Poll Shows Most Americans Doubt Victory in Iraq

Had we gone into Iraq with enough force to both defeat the Iraqui military (an easy thing to do) AND secure the rear areas (a more difficult task), we may have been done or close to it. I can think of two reasons why we didn't have the manpower. 1) A draft would have been needed. This would have been political suiicide. 2) Enlist the support of our so-called allies, as in the first Gulf war. Unfortunately for dub, there was no international sense of urgency for that.

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich explained in a National Public Radio interview why Vice President Dick Cheney provides such good red meat for satirists. Luckovich said, "First of all, he's sort of a colorless and seemingly humorless individual, and something about that type of person is sort of fun to caricature. And he's always so certain when he talks, like when he's on 'Meet the Press' – 'Well, we'll be greeted as liberators, Tim.' You know, he's so certain, and then he's just completely wrong ..." [Emphasis added.]

Just completely wrong? Recently I received the following letter from a soldier who served in Iraq:

In April 2004 I was in the first push through Fallujah after the four American contractors were murdered, desecrated and hung from a bridge. I was critically wounded after I was shot through the hip in a firefight and nearly bled out on the battlefield. It was six months before I was able to walk semi-normally on my own more than 20 feet unaided by crutches or a wheel chair. In December of 2004 I was medically retired, and even now over two years later I still cannot run and I honestly don't think I will be regaining that ability in this lifetime ...

Well, I have had multiple people ask me about what I think about everything going on over there and I always respond the same way ... I reach into my wallet and pull out a card and let them read it. It speaks for itself; I don't need to say a word. I received this shortly after the invasion in 2003, a young boy walked up to me with his father who was standing behind him with his hands on his shoulders and just reached out his hand and gave this to me ... Sure there are those who want us dead and gone and will do anything to get rid of us, but they are a minority.

The soldier enclosed a copy of the card. It has a big heart on the front, and inside it reads: "Thank you George Bush. Thank you American soldiers. Thank you Marines [sic] soldiers. To save us. We are so grateful. Your friend, Ali Ahmed. An Iraqi boy, 9 years old. 2003.4.15 Wedensday [sic]."

OK, so that's one soldier. But a reporter from the New York Times saw things the same way. On April 10, 2003, John F. Burns filed this story from Baghdad:

Saddam Hussein's rule collapsed in a matter of hours today across much of this capital city as ordinary Iraqis took to the streets in their thousands to topple Mr. Hussein's statues, loot government ministries and interrogation centers and to give a cheering, often tearful welcome to advancing American troops.

... Army and Marine Corps units moving into the districts of eastern Baghdad where many of the city's 5 million people live finally met the kind of adulation from ordinary Iraqis that American advocates of a war to topple Mr. Hussein had predicted ...

Much of Baghdad became, in a moment, a showcase of unbridled enthusiasm for America ...

American troops, but almost as much any Westerner caught up in the tide of people rushing into the streets, were met with scenes that summoned comparisons to the freeing of Eastern Europe 14 years ago ...

Shouts to the American soldiers of "Thank you, mister, thank you," in English, of "Welcome, my friend, welcome," of "Good, good, good," and "Yes, yes, mister,' mingled with cries of "Good, George Bush!" and "Down Saddam!" ...

A middle-aged man pushed through a crowd attempting to topple a statue of Mr. Hussein outside the oil ministry with a bouquet of paper flowers, and passed among American troops distributing them one at a time, each with a kiss on the cheek.

A woman with two small children perched in the open roof of a car maneuvering to get close to a Marine Corps unit assisting in toppling a Hussein statue outside the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, the quarters for foreign journalists, wept as she shouted, "Thank you, mister, thank you very much."

Gen. Georges Sada, the No. 2 ranking general in the Iraqi air force, said the same thing when I interviewed him Feb. 9, 2006.

I said, "You said the president did the right thing in invading Iraq – "

"Excuse me," said Sada, "you say invading, I always say liberating ... In most provinces of Iraq and Kurdistan, the forces were received with cheers and flowers, in the South, it was the same thing in my province." The people living in the Sunni triangle did not consider Americans liberators, he explained, because Sunnis ran things. "When they found that this is all gone, of course they didn't like it."

The Iraqis show more optimism about their country than Americans show about theirs. According to a November 2005 American Research Group poll, 31 percent of Americans believe their household financial situations will improve over the next year. But, according to a December 2005 ABC News poll, 69 percent of Iraqis expect their lives to improve in the coming year.

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General Georges Hormuz Sada is a personal adviser to Iraq ’s Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and an adviser to the new Iraqi army. He is also the former President of the Evangelical Churches in Iraq .

AND I HEAR ALLAWI LIKES TO CUTOFF PEOPLE'S HANDS.

allowed christians to be generals.

After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, Sada sided with the US-led government, and served as spokesman for the interim leader Iyad Allawi, and was appointed as National Security Advisor.

Sada: Iraq possessed WMD and they were there, and they were chemical and biological, and nuclear weapons. He have also deals with China to make it in China this time, not in Iraq, because F-16s of Israelis have destroyed the Iraqi nuclear project, therefore, he designed a new system to have the atom bomb to be done in China, and he would only pay the money, and he did for $100 million, and $5 million were paid for down payment. I know the bank, I know the branch, and I know the accountant who did it.

will certainly get him in good with the occupiers.

David Kay: Exclusive interview
Chemical, biological, nuclear programs ‘rudimentary’

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• Kay: No evidence of WMD
Jan. 26: David Kay, former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, tells NBC's Tom Brokaw that he didn't find evidence of a nuclear program and he blames it on a flawed intelligence system.
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Tom Brokaw
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By Tom Brokaw
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Updated: 7:16 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2004
David Kay, who resigned last week as the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, now says he didn't find stockpiles of WMD — or evidence of a nuclear program well under way in Saddam Hussein's Iraq — and he blames it on a greatly flawed intelligence system and analysis.

When I met Dr. Kay in Baghdad last summer he showed me the bales of documents he was confident would lead to the weapons. But instead, he says, Iraqi scientists told him Saddam's WMD program was in chaos.

David Kay: They describe in Iraq that was really spinning into a vortex of corruption from the very top in which people were lying to Saddam, lying to each other for money; the graft and how much you could get out of the system rather than how much you could produce was a dominant issue.

Story continues below ↓
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Tom Brokaw: You found evidence of programs that were in place but no weapons.

DK: There were a lot of small activities. Now, in the missile field it’s quite different. There were actually large, purposeful programs going on in that area. But in chemical, biological and nuke, it was rudimentary.

TB: David, as you know the vice president of the United States and Secretary of State Powell say, “We still don’t know the end result. We could still find these weapons.

TB: David, as you know the vice president of the United States and Secretary of State Powell say, “We still don’t know the end result. We could still find these weapons.

Iraqi Scientists: No WMD Program

July 31, 2003
(CBS)

(CBS/AP) Iraqi scientists interviewed by the U.S. deny that Saddam Hussein had restarted his nuclear weapons program or secretly developed chemical and biological weapons since U.N. weapons inspectors left the nation in 1998, the Washington Post reports.

The newspaper said interviews with four senior scientists and more than a dozen lower-level scientists have failed to yield any evidence to support the U.S. contention that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction.

The best known of these researchers, nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi, dug up parts and plans for a gas centrifuge that he buried in 1991 following the first Gulf War.

But Obeidi also told U.S. investigators that Saddam’s nuclear program had been dormant for years and that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were for use on rockets and not the development of a nuclear weapon, as the U.S. claimed.

Dr Kay's 13-page public report was based on interviews with top Iraqi scientists and policy makers, the seizure of documents and searches of hundreds of facilities.

. . . what one would actually define as victory in Iraq. Is it deposing and capturing Sadaam, or perhaps creating a democratic election process?

All I ever hear from thr right is that we're staying until we achieve victory, without having any real definition of what that is.

"The CNN poll, conducted April 21-23 by Opinion Research Corporation, found that only 9 percent thought the U.S. mission in Iraq had been accomplished, while 40 percent believed it would be complete someday.

From CNN

"Someday????"

That's promising.

Also this from CNN:

"Five months after his speech, with U.S. casualties in Iraq growing and the insurgency against American forces building strength, Bush said the "Mission Accomplished" sign had been put up by the ship's crew. But the White House later conceded that it produced and paid for the banner as part of the president's visit."

So, they lied. Really??? The White House???? Lying???

Say it isn't so........

Happy Anniversary...."Mission Accomplished."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0211/p02s02-woiq.html

The rapid takeover of Iraq's oil fields will be a key early objective of US troops in any military action, to forestall sabotage that could send oil prices soaring, experts say. And Iraq's oil reserves, the world's second-largest, would become crucial to the operation of a new Iraqi government.

"The morning after, oil becomes the driving issue," says Robert Ebel, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Oil firms from the US, Europe, and Russia may compete for concessions in an industry with huge cash flow. Much of Iraq's oil lies so near ground level it costs less than $2 per barrel to produce.

Damn hind-sight is 20/20 every time.