MORE ON IRAQ

Errata: In yesterday's blog I erroneously
wrote that our costs in Iraq are running at
$10 billion a week. That should have been
a month! Sorry.

Also in yesterday's blog, I referred to retired Gen.
William Odum. That prompted me, after I had
published, to look him up (on google) and refresh
my recollection of his views. There I found his
10-page Testimony For The Senate Foreign Re-
lations Committee, which he presented before the
committee on 1/18/07. This was as the "surge"
was starting. He opposed it, as did the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (firmly and forcefully, we learn in
Bob Woodward's new book on that period.) They
were simply ignored, says Woodward.

Gen. Odum (G.O.) told the senators that "mili-
tary operations must be judged by whether and
how they contribute to accomplishing war aims."
He then explains why the surge wouldn't and
couldn't do this, and therefore was a waste of
time and lives and money. He noted that we
originally had three aims in Iraq: destruction
of their WMDs, removal of Saddam, and crea-
tion of a liberal democratic Iraq. The only one
of these left to do, G. O. said, "has no real pro-
pects of being achieved even in 10 or 20 years."
I would add that explains why Bush/McSame
want to stay on indefinitely.

G. O. observed further: "Overthrowing the Iraqi
regime in 2003 insured that the country would
fragment into at least three groups, Sunnis, Shiites,
and Kurds. In other words, the invasion made it
inevitable that a civil war would be required to
create a new central government able to control
all of Iraq. Yet a civil war does not insure it. No
faction may win the struggle. A lengthy stalemate
or a permanent breakup of the country is possible.
The invasion also insured that outside countries
and groups would become involved. Al Qaeda
and Iran are the most conspicuous participants so
far, Turkey and Syria less so. If some of the weal-
thy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Penin-
sula are not already involved, they are most likely
to support with resources any force in Iraq that
opposes Iranian influence."

So it was a bad idea. Horribly bad. Even if we had
sent in three times as many troops originally, as
Gen. Sensiki said we would need, and we had sealed
off the borders, as taught in "Occupation 101," we
could not have prevented the civil war. We might
have delayed it. The surge has created a pause in
that showdown. That's all it has done. All sides are
waiting and preparing to resume when we leave, as
I wrote yesterday.

G. O. again: "It is a strategic error of monumental
proportions to view the war as confined to Iraq. Yet
this is the implicit assumption on which the presi-
dent's new strategy (the surge) is based. We have
turned it into two wars that vastly exceed the borders
of Iraq. First, there is the war against the U. S. occu-
pation that draws both sympathy and material support
from other Arab countries. Second, there is the Shia-
Sunni war, sectarian conflict heretofore sublimated
within the Arab world but that now has opened the
door to Iranian influence in Iraq. In turn, it foreor-
daines an expanding Iranian-Arab regional conflict."

So it's a mess. Still. The surge has been a tactical
success without strategic significance or value.
What a colossal waste!

More on this later.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net