No I'm not saying that at all. Just to avoid the standard dem/repub arguments on this subject I'll be clear...I blame the decision to go to war on bad intelligence combined with a desire to do it by the administration. I make no excuses (and never have) for the terrible management of the war and that blame ultimately lies with Bush.
RG said he knew who was responsible for the way things went. I just asked for specifics on who he thought was most to blame. Saying it was the Bush administration is pretty generic. It was a long time ago so the details may be off a bit but I saw a show on Bremmer's decision and it wasn't clear if Bush was even involved in making the decision. From what I recall it was Bremmer and Rumsfeld who made the call. Generals and some within administration only found out about it after the fact through the media. That doesn't absolve Bush in anyway, he backed the decision whether he made the call or not.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Revisionism at it's finest. You never fail to fail.
Do you want me to post all of the "we'll be out in months, tops" quotes from the administration during the pre-war run up?
Seriously, your selective memory astounds me.
Why would Bush be out of the loop on such a critical decision?
That makes no sense.
Saying he had nothing to do with the decision is worse than saying he just made a ty decision.
I would start most primarily with Cheney.
You know, the guy who was the Secretary of Defense in the first Gulf War, and who very clearly, in defending the senior Bush's decision, rather accurately predicted what would happen after Saddam got toppled:
I would say that he probably controlled some of the information going into the oval office, and let GW think that it woudl be a walk in the park, when he knew better so as not to let GW hestiate about heading in.
I think GW's general ignorance of the rest of the world and modern military affairs in general contributed greatly as well.
The administration in general, in terms of the right-wing ideologues who made up the bulk of the rank and file of the administration of the time tended to know almost nothing about the country they were in charge of running.
There seemed to be some minor contingency planning on the part of the military, but even the senior levels of the miliatary seemed intent on making the same tactical mistakes of Vietnam.
, are we still talking about IRaq?
In short it was a systemic administration failure, that started most importantly with the guy in charge, GW Bush.
The tone at the top will heavily influence the culture of any human organization.
The depths of ignorance and valuing ideological purity over competance was the tone at the top, and that reverbrated with deadly effect on the streets and roads of Iraq.
In case you haven't noticed, we will have tens of thousands of troops deployed there.
Thanks for caring/paying attention.
We're still there, aren't we?
The OP was a cartoon. Would you rather discuss that?
Yes it is. This is what I recall seeing on the show. I don't remember the name of it, something my wife had taped or rented. She turned on Bush/Rumsfeld sooner then I did. Took me a little longer to believe they could be so incompetent in managing the war. Anyway, it seemed well researched. I do recall one general on it saying that he was under the impression from a meeting just days earlier that they (the generals & Bremer) had agreed not to disband the army and then boom he heard the news.
It really wouldn't surprise me if Bush didn't know. It's well known that his management style is to pick the right people and then let them make the calls. No a bad approach if you pick the right people, he didn't. I also recall something from Woodward about Bush being annoyed by having to deal with the details of managing the war and at one point losing his temper and yelling " , I have other things to do!".
If you want to go a little more in depth, I recommend reading Tom Ricks' Fiasco. You can get used copies for two bucks online. I just started reading his book on the surge.
Ultimately no one above Bremmer wants to have anything to do with that decision, but I find it hard to believe that they would just leave it up to him.
My memory is not selective. There was an article a few years ago I remember reading that one scenario they realized was a long war. Just because they chose to publicly state otherwise doesn't mean they didn't consider it.
I pray to God the Dems can magically fix the economy with their "stimulus."
The problem is that's like praying that shooting a loaded gun into my face won't kill me.
Neither political party controls that much of anything anyway. Its already painfully obvious just by following whats going on. I don't know if people who don't pay attention will ever catch on.
Maybe our banker overlords will be nice enough to give us another decade of prosperity.
Cap and trade is probably the next great bubble. If its not I'm sure something else is waiting in the wings.
I really think Bush, in other cir stances, would have been one of those great tragic figures that famous plays are written about.
We have a man here whose father was President, striving to be a President himself. One who was smart enough to graduate prestigious colleges, one who can fly a plane, yet portrays himself as the country bumpkin in public. Sometimes I think of him just as a man who made a few wrong decisions, and those wrong decisions were pulling down everything else. Like an alcoholic that can't get off the sauce, his Presidency spiraled downwards as more and more situations grew too large for him to handle, and he kept throwing out the wrong answers.
I think how quiet he has been since he left the Presidency is a true reflection of Bush. I do think he did what he thought it took to make this country safe, the best that he could. I don't think he did a good job, or took the correct ways to do it, but I don't think he was acting maliciously.
I feel kinda bad for him, to be honest.
Bush's two biggest weaknesses to me were his poor judgment concerning his advisers (which also freaks me out about Obama and his choices for cabinet positions), and his stubbornness. In a different situation, Bush's stubbornness would have been great but in the situation that we had, agile decision making was required. He wasn't capable of that as far as I can tell.
You do realize there is a distinction between realizing the possibility exists, and actively providing a contingency plan for it, right?
Simply realizing there is a chance for something happening that could kill thousands of your own servicemembers IS NOT ENOUGH.
As a Commander-in-Chief You have a sacred duty to do some contingency planning to minimize the risks involved in that percieved possibility.
The fact that they considered the possibility itself says that they are guilty of sheer criminal negligence, because they obviously had no plan.
You just don't get responsible risk management, do you?
They had contingency plans, but things just didn't work right. Nobody's perfect. It is a sad thing that things occurred like they did. I don't have enough details to say much more. I can say from 11 years experience in the Army that we would have never gone in until after things were thought out as well as they could be, for the information at hand. Too bad the CIA was crippled by the previous administration, and we couldn't get reliable intel.
I would add that I firmly believe the war would have been over allot sooner in the liberals never gave Al-Qaeda the moral support they did. My god. they badtalked us so bad, it gave them moral strength.
ing traitors.
Tell me, oh great patriot, when did the process for procuring more armored humvees and body armor start, before or after the ground war?
.
What were the contingency plans?On what? Yellowcake?Too bad the CIA was crippled by the previous administration, and we couldn't get reliable intel.I firmly believe you're an idiot. The insurgency began because we stupidly disbanded the army and fired anyone who actually had any experience running the country.I would add that I firmly believe the war would have been over allot sooner in the liberals never gave Al-Qaeda the moral support they did.
What was the contingency for that?
I would add that morons like you who obviously have no understanding of the issue, and who blindly followed and supported criminal negligence because of some emotional need to feel superior to people they disagree, can be much more readily accused of outright treason.
The fact is that the policies you support tend to give much more direct support to the Al Qaeda ideology than any "liberal" criticism of the president.
I firmly believe, and can actually prove that, unlike yourself.
I suppose you think a war must wait until the current administration spends money on something that the past administration didn't...
Tell me, oh great patriot, when did the process for procuring more armored humvees and body armor start, before or after the ground war?
.
Any idea how large of a task that was to make all that armor? It's not just any steel. It doesn't form easy like just any steel.
Blame president Clinton if you must blame a president over it.
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 07-08-2009 at 12:34 PM.
Does it take over two years?
I think that, if you have bad intel, you probably shouldn't be going to war in the first place.
Bill Clinton did not invade Iraq. Idiot.
Body armor is not made from steel. Moron.
(I'll give your unintelligent ass a ride on the "steel" part, although technically the armored vehicles tend to have mixtures of aluminum and ceramic composites as well)
The PROCESS to begin to get amored humvees and more body armor was not even BEGUN until MONTHS after the invasion was over, and the big bad liberal media was reporting that families were buying their soldiers body armor with their own money, and that soldiers were welding steel plates to their unarmored versions.
Riddle me this, you short-bus escapee:
If it is reasonably possible that you are sending tens of thousands of soldiers into an area for a "long period of time" during which they might be exposed to IEDs and constant guerilla small arms attacks, do you wait until months afterwards to start the process of giving them armored vehicles and body armor, or do you start the process in the months BEFORE the attack?
Anybody with any knowledge of military affairs knows what types of threats troops will come under in moder LIC's.
If only Clinton had prepared for an Iraq invasion sooner. Tsk Tsk.
Was the big bad liberal media traitors for airing videos showing our troops having to spot-wield scrap steel onto their humvees?
If it is traitorous to call an administration onto the carpet for betraying our troops, I guess they are traitors.
I guess you are an ueber-patriot for not caring whether our troops had the right equipment, and defending the handling of the war, even if it meant more troops died because we didn't give them the right equipment.
Seems to me like you are exactly the kind of patriot that al Qaeda loves.
"Ha ha, the American soldiers are dying by the hundreds to our bombs and mortar s s, I'm glad we have patriots like Wild Cobra to keep their "free" media from criticizing the regime and forcing them to get armor that might stop us from killing US soldiers..."
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