Iraq: Bush Has a Plan And It's Working

[Jcrowley]

Iraq: Bush has a plan, and it's working

"If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don't have a plan ..."
- US President George W Bush, campaigning for Republicans in next week's congressional elections.

So, does the Bush administration have a plan for Iraq, and if so, is it working? The answer to both questions could well be "yes". But it's not a plan that Bush could publicly boast about, despite the fact that it's working like a charm.

This is how things are shaping up in Iraq (see image below), according to US Central Command itself, which keeps a "chaos gauge" to measure Iraq's progress from chaos to peace.


According to the New York Times, the "gauge" was shown as a slide at a classified briefing on October 18. (Click here to see the full slide, titled "Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict".)

Unfortunately for the benighted Iraqis, the gauge is moving steadily in the "wrong" direction: away from peace and into the "red zone" of chaos. So how is it that the Bush plan can be said to be working? Easy, if the plan is ... chaos.

More:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK03Ak01.html

[warrens]

1. Did anyone see that Conrad Burns clip?

"Bush has a plan for Iraq, but he's not going to tell YOU (his opponent) about it. But he has one, he's just not going to blab it everywhere."

Seriously, Burns said that.

[Junkdrawer]

2. Pacification...

NOTE: The following is just a guess based on many, many events that seem to suggest it as a possible BushCo strategy. It is extremely brutal and I hope I'm wrong.

Pretend that you have absolutely no morals whatsoever and that your goal is to capture and exploit the world’s largest underexploited oil reserves - Iraq. You don’t want to start the pumping while your Saudi business partners still can meet demand, so let’s say your time frame to start pumping is 5 to 10 years out. Your problems are:

1.) The population of the country is 65%+ Shia, many with links to Iran and many more decidedly Anti-American.
2.) Immediate installation of a Pro-American puppet regime would be opposed, not only by Iraqis, but also by most of the world, especially Iran, Russia and China.
3.) Oil fields and pipelines are easy sabotage targets for any well-manned insurgency.

So invading with a sufficient force to bring post-invasion stability brings a Shiite regime with a pro-Iranian tilt. Joy, just what you don’t want. So what do you do? Try this little three phase plan:

Phase I:
Invade with a force sufficient to overcome Saddam’s weakened defenses, but insufficient to create stability. Leave plenty of weapon caches lying about because you want an insurgency. Why? Because an insurgency provides cover for:
1.) The expulsion of the U.N.
2.) The expulsion of unfriendly media
3.) The building of permanent military bases
The insurgency also creates the core of a brutal, professional colonial army – something you’ll need for Phase III.

Phase II:
Instigate a civil war and then retreat to the bases you built in Phase I. You can, at this point, talk about an “orderly withdrawal” because you really just need a small core of provocateurs to keep the civil war raging. This is when the real killings occur – the pacification if you will. The idea is to reduce the population of anyone who will oppose your later occupation. The magnitude of the killings during this phase will be so severe that there will actually be cries for your return, both at home and within the international community. See Bosnia.

Phase III:
Remember those military bases and the brutal, professional colonial army you built during Phase I? Now is when you use them to bring about your actual goal: a puppet government propped up by a brutal military presence. You can refer anyone who complains at this point to the atrocities of Phase II and suggest that your forced stability is the lesser of two evils. Oh, by the way, you can pump the oil now.

Well, there you have it. As I said, I hope I’m wrong.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1503947

[jannyk]

3. Well yeah, if the plan was

to invade a sovreign country, kill as many of its innocent civilians as possible and terrorize the rest. Completely destroy the infrastructure and breed a new generation of insurgents and terrorists. Become so mired down that our troops stay longer than we fought WWII, and so completely destabilize the nation that it spirals into civil war with the US caught in the middle. Enable an ineffectual government that uses tactics from Sadam's playbook and donate billions of US tax dollars to corrupt Iraqi officials private offshore bank accounts and lose more US lives than we lost in 911....

...Then I'd say the plan was working pretty well.