U.S. Was 'Clueless' on Counterinsurgency (says Paul Wolfowitz)

[sabra]

Source: NYSun

WASHINGTON — Paul Wolfowitz, in his first public remarks on the Iraq war in years, said the American government was "pretty much clueless on counterinsurgency" in the first year of the war.

The former deputy secretary of defense said yesterday that the force sent to Iraq was adequate for fighting Saddam Hussein's military, citing the speed with which American troops toppled the regime. But Mr. Wolfowitz said no one in the Bush administration anticipated that Saddam would order his security services to wage an insurgency after their formal defeat on the battlefield.

Mr. Wolfowitz's remarks came at a forum for a new book, "War and Decision," by the former no. 3 official at the Pentagon, Douglas Feith. In the book, Mr. Feith argues that America's greatest mistake in the war was establishing a coalition provisional authority instead of installing a group of Iraqi exiles in an interim government until elections could be held.

Mr. Wolfowitz said he agreed with his old colleague. But his remarks yesterday have special relevance, because in the run-up to the war, the deputy secretary of defense downplayed testimony from a retired Army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, who told Congress that postwar stabilization operations would require several hundred thousand troops.

...

"I think I said in my comments quoting Doug's book, no one anticipated this insurgency, a lot of people were slow to recognize it once it started," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "And I do think a real failure — I assign responsibility all over the place — was not having enough reliable Iraqi troops early enough and fast enough, because I think a sensible counterinsurgency strategy would not be to flood the country with 300,000 Americans, but rather to build up Iraqi forces among the population."

Read more: http://www2.nysun.com/article/75428

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/wcheney121.xml

In a 1994 television interview Mr Cheney, who was defence secretary in the 1990-91 Gulf War, said that it had been right not to seize Baghdad after driving Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait.

He said: "There would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off."

[tanyev]

1. Oh, yeah, things would have gone much better if we'd just installed Chalabi

as the leader of Iraq right away. Nothing would have gone wrong with that plan.



:sarcasm:

[wtmusic]

2. Can you believe it?

Or maybe you're just painfully stupid, Doug. :eyes:

[mr_hat]

3. No one could have expected an insurgency!

We were expecting flowers...

[hobbit709]

4. The neocons were clueless on pretty much everything.

They were equally adept at international policy, domestic policy and economics.
0=0=0=0.

[yardwork]

5. I call bullshit. Things have gone the way they expected.

Maybe some of them - Feith, perhaps - are so completely stupid they literally didn't know what was happening. But the leaders of this horror knew exactly what would happen, and it was all part of the plan.

[rudy23]

15. Exactly--why would anyone make themselves look this stupid, unless the alternative was much worse

Stupid > complicit

[CJCRANE]

22. Exactly.

And when the insurgency started to fade...sectarian fighting broke out.

Peace is the last thing that Bush-Cheney want...otherwise how can they justify keeping the troops there and Halliburton in business?

:shrug:

[barnel]

6. the utter shamelessness of neocons

" I assign responsibility all over the place —"

he's the bastard who pushed for this, it would have been his responsibility to weigh the costs

[TaffyMoon]

7. And Now This Bloody Handed Criminal Will Try To Make Money From

His Murderous Past.

[barnel]

8. did you really expect him to leave money on the table?

out of shame?

sorry, that's just not his nature

[RoccoR5955]

9. Yeah, Bushco, Inc. is the most clueless administration in history!

Someone buy them a clue, so that they can figure it out!
:kick:

[shain from kane]

10. Now we know why General Franks had such an opinion of Feith ---

Described by General Tommy Franks as either "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet" (according to Franks' autobiography) or "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the Earth" (according to Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack)

[yardwork]

16. Now Feith holds a tenured faculty position at Duke University's Political Science Dept.

Duke should be ashamed.

[Tansy_Gold]

11. Paul Wolfowitz was 'clueless' on insurgency (says U.S.)

Not long before the invasion, "60 Minutes" did a segment from Iraq. The reporter was speaking to a couple of young women students at Baghdad University. Both of these young women spoke flawless and only slightly accented English. Both of them vociferously opposed any U.S. invasion or other intervention, and swore that if the U.S. invaded, they and other Iraqis would fight to the death to protect their country from its enemies.

wolfowitz and Feith must have been doing the eyes-closed, fingers-in-ears, "lalalalala -- I can't hear you!" routine that night.

goddess, what lying stupid assholes these neocons be.



Tansy Gold

[Bragi]

12. Can't wait for Feith's Global Book Tour

Oh, wait a minute, there won't be a global book tour because Feith, like most of Bush administration henchmen, is just a tad reluctant to travel abroad, what with the possibility of war crimes charges being laid while in a foreign country.

Yee Haw! Looks great on 'em.

- B

[Hissyspit]

13. Fuck you, Paul Wolfowitz.

Special place in hell, asshole.

[14thColony]

14. Either he's a moron or he thinks I am...

"But Mr. Wolfowitz said no one in the Bush administration anticipated that Saddam would order his security services to wage an insurgency after their formal defeat on the battlefield."

Really? We were getting daily reports on the comings and going of the 20,000+ Fedayeen Saddam para-military group as well as the Special Republican Guard units. We knew they had been ordered to act as "stay-behind" forces to launch an insurgency immediately after the main US/UK forces had passed through an area, something that did in fact happen almost immediately. If "no one in the Bush administration anticipated" any of this then all of the following must be true:

- "No one in the Bush administation" had ever read a book or seen a movie about any other invasion ever in history, otherwise they would have known (like any 2nd grader would) that invasions virtually always result in insurgencies.

- "No one in the Bush administration" was bothering to read the reams of intelligence reports that the Fedayeen Saddam and the SRG had well-laid plans to conduct an insurgency, and were already activating those plans before the invasion.

- "No one in the Bush administration" ever bothered to ask the question "what if it doesn't go exactly as we've planned?" In war nothing EVER goes as planned.

Hey Paul, "America's greatest mistake in the war" was starting it to begin with. Everything after that was just various degrees of trying to bail out the Titanic with a pail.

[Rob H.]

17. "...no one anticipated this insurgency..."

A blatant lie--Col. Paul Hughes and Lt. Gen. Jay Garner warned L. Paul Bremer against dissolving the Iraqi army* (which Bremer did with Rumsfeld's full knowledge and support) because it would render unemployed roughly a quarter-million men who not only had military training, but were also armed. Bremer did it anyway and all but guaranteed that violence would follow. In fact, Bremer claims it was Douglas Feith--who reported to Wolfowitz, who in turn reported to Rumsfeld--who told him to do it! Cheney's slime is all over it, too, as is Chalabi's:

In his memoir, published last year, Bremer wrote that he was handed the orders—and told to announce them as soon as possible—by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. "We've got to show all the Iraqis that we're serious about building a new Iraq," Feith reportedly told him. "And that means that Saddam's instruments of repression have no role in that new nation."

Feith was a messenger, too, reporting directly to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and ultimately to Secretary Rumsfeld.

Did Rumsfeld write the order? Bob Woodward, in State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, quotes Rumsfeld as saying that the order came from elsewhere. Does that mean it came from the White House? My guess is it came from Vice President Dick Cheney, if only because his is one of the most leakproof offices in Washington. Had the order originated someplace else, that fact would have leaked by now. It's like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story; unbarking dogs in this administration, especially at this late date of decrepitude, tend to be the hounds in Cheney's kennel.

But where did Cheney get the idea? A good guess here is that it came from that familiar meddler of the era: the Iraqi exile, chief neocon guru, and suave banker-mathematician, Ahmad Chalabi.

Edit: italicized book title.

Edit #2: *They did think it would be wise to dissolve the Republican Guard, but not the Iraqi army proper.

[onager]

19. And lest we forget, "convicted bank swindler Ahmad Chalabi..."

...installing a group of Iraqi exiles in an interim government until elections could be held.

People who had to do the grunt work in Iraq are still pissed about that great idea. You can hear quite a few of them, military and civilian, speaking out in the great documentary No End In Sight/ (NEIS).

Among those folks, there's a general feeling that the CPA was INTENTIONALLY made as weak as possible. The plan was that the CPA would then be forced to turn to the Iraqi exiles for their "knowledge and expertise."

Then, eventually, the CPA would give up and "install" the exiles, especially Smilin' Ahmad Chalabi.

You know, install--the same word you use when putting a new toilet in your bathroom.

The people trying to get Iraq back on its feet were amazed that they couldn't get even the most basic data to do their jobs from the State Department or the Pentagon. Stuff like, "How many people are in the Iraqi Army, anyhow?" The answer was always: "Oh, check with Ahmad" (or somebody similar).

In NEIS, one retired military officer said he constantly asked for help, since he was running a one-man show. Eventually, his bosses in DC sent him a young woman who did not speak Arabic, had never been outside the USA, and had no discernible job skills. The officer acidly comments that she got her job because "Daddy made a big contribution to the GOP."

The CPA put her in charge of designing a new traffic control system for Baghdad.

:rofl:

[Rob H.]

25. I just watched "No End in Sight" this weekend!

IMO, it should be required viewing for every American. It was enlightening but also unbelievably infuriating, especially with regard to exposing what lying, responsibility-dodging weasels Rumsfeld and his minions are. I got the sense from watching it that ShrubCo couldn't have FUBARed postwar Iraq more thoroughly if they'd tried. :grr:

[Gman]

18. "No one anticipated..."

their standard answer. No one anticipated flying planes into buildings, no one anticipated a counter-insurgency, no one expected the damage from Katrina...

the list goes on and on... well then WTF are they doing?

[Amonester]

21. They R systematically destroying the US and the World.

And they do it shamelessly "in hopes they will get themselves and their selected few richer" doing it.

That's what they R doing.

[xxqqqzme]

27. Yea, this is the singularly most unimaginative

clueless nerd, neo-con bunch ever! Given these are all straussian acolytes, worshiping at the altar of the god friedman, disaster capitalism was their end goal.

Mission Accomplished!!!!

[Adsos Letter]

20. I seem to recall a certain General Shinseki...

warning that the number of US troops needed to stabilize and hold Iraq would need to be much higher. Of course, they disregarded his message...and fired the messenger...

[Preston120]

23. Isn't Mr. Wolfowitz's 15minutes of fame over yet?

[lebkuchen]

24. Wolfowitz is as sleezy as Scalia

They look like they lick the same comb.

[lonestarnot]

26. Wolfoshits should stick with what he does best, comb licking!

[FreepFryer]

28. Eastasia 'Clueless' on Oceania, says Upper Party member. The war is not against Eurasia. (n/t)

[paparush]

29. Clueless Comb Licker Claims Clumsy Catch 22

Yeah..cause illegally occupied countries almost never form an underground resistance..that only happens in the movies.

[hunter]

30. If Dick Cheney is Jabba the Hutt...

... Paul Wolfowitz is his annoying little pet, Salacious Crum.

If they happened to fall into the mouth of a Sarlacc... :party:

[ckramer]

31. Why do these people keep playing dumb after the fact?

Knowing that they were the designers and promoters of this senseless war.

[KakistocracyHater]

32. No one EXCEPT those whose careers they wrecked

or tried to destroy, "all those doves" knew; take the truth & replay it over & over, let it sink in.

[Virginia Dare]

33. No one anticipated the insurgency...

except for about a half a dozen or so Generals, who were summarily sacked.

Dougie Feith and Paul Wolfowitz are treasonous bastards. They knew exactly what was going to happen, and they did it anyway, in a
self-serving and aggrandizing exercise ultimately destined for failure.

[ryanmuegge]

34. McCain thought it was sound military strategy before he thought it was totally stupid.

Come on, even I could tell you that it was a powder keg of ethnic strife before we invaded. There was no way that this was going to be a smooth transition to a stable constitutional democracy.

They HAD to know that an "insurgency" would develop. These are smart people. This isn't even an insurgency; it's a complete civil war between different ethnic factions. We're just arming both sides now (OMG! PETRAYYYUS IS A GENIUS! THE SURGE IS WORKING! REAL PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE!).

I think they wanted this thing to be chaos so they'd have an excuse for staying. This is much more Machiavellian than people give it credit for.

[Magleetis]

35. Pure arrogance

and evil.

[PassingFair]

36. "Who could have foreseen?"

:puke:

London CLAIRVOYANT CONVENTION: