What went wrong in Iraq

[unhappycamper]

What went wrong in Iraq
By Fawaz Turki, Special to Gulf News
Published: 31/03/2007 12:00 AM (UAE)

You want to read another story on Iraq like you want a root canal. We are all, Arabs, Americans, Europeans and others, burned out on the war there. What has happened in that ancient land, four years on after the invasion, is now a repetitive story with no happy ending in sight, a story about the dissolution of an Arab nation, the dilution of its culture and the tearing asunder of its society.

A Niagra of books, feature stories, news reports and documentaries has been released, and somewhere along the line we just stopped paying attention to any of them. What is there new to say about the blood-letting by Iraqis against their fellow Iraqis, and about how Washington's excuse for going to war in the first place was too glib by half? It's been repeated over and over again to the point of litany.

These days we read, as we did early this week, that "twin truck bombings killed dozens of people in the northern Iraqi city of Tall Afar, in the deadliest of several attacks across the country on Tuesday", and we turn away in nauseated disbelief. And we read, again as we did early this week, that General Barry McCaffrey, an influential figure in the Army, has released a dire assessment of the situation in the country, based on a recent round of meetings there with General David H. Petraeus and 16 other senior US commanders. "The population is in despair," he wrote in an eight-page document completed in his capacity as professor at West Point. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."

Come, come now, Barry, any working class Iraqi running a lunch counter in Baghdad, or any one of the five million Iraqis who have already fled their homeland to seek refuge in the surrounding countries, would have told you that - and then some.

"Stuff happens", retorted flippantly the former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld when he heard the news about looters picking clean public buildings and museums in the Iraqi capital. "Bring it on", hollered President George W. Bush defiantly when asked what to do about the then nascent guerrilla uprising. "The insurgency," explained Vice-President Dick Cheney with a straight face as he addressed reporters, "is in its last throes". And, yes, let's not forget the other slogans that defined the dream world administration officials inhabited at the time, such as "failure is not an option", "Americans don't cut and run" and the rest of it.


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[orpupilofnature57]

1. What was definition of victory ? WMD or Saddam or democracy or

400% for the 18% in cahoots.

[bemildred]

2. Iraq did not go wrong, it WAS wrong. nt

[NI4NI]

3. Besides the fact the ChuckleNutz invasion was wrong,

it was the absence of Rumsfield's post war plans; But more so, it was the ideology, cronyism and ignorance of Iraq's culture by Jerry Bremmer's CPA.
Just read "Emerald City" if you want to know exactly why and what went wrong and who is at fault.