Bremer kiss and tell book

[LeeG]

Oh these 20/20 hindsighters,,don't they know the future is what matters? Why do they write these books, Clarke, O'niell, Franks, Zinni, etc.? The future belongs to those who make reality.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N06261100.htm

L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, urged U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to increase U.S. postwar troop strength in the country, but his pleas were ignored, the former diplomat said.

In an interview on NBC Television broadcast Sunday night, Bremer said he sent a memo to Rumsfeld suggesting that half a million soldiers would be needed, three times the number deployed by the Bush administration.

"I never had any reaction from him," Bremer told NBC's Brian Williams on "Dateline."

Although he never heard back from his direct boss, Bremer said he did discuss his concerns with Bush.

[cedar savage]

If we pleaded with you to take a break from posts like this, would our pleas be ignored? Or will you persist despite advice to the contrary?

[LeeG]

Cedar, you'd have to plead really well,,or if like minded (to me) folks told me to take a break.
How about this Cedar, why don't you repost the link in a manner that fits your disposition?

Or does the actual content bug you?,,you know,,GWs medal award winner being ignored regarding troop strength.

[ 01-09-2006, 09:29 AM: Message edited by: LeeG ]

[cedar savage]

I've heard that we should have sent more troops again and again here. I've yet to hear a convincing case why more troops would have made much of a difference. Except, I expect, to increase the number of coffins being flown home without publicity.

I did post at least once that it wasn't really more troops in theater that were needed, but more boots on the ground. It would be especially helpful to have a lot more troops on the ground that spoke the language.

[Keith Wilson]

It would be especially helpful to have a lot more troops on the ground that spoke the language. And THAT's a point on which we can agree 100%. Our military is very good at winning battles against armies. That is as different from what they're now tring to do in Iraq as is lifting weights from playing the piano.

[LeeG]

so NOW you think the topic is ok to talk about? See, you just needed an opener.

There are numerous reality disconnects with this administration,,when those approved by the WhiteHouse go off message it's worth noting.

Yes, more boots on the ground at the time of invasion which requires more soldiers/support in bases to supply the boots on the ground.

We don't have that many troops to be installed in that short of time. This is another way to see that decapitating Iraq was the only goal.

[Osborne Russel]

Originally posted by cedar savage:
If we pleaded with you to take a break from posts like this, would our pleas be ignored? Or will you persist despite advice to the contrary?Amazing.

[troutman]

The French left the Japanese in charge in Viet Nam after the surrender to "maintain order" (read, hold the colony till the colonizers got back). Now I don't take a lot of advice from the French or the Japanese but seems like we could have worked a deal with the enlisted ranks and offices up to Major and left them in place in Iraq to at least prevent the immediate looting. That looting was Rummy's "stuff happens".

[Osborne Russel]

Any number of things might work. But if the Bush administration didn't propose them, they are bad.

[LeeG]

this is amazing stuff,,they were surprised by the insurgency. Bremers questions to Cheney reinforce Richard Clarkes view that the invasion was one big AEI experiment.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10739597/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10739597/)

Still, critics argue that former members of the Iraqi army, along with Saddam loyalists and displaced civil servants formed the insurgency that troubles Iraq till this day.

Williams: Whose fault is it that no one saw the insurgency coming?

Bremer: You know I’ve thought about that as I looked back a lot, because we really didn’t see the insurgency coming.

That’s a rare admission, and Bremer goes on to question the focus of the entire Administration back then.

.............

Bremer says that by November 2003, he raised his concerns with Vice President Dick Cheney.

Williams: You wrote that you told Vice President Cheney there was no military strategy for Iraq, that the policy was driven more by troop rotation. What was the reaction?

Bremer: I said to the vice president, “You know i’m not sure that we really have a strategy for winning this war.” The vice president said to me, “Well, I have similar concerns.” He thought there was something to be said for the argument that we didn’t have a strategy for victory at that time.

It’s a surprising admission, considering what the Vice President was telling the public at the time.

[LeeG]

This short article raises the question how effective Iraq will be in reconstructing it's oil industry if the larger amounts of petrodollars trickles down to funding extremists venturing into Iraq.

blog article (http://http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymond-j-learsy/the-head-of-the-snake-ir_b_13459.html)

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by cedar savage:
I've heard that we should have sent more troops again and again here. I've yet to hear a convincing case why more troops would have made much of a difference.If you haven't heard a convincing argument, that's because you can't be convinced.

Professional military said 350,000 troops would be needed. The amatuers in charge denigrated that message and sent 130,000. Results speak for themselves.

That not good enough?

After WW II, we garrisoned Germany at the rate of 1 soldier for every 6 Germans. In Iraq, it's more like 1:25. If you can't keep a sharp eye on them, you can't control what they're doing.

[Ross M]

Cedar wrote: "I've heard that we should have sent more troops again and again here. I've yet to hear a convincing case why more troops would have made much of a difference."

In my opinion, leaving the armories unguarded was a fatal mistake.

I understand light and fast; mimimizing troop concentrations, et cetera - but if you can't keep high energy explosives out of the general population, you can't do the job.

I think this is a nail in Rumsfeld's coffin.

Ross

[ 01-09-2006, 08:06 PM: Message edited by: Ross M ]

[Norman Bernstein]

"I've heard that we should have sent more troops again and again here. I've yet to hear a convincing case why more troops would have made much of a difference."
It's called the Powell doctrine, cedar... Colin Powell is the author, and Gulf War I is evidence of the wisdom of it's author.

FWIW, I am in total agreement with Powell. If there's a compelling reason to go to war, then nothing less than total commitment with an absolutely overwhelming force is the ONLY way to do it. With an overwhelming force, far fewer casualties are the result, because you can lock down the theater of war far more effectively.

Rumsfeld's 'war on the cheap' doctrine has most obviously been a near total failure... he evidently wasn't willing to listen to Powell.

[LeeG]

575,000 military personell to get Saddam out of Kuwaitt in '91.

Rumsfeld was initially looking at plans of 75,000 to get Saddam out of Bagdad and defeat the military. It took Powell supporting Franks to get Rumsfeld to up it to 150,000.

Can anyone believe that bringing democracy, finding WMD, and securing the country was on the agenda?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin e/shows/invasion/interviews/kagan.html (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/invasion/interviews/kagan.html)

Before the war, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon seemed pretty optimistic about the outcome. Can you describe the key assumptions concerning what the war was going to be?

The most important assumption that Rumsfeld made was that his job was destroying the Iraqi army and bringing down the Iraqi government. I think that he never really understood the degree to which his job also involved maintaining order in Iraq thereafter, and establishing a new regime that might be stable.



If you look at it from the perspective of destroying the Iraqi armed forces and taking down Saddam Hussein, then it was easy. We knew that it would be easy. It's no surprise that it was easy, and his assumptions were justified. I think the surprise that the administration seemed to show when we did not immediately manage to maintain stability in Iraq, to not instantly become a stable democratic society, reflects the fact that they had never really thought seriously about what would be required to do that.

Why?

I don't know. This administration certainly came into office saying, "Superpowers don't do windows, we don't want to do peacekeeping, we don't want to do nation building." Bush made statements, even after the Afghan war, that he did not want to have American ground forces there after the war, doing peacekeeping. When you come into office with that kind of attitude, I think it's probably very hard to turn around quickly and say, "This is going to be all about peacekeeping after we destroy Saddam Hussein."

I think the other problem you have is that Rumsfeld has a vision of war that is honestly very much like the vision that Moltke had in the nineteenth century. Moltke thought politics stops when the war begins; starts again when the war ends. The military is not involved before the war, and is not involved after the war. That seems to me to be very much the attitude that Rumsfeld has: when the war's over, it's not his concern anymore.

[ 01-09-2006, 08:32 PM: Message edited by: LeeG ]