Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

February - March, 2003, is a time I'll remember very well. I was living in the Midwestern US at the time and never in my life have I said out loud so many times 'what the hell are these people thinking'? At one point I think up to 80% of Americans and 50% of Brits and Australians and a majority of Israelis supported it. That was it - two nations in the world, America and Israel, where a clear majority were in favour of invading Iraq?

Now, of all these people who were so gung-ho, does anyone still support the invasion, and what would it possibly take for them to admit that it was a mistake? It's almost like it's become a non-issue now, isn't it?

[Kuros]

It's a non-issue. I'm interested what the results of this kind of question would be for something like global climate change.

[mindmetoo]

I keep wanting to ask that question. I remember a couple years ago you had Derrek and some other guy arguing rather vigerously for the war (could never figure out why Derrek, who was so certain of the just cause, didn't stop teaching and went to fight along side his brothers... surely would have never let someone do the heavy lifting for him).

At least now, after 5 years, Bush is beginning to admit things aren't going 100% the way he wants them to go. Gosh, they're even floating the C word (civil war).

Sunnis and Shiites... enemies for centuries... they could even barely get along to fight the Crusades... they'd all just lock arms in brotherly love to rebuild Iraq under an American imposed constitution and peace.

The mission was so clear.

[Nowhere Man]

I know I don't, but I'm glad the British went to Iraq.

[postfundie]

in hindsight...I'd say it was NOT the best of choices....I don't think many people see this as all that much worse than Saddam and his raping and murdering sons...Not to many people want Israel back in Gaza despite the palestinian violence....

[Adventurer]

[Hollywoodaction]

What if the main purpose of the war in Iraq was to distract us from the fact that the world is going to hell because of climate change (which is a result dependancy on oil)?

[stevemcgarrett]

In his last interview with a prominent Western journalist, Saddam Hussein said to Dan Rather of CBS News that if the American military went to war against Iraq they would encounter a form of resistance unlike any before. Many interpreted it at the time as bellicose hot air from the pompous dictator but I recall having this uneasy feeling that he was referring to a new form of guerrilla warfare.

I really believe he never intended to offer stiff resistance to the American forces, and although some field commanders sensed early on that we would need a huge occupying force to silence a Sunni insurgency, their concerns went ignored by Rumsfeld, who believe light, tactical and mobile forces could do the job just as well. This gross miscalculation enabled the insurgency of former Baathists, disbanded Sunni army elements, and other Saddam loyalists to generate an insurgency of broad scale.

And we saw the result. The terror networks infiltrated only later.

Saddam I believe learned from the first Gulf War that his regular forces in the standing army could not indeed hold off massively superior American firepower. He went into a rat hole hoping the insurgency would succeed quickly. Although he overestimated the pace of its deteriorating effect on the transitional government, he did not calculate incorrectly in terms of what has since transpired.

Whether there was sufficient war planning is a secondary concern in my view; what mattered most, as retired general Eric Shizeki insisted, was more boots on the ground in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.

Anyhow, that's my take and I think Powell declined a second Bush appointment not because of the fiasco with the nuclear weapons issue but because he knew Rumsfeld wasn't going to abide by the Powell Doctrine, learned from hard lessons when he was a rising officer in Vietnam, namely, that you don't go in unless you are there to assault with overwhelming force and also support at home.

This all said, now that we're there we can't just pull out. As Jefferson once aptly said metaphorically about the issue of slavery: we have the wolf by the ears.

[Kuros]

[bucheon bum]

[ddeubel]

[mindmetoo]

[wannago]

[bucheon bum]

well i personally like the red sea. some of the old architecture is cool. lots of hot women if you're into brunettes (but untouchable for the most part). but yeah, economically speaking, all it has is oil.

[stevemcgarrett]

bum: