Who lost "our" war? Look no further than Halliburton/ Bechtel/ Blackwater/ Dyncorps

[SoCalDem]

The military did what was expected of them, and did so rather quickly and efficiently (all things considered).

In many places they WERE initially received as liberators, and the people were happy to see them.

Imagine youself a poor Iraqi who has barely been scraping by for decades, and now..all of a sudden..you are "free".

Who "freed" you? Only the richest country on earth.

You would expect to see YOUR own life vastly improved.

There would finally be:

well-equipped hospitals
medicine
jobs
decent schools
food in the stores
electricity all the time
potable water
a functioning sewer system

But instead of you and your friends being HIRED to do the actual work on your own country, you see nothing but day after day of big SUVs full of armed civilian Americans who are being paid more money per month than you could ever expect in years..and they are not even doing a good job of it.

The military has regrouped in saddam's palaces, and are hunkered down in the Green Zone where THEY have all kinds of imported luxuries.

Months go by, and things only get worse..

and yet.. all you hear about, is the money being spent on the war with your country(even though the war is supposed to be over)..

Iraqi people are not stupid.. they read.. lots of them have generators, so they even have TV.. they have radios.

they knew that the US did not WANT any foreign countries (France/germany/russia/china) to participate in the reconstruction. This was a sweet no-bid deal for the friends of Bush/Cheney...ONLY..

They heard about the supposedly frozen assets being released for the "rebuilding, and yet it wnet to American companies...not Iraqi companies.or Iraqi people who were more than able and willing to do the work themselves. Iraqis have been building and rebuilding for thousands of years. they may be in a "slump" due to a long dictatorship, but they have bounced back many times before. They were/are capable of doing for themselves. (they just needed help)

They had engineers, scientists, construction workers, doctors etc. They only needed their wealth restored to them, some help getting back on their feet and they would have been good to go.

Had our soldiers been followed by convoys of trucks loaded with:

building supplies
tools
school supplies
medicine
doctors
household goods
food

and on day ONE of "no shooting", placards should have been attached to every lamp-pole/building, announcing that every male between 15 and 60 would be paid $1K US per month for 40 hours of work per week... cleaning up and repairing their infrastructure..

In a family where Dad, Mom and a couple of sons lived, they would suddenly have a $3k a month income, and a positive image of Americans.

Where people are actively engaged in building/commerce/education and are living comfortably, you probably won't find much nocturnal bomb-building going on.

And a side benefit is this.. People who LIKE you are a lot more likely to see things your way...and a whole lot less likely to try to kill you every time they see you..

[whistle]

1. And remember these same companies profited big-time, plus

...all these fascist corporations have to do is give their U.S. military puppets and Bush/Cheney the directives to accelerate to the use of nuclear weapons against Iraqis and/or Iran and the war will be over in a few days and the U.S. declares martial law and victory and the same corporations move in and take possession

[mediaman007]

2. Words that should become the Democratic mantra...

Recommended...

[frogcycle]

3. amen to that

of the many crimes committed by this gang, this total fucking-over of the country while lining the pockets of their cronies is right up there. After the military did their job, it may have been ours for the taking, had we done the right things. instead we screwed the pooch, big time, and that is ALL on bush's head. plus everyone who ever stayed in the room for him for more than five minutes without cleaning his clock!

[stellanoir]

4. There were more PHD's in Iraq per capita at the time of our illegal

invasion than there were in the US. Women had a far better scale of wages than we currently have in the US. No, I do not think Hussein was a good guy. But we empowered him.

This is an excellent summary IMHO.

8th rec and thanks for clarifying things so well.

[hughee99]

5. I'm not sure that this was ever "winnable" in the sense that

the Iraqi people would be happy about the invasion and occupation. IMHO, there are some people who do not want us there no matter what we're doing, and they would have made it very difficult to rebuild the infrastructure. Certainly these companies seemed to do everything they could to make a bad problem worse, though.

[SoCalDem]

6. Still..

If we had at least TRIED the benevolent approach FIRST. Now we will never know if it would have worked..

and it would have been so much cheaper..in lives and money.

someone the other day said that we have spent enought to have GIVEN every living Iraqi $15K..that included babies/women/old people.

[hughee99]

7. I agree that things would have gone much better...

I'm just not sure that in the end, even that would have been enough.

[SoCalDem]

13. we'll never know now.. and we have scores of "new" enemies n/t

[LuckyLib]

18. And for a VERY long time. The Middle East shows us how long hatred and conflict

can brew. Enemies for generations. That's what we have created in Iraq, not to mention every country now holding Iraqi refugees.

[sanskritwarrior]

26. I'm not sure the war was ever winnable

myself, but all I have done in Iraq is escort supplies, generators, and people around. Our platoon was tasked with convoy duty of these kinds of things. The problem is once delivered corrupt Iraqi construction crews, insurgents and poor Iraqis would make off with or blow this stuff up. I once spent 17 days straight escorting lumber and building supplies to Tarmiyah Iraq. We would escort it during the day, at night it would get stolen or destroyed. The mayor of the town would call the local Iraqi Army unit, they would call US forces, we would dole out more money and more supplies would show up. Me and my guys would saddle up and escort the stuff again, the process would repeat itself again. In 17 days we did that 5 times. After the 5th time I told my Company commander if he made us do it again, I'm not sure my men would do the job. No point just a little anecdote.

[SoCalDem]

28. I hope you are back in the USA, and don't have to go back

It must be frustrating as hell to have to do the same stuff over and over, and put your life in danger, for nothing :hug:

[genie_weenie]

8. It's simply not a loss. Bush was right all those months

when he intoned the mantra "We are winning." He never specified the "WE".

[patrice]

9. Greedy Rambos lost this war and took advantabe of the Troops.

[Disturbed]

10. The Multi-Corps aka War Proffteers added to the Fiasco.

If you really want to know why the US screwed up Iraq, read the book "Fiasco".

[lies and propaganda]

11. ding din ding!

K&R for the most leveled headed, dead on accurate post currently on DU.

[NNN0LHI]

12. If a foreign country invaded America I would not collaborate with them for any amount of money

I would rather be poor and free (or dead) than wealthy and have to submit to the occupiers.

I suspect there are more than a few Iraqis who feel the same way as I do.

Don

[stillcool]

14. the enormity of the shift of wealth...

since 2000 can not be a coincidence.

[Horseradish]

15. No Kidding ...

I've been trying to understand this heinous war from the get-go the way one would try to understand an intricately orchestrated corporate tax write-off -- for that is how the military/industrial complex rolls with our taxes. "Oooops, we failed to rebuild Iraq ... but in failing we're still guaranteed economic protection by the US government and get to keep our profits anyway, so ... let's roll!"

Total fascism - probably the most profound case of fascism in the history of the world, in my opinion.

[Jcrowley]

16. If only "WE" had won

That War

K&R

[OneBlueSky]

17. I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . corporations are largely responsible for ALL . . .

of our major crises -- the war, global warming, environmental destruction, loss of American jobs, the collapse of our manufacturing base, the healthcare crisis, drug prices, gas prices, all of it . . .

unless and until we STRICTLY regulate what corporations can and cannot do -- AND their profits -- none of these crises will ever be resolved . . . to make any progress whatsoever, we MUST reclaim citizen authority over corporations . . .

but you won't a single senator or congressperson, of either party, willing to address the issue -- not as long as corporations are the source of so much campaign cash . . . if change is going to happen, it's going to have to be a truly grassroots initiative, and a massive one at that . . .

here's a place to start . . .

ReclaimDemocracy.org
Reclaiming Citizen Authority Over Corporations

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org

[Capn Amerika]

19. second that.

[Orsino]

20. It was lost before it began.

Our military is not capable of pacifying a nation the size of Iraq, period. Without a huge coalition, it was never possible that we could "win" much of anything past the initial blitz.

[SoCalDem]

21. and of course a "real" coalition might just expect to "share" in

any good that might have come out of a well-executed "Saddam-removal".. That's why the coalition-thing could never happen.

[Orsino]

22. Oh, I just figured that most other nations detected the smell of ass...

...on this war, and chose to avoid it or participate with only token force. The only "good" planned on was the war profiteering, and getting a piece of that action was too risky for most tastes.

[Joe Chi Minh]

23. Yes. All the rest is bullshit. Ask yourself how it is that the most backward,

materialistic and decadent of the "advanced" countries of the Western world, the UK and the US, who are too busy exploiting their own populations to concern themselves with the welfare of the country at large, the true national interests, presume to teach foreigners how to run their countries in a civilised way; while the Social Democracies of Scandinavia, for example, who do look after their people, neither boast nor entertain such grotesquely misconceived pretensions.

[Maraya1969]

24. Another truth knocking me over the head. Thank you.

[MasonJar]

25. We have installed an Islamic fundamentalist government which

will put Iraqi women back into the Dark Age.

[welshTerrier2]

27. real reconstruction MAY have brought peace ...

but reconstruction contracts were NOT the big prize ...

this link and the Der Spiegel article it links to spells it out all too clearly: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/welshTerrier2/106

[tabasco]

29. Another great post. Recommended! n/t

:kick: