These things never end well and it is why we never should have gotten involved. If you do get involved, you better be willing to erase their culture and occupy long term. We are not willing to do that and really should not anyway.
Wo... nothing? Remind me of the $50-60B of "nothing" to start the Iraq war. It's really nothing. A drop in the bucket in the scheme of things. Oh, and the life lost... that's also nothing.
We villainize Iran and they are going to be bled of money and weapons. A protracted involvement and hardship on the people could weaken the Mullahs and speed a more secular youth oriented regime there . Could; or it could provide the national emergency that allows a total crackdown on things un-islamic. It also this is a proxy conflict between Russia's Syrian interest and Iran's Iraqi interests splitting some of that alliance and making US sanctions more effective. Proxy wars make strange bedfellows. Fareed Zakaria said today he thinks the end will be a 3 way partition of Iraq (and ethnic cleansing) I think that was clear by 2004 myself.
Sorry for the bad syntax, the Saudi's can outspend the Iranians and the irony is the worse they make it in Iraq the more their oil is worth and the more political influence they have. There is nothing positive about the situation for us in respect to Saudi Arabia. They spend our money to support wahhabism, and even if we get a clue and conserve energy, the Chinese will just give them the money they got from us and buy the same amount of oil. This article addresses some of the complexities: Iraq Crisis Puts Heat on Mideast Arab Officials Say ISIS Threatens Regional Security http://online.wsj.com/articles/iraq-crisis-puts-heat-on-mideast-1402865270 Saudi Arabia supplies arms and money to groups it says include moderate rebels in neighboring Syria, but has long denounced ISIS—which has overlapping operations in Syria and Iraq—as a terrorist group. In May, Saudi Arabia accused Saudi ISIS recruits of trying to spur domestic attacks. ISIS fighters in Syria say their enemies include both Saudi-backed Syrian rebel factions and the Saudi regime. Any "U.S. involvement has and will continue to be recruitment gold for al Qaeda," Mr. Nazer said.
Again, the trend was less and less lives lost as Iraq got more and more safe, it would have continued. If you look at the numbers, we lose more soldiers in garrison every year than we do on deployment. Sure there would probably be 20 or 30 fatalities per year for the first few years, but give it 5 years and it would probably be down to 1 or 2, give it 2 decades and the number of combat fatalities would be almost non existent and it would be just another duty station.
Korea isn't a very fun duty station and I'm sure Iraq wouldn't be either, but it wouldn't be significantly different from a danger standpoint within a few years and it would provide valuable security and stability for a new Iraq to grow essentially from scratch.
We were told Americans would be greeted with candy and flowers. Rumsfeld said the whole thing would be done in 6 months
If you bought that, you were stupid. Sure the invasion would be over quickly, but a country doesn't rebuild itself in 6 months or even 6 years.
Are you saying Rumsfeld and the administration was lying? Hum...what else could they have lied about?
No, I'm saying if you believed that then you are stupid. Hum....what other stupid things might you believe?
I was told Iraq had WMDs. Of course I didn't believe it. But you and a bunch of other stupid ****s did. And now you want to go back in again and try to clean up Bush's mess. Those of us that were called traitors to our country at the time were right. And we were right about what would happen when we left (what we're seeing now). But we were told to shut up.
Why are you still droning on about this BS? At this point, what difference does it make? I mean sure we've recovered several hundred chemical weapons from Iraq, but does that really matter? Does it matter that there were more weapons included in the intelligence reports quoted by the Clinton and Bush administrations than they found after telling them for months that they were coming to get them?
You don't just 'take' troops from other overseas bases and drop them into Baghdad. That is not how the Military works. Do you think we got thousands of troops overseas just sitting around doing nothing? Waiting for something to do? What you are saying makes no damn sense logistically and in reality. Most missions, whether overseas or in the conus are undermanned and getting worse as it is. You wanna pull 100k to set up base in Iraq? That is criminally insane. I am glad you do not have that power....
I'm guessing that might be what happens but I doubt that will fix the situation over the long term. Let's face it but Iraq is an artificial creation, created by the British after decades of occupation from the ashes of the Ottomans who occupied the are for centuries for those who think long term occupation can fix things. It is made up of groups that haven't liked each other centuries and not an organic development of people who feel a common bond. The Kurds have already carved out basically their own country and probably the best thing is to figure out how the rest of them can do the same.
2 things.... Less and less violence the last 3 years was because regional organizations were laying in wait for us to leave. As soon as Bush even whispered 'withdraw'......the trend of attacks went downward. It was not because we were winning or making a difference. They wanted us gone. In 08..... We got hit 3 or 4 times a week on average. Around August, it almost stopped completely. In 11, we got hit once a week tops. Were all the bad guys dead? He'll no. They waited us out. Anyone that claims Iraq was safer in the last few years is not looking at why. Less guys died because the enemy did not want to screw things up and lengthen our time there. Also, I love how you can accurately predict the death tool of a 100k troop occupation. If we send in the grunts again.....you best believe the people on all 3 sides are gonna flip and go right back at us. Every Iraqi I worked with wanted us gone. Every damn one. If we go back......it is gonna be a damn bloodbath.
To follow up on the post above tit wasn't like we cut and run with the Iraqis begging us to stay. They wanted us to leave and the only way we were staying with their consent was to agree to terms that no sane US President would agree too. One other issue that many who are so eager to see us back is forgetting is that coming in now to fight the Sunnis is that we would be tacitly be helping the Shiites many of who aren't really good guys either. Do we really want to come in and beat off ISIS only to see people like Sadr getting more power.
Cool facts about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (leader of ISIS): He was at Camp Bucca at the same time I was. I do not remember every single sh!thead's name (there were thousands of them, and they frankly sounded mostly alike to me, only really paid attention to a few of the higher-ups), but there is a good chance that he was in my compound while I was there. Reportedly he was a fairly mid-level guy at that point. He was captured in 2005 and turned over to Iraqi authorities in 2009 when we shut down Bucca (after I had left). The Iraqis apparently set him free at some point after that. I am sure that someone is regretting that decision about now. So, who wants to let all the Gitmo sh!theads go free now? It's not like any of them would ever return to the fight... Right? I had a chat with an Iraqi terp (interpreter) one night shortly before we left and asked him what they were going to do with all of these really bad guys when we had gone. He said "We'll probably just kill them all. If we're lucky." My response was along the lines of "yeah, that'd be a good idea" sort of thing. Well, they didn't. They apparently let a bunch of them go, and a bunch more were busted out in 2013. Should've killed 'em all and been done with it.
