Pearl Harbor, Americans were asked to step up, and they did. In the wake of 9/11, Americans were asked to step aside and let the professionals handle it. And they did. And this is the result.

At the very least, if Bush had managed to build up real support for the war in Iraq at home, he wouldn't have to deal with everybody always trying to "undermine" the effort.

[Blackmane]

They can believe that Kerry won't continue to make more blunders as Bush will if he remains in office.

As to how this all could have been handled differently, I direct you to the post I made in that other Iraq thread oh so long ago. And I also want to make an observation: in the wake af Pearl Harbor, Americans were asked to step up, and they did. In the wake of 9/11, Americans were asked to step aside and let the professionals handle it. And they did. And this is the result.

At the very least, if Bush had managed to build up real support for the war in Iraq at home, he wouldn't have to deal with everybody always trying to "undermine" the effort.

You can almost bet that he will not put focus into this war and will actually move to pull out, victory or not, instead of fighting and finishing this war in Iraq. That will simply show a message of weakness to these people, and thats something that is dangerous and can't be allowed to happen. If you don't believe me, take the time to look into Kerry's voting record and his anti-war feelings after Vietnam as proof of this.

Also, I'm not asking how things could have been done differently, because almost everyone who has a brain knows that the war could have been done differently. Hindsight is 20/20.

I'm asking what Kerry would do different from this point on. I have already made my case as to what I believe he will do. If you want to make a case based on his promises, which have no backing in reality, then go ahead.

Also, I believe there was support for the war in Iraq in the beginning. I don't know the % support, but I believe it was in the 70's or 80's. When things got messy and elections came up, dissent started rising in order to generate bad feelings towards Bush.