Can someone exlplain what went wrong in Iraq?

[Doctor_J]

As evil as they are, I can't believe that this is the way the Rove Administration wanted the invasion to go. What possessed them to get into this quagmire? I realize that without Schlock and Awwwww, Smirk's approval would be in the single digits. I also realize that this is the biggest windfall imaginable for Haliburton. But did they underestimate the resistance? The monetary cost? The human cost? What happened?

[Goldmund]

1. I'm not sure you're right about that.

I think this is exactly what they may have been hoping for. Let the situation fester and then eventually get out of control, which would enable them to justify more wars yet and on a bigger scale. "We can't pacify Iraq while insurgents are coming in from Syria", or "We've found out that the recent slaughter of our soldiers was directed by the Iranian government", or something like that. Never too cynical for the * administration.

[DUreader]

9. I agree, chaos is one of the PNAC methods

[Nite Owl]

10. Yes, cynical as

it seems I think they had no intention of it it being easy. War is good for the Repukes and thus for reelection is how they view it.

[Skittles]

2. they thought it would be a cakewalk

we'd be swimming in oil and the Iraqi people would all be hailing King George. F***ing idiots.

[salin]

12. The term I saw Krugman use - quoting from an unamed insider was...

"incestuous amplification" (otherwise known as group think.) The key folks on the effort had a single scenario... all chimed in with agreement giving the impression that it MUST be factually correct since all were in agreement with the scenario. The scenario, to my understanding, was that a quick and brutal air driven war would result in a quick collapse of the regime (so far, so true) and that the Iraqi's would be so grateful - that they would all fall in line with teh US Admin's plans (eg who controls the interim govt, who controls the oil contracts, etc.) with no resistance.

Various reports from insiders paint a picture of a WhiteHouse where policy discussions are looked down upon (eg looking at contingency planning), where political decisions drive policy decisions. And where dissent was frowned upon. Given this environment - it appears there was simply NO consideration that the scenario would play out any other way, and thus there was NO reason for contingency planning.

[hippiegranny]

21. if they had read "the baghdad diaries"

they would have known that the ordinary iraqi people were never ever going to embrace their u.s. "liberators". as a people, they have been stomped on endlessly as the whipping boy of the world for the last three administrations. they already hated us after gulf war one, and the subsequent soul numbing sanctions of the next decade. we lost the iraqi people's hearts and minds a long time ago, and we are definitely never getting them back, saddam or no saddam. no planning, no human consideration = quagmire.

[0007]

33. ....or if they had taken a good look at Ahmed Chalabi, then again

maybe not?

[waterman]

Seems that their single-minded ideology superceded any accurate

interpretation of reality. They were at once too pessimistic and too optimistic about all the wrong things.

[Caution]

3. what happened?

we invaded using only Chalabi as our primary source of information who assured us that we would be welcomed with open arms. So yes they underestimated the resistance and they certainly don't seem to have planned for a concentrated guerilla type campaign against them. The media only occasionally reports that the Iraqi's are in fact concentrating far less on attacking soldiers than they are on sabotaging infrastructure which is driving up costs and causing the local populace to resent the occupying force that much more.

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. What's gone wrong? crusaders are killing Iraqis, Halliburton is making $

Everything seems to be going great. Good planning is good business!

[htuttle]

5. The biggest mistake...

...was invading it.

After that, it was all sort of pre-destined.

They believed their own propaganda on the one hand, then lied to convince others on the other.

Wolfowitz & Rumsfeld committed the sin of Hubris, and the whole world is paying for it. Bush committed the sin of Sloth (as always), and Cheney's sin was Greed.


But once they invaded, there wasn't any right answer to avoid the mess we have now. Not entirely sure there is a good answer at all at this point. I think the key will be finding the 'least fucked up solution' to this mess. There isn't a 'best' one anymore.

We should just up and leave Iraq, but there's little we can do now to avoid it being even worse over there for everyone than under Hussein, no matter what we do.

[waterman]

18. Gosh, that was pretty good, htuttle

[Loonman]

6. They got all the right warnings from the right people

Shrubco went ahead, anyway.

[rogerashton]

7. Like I said all along, the Shrub* is bipolar.

He was manic when he made that decision.

[waterman]

13. You know what, you just might be on to something there....

...never really thought of that til now. I know 2 (at least) bipolar people and dang if there aren't a few similarities there.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. I can and it rests squarely on Rummy's shoulders

It isn't that they convinced America it would be a cakewalk. They were so DRUNK on their own vision of things, they convinced THEMSELVES it would be a cakewalk. They undermined American intelligence and listened only to the Chalabi's of the world who agreed with them that Iraqi's would cheer their liberators with open arms.

Prior to the war, there was a story in the Washington Post about a general the resigned in protest in North Carolina due to the manner in which army war games were being rigged. This general was in charge of the team that was the opposition and made it tough for the army team that was ferreting out the opposition to prevail. Instead of using cell phones and GPS means of communicating, he used runners and bicycle riders and guerilla tactics and repeatedly outsmarted the other team. He was reprimanded for not letting the other team win. I will see if I can locate the story in my bookmarks, but the manner in which this war has proceeded is the same off the cuff manner (grounded in blind faith) that the war games were conducted.

They really did believe their own bullshit when they weren't just telling a bald faced lie.

it was a toxic mix of incompetence, arrogance and deceit.

[Cat Atomic]

11. Bremer's idiotic "de-Baathification" policy is at the root of alot of it.

He singled out all the most dangerous men and said- "ok, you're unemployed. Bye bye. Now don't cause any trouble".

But that's only a misstep in a fundamentally flawed action. The occupation was going to be bloody no matter what.

[TrogL]

14. Absolutely nothing

It has served its purpose admirably as did the Afghanistan war before it. It has spent billions of money that could have been used for social programs. Dubya and his ilk will continue to implement these boondoggles and others (eg. the ridiculous mission to the Moon) until the US is so totally bankrupt that all government funding is put towards debt servicing with none left over for:

• social programs, eg. Medicare, Social Security, Veterans benefits
  
• oversight
  
• environmentalism
  
• consumer protection
  
• a proper voting system
  
• public education
  
• foreign aid
  
• infrastructure
  

except what they want to spend on:

• corporate welfare
  
• the military
  
• internal security eg. National Guard
  
• jails (and the phony drug and "moral" wars)
  
• pork barrel in Republican precincts
  

[9215]

30. You beat me to it

I agree, nothing has gone wrong. Another element to this is that the Bushies know how gullible/ignorant Americans are. They used the terror fear to get us in the war now all they have to do is reap the profits and keep control of the government with propoganda and disinformation, etc. while the money rolls into the BFEE coffers.

The ignorance, self-absorbed materialism, and football mentality of Americans will do the rest. They don't read much, and when they do it is corporate controlled crapola designed to entertain and distract. The majority of US citizens simply don't care and haven't changed their behavior one iota since all of this started. People talk about the same shit they were talking about twenty years ago--football, latest soaps and other simple minded distraction. I'll bet that voter turnout in this next election won't be significantly different than it was in 2000 and before.

[Solomon]

15. They valued the power of technology over

the power of human will.

[arcane1]

16. I have a hard time believing..

for a moment that they thought this would be easy, that we'd be greeted as 'liberators', etc.

Chaos in Iraq works perfectly. The more chaos, the more we "need" troops there, the more we can claim an al Qaeda presence, etc.

[Fleshdancer]

17. PNACers closed their ears to everyone else's opinions and insight

These people have been planning the death/capture of Hussein for over a decade. What you have is a group of men who have held various positions of power for a long time and are now deluded in to thinking that they know what is best for this nation and the world.

I think they really did believe that Iraqis would throw roses. I think they really did believe they would capture Hussein within days of the invasion. They thought the oil there could pay for everything and I guess they never considered people outside of Iraq going there to fight us.

This happens when a small group of egomaniacs make huge decisions while dismissing the concerns of anyone who doesn't 100% agree with their decision.

[Warren Stuart]

19. Nothing, everything is going as planned

You would have to be an evil genius (like Dick Cheney?) to believe this, but these guys don't do anything that is not in their best interests.


The costs are minor compared to all that oil, they don't want a strong, prosperous and democratic Iraq. They want a weak, divisive and ethnically squabbling Iraq. So far they are hitting on all cylinders.

[Lexingtonian]

20. They thought it would be an easy place to rule

Look, Plan A was to install Chalabi as puppet corrupt dictator. The Iraqis laughed at him.

Plan B is a faux democracy, a confederacy (despite claims that it's a federation). It's dying now because the Shiite leaders aren't cooperating- and they hold the trump cards.

Plan C or D is a true federation, it's dominated by the Shiites, and it's inevitable. But Bush can't afford it- it'll cost him all kinds of conservative white votes if he lets it happen before November. Iraqis are, however, not exactly willing to help him by waiting that long.

It was pure and complete ignorance of the history of Iraq. The neocons and Cheney's gang really thought that it would be basically like installing rulers in the American South- put someone who has the look and talks the talk, corrupts and suppresses and pays tribute, and the Iraqi people would calmly submit.

Well, after 50-60 years of colonialism, military dictatorships and occupations, an utterly repressive dictator, bloody internal uprisings, and wars, Iraqis were somehow not really willing to settle for a repressive puppet government controlled by foreigners.

[hatrack]

22. Biggest problem - Iraq has no reason to exist as a nation

It's the result of French & British diplomats drawing lines on a map at the end of World War I while ignoring the ethnic, religious and national identities of the three main groups who inhabit the region.

The result? A nation comprised of (roughly) 65% Shiites, 20% Sunnis and 15% Kurds.

The Kurds have hungered for national status for centuries, but their largely oil-free location and proximity to Turkey pretty much guarantees that they won't get it. They demanded Kurdish control of Mosul within the last ten days, but it's unlikely that they'll gain control of this northern oil city.

The Shiites generally despised the Sunni-dominated Hussein government and were viewed by Saddam as a pro-Iranian threat. The result was decades of brutal repression from Baghdad for decades, particularly after the West left their ass hanging in the breeze post-Gulf War I.

The Sunnis, located largely in the center and western parts of the nation, held the bulk of power in Saddam's regime (particularly members of clans from in and around Tikrit), always on guard against potential threats from the other two ethnic factions.

(I know there's some fallacy of misplaced concreteness in this quick sketch, but I'm trying to keep this short).

So, we're now (ostensibly) trying to establish parliamentary democracy in a region fractured by tribal, religious, linguistic and ethnic identities. We're also trying to do it in a nation first destabilized by invasion and occupation, and now wobbling as these tensions bubble to the surface. Small wonder that things got as fucked up as they did, to paraphrase John Kerry.

If you're looking for serious detail on the topic, check out a book called "A Peace To End All Peace". Can't remember the author, but it's an interesting history of the creation of the modern Middle East in the early 1920s and all of the consequences flowing from the decisions made at the time.

[randr]

23. The Prime Directive was violated

[DrWeird]

24. They got what they wanted- money.

Halliburton got rich, and Cheney's their employee. Bush Sr. works for a defense contractor who got rich, and that's going straight into W.'s inheritance. Which, conveniently, will be tax free by the time Sr. dies.

Did you really think it was ever about protecting america?

[Toots]

25. As long as things are getting blown up Haliburton has contracts

The longer unrest lasts the longer Haliburton milks the US Taxpayer and the more money to be kicked back into GOP Coffers.

[loudnclear]

26. What went wrong was that we INVADED a sovereign nation...unprovoked!

What more do you want?

[Iverson]

27. We invaded. n/t

n/t

[LunaC]

28. They neglected

to throw thousands of years of Mideast strife into the equation.

I suppose they expected the whole world to cower and submit to the big, bad U.S. military machine, lay down their own weapons, submit and go along with the program. Ain't gonna' happen. The insurgents will wear them down little by little until it's more costly (financially and politically) to stay than to leave. Ask Russia about Afghanistan.

[imax2268]

29. What went wrong...

just take a good long look at George Bush...

[gold_bug]

31. here's an insight in neocon planning

during the Soviet Afghan invasion, from calpundit:
http://www.calpundit.com/archives/003061.html

post-invasion Iraq certainly isn't their first goof, just the worst. They have a problem discerning reality from their (ideology-fueled) wishful fantasies.

[alcuno]

32. Republicans are incredibly naive and easily duped.

In their black and white, good and evil world, they miss the nuance entirely. If you go back and listen to what they were saying as Baghdad was being looted, their arrogance stood in the way and they just didn't get it.

We have been WEAKENED in the eyes of the world because of our failure to take control of the situation. Everyone got to see the bumbling United States when they were expecting to see a miracle-working super power. The image mattered and now it's gone.

[Jacobin]

34. Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumfilled, et al...neo con cabal are starry eyed

dreamers who don't have a significant connection to reality. You can look at policies they have espoused in the past and the consequences of enacting some of their earlier policies which were all disasters.

They don't care. They are ideologues. Some actually thought we would be welcomed in Iraq.....which I still find a bizarre concept. Welcoming invaders to steal your oil. New Saddam worse than the old Saddam.

In addition, some believe that Israel must be protected at all costs, and expending American lives and treasure is just fine in that pursuit, regardless of national interests of this country.

[Zero Gravitas]

35. The US Invaded it

without justifiaction and without meaningful international support. It was doomed to failure from the start.