| Monday, November 14, 2005 |
| Impressions of Iraq |
I'm not even sure where to begin. I learned so much and heard so many amazing, horrific, and heartwarming stories about the war and the US presence in Iraq yesterday, that I could probably post about it all week. But a couple of things will prevent that: One; I simply don't have the time, and two; a lot of what I was told was a private conversation between friends. Friends who are still actively working in Baghdad, and I don't want to betray those confidences. Don't go thinking there's any cloak and dagger stuff here - there's not - it was just a conversation between friends and it should stay that way and off the internet. A couple of things I can say from an overarching perspective are this:
1. Chalabi is a creep. A snake, a charlatan, and a con man who would sell his own mother if he thought he could benefit from it personally. He cannot be trusted.
2. There is a plan for Iraq, but it is currently not very effective despite a lot of smart, brave, people doing their level best. The insurgents are everywhere and getting smarter and more desperate.
3. The Bush administration (i.e. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, etc...) don't have a CLUE as to what is really going on over there, and there is NO accountability for any of it.
4. My friends do not serve at the pleasure of the President, they serve in spite of it.
5. It is safer today in Baghdad than it was last fall by far, but that is because of tight lockdowns and constant military presence and control. It is well and truly effed up over there and we will not be able to walk out of this thing cleanly. We will eventually need to leave, and we will leave it in a state far less stable and more damaged than when we invaded, and there is a significant likelihood of civil war when we do.
6. Eventually, R. thinks that Iraq will likely end up resembling the remains of Yugoslavia; with the Kurds, Shiites, Sunii-Arabs, and Bathists each carving out their own state or sovereignty.
7. I asked R. if there was any one report that showed up in the media where either because of military filtering or other misinformation, was mostly or completely incomplete or wrong. He thought for a minute, and said - You know when things were so bad in Falluja last spring with the Sunii uprising, and we had to go in there and take control? Well, they got control all right. They wiped Falluja off the face of the earth. The only way they could get control was by destroying the city. It looks like Hiroshima. That never made the US papers.
8. Daily life at the Embassy compound in Baghdad is incredibly, incredibly difficult and regimented due to security issues.
9. I never want to go to the Baghdad International airport. A. is in charge of logistics there, and I couldn't believe some of the stuff she reported regarding conditions. She has done a HUGE job in cleaning it up and getting it running more smoothly. I fully believe she could run the Olympic Games single handedly if we let her.
10. We made a huge mistake by entering into this war. Period. |
posted by Broadsheet @ 9:31 AM   |
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| 1 Editorial Opinions: |
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Thanks for sharing what you picked from their brains.
That wasn't meant to sound zombiephilic.
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Thanks for sharing what you picked from their brains.
That wasn't meant to sound zombiephilic.