About Iraq

David Rosenak asked:


“Victory” is when you have successfully achieved your mission.

In 2002, we were told that Saddam Hussein had amassed stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that were a “Growing and gathering threat to our safety and security”. If we did not act, “We would awake to see the mushroom cloud on the horizon”. On October 2, 2002, the United States Congress passed resolution H.J.Res.114 which required that Saddam dispose of his stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction and authorized military action if needed to force him to do so. The Congress enacted this resolution as a necessary step before requesting that the United Nations Security Council pass a similar resolution. On November 8, 2002 the U.N. enacted resolution 1441 offering Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations”. To ensure that Iraq would dispose of its stockpiles of WMDs the U.N. required that Saddam furnish a listing of all weapons currently on hand, and an accounting for what had become of all weapons that he had had when inspectors had previously been in Iraq. The U.N. also required that Saddam allow new teams of inspectors to come to Iraq to look everywhere and talk to everyone who might know about weapons, to verify the list, and to oversee the disposal of the stockpiles of WMDs. Saddam complied, and claimed that he had no WMDs.

Our mission was to rid the world of the menace of Saddam’s stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The inspectors never found any WMDs nor any indication that there had been any since the last time inspectors were there. In all the years since, all evidence indicates that there were no WMDs. Mission Accomplished, we had achieved Victory in Iraq before we began.

But wait! As we began to drop bombs on Iraqis, it was announced that “Operation Iraqi Freedom” had begun. There was a new mission. We would free the Iraqis from the clutches of an evil dictator, and they would thank us with chocolates and flowers. A few weeks later, after our campaign of “Shock and Awe”, we toppled the giant statue of Saddam. The evil dictator was gone. If we had left the army in tact, left the national, regional and local governments in tact, installed an Iraqi to be in charge, we could have left. Mission Accomplished, we had achieved Victory in Iraq.

But wait! But when the Iraqis actually thanked us with suicide bombers and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) we had another new mission. Iraq would become a Democracy - a shining beacon that all countries of the Middle East would want to emulate. We launched a campaign to rid the government of members of the Baath Party, which included everyone who had had any position of power or authority. We developed a cute “deck of cards” with pictures of all of the most powerful people, and arrested them. We held an Election and proudly took pictures of people holding up their purple dyed fingers. We turned out the Sunni ruling class, and put the majority Shia in charge. We created a Democracy. Mission Accomplished, we had achieved Victory in Iraq.

But wait! We had upset the social order. The rich and powerful didn’t like it, and they had hundreds of thousands of unemployed young men that we had dismissed from the army to form into tools of violence. As the country descended into civil war, and instead of a shining beacon, Baghdad became a city of darkness, violence, and rotting sewage, we had a new mission. We would “Stay the Course”, we would not “Cut and Run”, which would dishonor all the brave efforts of our troops. If we did not “Fight them There” we would have to “Fight them Here” - we must not “Embolden” the enemy. “They” would follow us home. And so we have stayed.

And then came “The Surge!” Which sounds like an overpowering show of strength to overwhelm the “enemy”, but in fact was just building the number of troops back to its former level, and changing tactics. Instead of trying to kill everyone who opposed us, we began to talk with them, negotiate, buy their cooperation, and form alliances–recommendations from the “Iraq Study Group” proposed years ago, but rejected at that time. Our new mission is to have Iraqis kill us and kill each other more slowly than they did before “The Surge”. Mission Accomplished, we have achieved Victory in Iraq.



Harry

DIRT asked:


Hi. My friend has been in Iraq for a month now and is hankering for some homemade cookies. I want to send him chocolate chip, etc. but I’m afraid they’ll melt/be stale by the time he gets them. Any suggestions on what I can bake ( he deserves homemade, so store bought isn’t an option ) or how I can ship them so they won’t be a mess when he gets them? Thanks.

Tyrone

Michael Payne asked:


Expect this fall’s election to be flooded with political rhetoric and populist calls for a deliciously swift exit from Iraq. Digest the hypocrisy and move on. It’s the past. It’s done.

In an election that’s largely to the advantage of the Democrats, the American people will see through fragile liberal intentions and move on. The concern of the people now should not be why we entered Iraq, but why we must stay. Listen to me now: swallow your infectious desire to enlist in the zeitgeist and embrace the need to protect your nation from an evolving threat.

The Democratic approach to this threat is a rapid withdrawal of troops. They believe the growing number of fatalities and financial burden outweigh the need to end the hostility and political turmoil in the Middle East. While reconciliation for the tragic loss of life can never be achieved, those brave Americans will not die in vain. We will not compromise their efforts. We will finish the job.

Those who speak out against the Iraqi occupation lean on the unjust reasons for war as rationale for a withdrawal of troops. I repeat: It’s the past. It’s done. The drastic consequences of such actions would ensure the maturation of terrorism in Iraq. What Democrats view as a cessation to the loss of life and bleeding financial burden is a biased perspective from across the Atlantic.

In the case of a Democratic presidency, troops will be withdrawn within a short period of time. The morale of the world’s greatest military will plummet. What is to become of a military that retreats in the face of boorish Middle Eastern tactics? For one, al-Qaeda will undoubtedly claim victory in Iraq and sound their trumpets across the continent. While that may be a petty price to pay for the reassurances of a withdrawal, consider the breadth of that call. It will not go unanswered. Extremists across the globe will thirstily join the ranks of the organization that sank the US. al-Qaeda will thrive.

Feeding off the hype of a withdrawal, al-Qaeda decides to again attack the US. Suppose that attack rivals 9-11. What do we do? What CAN we do? We just shipped world’s reigning military superpower back across the Atlantic under the pretense of defeat. Not only would the mobilization of such an army be financially exhausting, but who would be willing to do it? Would a Democratic president embrace a hypocritical attack message or cower behind “peace negotiations”?

Now suppose we withdraw and there is no such attack. Does the president expect insurgency to decline? No, the Democratic president would most likely take a laissez-faire approach to the violence and let the region go to hell. Expect a dramatic increase in violence and a full scale civil war to erupt. While such a situation may not directly affect us, consider the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Violence would seize the vicinity and oil would cease to flow out of the area. Timid politicians abashed by the great “R” word would step out of the closet to announce the global depression that is to come.

But there is a way. Ironically, the answer is a gradual withdrawal of troops. The surge was a first step in sustaining minimal levels of violence. Now General Petraeus needs to gradually withdraw troops and with each withdrawal assess the situation. If, after the assessment, violence remains at a minimal level, withdrawals may continue. Once the minimum level of troops is reached to maintain levels of violence, begin deploying Iraqi forces to respond to insurgency.

While our presence is needed, many Iraqis are hostile to it. We must allow Iraq to maintain its sovereignty by forcing them to use their security forces against al-Qaeda. The problem is that we do not yet know how well an Iraqi force would respond to such threats. Should the violence reach a point beyond containment, many Iraqis will feel pressured to take sides – Sunni, Shia, etc. – and civil war will break out. We are there for support, but our presence is not indefinite.

Should a rapid withdrawal of troops occur, expect anarchy to downpour on Iraq. Nobody wants war. Sometimes it’s necessary.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse . . .” - John Stuart Mill



Corey

Amanda asked:


My son’s father is being deployed to Iraq in May, but leaves in March for his training. Child support is already court ordered, but I know that there will be a huge increase in his pay once he leaves. What should I do about getting child support increased? Should I contact his national guard unit or child support enforcement now or should I wait? If I wait until he has gone, how do I show his income?
He is ordered to pay, but has just started to pay because he will most likely to have to serve 30 days before he leaves. His court date is on the 18th for that. He is over 3000 behind already.
He is in the national guard so when we processed the orders he was working a minimum wage job. His pay will increase.

Karen

jess asked:


Our country is spending trillions of dollars a year in iraq, and we aren’t even doing what we are there for to begin with? Should the U.S. stop focusing on other people and help our own for awhile? Iraq or America?

Ellen

Bill Murphy Jr. asked:


A great gulf exists between American military and civilian societies. But paradoxically, it can be hard to tell young veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from their peers who haven’t served. As I wrote a book about West Point recently, I would visit with vets who had left the Army and were attending some of America’s most prestigious universities. I was struck that the veterans were often the ones walking around campus with the longest hair, and the most stylish clothes. Spot a guy with a high-and-tight haircut and a wardrobe looking straight out of the AAFES at Fort Bragg — odds are he’s a wannabe who reads too many Tom Clancy novels and never served a day in the military.

But soldiers and veterans want to be noticed. That’s not to say they want to be singled out, but I found over and over as I wrote my book that they want civilians to pay attention to their collective service. Soldiers talked with me for thousands of hours, and even gave me access to their diaries, their letters, the “sent mail” folders of their yahoo and gmail accounts. They know their stories are worth telling. And what’s more, they recognize that the rest of us need to know. We need to understand.

I did more than six hundred interviews for In a Time of War. I recorded most of them, and paid people to write transcripts. Here’s a sample of what I heard:

Joe DaSilva was assigned to lead a platoon of soldiers in Kuwait just days before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“I pulled everyone in that night, and I told them, look . . . I’m not going to lie. I don’t know what awaits us on the other side of that berm. I have no idea but I’ll tell you this . . . [I]f I have to give my life for any of you I would do that in a heartbeat . . .

“And I had soldiers after that come up to me and telling me that they don’t know why but just hearing that from their lieutenant made them feel better. I knew they weren’t B.S.-ing me because months down the road we would talk about how they felt when I took over . . . They were brutal.  They were talking about tying [me] up in the back of a humvee . . . Some of the other platoons were joking with them, saying, You guys are going to die!  You guys are going to die!”

Drew Sloan was nearly killed when his humvee was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan. He turned down a medical discharge, endured a year of surgeries, and recovered to go to Iraq. When an IED went off right in front of his humvee, he was surprised by his own reaction. He smiled broadly and reached out to bump fists with a sergeant in the front seat.

“Having a bomb go off close by to you can’t help but remind you about your own mortality,” he explained later. “And being reminded of that makes you feel really alive.”

Eric Huss served an intense Iraq tour, taking over for a lieutenant who had been killed in action. I interviewed Eric and his wife, Julie, in a brew pub in Denver, just after he got off active duty.

“I didn’t let him drive for a while when I was in the car,” Julie explained. “And his short term memory was non-existent.”

“I talked to a lot of different guys,” Eric said. “It’s about a year before your short term memory comes back.”

“I haven’t heard that,” I replied.

“I’ve been trying to, like, psychoanalyze it, and here’s what some friends and I have come up with. You’re doing a job.  It’s kind of a crappy job.  You go through a lot of stress on many different levels.  Regardless of the stress you face you still have to get up the next day and do the same missions over and over again, whether it be a different patrol, a different IED, a different guard shift — whatever the case may be. Regardless of who shot at you the day before, whether you got mortared the day before, you know, etc., etc. And as a defense mechanism in order to help you cope, we figure that over time you start to basically, automatically, kind of forget a lot of what just recently happened to you, so you can kind of cope and live in the present . . . [W]hatever happened to you that day or the day before, you still have to continue on that mission regardless. As a result, you act, react, and then dismiss it and try not to dwell on it. Because otherwise it’d be so hard to get out of bed the next day and do the same damn thing.”

War is a horrible thing, and not all of the real-life characters in my book survived Iraq. I interviewed Jen Bryant, the widow of Lieutenant Todd Bryant, about the day she learned his fate.

“I was in my classroom waiting for all my students to come back up from lunch, and the assistant principal came in and said to me there’s somebody in the office. We need you in the office. My whole chest caught . . . And so I walk in the office and for a split second I was relieved because I didn’t see any officers. And I thought it’s okay. And I just looked around for someone to tell me what was going on. And one of my students was in there, and she’s like, ‘Oh, they’re in there,’ pointing to the principal’s office in back . . . I saw my principal standing there, and I just looked to my right, and there’s four or five officers standing, wearing their class As. And one of them was one of the generals at Fort Riley.

“I just hit my knees and I started saying, No, no, no. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. And I remember General Kearney, like, kneeling down beside me. And he took my hand. He just kept holding my hand. And I screamed. I kept saying, No! No! No!”

About one and a half million Americans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  They want us to notice them. It’s disturbing, to say the least, to come home from a war only to find that nobody notices anymore. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s apathy.

We owe these veterans quite a bit.  But before all else, we owe them the duty to pay attention. And to listen.

©2008 Bill Murphy Jr.



Frank

John Barell asked:


McCain on Victory in Iraq

 

            In 2002 Senator John McCain told us that the impending Iraq invasion was a “well-planned effort. . .not very difficult. . . fairly easy. . .[with] victory in a short period of time.”

            “Well planned”?  “Not very difficult?”

            It was somewhere between the invasion, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue and his capture that the insurgency became a real problem and some like Senator McCain began to say we didn’t have enough troops and listed all of the mistakes made in the prosecution of this war.  Would that some had listened to Colin Powell and General Shinseki earlier!

            Now, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention this past Monday Senator McCain described the Iraq operation as similar to driving a bus into a ditch, “and then after five years and a trillion dollars and 4,000 lives lost, you are getting the bus halfway out of the ditch. . .” 

He went on to note that both he and Senator Obama want to bring troops home from this war.  “The great difference,” he told the veterans, “is that I intend to win it.”

            Senator McCain is often claiming that he will never put politics and voting for him ahead of winning this war. Indeed, he often claims that those who disagree with this stance on winning in Iraq are placing personal ambition ahead of doing what’s right or best for America.  He and his surrogates are often heard saying “We will put America first.”

            It seems as if those who disagree with him are un-American, unpatriotic.

            But, just two days prior to this Florida address on Saturday evening Senator McCain told Rick Warren at the Saddleback Civil Forum that  General David Petraeus is “one of the great military leaders in American history, who took us from  defeat to victory in Iraq.”

            Now, Senator McCain did not say, General Petraeus is in the process of taking us to victory.”  Nor did he claim that Petraeus “is taking us toward victory.”

            No, the claim was that Petraeus “took us from defeat to victory in Iraq.” 

            We’ve won!  We’ve achieved his goal of winning, defeating al Qaeda, and stabilizing Iraq!

            Maybe the Senator mis-spoke.  Perhaps he confused his verb tenses and meant to use the so-called “present continuous” (“is taking us”) rather than the simple past (“took”).

            This is an understandable mix-up in a complex language like English.

            So, what if he meant that Petraeus has indeed achieved victory?  What do we do now?  What is our strategy?  To continue the draw-down of Surge forces, those 30,000 troops that have helped stabilize the country—together with the Sunni Awakening and the standing down of the Shia militias controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr?  Accelerate our withdrawal along a time-table approved by Prime Minister Maliki?

            But what if Senator McCain did in fact get his verb tenses confused? What if he meant Petraeus is taking us toward victory?

            What is our definition of this term victory?  Some have said, “A stable Iraq that can defend itself.”  But what does this look like?

 What would be the conditions on the ground that would indicate such a status? 

                        Reduction in violence for all.

                        Sustainable political agreements amongst the Sunni, Shia and Kurds about elections, oil revenues and who serves in the government.

                        The full “standing up” of the Iraqi forces to defend their country and its borders.

                        Functioning civic processes and organizations: a free press; an equitable legal system; schools open continuously.

                        Resources available to all citizens; fuel oil, electricity, sewage, goods and services in open, risk-free markets.

                        Support from neighbors in the region

            And a government that supports the United States?

            Victory involves some or all of these, but if we never define our goal, we will work toward it indefinitely.

And if we are still striving toward victory, what is our strategy for achieving it? 

Just doing more of the same is an unreflective way of never achieving our goals.

            Any strategy should keep in mind that General Petraeus has also told members of Congress earlier this year that our success in Iraq will not be primarily military.  We will have to use a combination of military force and skilled diplomacy—more the latter than the former.

            Let’s hear more straight talk about how to achieve stability amongst all the factions in Iraq and with neighbors in the region , not just about “winning.”

            In an era of terrorism the terms “victory” and “defeat” are  outdated and mislead  us toward over-reliance on military means of attaining our goals. There will be no surrender ceremony on the decks of the USS Missouri or anywhere in this world.

We need other ways of achieving the desired goal of stability, and new concepts of what security means and looks like within an age of constant threats to our safety.

We are in  a continuous, arduous struggle to maintain our freedom, one requiring that we maintain a vigilant inquisitiveness about all policies, performances and philosophies.

 

 

John Barell

Author of Quest for Antarctica—A Journey of Wonder and Discovery (2007)

www.morecuriousminds.com

           

           

           

            



Martha

godschild asked:


My bf got deployed to Iraq. What are the tips that were used to keep your relationship strong while they were over there.
He left on monday and I havent heard from him as yet.

Barry

Shelby P asked:


Saw a news story today, 9/14/08, about the Defense Department selling Billions of dollars of weapons to Iraq.

This of course seems shady since we sold weapons to Iraq in the early 80’s and then went in and destroyed them and also sold weapons to the Taliban a decade ago and then went in and destroyed them.

Can anyone tell me specifically what American companies are benefiting from this? I see that many of the airplanes are from Lockheed Martin.

Gary

Derek Drekland asked:


Man oh man! What is this world coming to? Has it gotten so bad that you now have to consider going to Iraq to find a job? That my friend, is a question that you are going to have to answer for yourself but the fact is that Iraq is the next big gold rush for fantastic paying jobs of all types.

Safer Then South Side Chicago

Hey! Don’t let the news hype fool you either, because the fact is that urban areas in the state that you now live in are in fact more dangerous to visit that the cities of Iraq. Also, most of the violence in Iraq has subsided so it is much safe place to live and work in now.

Good News and Bad News

The bad news for Iraq is the whole country is in real bad shape. Everything is completely worn out due to neglect, sabotage or warfare. The good news for job seekers is that Iraq has the money to rebuild, to the tune of billions of dollars in oil revenue money stashed away.

Get Your Stuff in Order

Your first step would be to get a passport and start looking into what it takes to get a visa. Also, you will definitely want to research into any laws or rules that apply to non resident workers. Then you will need to get your resume in order.

Go there and Look…Thats Crazy!!!

You can begin your search online and you should have no trouble finding material to read and explore. However; if you have the time and the money you may want to consider heading on over there. What!? You say!! Go and personally look for a job in the country that you want to find work in? What a crazy concept!

Go Low Key and “Local”

There are some basic rules that apply when you visit any foreign country. Rule one, is that they don’t care that you are American and  either do the people at the American embassy, so leave your American flag at home. In fact, it doesn’t hurt to try to go a bit “local” with regards to your appearance.



Todd