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Panetta unloads on White House for pulling US forces out of Iraq

but he helped influenced the development and founding of the bundeswehr, the west german military organization that replaced the Wehrmacht.

Yes. Later in the 1950's he provided advice to the new German government. A few Baathists were rehabilitated after a few years in Iraq too.
 
Yes. Later in the 1950's he provided advice to the new German government. A few Baathists were rehabilitated after a few years in Iraq too.

key word there: FEW.

a large majority of them remained unreformed, and they still had plenty of influence despite being removed from power.

And why did we have to dissolve iraq's former army and the republican guard?
 
Not even close. I'm no fan of the entire stupid ME region over there and their religious zealotry... but Bathists were not Nazi's. They were not doing race purifications and anything close to what the nazi's did.

yeah. Just because both were nationalist socialist parties who utilized chemical weaponry to attempt to wipe out a particular ethnicity and launched wars of aggression against their neighbors doesn't mean they had anything in common.

The Arab Ba'ath Party established by Zaki al-Arsuzi was according to Sami al-Jundi, one of the co-founders of the party, heavily influenced by fascist and Nazi ideals. The party's emblem was the tiger because it would "excite the imagination of the youth, in the tradition of Nazism and Fascism, but taking into consideration that the Arab is in his nature is distant from pagan symbols [like the swastika]".[59] Arsuzi's Ba'ath Party believed in the virtues of the "one leader", and Arsuzi himself believed personally in the racial superiority of the Arabs. The party members read a lot of Nazi literature, such as The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century for instance, became one of the first to plan the translation of Mein Kampf into Arabic and they were actively looking for a copy of The Myth of the Twentieth Century – the only copy in Damascus was, according to Moshe Maʻoz, owned by Aflaq.[59] Despite his pro-fascist views, Arsuzi did not support the Axis Powers, and refused Italy's advances for party-to-party relations.[60] Arsuzi was also influenced by the racial theories of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Nazism.[61] Arsuzi claimed that historically Islam and the Prophet Muhammad had reinforced the nobility and purity of Arabs, which degenerated in purity because of the adoption of Islam by other people.[61] He had been associated with the League of Nationalist Action, a political party strongly influenced by fascism and Nazism with its paramilitary "Ironshirts", that existed in Syria from 1932 to 1939.[62]

Saddam drew inspiration on how to rule Iraq from both Joseph Stalin, a communist, and Adolf Hitler, a Nazi. According to a British journalist who interviewed Barzan al-Tikriti, the head of the Iraqi intelligence services, Saddam had asked Barzan to procure these books not for racist or anti-Semitic purposes, but instead "as an example of the successful organisation of an entire society by the state for the achievement of national goals."[63]

Nothing in common at all.
 
M
key word there: FEW.

a large majority of them remained unreformed, and they still had plenty of influence despite being removed from power.

And why did we have to dissolve iraq's former army and the republican guard?

We actually kept quite a few military officers, comparatively speaking. Unfortunately most of the good ones were cashiered in favor of connected cronies by Maliki after US forces withdrew.
 
M

We actually kept quite a few military officers, comparatively speaking. Unfortunately most of the good ones were cashiered in favor of connected cronies by Maliki after US forces withdrew.

why did we not keep the large majority of soldiers?
 
Did we have to remove everyone who was a bathast at the local levels of government?

We probably didn't - particularly among apolitical/non-security-force government services (such as education) - and particularly in the Sunni areas. Disbanding the Iraqi Army was also foolish.


However, given the nigh-impossible task in the middle of attempting to rebuild to do a real-time assessment of every local principal and city manager to see whether or not they had ever been part of the abuses, I can understand why de-baathification was the method chosen.
 
Greetings, cpwill. :2wave:

I well remember the pictures showing how proud they were to vote! :thumbs: It's a shame that some people here don't even bother ....

A larger portion of Iraqi's showed up to vote than Americans did. And nobody here had credible threats that if they went to vote, they and their family would all be killed.
 
A larger portion of Iraqi's showed up to vote than Americans did. And nobody here had credible threats that if they went to vote, they and their family would all be killed.

Real freedom means the freedom not to care, sigh.
 
Greetings, cpwill. :2wave:

I well remember the pictures showing how proud they were to vote! :thumbs: It's a shame that some people here don't even bother ....

I can agree with that. If only some weren't working overtime to make is so hard to vote perhaps we'd get a better turnout?
 
We probably didn't - particularly among apolitical/non-security-force government services (such as education) - and particularly in the Sunni areas. Disbanding the Iraqi Army was also foolish.


However, given the nigh-impossible task in the middle of attempting to rebuild to do a real-time assessment of every local principal and city manager to see whether or not they had ever been part of the abuses, I can understand why de-baathification was the method chosen.

should we have removed only saddam and his inner circle of cronies from power and keep the majority of iraq's government intact?
 
I can agree with that. If only some weren't working overtime to make is so hard to vote perhaps we'd get a better turnout?

:confused: voting here is so ridiculously easy that even the dead and those legally forbidden from doing so manage it.
 
should we have removed only saddam and his inner circle of cronies from power and keep the majority of iraq's government intact?

There are functions of the former regime that should have been entirely cleared out. Others could have been kept. The trick was how to rapidly distinguish between - for example - the guy who joined the Ba'ath Party because it was a requirement to run the city's water systems, and the guy who joined the Ba'ath Party because he liked turning in his neighbors. We had neither the manpower nor the time nor the bandwidth to make those decisions on an individual basis.
 
:confused: voting here is so ridiculously easy that even the dead and those legally forbidden from doing so manage it.

It must be everywhere and damn near uncountable that it's so much. Show me the overwhelming evidence of this apparent epidemic in the U.S.
 
Real freedom means the freedom not to care, sigh.

:shrug: I'm fine with that. Given the heavy overlap between those who are less likely to vote and those who are less likely to know anything about current events, the Constitution, or politics.
 
Obama doesn't respect the U.S. military and those who wear the uniform, pretty hard to respect your commander when he doesn't respect you.

A rather bizarre thing to say. The President respects the military enough not to send troops into Iraq without immunity and subject them to a judicial system famed more for meting out revenge rather than justice.
 
There are functions of the former regime that should have been entirely cleared out. Others could have been kept. The trick was how to rapidly distinguish between - for example - the guy who joined the Ba'ath Party because it was a requirement to run the city's water systems, and the guy who joined the Ba'ath Party because he liked turning in his neighbors. We had neither the manpower nor the time nor the bandwidth to make those decisions on an individual basis.

why did the administration not have a plan to deal with this situation if it came up?
 
It must be everywhere and damn near uncountable that it's so much. Show me the overwhelming evidence of this apparent epidemic in the U.S.

Strawman argument, eh? How astonishing. :roll:

In fact we do get folks such as felons voting all the time - Senator Franken likely owes his seat to such illegal voters.

As a single example, because it popped up quickly on Google

...RALEIGH, N.C. — State elections officials said Wednesday that they're investigating hundreds of cases of voters who appear to have voted in two states and several dozen who appear to have voted after their deaths.....





Vote Fraud Epidemic? Nah. But enough to easily demonstrate the laughable vacuity of the claim that it is too difficult for those who have the right to to vote in this country? Definitely.
 
A rather bizarre thing to say. The President respects the military enough not to send troops into Iraq without immunity and subject them to a judicial system famed more for meting out revenge rather than justice.

Sending American troops into Afghanistan with politically correct rules of engagement that favor the enemy doesn't gain the respect of the troops.
 
why did the administration not have a plan to deal with this situation if it came up?

De-Baathification appears to have taken place in a low-communication structure. The decision to send home the Iraqi Army, for example, wasn't coordinated on its way up. Bluntly, the Administration decided (for whatever reason ) to maintain two chains of command, and the result was people working either independent or at odds with one another.

Basically, they did have a plan - it simply was inadequate to the task. Which admittedly may have been beyond any organization, given the restraints.





I notice, for example, that Obama only just now got us below 6% unemployment. Why didn't he have a plan to get us there by the fall of 2009?
 
A rather bizarre thing to say. The President respects the military enough not to send troops into Iraq without immunity and subject them to a judicial system famed more for meting out revenge rather than justice.

The Obama Administration torpedoed those talks, as has now been revealed not only in interviewers with the negotiators, but by two of the administrations' own SECDEFs.
 
what gains were made on behalf of the Iraqi People? we invaded their country, we toppled their government, we forced them to adopt a new system of government suitable to our expectations, we brought secratarian violence to their country, we dismantled their army, and we have became a occupying force.
Their government?? Iraqi was a dictatorship!

Good Grief!
 
Not even close. I'm no fan of the entire stupid ME region over there and their religious zealotry... but Bathists were not Nazi's. They were not doing race purifications and anything close to what the nazi's did. Comparisons are ridiculous. Bathists were in power and did whatever they thought they had to do to maintain their power. Not to create a third reich.
When any group behaves like Nazis, what's the harm in comparing them to Nazis? Why so sensitive in this area? Photos and Documents of Amin Al Husseini: Nazi Father of Jihad, Al Qaeda, Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the Muslim Brotherhood
 
Strawman argument, eh? How astonishing. :roll:

In fact we do get folks such as felons voting all the time - Senator Franken likely owes his seat to such illegal voters.

As a single example, because it popped up quickly on Google

...RALEIGH, N.C. — State elections officials said Wednesday that they're investigating hundreds of cases of voters who appear to have voted in two states and several dozen who appear to have voted after their deaths.....





Vote Fraud Epidemic? Nah. But enough to easily demonstrate the laughable vacuity of the claim that it is too difficult for those who have the right to to vote in this country? Definitely.

No straw man. You made an assertion and I'm asking you to back it up... And you came back with a story that was long on "Maybe possibly" and zilch on evidence or prosecutions.

btw... if it's so easy to vote, why does it take people 7 hours or so to do it? That's not "easy".
 
De-Baathification appears to have taken place in a low-communication structure. The decision to send home the Iraqi Army, for example, wasn't coordinated on its way up. Bluntly, the Administration decided (for whatever reason ) to maintain two chains of command, and the result was people working either independent or at odds with one another.

Basically, they did have a plan - it simply was inadequate to the task. Which admittedly may have been beyond any organization, given the restraints.





I notice, for example, that Obama only just now got us below 6% unemployment. Why didn't he have a plan to get us there by the fall of 2009?

i am willing to cut Bush some slack on iraq because the thing i am criticizing him for was an unintended an unforeseen consequence of removing a large group of people from power. there are many things that have happened over the course of this decade that have been unforeseen and were not anticipated to happen. Fair enough?
 
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