Salon: Mission Demolished

[kskiska]

Bush and Co.'s Iraq adventure grows bloodier by the day -- thanks to the delusional hawks who planned only for a victory parade.

Back in June, during one of his press briefings, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was getting needled with sharp questions about the increasing number of American casualties in Iraq. Though President Bush had announced May 1 that major combat was over, nearly four dozen soldiers had died in the weeks that followed. But Rumsfeld waved off the concern, comparing occupied Baghdad to Washington, and suggesting the Iraq capital was safer than its American counterpart, given Washington's sky-high murder rate.

Rumsfeld shouldn't have been so glib. Last year there were 262 murders in the city of Washington. As of Monday afternoon, 262 coalition troops had died in the six months since Bush's May 1 proclamation. (One hundred and seventy-three soldiers have died since July 17, when Bush sent a much-criticized message to Iraqi resistance fighters: "Bring 'em on." To be fair, that casualty figure is for all of Iraq, not just for Baghdad. But there's no accurate count of how many Iraqis have perished in that same period, and it's safe to say conditions in Baghdad have only gotten worse since Rumsfeld made his unfortunate comparison.)

(snip)

"The administration walked itself right into this problem," says Pena. "Despite all their talk, the trend -- and that's what it is, a trend -- is moving in the wrong direction. Ever since Bush said, 'Bring 'em on,' the hostilities have gotten worse."

(snip)

Like so many things that have gone wrong in Iraq, it seems few inside the administration were prepared for such deadly or dedicated resistance. That's because the postwar was never supposed to be a hostile occupation, but a welcomed liberation. And once Saddam fell, grateful Iraqis were going to put in place a Western-style democracy. At least that's what Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the exiled Iraq National Congress was telling administration hawks, who at times relied nearly exclusively on his rosy, if out-of-touch, pro-Western scenarios. The State Department and the CIA often dismissed Chalabi, but the agencies in turn were dismissed by the postwar Pentagon planners.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/04/iraq/index.html