Big picture. Long time frame. Don't think retaliation or revenge. This wasn't touted as 9/11 Revenge; it was called Operation Iraqi Freedom. Think "fix the problem." How does opening up the one country in the Middle East that was secular and immune to extremist Islam fundamentalism to that exact problem help "fix the problem"? Outside of freedom for the Iraqi people (which we all agree is good, but has no real relevence to the war on terrorism), how exactly did this assist in the fight against terrorism? I can tell you the ways it didn't: (1) It's locked up plenty of money and troops that could be used elsewhere for who knows how long in Iraq. (2) It's taken the U.S. public focus away from more important fights like Afghanistan and the tri-border South American region. (3) It's opened up a whole new country to fundamentalism. (4) We have created a vast swath of territory that no one effectively controls, and which has provided a new home for terrorist training. Plus, we've given them lots of live targets to aim for.
Oh, and we pissed off the majority of the world in the process. That same majority of the world that we need to help us win the war on terrorism...
It is a reasonable argument with which one can come to different conclusions. How long is too long? Is it calendar-based or stability-oriented? I don't see the US assuming anything extraordinary. Aren't we working extraordinarily hard and sacrificing greatly? What evidence do we have of "stiffening" guerilla resistance? How many thousands of these rogues have been collared? What kind of "permanent" American presence is being articulted?
Originally posted by Major How does opening up the one country in the Middle East that was secular and immune to extremist Islam fundamentalism to that exact problem help "fix the problem"? <b>By keeping it that way and engendering a more pro-Western attitude.</b> Outside of freedom for the Iraqi people (which we all agree is good, but has no real relevence to the war on terrorism), how exactly did this assist in the fight against terrorism? <b>Maybe nothing. The aim was getting rid of Saddam. Freeing the Iraqi people was an unavoidable and happy consequence of that. There's nothing that says you can't have two good outcomes growing out of a determined course of action.</b> I can tell you the ways it didn't: (1) It's locked up plenty of money and troops that could be used elsewhere for who knows how long in Iraq. <b>Who's to say where the priority should be but those elected to be in charge. We can say that about any expenditure, can't we?</b> (2) It's taken the U.S. public focus away from more important fights like Afghanistan and the tri-border South American region. <b>See above.</b> (3) It's opened up a whole new country to fundamentalism. <b>Yes, Capitalist Fever brought on by electricity and water and schools.</b> (4) We have created a vast swath of territory that no one effectively controls, and which has provided a new home for terrorist training. Plus, we've given them lots of live targets to aim for. <b>Where are the terrorists training? I've missed that. They are making regular attacks and succeeding but so is the effort against those few. How would you like to be hunted in the Sunni Triangle by the US military? I hear that Saddam is wearing Depends. I heard today that the casualty rate of this war is but a fraction of that of previous wars.</b>
I heard today that the casualty rate of this war is but a fraction of that of previous wars It would be humiliating if the casualty rate were even close to that of previous wars with the only modernized military up against a third world country's army with no significant air or naval power. A lot more casualties are surviving. This is why our military hospitals are stuffed to the gills. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031110-536257,00.html I R A Q / T H E I R A Q W A R : U . S . C A S U A L T I E S The Wounded Come Home For every soldier who dies in Iraq, many more are injured. TIME takes an up-close look at the battle they face after the shooting is over By MARK THOMPSON Monday, Nov. 03, 2003 For several seconds after the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) drilled through the back of their armored M113 "battle taxi," the soldiers inside, mainlining adrenaline, continued firing. Then they started screaming. "It blew my leg clean off," says Private First Class Tristan Wyatt, who was standing at the rear of the armored personnel carrier (APC), unloading an M-240 machine gun at a dozen or more Iraqis who had ambushed them minutes before. He was the first to be hit. The RPG then passed through Sergeant Erick Castro's hip, spinning him violently to the floor. His left leg was still attached — but barely. "I picked up my leg and put it on the bench," he says, "and lay down next to it." Finally, the RPG shredded Sergeant Mike Meinen's right leg. "It was pretty much torn off," he says. "There was just some meat and tendons holding it on." There is horror and there is luck, and in war they sometimes come together. The RPG that severed three legs in a fire fight late last August near Fallujah didn't explode, which probably saved the lives of Wyatt, Castro and Meinen. But even a dud traveling at nearly 1,000 ft. per sec. can slice through limbs like a meat cleaver. The three men were alive, but there was a real danger that they would bleed to death in minutes amid the smoke, dust and confusion. As troops on the two other APCs continued firing, the lone medic among the 15 soldiers on the patrol climbed up the back ramp into the compartment. "'Holy s___!' was the first thing out of his mouth, and it looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head," Wyatt remembers. "That's kind of disheartening when he's talking about you." The medic, the wounded soldiers and their comrades began a frantic race against the clock. Buddies pressed their hands into Castro's hip wound to keep him from bleeding to death. The wound was so massive that his tourniquet was useless. He handed it to Wyatt, who needed two to stanch the blood flowing from his femoral artery. Amid the mayhem, Meinen, who had been manning a 50-cal. machine gun, noticed that he didn't have any feeling in his right foot. "It felt like it had gone to sleep on me, so I picked my foot up and was trying to massage it, trying to get the feeling back," he says. "But then it dawned on me: it wasn't even connected. So I put it on the floor." They tried to raise their wounded legs to slow the bleeding. "There was nothing to elevate my leg except for the piece of my leg that had been blown off from the knee down," Wyatt says. "So I took my leg and jammed it under the stump to keep it pointing up. It was kind of messy." It may have been messy, but it worked. Meinen and Wyatt held hands, trying to reassure each other. "We're not gonna die in this track," Meinen said. "We're not gonna die over here." He was right. About an hour after being wounded — thanks to their colleagues and a Black Hawk medevac flight — the three U.S. soldiers were receiving some of the world's best medical care at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, south of Baghdad. Wyatt and Meinen were back in the U.S. about three days later. It was a week before the more seriously wounded Castro landed on U.S. soil. This is a story of the unseen war — and the grim, quiet battles that take place when wounded soldiers arrive home. What happened to members of the 2nd Squad of the 1st Platoon — who call themselves the War Machine — of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company is a tale that has never been told. Soldiers have been wounded in war since the beginning of time — a fact that armies never like advertising. The Pentagon, which makes terse announcements when U.S. soldiers die in combat in Iraq, doesn't inform the public about those who have been wounded or release month-by-month injury counts. The wounded are mentioned only when some other soldier has been killed in the same attack. "When you join the Army, they send your picture to your hometown paper because they want everybody to know that you're leaving for the military," says Meinen, a dark-haired practical joker from Grangeville, Idaho. "But if you're wounded, the military doesn't tell them, because they might be worried about the public getting negative about what's going on over there." Says the serious, quiet-spoken Castro, from Santa Ana, Calif.: "Nobody knows what happened to us, even though it was one of the biggest ambushes in Iraq. People are only finding out about soldiers who are dying, but American soldiers are getting injured too." October was the bloodiest month yet for the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and the number of wounded is plainly on the rise. Daily attacks against U.S. troops have tripled. The number of U.S. troops who have died in hostilities in Iraq from May 1, when President Bush declared "major combat operations over," through last week has topped the 114 who died in the invasion and its immediate wake. By week's end 122 U.S. troops had been killed in action in Iraq, for a total of 236. But the number of U.S. wounded since May 1 is 1,242, more than double the 551 injured during the war. From the Nov. 10, 2003 issue of TIME magazine Four more pages... http://msnbc.com/news/988553.asp?0sl=-41 Injured soldiers wait for treatment ASSOCIATED PRESS FORT STEWART, Ga., Nov. 3 — Maj. Mike Kissenberth is scheduled to perform surgery in two hours, just enough time to see a dozen clinic patients before he heads upstairs to scrub. “Who’s first?” the Army surgeon asks two soldiers sitting on examining tables in adjoining rooms. The one with an injured rotator cuff speaks up. “Oh, right,” Kissenberth says. “You’re my 9 o’clock IT’S PAST 10 a.m. When he’s done with these appointments, he returns to an inbox piled with new charts and X-rays. Hard work and long hours are nothing new at Army hospitals, but the patient overload from the thousands of soldiers who have returned from the Iraq war has suddenly thrust doctors here into the middle of a national emergency. BACKLOG OF PATIENTS Fort Stewart’s 70-bed hospital is struggling with a backlog of patients, including more than 600 sick and injured reservists. Some have grumbled publicly of waiting weeks, even months, for treatment while living in barracks without air conditioning or indoor toilets. The complaints prompted visits last month from the Army’s surgeon general and its top civilian, acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, who promised more staff for the hospital and an inquiry into conditions at other posts. “You’d like to say it’s a nice, controlled panic,” said Kissenberth, the chief of orthopedics and surgery at Fort Stewart’s Winn Army Community Hospital. With one of his surgeons still deployed, Kissenberth has cleared his schedule of retirees and military spouses — except for emergencies — to concentrate on soldiers. With troops routinely waiting six weeks to be operated on, he’s in surgery five days a week — about double the norm. . . .
MSNBC is reporting that, as even the highly guarded areas ( 'Green Zone', etc.) are now being attacked, and with two more attacks last night, 3 more embasies have reduced staff in anticipation of pulling out, and several Americans working in Iraq are asking to be allowed to get out, pr are telling reporters that they want to leave as soon as allowed. I am not among those making a lot of comparisons between Iraq and Nam, but psychologically, the sense that there is nowhere that is safe, and no one that can be trusted is very similar, and many analysts of the deterioration of morale in VietNam have cited that sense of never being off your guard as the greatest cause of breakdown, and it is very linked to the mass of serious psychological issues veterans suffered after the war was over.
our Army is not meant to be an occupying police force, is it any wonder they are vunerable and feel unsafe?
Bush got his wish. How about backing up his words with more troops instead of less? http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...9nov09,1,1289206.story?coll=la-home-headlines Iraq Seen as Al Qaeda's Top Battlefield Terrorist network and its affiliates are aiding Hussein loyalists, coalition officials say. By Richard C. Paddock, Alissa J. Rubin and Greg Miller, Times Staff Writers BAGHDAD — Answering Osama bin Laden's call for holy war in Iraq, hundreds of followers from at least eight nations have entered the country and are playing a major role in attacking Western targets and Iraqi civilians, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. Operatives of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and affiliated extremist groups are collaborating with Saddam Hussein loyalists, officials say, forming an array of shadowy alliances that are emerging as one of the biggest challenges to U.S.-led efforts to bring stability to the war-torn country. Some officials believe that Iraq is replacing Afghanistan as the global center of Islamic jihad and becoming the prime locale for extremist Muslim fighters who are eager to confront Americans on Arab soil. As many as 2,000 Muslim fighters from as far as Sudan, Algeria and Afghanistan are operating in Iraq, officials say. Ansar al Islam, an Iraqi group that was previously active in northern Iraq, also has made a comeback, officials say. The Bush administration says Ansar has ties to Al Qaeda. Although many of the foreign militants likely operate in small cells independent of any central command, others appear to have hooked up with Hussein loyalists who provide money, materiel and logistical support. In exchange, the foreigners provide suicide bombers and experience in guerrilla tactics. While authorities have acknowledged the presence of some of the fighters, the role they are playing in the anti-American insurgency appears to be increasing — and their unconventional tactics make them a formidable force. Foreign fighters are suspected of taking part in as many as a dozen suicide bombings that have killed more than 200 people in the last three months, including four nearly simultaneous attacks in Baghdad on Oct. 27. "Since mid-July we have seen the reconstitution of Ansar al Islam and Al Qaeda," L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the U.S.-led civilian administration, said at a briefing of visiting Americans last week. "They are coming back into Iraq." Jalal Talabani, the current president of Iraq's Governing Council, estimates that 500 to 2,000 Islamic militants from foreign countries are operating in Iraq, including some who may have arrived before the war started. Some officials of the U.S.-led coalition cite the same figure. The largest group of militants is from neighboring Syria, officials say, while others have come from Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Palestinian territories. "The big majority of those criminals who are committing terror actions are from Al Qaeda" and associated militant Muslim organizations, Talabani said. "Those who are making suicide attacks are from Islamic fundamentalist groups." Before the war, President Bush contended that Al Qaeda was active in Iraq. But it was not until several months after the U.S.-led occupation began that Islamic extremists apparently took advantage of the postwar chaos and started launching terrorist attacks. U.S. officials acknowledge that they are hobbled in their efforts to stem the apparent surge in Islamic extremism because they have little information about the attackers or their activities. Authorities believe that some of the fighters are Al Qaeda operatives and others are members of extremist groups affiliated with the network. Officials suspect that the groups operate as independent cells but are cooperating to some degree with one another and with Hussein loyalists seeking to regain power. In September, Bremer told reporters in Washington that 248 foreign fighters had been arrested in Iraq, including 19 suspected Al Qaeda members. It is unclear when the arrests took place. Bin Laden, who was critical of Hussein while he was in power, has repeatedly called on Muslims to go to Iraq and avenge the U.S. invasion. "God knows if I could find a way to your field, I wouldn't stall," a voice identified as Bin Laden's said in an audiotape released in mid-October. "You my brother fighters in Iraq ... I tell you: You are God's soldiers and the arrows of Islam, and the first line of defense for this [Muslim] nation today." It is difficult to gauge the extent of ties between Hussein loyalists and the foreign fighters. Some officials believe that a new alliance between Al Qaeda-trained foreigners and former agents of the Mukhabarat, Hussein's intelligence service, is behind some of the terrorist attacks. "They are now fully operational and clandestine and working with terrorist groups to start hitting targets," said Iyad Allawi, a member of the Governing Council and its security committee. "They are getting more clever, and we will see more attacks in the weeks ahead." In the battle against the U.S. presence in Iraq, the foreign fighters bring with them experience as guerrilla warriors who are skilled in reconnaissance and mounting surprise attacks while keeping a low profile. The Hussein loyalists can offer their knowledge of local targets and the location of caches of weapons that could be used to make bombs. Top Iraqi operatives can contribute cash, much of it stolen shortly before or during the war. The Iraqi insurgents may also be in contact with sympathizers who work near American or international targets. It appears, for instance, that some of the Iraqis working at the United Nations at the time of the August bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad had worked there during Hussein's regime. Allawi said recent intelligence indicated that former Mukhabarat agents and Al Qaeda or its affiliates were forming a "field command" that would be responsible for operations against Americans and their supporters. According to these reports, attacks would increasingly target the Americans and British, the leading members of the coalition that ousted Hussein, he said. U.S. officials say there are an average of 29 attacks a day on coalition forces, most of them low-level incidents apparently staged by Hussein supporters. Some major attacks also appear to be the work of Hussein loyalists, including the downing of a Chinook helicopter near the town of Fallouja on Nov. 2 that killed 16 people and the shelling of Baghdad's Rashid Hotel on Oct. 26, which killed one and injured seven. But other attacks bear the stamp of Al Qaeda: in particular, suicide car bombings of targets that are carefully selected for maximum psychological effect and to inflict a large number of casualties. "The goal in hitting these targets is to create chaos, especially in Baghdad," Allawi said. Authorities were able to establish the role of foreign extremists in the Oct. 27 bombings when police foiled a planned attack on a fourth Baghdad police station. The would-be suicide bomber rammed a police barricade with his SUV, which was packed with explosives. The vehicle did not explode. When the man jumped out and threw a hand grenade at police, an officer shot and wounded him. "Iraqis are traitors!" the attacker shouted at police, authorities say. "I am an Arab, you cowards! Allahu akbar [God is great]!" Initially thought to be a Syrian, the would-be bomber was a Yemeni who entered the country through Syria, authorities say. He is believed to be in U.S. custody. There was no indication what he might have told investigators. Ahmad Shyaa Barak, a member of the Governing Council who sits on its security committee, said authorities recently arrested another foreign militant who apparently was casing a building in Baghdad. The man's passport showed that he had been to Afghanistan four times, including a six-month stay during which authorities suspect he attended an Al Qaeda training camp. He was turned over to coalition investigators. "They captured him on the street," Barak said. "People were suspicious of him. He had a camera, and he was trying to take photos of a building that was a possible target." In the last three months, Iraq has seen 13 vehicle bomb attacks. Most of them were suicide bombings, authorities say. The targets have included one of Iraq's holiest Shiite Muslim shrines, police stations, U.N. offices, U.S. facilities and the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Most of the victims have been Iraqis. Iraqi officials say the willingness to commit suicide and to target civilians are uncharacteristic of attacks by Hussein loyalists but are a common tactic for Islamic terrorists. U.S. and Iraqi authorities as well as former agents of the Mukhabarat suspect that Islamic terrorists were involved in the deadliest attacks: the Aug. 19 car bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people; the Aug. 29 bombing of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf that killed 120 people; the Oct. 12 bombing of the Baghdad Hotel that killed seven people; and the Oct. 27 attacks on the police stations and Red Cross that killed at least 35 people. Two of the attacks may have been intended as assassinations of widely respected leaders who could have played a key role in stabilizing and reconstructing Iraq: the esteemed Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr Hakim, who was killed in the Najaf bombing; and U.N. Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, a strong advocate of handing over power to a new Iraqi government, who was killed in the U.N. headquarters blast. Some officials fear that a growing Islamist movement in Iraq could give a boost to the extremist cause and train a new core of Muslim fighters, just as the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union did in the 1980s. A senior U.S. intelligence official in Washington said Iraq has emerged as the focal point for Islamic jihad, becoming the most active front in the movement and the top priority for Muslim fighters who want to confront the United States. The assessment, shared by analysts at the CIA and other agencies, underscores how in a matter of months Iraq has supplanted Afghanistan, Chechnya and other international trouble spots as the focus of the jihad cause. "The fact that the U.S. military is there in force, that this is a core Arab state, that [the U.S. occupation] has been the biggest issue in world affairs in the last few months all add up to it being a highly important, highly active place" for jihadis, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Iraq is a top priority for jihadis in the Arab world, who have chafed at the presence of American troops in places such as Saudi Arabia for years but now confront the U.S. occupation of a nation in the heart of their region. Asked whether Iraq was now the primary destination for Islamic fighters, the official said: "Far and away, no question about it." He added that Iraq had earned that distinction because of its "size, prominence, importance and number of Americans to shoot at." Although many in the West have been skeptical of Bush's contention that there was an alliance between Hussein and Islamic extremists, members of the Governing Council say the dictator began reaching out to the militants more than two years ago. Before the war, hundreds of Ansar al Islam militants were trained at camps in northern Iraq and hundreds of foreign fighters were trained at camps outside Baghdad, said Talabani, the Governing Council president. The Mukhabarat began forging ties with Arab extremists in 2001, Allawi said. During the war, at least 5,000 foreign fighters came from abroad to aid the regime, Iraqi officials estimate. Many entered through Syria, where buses would fill up in Damascus with Syrians, Palestinians, Jordanians and occasionally Moroccans and Tunisians, according to injured fighters interviewed in Damascus, the Syrian capital, after their return. There is no estimate of how many fighters stayed behind after the war ended. With the U.S. occupation, Iraq no longer had border guards, creating opportunities for militants to enter. The crossings opened up, and people streamed freely into Iraq. "I'm afraid to say, it is going to get worse before it gets better," Allawi said. "They are an evil group. They are looking at Iraq as their haven and as the staging post to hit at every decent and civilized target." Paddock and Rubin reported from Baghdad, and Miller from Washington.
