Home

Floundering in Iraq or Real US Strategy?

Comment by Larry Ross, January 3, 2007

The New York Times article below gives a good account of how alleged US strategy in Iraq during 2006 has zigzagged and failed.

The NYT and US Govt want to give the impression that it is a series of blunders and mistakes in Iraq that has resulted in the situation going from bad to worse, to full-blown civil war.

What they do not discuss is (1) They had no right or real reason to invade and occupy in the first place (2) That the whole effort is based on a collection of lies by the Bush regime. (3) With the lies they used to justify their attacks now thoroughly exposed, the Bush regime carries on anyway, intensifying their war, killing 655,000 Iraqis and stoking the civil war.

Looking at it from the point of view of real-politik and the well-known US conspiracy to dominate the Middle East, the situation looks quite different from that portrayed by the NYT.

There are many indications that everything the US has done in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and bombing, is designed to make more Iraqi terrorism not less. Suddenly hanging Saddam on the eve of a Moslem religious festival enraged the Islamic world. It is a typical case in point that illustrates that real US strategy in Iraq is to create hatred of the US and more terrorists.

The reason is to create a chaotic, ungovernable violent situation, where a puppet government set up by the US government is called an "independent democracy" but has little real authority and cannot govern effectively. This pathetic charade of a government desperately needs a US military presence to stay in power. And with their huge new military bases in Iraq and biggest US Embassy in the world, the US plans to stay indefinitely and continue to create the situation and social chaos it needs to justify this real policy. Naturally the NYT does not, and will not, mention that alternative interpretation, of the apparent floundering, and bumbling of the US in Iraq.

The next step becomes obvious as so many articles on this site attest. Expand the war by blaming  Iran for various crimes it either did not commit or were not crimes, then use that manufactured situation to justify attacking Iran.

This is in line with neoconservative plans and recommendations to dominate the Middle East, including attacking Iran and possibly Syria . And it is very much in line with Israeli plans to attack Iran because of their false allegations that Iran is making nuclear weapons to attack Israel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in '06, Bush Team Says

by David E. Sanger, Michael R. Gordon and John F. Burns, January 2, 2007

President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq.” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.

The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq's ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush's war council by surprise.

In interviews in Washington and Baghdad, senior officials said the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department had also failed to take seriously warnings, including some from its own ambassador in Baghdad, that sectarian violence could rip the country apart and turn Mr. Bush's promise to “clear, hold and build” Iraqi neighborhoods and towns into an empty slogan.

This left the president and his advisers constantly lagging a step or two behind events on the ground.

“We could not clear and hold,” Stephen J. Hadley, the president's national security adviser, acknowledged in a recent interview, in a frank admission of how American strategy had crumbled. “Iraqi forces were not able to hold neighborhoods, and the effort to build did not show up. The sectarian violence continued to mount, so we did not make the progress on security we had hoped. We did not bring the moderate Sunnis off the fence, as we had hoped. The Shia lost patience, and began to see the militias as their protectors.”

Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey's strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general's departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.

General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush's wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.

But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president's advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!": Samuel Adams - (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution." Source: letter to John Pitts, January 21, 1776

Continue.....