Iraq's Old Army May Be Recalled

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040711/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_old_army&cid=540&ncid=1473

Iraq (news - web sites)'s new leader wants to call some of its old army back to duty to help restore peace in his war-torn land. Disbanding that defeated force 13 months ago was a mistake made in Washington, says a U.S. Army colonel who held a pivotal role in Baghdad at the time.


"It was because ideology ruled where reality should have," Col. Paul F. Hughes, then strategic policy director for the U.S. occupation authority, said of last year's decision.


Other key players said the order came not from then-Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, as believed, but from top-level civilian officials at the Pentagon (news - web sites), and that it was done without consulting U.S. military chiefs.


With no Iraqi security forces on hand, the U.S. military was left almost alone to confront an Iraqi insurgency and crime wave that built through 2003 — fed in part by armed soldiers of the disbanded army.

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[brokensymmetry]

1. 'twould make great comedy.

If it weren't real.

[saigon68]

6. LET'S GET SADDAM BACK IN CHARGE !!!!!!!!!!!!

He knows how to handle an uprising, and provide security----

Oh I forgot, he is a Nationalist and would object to Cheney's Halliburton and Bush's Bechtel Looting the COUNTRY. !!!! LOL

[UpInArms]

2. aren't these most of the very same people that now comprise

the "insurgency"?

yeah, this is gonna work at this point :eyes:

[Aidoneus]

3. sorry, they're a little busy right now

I'd imagine most of the conscripts returned home to their families, while the most useful core of the "old" army seems to have occupied themselves with the task of providing a technical base to the nationalist resistance movements (the Salafi groups seem to have kept their grudge against the old order and take their own approaches, though many of them had served in the old army in stealth).

The conscripts never wanted to serve to begin with, and the nationalists would be highly unlikely to be willing to serve the quislings of the invaders.

That doesn't leave much aside from those in need of cash, which abound in the environment that the occupyers have created. I find this unfortunate; as servants, if grudgingly, of the crusaders they make for an easy target by those looking to put to use the explosives they have lying around the garage, yet in spite of the poor choices there is a certain innocence to their deeds. The solution to this would be to somehow find a way to cram the upper level puppet bureaucrats, `Alawi for instnace, into the scene of the next carbomb in the place of the "trying to feed their family" sort of cannon fodder. Unlikely to happen, but a preferable alternative to the typically existing results.

[Placebo]

4. Yeaaaaaaaaa...

We sure have made Iraq safer alright. It amazes me ANYONE can defend this war/invasion/occupation at this point.

[Wright Patman]

7. An 85-year-old woman

just told me in a Bible study group that this is a spiritual battle with Iraq (aka Babylon) as in the days of ancient Israel and that it is too bad we cannot all get behind our "Godly, Christian" leader in this end-times battle for the Lord.

Meanwhile, her bigger issue seemed to be to implore us to call our representatives immediately to give them the courage to vote for the constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage Wednesday. All Southern Baptist pastors were instructed to preach on this topic this morning by the RNC/SBC joint command.

I felt like telling her (but didn't), "Fear not, Sister; it won't be long until the Lord calls you home and you won't have to endure any longer this pagan-infested vale of tears."

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. "It was because ideology ruled where reality should have"

And that's the story of George Bush, and the neocons. If only someone had told them that around 1990, there's so much shit we could have avoided.