While I do think that it was time for us to pull out of Iraq, I do think that we needed to go in, just not for as long as we were there.
Heres the thing, Saddam needed to be removed from power. Bush SR. should have done in 20 years ago during the first gulf war. Saddam gassed tens of thousands of his kurds and committed many other atrocities. And, we knew that he had WMDs, we just didn't know where. I'm still positive that he had them buried in the desert somewhere. I mean, when I was overseas, we took picture of people sitting in the SCUDs where the canisters of various types of gas had been removed .
Now, while I support us going in and taking him out, I think we should have gone a different route with out "occupation". Once we had removed him and established an interim government, we should have tried to get a democracy setup as quickly as possible, then turned over control to them much sooner. I mean, I was there still close enough to the beginning where most of the people fighting us were Saddam Loyalists, Ba'ath party members, and a few people who were generally displeased with everything. But, as I was leaving in Jan 2006 (after he had been executed and democracy had been established), the people fighting began to turn from loyalists to people who were upset with the US, people who were being paid by Iranians (I don't even remember how many Iranians we caught smuggling weapons), and finally, Al Queda in Iraq. Now, when I was there in early 2005, al Queda in Iraq was small, but they grew quickly as they smuggled people in from neighboring countries. In fact, near the end of 2005, maybe only about 10% of the people we were fighting were Iraqis.
Now, I do think that Iraq went on too long, Had we began to pull out in 2007 and left a small force under Iraqi government control (to assist the Iraqi Military that was still re-establishing at that time), I think it would not have gotten as bad as it was at some points. The problem, was that intelligence would get "skewed" on the way up to the top. Imagine, a giant game of telephone.
Here is exactly how our intelligence reporting worked:
Our Squadron (we called it Squadron, cause we were cav, but it is the same setup as a Battalion), would send a report to our Brigade. The report would be like, 5 pages. Now, there were 6 other Battalions that would dot he same thing. They'd then take the 30 pages, and filter it down to about 8 pages with the highlights. Next, those 8 pages would be sent to division. Division would receive reports from 4 brigades. Then would take that and filter it down again pulling out the highlights. They would send this to MNF-I command. Now, they would get reports from usually 5 divisions and shrink it again. It would get sent to General Shoomaker, and he would then simplify it to the most important information and that was what Bush would get. This happened every day, so you can imagine how much information was lost or not sent further once it reached where it was necessary the most. In fact, most of what Bush got, was reports of casualities, successful combat operations, and critical information from detainees.
So, basically, our of the hundreds of pages of intelligence reported, only the most critical information was passed on, and that was after it was rewarded half a dozen times. Personally, I had 2 reports that I wrote go all the way to Bush, and when they came back to me each time they were nothing like what I originally wrote. They had taken a page or so of information and shrunk it down to 2 or 3 sentences. For example, the one report I wrote was about how we had secured airport road so that noone had died on it for 6 months. It was about a page and a half and was simplified down to: "6-8 Cav has secured Airport Road, no enemy action for 6 months". Which was not completely true. We had plenty of enemy action, but we had thwarted all of it. However, just the fact that we were able to secure airport road (before we took control, it was the most dangerous road in the entire world), got us a presidential unit citation.
At least now, we can concentrate on Afghanistan, which needs much more help than Iraq does.
Also, I will forever hold a grudge against Obama for cutting NASA funding. But I did like Clinton (who, some of you might not be old enough to remember, played Saxophone on Leno while he was in office, A first). Also, Gore wasn't bad for Clinton's VP (I mean, he was on Futurama as himself while he was in Office, another first).
Topic: Qualified to manage you but not old enough to drink (Read 9654 times)
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