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10 Years On, Paul Wolfowitz Admits U.S. Bungled in Iraq

pbrauer

pbrauer

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Gee Paul, tell us something we didn't know already.


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The former deputy Pentagon chief, Paul Wolfowitz, a driving force behind the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, has conceded that a series of blunders by George W. Bush’s administration plunged Iraq into a cycle of violence that “spiralled out of control”.​


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In an interview with The Sunday Times to mark the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, he said there “should have been Iraqi leadership from the beginning”, rather than a 14-month occupation led by an American viceroy and based on “this idea that we’re going to come in like [General Douglas] MacArthur in Japan and write the constitution for them”.​


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He accepted that too many Iraqis were excluded by a programme to purge members of the ruling Ba’ath party, that the dissolution of the Iraqi army was botched and that the “biggest hole” in post-war planning was not to anticipate the possibility of an insurgency.​


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“The most consequential failure was to understand the tenacity of Saddam’s regime,” he said.​


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Wolfowitz, 69, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington since he stepped down as World Bank president in 2007, has a somewhat diffident manner but he became animated as he reflected on the lead-up to the invasion and its aftermath.​



Read more: 10 Years On, Paul Wolfowitz Admits U.S. Bungled in Iraq | RealClearPolitics
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitterm
 
Wolfowitz is right this time. Having invaded Iraq in the first place was a wrong decision with huge consequences.

Interesting observation here, from the link in the OP:

Wolfowitz called for Saddam’s overthrow during the 1991 Gulf War and was the first senior official to advise Bush, days after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, to seek regime change in Iraq.
Click to expand...

The connection between the attack of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq was... what again? Oh, right. The former gave the war hawks an excuse for the latter, even though Iraq had nothing at all to do with the terrorist attack on that dark day.

George Bush I was right to have sent Saddam's forces packing and then go home. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld were wrong to keep agitating for an invasion. Now, Wolfowitz has admitted that the invasion was a mistake. Cheney? Rumsfeld? What have you to say?
 
At no point in the article does Wolfowitz say that invasion was the wrong choice.
 
It's one thing to bungle Iraq tactically, it's quite another thing to bungle America's reputation philosophically .. about which the majority of Americans agree: Most Americans think Iraq War was a mistake: Poll | The Ticket - Yahoo! News.

What I and a few others outside the loop realized from the onset is that we invaded Iraq for the oil, and for no other reason .. or so we thought.

As it was later revealed, Saddam was working out a deal with China and Russia, brokered by the French, to send oil to China, Russia would get cheap Chinese goods, and Iraq would get Russian weapons, and the French, for making it all happen, they'd get oil too, and the beltway-coined "freedom fries" was our way of digging at the French for that while still keeping things under wrap.

Saddam, however, was all tapped out of available light sweet crude for China .. but, the Gulf War sanctions against him adding .. and subtracting .. trading partners was about to expire! .. And then we invaded.

So China never got that oil .. and we still have our special light sweet Iraqi crude, which at the time accounted for nearly 20% of the foreign crude refined in California alone.

Were there ever terrorists in Iraq? Just Saddam. He wouldn't abide the Al Qaeda competition.

Were there WMDs in Iraq? No. And we all know that WMD really means: nukes. There were no nukes in Iraq. That was proven. None being built, no nuke materials being imported from South Africa, nada. There weren't even any bio-weapons. And chemical agents, like mustard gas? We knew about that many years ago. Not an excuse.

Were Iraqis clamoring for "democracy"? That's a laugh!

Did we invade simply to get jobs for Halliburton and the lot? Yeah .. no.

Did we invade to get "revenge" for Daddy Bush? Again .. don't make me laugh, liberals.

We all know now what only The White house and the Senat Security Commission knew back then: that we invaded to keep our share of that special short-supply light sweet Iraqi crude from being diverted to China and creating a western economic depression as a result.

Now, some who said that was the only reason we invaded have backed off a bit from that. This after realizing that those nukes the soviets kept on rails, moving them around and stuff .. well, a couple in the Ukraine went unaccounted for, and the thought was they were eventually to be headed for Iraq in the deal .. though I find it unfathomable that Russia would ever "let" that happen.

Maybe it was better to keep a lid on the more underlying reason we intervened, the real reason Bush was so actively looking around for what appeared to be an excuse to attack Iraq.

After all, bringing it all out in the open and indicting Russia, that might have lead to planetary suicide. Whupping Iraq as an unspoken message not to do stupid things like "let" nukes make their way to the likes of Saddam Hussein.

All I know is, I don't ever want to be President, have to carry around that little black box, and be responsible for keeping really good secrets .. about which I simply don't want to know.

Nope .. don't want to know.
 
ChuckBerry said:
At no point in the article does Wolfowitz say that invasion was the wrong choice.
Click to expand...

Not in so many words, no. He does talk about "Iraqi leadership." It's hard to see how that could happen when foreign forces invade and take over by force.
 
pbrauer said:
Gee Paul, tell us something we didn't know already.


​
The former deputy Pentagon chief, Paul Wolfowitz, a driving force behind the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, has conceded that a series of blunders by George W. Bush’s administration plunged Iraq into a cycle of violence that “spiralled out of control”.​


​
In an interview with The Sunday Times to mark the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, he said there “should have been Iraqi leadership from the beginning”, rather than a 14-month occupation led by an American viceroy and based on “this idea that we’re going to come in like [General Douglas] MacArthur in Japan and write the constitution for them”.​


​

​
He accepted that too many Iraqis were excluded by a programme to purge members of the ruling Ba’ath party, that the dissolution of the Iraqi army was botched and that the “biggest hole” in post-war planning was not to anticipate the possibility of an insurgency.​


​
“The most consequential failure was to understand the tenacity of Saddam’s regime,” he said.​


​
Wolfowitz, 69, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington since he stepped down as World Bank president in 2007, has a somewhat diffident manner but he became animated as he reflected on the lead-up to the invasion and its aftermath.​



Read more: 10 Years On, Paul Wolfowitz Admits U.S. Bungled in Iraq | RealClearPolitics
Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitterm
Click to expand...


It seems fairly obvious that the whole thing was bungled. Even if invasion in and of itself wasn't a bad idea, the planning that went into it was atrocious. Best one line analysis of Iraq that I heard (and I wish I could remember who said it) "We went in with an overly rosy plan A, and no plan B."
 
The major problem with the conduct of the war in Iraq was the actions of Paul Bremer after the fall of Saddam. Bush and Cheney were right, the people of Iraq welcomed the US soldiers with open arms and cheered them as liberators. However, Bremer allowed the Iraqi military to be dispanded, allowed them to take their weapons with them, and sent them off with no jobs and no opportunities. Inner City Chicago can tell you what happens with a highly armed young population with no hopes.

What followed was a ransacking of all Iraqi government historical sites and treasures as well as gangs with guns roaming the streets killing, raping and pillaging the country. It's pretty hard to set up a transitional government that was more feared and dangerous than Saddam's but Bremer found a way.

In those early days, the war for "hearts and minds" was largely lost and resulted in a decade of additional US life and treasure being lost in Iraq.
 
Iraq was a huge mistake. Besides the countless lives lost and the lives that are now destroyed by war, nothing has changed. Unless you want to count the death of a has-been dictator who at least kept his people in check. It was like the Bush Administration took a 2 trillion dollar dump and flushed it down a ginormous toilet.
 
CanadaJohn said:
The major problem with the conduct of the war in Iraq was the actions of Paul Bremer after the fall of Saddam. Bush and Cheney were right, the people of Iraq welcomed the US soldiers with open arms and cheered them as liberators. However, Bremer allowed the Iraqi military to be dispanded, allowed them to take their weapons with them, and sent them off with no jobs and no opportunities. Inner City Chicago can tell you what happens with a highly armed young population with no hopes.

What followed was a ransacking of all Iraqi government historical sites and treasures as well as gangs with guns roaming the streets killing, raping and pillaging the country. It's pretty hard to set up a transitional government that was more feared and dangerous than Saddam's but Bremer found a way.

In those early days, the war for "hearts and minds" was largely lost and resulted in a decade of additional US life and treasure being lost in Iraq.
Click to expand...
What I found amazing was that President Bush thought Iraq was populated with a homogenous group of Muslims , he didn't realize there was animosity between the Sunni and the Shia, which was the major cause of the civil war in 2007.
 
pbrauer said:
What I found amazing was that President Bush thought Iraq was populated with a homogenous group of Muslims , he didn't realize there was animosity between the Sunni and the Shia, which was the major cause of the civil war in 2007.
Click to expand...

Dubya didn't even know the capital of Canada, let alone that. :roll:
 
ChuckBerry said:
At no point in the article does Wolfowitz say that invasion was the wrong choice.
Click to expand...

Talk about hanging on a thread.

"OK so everything post invasion and everything it lead to was disaster after disaster, mistake after mistake, but the invasion itself was still a good idea!"
 
pbrauer said:
What I found amazing was that President Bush thought Iraq was populated with a homogenous group of Muslims , he didn't realize there was animosity between the Sunni and the Shia, which was the major cause of the civil war in 2007.
Click to expand...

That's ridiculous. Could you honestly believe that the president was not briefed on the situation in the country and its relevant history?


I'd add: disbanding the Baath party and excluding them from government was a bad move. It seems that the US overestimated the social capital still alive in Iraq and found that everyone who was not a crony had been killed, leaving only bad options for staffing the transitional government.
 
Middleground said:
Iraq was a huge mistake. Besides the countless lives lost and the lives that are now destroyed by war, nothing has changed.
Click to expand...

FGM is illegal
Honor killings are illegal
Women have basic human rights
Women are allowed to vote and be part of society
Iraq is no longer in violation of 17 ch7 unscrs
Iraq no longer fires on no-fly zones created to prevent further genocide
The Kurds are not suffering genocide
The Marsh Arabs are not suffering genocide
Food-for-oil is not being sold, causing the starvation of 400k children
Iraq is not invading neighbors
No more government rape palaces
No more mass slaughters in paranoid fits of rage
No more sanctions
No more fake WMD program
International development projects
Civil rights


These are a few of the changes.
 
A moment's reflection reveals who the wrongly named "Neocons" are, what their purpose is and what their purpose will always remain. Who knows what was in it for the far left leaning globalist Bushes.
 
ecofarm said:
That's ridiculous. Could you honestly believe that the president was not briefed on the situation in the country and its relevant history?
Click to expand...
Yes, I do.
Ambassador: Bush Didn’t Know There Were Two Sects of Islam


I'd add: disbanding the Baath party and excluding them from government was a bad move. It seems that the US overestimated the social capital still alive in Iraq and found that everyone who was not a crony had been killed, leaving only bad options for staffing the transitional government.

I agree.
 
CanadaJohn said:
The major problem with the conduct of the war in Iraq was the actions of Paul Bremer after the fall of Saddam. Bush and Cheney were right, the people of Iraq welcomed the US soldiers with open arms and cheered them as liberators. .
QUOTE]
----------------------
Yeah, Bremer doesn't fare too well in hindsight.
I think the occupation got off on the wrong foot by declaring Bremer a "viceroy".
Geez, the word viceroy reeks of western colonialism.
Administrator would have been a better term.
I would also say that Bremer's poor decisions weren't made in a vacuum.
I'm sure GWB administration higher-ups signed off on his moves.
Iraq just ended up being a microcosm of the middle-east and US involvement therein.
Any actions we may take will probably produce an unacceptable downside.
To hell with the middle-east.
Click to expand...
 
Middleground said:
Iraq was a huge mistake. Besides the countless lives lost and the lives that are now destroyed by war, nothing has changed. Unless you want to count the death of a has-been dictator who at least kept his people in check. It was like the Bush Administration took a 2 trillion dollar dump and flushed it down a ginormous toilet.
Click to expand...
And the dung is still swirling down the drain.
 
"These are a few of the changes."
------------------
Those are all really great alleged changes.
But I'm an America first kind of guy.
Those alleged changes didn't help America one bit.
Ahmidinejad visits Iraq and gets the rock-star treatment.
US officials sneak in under cover of darkness.
Yeah, Sadaam and his gang are gone, but the murderous terrorist bombings continue.
The price the USA paid for a pyrrhic victory in the ME was too great.
 
Wolfowitz was a HUGE promoter of the wr in Iraq.
 
pbrauer said:
Yes, I do.
Ambassador: Bush Didn’t Know There Were Two Sects of Islam
Click to expand...

A single former ambassador proves something for one, if it is what one would like to hear. Wikileaks was mostly ambassador and other diplomats communicating suspicions, rumors and even flat out guesses. Some people think those things prove something. Mostly, it's just embarrassing to have ones speculation aired.

Raw Story Christian Avard reports that a former ambassador has a new book out about the incompetence of the Bush administration...
Click to expand...

I'm sure that will be an exciting book. Hacks, extreme partisans, CTers and unabombers throughout the country probably drool while reading it.

During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites. Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
Click to expand...

Funny, granted. I think I heard it long ago.
 
pbrauer said:
What I found amazing was that President Bush thought Iraq was populated with a homogenous group of Muslims , he didn't realize there was animosity between the Sunni and the Shia, which was the major cause of the civil war in 2007.
Click to expand...

I give President Bush far more credit than you do and frankly far more than a lot of Americans do. I don't think he was that ignorant of the Iraqi dynamics. Similar to what's going on in Syria now, when a minority rules the majority with an iron fist, once there is instability there is a great possibility that chaos with result if there isn't a strong central authority and a policing presence to sustain it. America would have had the moral authority immediately upon the fall of Saddam but once that was lost there was no way to recover it. That said, Iraq is a far better situation than Iran and has a more promising future. I'd also say that Iraq has a more promising future than Eqypt - in my view, Egypt is headed towards an Iran style state more so than a democratic state.

Without the advent of 9/11, I believe Bush would have been a fairly isolationist President, pulling back on American involvement around the world. Once attacked, that was no longer possible.
 
Dittohead not! said:
The connection between the attack of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq was... what again? Oh, right. The former gave the war hawks an excuse for the latter, even though Iraq had nothing at all to do with the terrorist attack on that dark day.
Click to expand...

If you read Feith's memoir, with his framing starting at around page 8-9, you get to see how the Defense Department argued the War on Terrorism included Iraq and other states, and why they took issue with your definition of terrorism.

I also disagree with it, but it's not exactly an excuse. It's the framing of the conflict that mattered to them. They thought after 3,000 people died, the problem needed to be handled more broadly. Yes, there were apriori assumptions involved, but it wasn't so simple.
 
Ray410 said:
A moment's reflection reveals who the wrongly named "Neocons" are, what their purpose is and what their purpose will always remain. Who knows what was in it for the far left leaning globalist Bushes.
Click to expand...

What on earth do you mean?
 
Fiddytree said:
If you read Feith's memoir, with his framing starting at around page 8-9, you get to see how the Defense Department argued the War on Terrorism included Iraq and other states, and why they took issue with your definition of terrorism.

I also disagree with it, but it's not exactly an excuse. It's the framing of the conflict that mattered to them. They thought after 3,000 people died, the problem needed to be handled more broadly. Yes, there were apriori assumptions involved, but it wasn't so simple.
Click to expand...

Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld, the real architects of the war against Iraq, were all members of the Project for a New American Century, which had as its agenda the maintenance of a pax americana on the rest of the world. Iraq, according to their philosophy, had to be taken over. They thought the war could be over and won in six months or less.
 
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