They still could have fixed Iraq after breaking it...(must read)

[cynatnite]

We've made three tragic decisions," Garner told Rumsfeld at their meeting.

"Really?" Rumsfeld said.

"Three terrible mistakes," Garner said.

He cited the first two orders Bremer signed when he arrived, the first banning as many as 50,000 members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government jobs and the second disbanding the Iraqi military. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around.

Third, Garner said, Bremer had summarily dismissed an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term. "Jerry Bremer can't be the face of the government to the Iraqi people. You've got to have an Iraqi face for the Iraqi people," he said.

Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."

Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. "Well," he said, "I don't think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are."

He thinks I've lost it, Garner thought. He thinks I'm absolutely wrong. Garner didn't want it to sound like sour grapes, but facts were facts. "They're all reversible," Garner said again.

"We're not going to go back," Rumsfeld said emphatically


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000293.html

[jtrockville]

1. SHAMEFUL that this buffoon is still the secretary of war

How dare he resign to notion that Iraq can't be fixed, yet not resign his post as the secretary of war.

[malaise]

2. No surprise

I can't wait until they're dragged out in chains.

[Imagevision]

3. With 340 Billion+ spent one would think they all had running water?

electricity for more then 5-7 hours daily

[Double T]

4. NO! They could NOT have fixed Iraq after breaking IT because.......

this 'war' was NEVER about doing what was right for Iraq, ONLY what was right for bushco and their political aspirations.

[wtmusic]

6. Amen.

The war was lost before it began.

These people have the foresight of gnats.

[glitch]

5. This implies there ever was any intention to fix Iraq.

When will they ever admit that the neocons moved on Iraq to loot (and the dimmer ones wanted to prove that looting is sound economic policy).

Edit: Ha! Woodward again, carrying water. Sorry Bob, plausible deniability and claims of incompetence may've worked for Reagan/Bush but most of us are a little wiser now.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Garner and the neoconservatives

I remember all the negative press he got when appointed (irregularities in his comapany's government contracts; big supporter of Israel who was going to force recognition of the Jewish state down the throats of Iraqis; Christian fundamentalist). Garner won me over when he showed that he wasn't taking the neoconservative party line. "It is better that they do it for themselves imperfectly than we do it for them perfectly," he said of building the post-Saddam Iraq. "It's their country," he said, and pointed added the rejoinder, "and their oil."

A sovereign Iraq is not what the neoconservatives had in mind at all. Whatever hint the neoconservatives gave Garner not to take their lies at face value, Garner missed. When the neoconservatives said "democracy", Garner thought they menat democracy. That was his downfall.

The neoconservatives broke Iraq and do not want it fixed. A broken Iraq is dependent on the US government, itself no longer responsible to Americans or to its most fundamental laws. A fixed Iraq with a parliament responsible to the Iraqi people would make its second order of business -- after bringing order to the country -- repealing the hundred decrees that Jerry Bremer imposed on Iraq while he was the colonial governor-general and then write their own arrangment for foreign investment in Iraq's economy. Then they would tell the US government "Mission accomplished, thank you; please go home."

Rumsfeld isn't incompetent. He's crooked. He knows very well what this war is about and it wasn't about WMDs (and remeber how he knew where they were?) or anything else related to national security. His bubling failures are his greatest successes.

[cynatnite]

8. Very well said!

:patriot: