This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
What US Veterans Say About The Iraq Fiasco: "When I Left In 2009, I Said In 5 Years There'll Be A Civil War"
With Iraq having succumbed to sectarian violence worse than anything observed in recent history, which accordint to many was merely exacerbated by US neocon ambitions to feed the ravenous military industrial complex, one can easily discard the opinion of all those on both sides of the argument - first those who said a US intervention was critical, as well as those who demanded a pull out. In fact, the only person who has preserved any credibility, and has not been "surprised" by the recent developments - is the man who said to never get involved in the first place - Ron Paul.
But what about those who were tasked with implementing US foreign policy, flawed as it may have been: America's veteran troops.
The WSJ has compiled several opinions of precisely those men and women who served in Iraq during the invasion and occupation. At least for some of them what is happening now is hardly surprising. "When I left in April 2009, I said, 'In five years there'll be a civil war,'" said Keith Widaman, a former Marine staff sergeant who helped train Iraqi law enforcement during his deployment. "The Sunnis were stockpiling weapons and they weren't using them against us. They were just holding on to them."
More:
Mr. Widaman, who currently lives in Washington, was stationed near the Syrian border, in Al Qaim, and said that area was mostly calm. But even there he noticed that the central government didn't have the support of the local populace. In Mosul the situation was even worse.
"There was just so much resistance, they never got it under control," he said.
Former Marine Staff Sgt. Keith Widaman in Washington on Friday. Lance Rosenfield/Prime for The Wall Street Journal
Others are just disappointed by the local army's response:
Matthew Sinsigalli's infantry battalion with the Army's 101st Airborne Division was part of the invasion in March 2003. He then spent most of his yearlong tour in Mosul, where his unit's duties included training Iraqi military and police.
"For them to just drop and flee, that's disheartening to see after all the effort put into it when we were over there," he said. "To see that fall, a place where we lost friends, that's really a blow," said Mr. Sinsigalli, who left the Army in 2004.
Yet others believe that America's mistake was simply refusing to make Iraq yet another colony of the US global empire:
Several of the veterans said the U.S. had a responsibility to stay involved. Chris Schuster, 34, a Navy veteran who served two tours in Iraq in 2003 to 2005, said he had mixed feelings watching reports this week about the developments in Iraq. "Once you're involved, you have a responsibility," he said. He is now a student at Clemson University in South Carolina.
At least one person realizes that the entire US approach of solving global conflict through the imposition of Pax Americana, and even more military involvement, especially where US interests are at stake, needs a major rethink:
William "BJ" Ganem, who lost part of his left leg and suffered traumatic brain injury in Iraq in 2004 after an improvised explosive device hit his vehicle while on patrol, said he hopes the U.S. thinks hard about its approach, and takes a "holistic" view.
"I'm not sure we're understanding the problem happening in the Middle East," said Mr. Ganem, who lives in Reedsburg, Wis. "We need to spend time, step back and think about what the best approach is, what the root of the problem is."
However with so much corporate money at stake, the last thing the US mega-corps, for whom even the slightest delay in promoting re-escalation and not letting yet "another crisis go to waste" means lost revenue, can afford to do is wait.
Finally, while it is handy to poll the invaders, be it those sitting behind desks or wielding an M-16, all of whom hide behind the idealistic banner of "democratic liberation", perhaps the real answer should come from the Iraqis themselves what they want: was it their vision of a better world one which involved US armed presence in their (and neighboring) country, and one which has pushed sectarian violence and brutality to unseen levels.
And not just Iraq but Libya, Egypt, Ukraine, to name just a few from the past few years alone.
Sadly we will never get the real answer.
»
- 24478 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
##### SOLUTION TO ALL WARS #####
-----
Everyone who advocates war must buy weapons, fly to front line, and start fighting. This includes president, congress, media, executives in the military industrial complex, everyone.
Let's see how many wars are ACTUALLY necessary.
This approach will tell.
PS: And yes, they get to pay for their own weapons, ammo and airplane tickets. That's not asking too much if the war is necessary.
Just put them all on a boat, tow it out to sea and set up a turkey shoot. End of.
You wanna see an end to all wars? Bring back the draft and start drafting the children of the top 1% first. All wars will stop IMMEDIATELY.
!!!!! NO DRAFT !!!!!
If he who advocates war won't fight, forget it.
DING DING DING! right you are! virtually nobody in Congress who votes for war have ever even served in the Military.....like wise many "Chicken Hawk" citizens scream for war. Until you ask THEM to join in......Then its "er thats the day i shampoo...." lol
My brother did 2 tours. Al Taqaddum, Iraq and personally witnessed CIA dropping ISO certified pallets full of money out of a CH-46 Helicopter. Fucing money still had the NY FED wrapper on it. People have no idea how bad we fucked that country up... HMM-364 "Purple foxes"
the big question is; how do we get them to start dropping pallets of money on US cities?
Its the game plan everywhere. Beat our asses to the dirt and then offer us bribes to not kill them. In Afghanistan we simply bribe all of the war lords to not kill our troops and spend most of their time killing each other, in Iraq pretty much the same. In America they are handing out EBT cards, section 8 vouchers, disability payments and an unending stream of the same shit. They goal is dependency and control and will use force when the money won't due. The most important thing is to eliminate anyone of principle as they are the hardest to buy off. The Russians figured it out buy staving the Ukraine into submission nearly 100 years ago and they will do it again. Our leaders here in America think they are so much smoother, that we won't notice. Well many of us have but it is likely too late. If we remain principled we will likely disappear. Much like they have no homosexuals in Iran. Its a fucking miracle!
I guess we should give them credit, at least they are giving us a chance to adopt the prone position. Most people today seem to be content with just coming up for a good rationalization for killing someone.
Mainstream documentaries,
like the CBC's
"The Lies that Led to War"
or PBS's
"Bush's War"
present documented events whose meanings change significantly after one knows more correct information about 9/11/2001. E.g., in Part II of the PBS show, it mentions how Paul Bremer was from Kissinger Associates. For background details, see: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=L._Paul_Bremer
Those shows present the picture of factions inside the government of the USA being in conflict with each other, and working out their difference to result in Iraq policy. It is clear to me that the secret government's fascist plutocracy, that arranged to make 9/11 happen, ended up taking control of the war in Iraq. Paul Bremer, in particular, had the task of making sure that war in Iraq would fail to result in any better peace in Iraq, but rather would be driven to chaos. I believe that Bremer's disastrous "mistakes" were (secretly) intended to do what they did.
Bremer's decisions and policies only make sense after one somewhat better understands the players and purposes behind 9/11. It was not a surprise to me to learn Bremer worked with Kissinger, & thus had evil ulterior purposes, which explain otherwise crazy incompetence. Bremer implemented his policies that would favour all of the evil intentions of the fascist plutocracy. After learning more about the information on 9/11, it becomes impossible to believe that officials were merely incompetent, but trying their best. All the information available to me indicates very competently achieving ulterior evil goals. The same thing applies to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those wars are not having bad outcomes due to incompetence. The evil results are being deliberately designed and caused. Believing that is why I find watching those documentary programs tough. (I have found that most of those original links to that kind of information tend to disappear after a while, which, again, does not surprise, although it disappoints me.)
It makes me angry and/or sad that it is so easy to make things worse. Hence, in general, the more one knows, the worse it gets. Watching these programs really makes things look worse. Such programs are relatively superficially, since they did not start with the correct understanding of the 9/11/2001 events. However, the facts they present can be reinterpreted better if one goes back to the beginning, and in those ways understands better what happened.
These wars advance the agenda of a "global fascist plutocracy" (for lack of any better label.) Those people do not care how much evil is done to the people of the USA, or Iraq, or elsewhere. The intentions are to benefit personally from being able to make things be worse. The people of the USA are being defeated and destroyed by being duped into belief in huge lies about 9/11, and then led to do more evil everywhere else, including, eventually, more than anything else, to themselves. However, the people who ended up having the most influence over what happened to make those wars happen, and to control the policies after those wars finished overt combat stages, have been deliberately doing what they could to sabotage and undermine everything, which they can continue to do, because their successful systems of organized lies and robberies continue to make them become more wealthy and politically powerful, in vicious feedback loops.
Most of the military efforts, in themselves, appear to have been quite competent. However, most civilian participation has been completely corrupted by a control of the agenda and policies by criminally insane, evil people who desired goals that were always deceitful. The "war" in Iraq has gone so badly because that was really intended by those who really started it.
Amongst the many documentary videos which I was once able to watch, but whose links are now broken was this one:
"Paul Bremer and 9/11"
The Brasscheck comments there were:
"In the early hours right after the 9/11 attacks, Paul Bremer appeared on NBC suggesting that Osama bin Laden was responsible. He was one of the first to float the name. What Bremer failed to mention is that as he appeared on television calmly speculating about who was responsible, 1,700 of the employees the company he worked for were "missing" as a result of the attack on the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
It later turned out that over 200 were killed, one of the biggest losses of any organization that day. Two years later, Bush put Bremer in charge of rebuilding Iraq. There he decided against the advice of all military and diplomatic experts to disband Iraq's army and put 400,000 armed and trained and then-cooperative soldiers in the street without any means of support and a major grudge against the US.
Bremer ... on TV right after 9/11 starting the Osama did it myth and then in Iraq guaranteeing a massive and deadly insurgency.
What was Bremer doing before 9/11? Among other things, he was the Managing Director of Kissinger Associates. You know, Henry Kissinger. The former Harvard Professor turned adviser to the Rockefeller family who became Nixon's foreign affairs adviser during the Vietnam War which Nixon extended for eight years beyond LBJs term.
Still think the "botched" occupation of Iraq was a mistake or a surprise? Like Vietnam, the Iraq War is intended to bleed America dry financially and isolate it diplomatically - and the very same cast of characters have their fingerprints all over it and profiting from it.
But try to find this very basic background information in the news media, mainstream or alternative ..."
I FIND THAT KIND OF INFORMATION TENDS TO BE DISAPPEARING, RATHER THAN BEING MADE AVAILABLE. The overwhelming vast majority of people are abysmally ignorant, and are almost certainly going to want to stay that way, continuing to believe in the bullshit that they were brainwashed to believe in. I see no practical political point to learning about the ways that the combined money/murder systems operate, because almost nobody else actually wants to understand those. But nevertheless, I REPEAT one of the crucial quotes that I have found explains the overview:
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/silent_weapons_quiet_wars.htm
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
Energy is recognized as the key to all activity on earth. Natural science is the study of the sources and control of natural energy, and social science, theoretically expressed as economics, is the study of the sources and control of social energy. Both are bookkeeping systems: mathematics. Therefore, mathematics is the primary energy science. And the bookkeeper can be king if the public can be kept ignorant of the methodology of the bookkeeping.
... In this structure, credit, presented as a pure element called "currency," has the appearance of capital, but is in effect negative capital. Hence, it has the appearance of service, but is in fact, indebtedness or debt. ... if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population (war, genocide)... They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act of destroying the creditor ... War is therefore the balancing of the system by killing the true creditors (the public ...)
THAT is the context in which I harp on the theme that we need intellectual scientific revolutions, to radically change the ways that we understand general energy systems, so that we can then apply that understanding to politics, and especially to militarism and the monetary systems, which are both currently based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds. The biggest bullies' bullshit social stories have dominated the philosophy of science, in similar ways that they have dominated everything else. Therefore, almost everything is BACKWARDS. One can not better understand things like the wars in Iraq unless one appreciates the degree to which one is looking into a Bizarro Mirror World Fun House, where everything appears to be backwards and distorted.
Philosophically, some of the most important ways that we think trace back to the beginnings of the Neolithic style of civilization, that began in the area of Iraq, and then spread out to conquer the whole world, with its systems of organized lies, operating robberies, which have spiraled around through the grand Ouroboros of Incorporated Robberies, to return to Iraq in the forms it has now.
Our fundamental concepts of time and space can be metaphorically traced back to "Babylon." Most crucially, regarding the fights over oil resources, and the accounting for the use of those resources, inside of the human civilization energy systems, the ways we think about time and space are BACKWARDS. That took the form of inserting an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations, so that power and information would end up having positive values, rather than negative values, which is what the mathematical physics itself reveals is the way things are.
The on-going wars in Iraq are the manifestation of almost infinite tunnels of deceits, becoming more and more entangled in themselves, in hyper-complicated and crazy ways. Overarching all of that is the emerging problems of APES WITH ATOMIC BOMBS. The special theory of relativity that made atomic bombs possible reveals that they ways that we thought about time and space were wrong, and utterly backwards. Furthermore, those philosophical mistakes continued to flow through our basic understandings of energy systems in ways which are profoundly mistaken, and backwards, because the history of science reversed the meaning of entropy.
Everything happening in the increasingly insane wars in Iraq displays the fundamental problems with Neolithic Civilization. Human civilizations are manifestations of general energy systems, which are understood by almost everyone BACKWARDS, due to the history of successful warfare having been based on deceits. Thus, the events on 9/11/2001 were an inside job, false flag attack, which were bolstered by more lies to start a war against Iraq, which war was initially "won" on the superficial military level, while the covert civilian control of that military activity had an ulterior evil agenda to deliberately lose the peace. That is all getting worse, faster, with the current tragic trajectory towards more genocidal wars abroad, as well as imposing democidal martial law at home, because the government of the USA has become the biggest form of organized crime and terrorism, which is controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals and terrorists.
However, almost everyone who partially becomes more aware of those social facts then tends to still stay inside of the same frame of reference of false fundamental dichotomies, and related impossible ideals, when proposing their "solutions." Meanwhile, the REAL PROBLEMS are much more profound, because those have become that the basic ways that we think are BACKWARDS. That is how and why apes with atomic bombs is on such a terribly tragic trajectory, manifesting technologies which are trillions of times more powerful, being used to promote the same old-fashioned money/murder systems, which enforce frauds, that can never be made to become true, no matter how much violence is used to try to back up those lies.
Theoretically, we should go through intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to cope with the EXISTENCE of phenomena like globalized electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, and all the other rapidly developing weapons of mass surveillance and mass destruction. Human beings are now mired in the situation of partially understanding energy systems better, such as from the industrial revolution onwards, whereby the most important fights over the control of the money/murder systems have become the fights over the control of the profit from the oil resources.
However, from the industrial revolution onwards, the social debt engines, and the physical steam engines, have been understood in basically backwards ways, on the most profound philosophical levels, because the ways that Neolithic Civilization understood time and space were basically backwards. Therefore, we are still measuring time in the old Babylonian ways, and although most of the world now uses the metric system to measure space, the coordinate system is still the cube, rather than the tetrahedron, as also goes back to the beginnings of Neolithic Civilization.
Those are the most basic reasons how and why the Middle East is so totally screwed up, as the place where the globalized Neolithic style of civilization began, whose Ouroboros of Incorporated Robberies has now returned there, as manifesting in the current state of Iraq. On level after level, we tend to be understanding things backwards, and therefore, constantly respond to problems in backwards ways, which always make those problems become even worse, faster.
The current paths we are on are for the collapses into chaos to be deliberately driven to become worse, faster, until the conditions are sufficiently deteriorated in order to cause weapons of mass destruction to be used, to enable genocidal wars to be pumped up orders of magnitude greater than they have been so far. Simultaneously, the effects back in the USA are headed towards causing democidal martial law to attempted to be imposed, which too will backfire badly, since that too will be understood and done in basically backwards ways.
I WISH that I could come to some better conclusions, however, I can not find any reasonable way to do that. Any apparent optimism is due to irrational hopes, merely because that feels better. However, all the rational evidence and logical arguments indicate that the apes with atomic bombs are eventually going to blow the shit out of themselves, while anything else would require a series of political miracles, such as enough people going through enough scientific revolutions in the ways that they think and perceive their political problems, in order to decrease the degrees to which they believed in lies, and so, see everything backwards, and therefore, keep on proposing "solutions" which are backwards, and thus, always backfire badly.
this man is a traitor!
support the troops!!!
SUPPORT FREEDOM!!!
Baghdad Bob says: "If you send your American LGBT Marines to the Embassy we will bury them in Reggie's bunghole along with your half breed leader Obama's head".
I said Omar not Moar...