General: "Never a Mission" to Defeat Iraq's Insurgents

[grahamhgreen]

Source: Wired

If these clips from former Gen. Jack Keane are any indication, tomorrow night's edition of Frontline -- on the Iraq war's "endgame" -- could be a blockbuster.

"We never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option. We took down the regime, and we thought what we had to do then was occupy then country, stabilize it, and in the mater of a few months we could reduce the force," says Keane, the former Army Vice Chief of Staff and intellectual co-author of the current troop "surge."

And while the President may have been "us terms like 'win,' 'we're going to defeat the insurgents,' 'victory,'" Keane adds, "we never had that as a mission in Iraq." Take a look...

- Video -

Read more: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/general_never_a.html

---

What is the mission in Iraq?

[rurallib]

1. My thoughts: The only mission was to topple Hussein

and protect the oil. After Hussein fled (what was that week 2?) there has been no clear mission, ergo, the mess that has followed.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Mission drift - same as in Somalia, but on a larger scale.

The Repukes who screamed about mission drift back then are ignoring the same today - of course, that's because the REAL mission was never revealed.

Control the oil.

IT wasn't WMDs, Saddam or democracy. It was always about the oil, and THAT mission has not been accomplished, mostly because we never admitted that it was the true goal.

[Supersedeas]

2. not on the same page with Sir Pretzle Choak-alot, you don't say

[index555]

3. That's because "junior" didn't want to listen to

all the evidence that the CIA had that an insurgency would be exactly what the U.S. military would be up against.
His dad was smart enough not to try , maybe because dad was CIA chief , and knew how to tell good intelligence from a bunch of bullshit that was made up just to justify the war?

[underpants]

5. "Fiasco" points out that they never considered much of anything

they seemed to actually think they could get rid of the law enforcement and the entire power structure and everyone would just get back up the next day (this requires a suspension of physics as it pertains to tons of bombs exploding in the major population centers) and go to work like nothing happened.

Rummy and Franks and Sanchez and Wolfowitz and Bremer and everyone are to blame. They screw the whole thing up from conception to implimentation to afteractions.

[Tempest]

6. Frontline show "Endgame" is on tonight

Coming on air Tuesday, June 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings)

[Ilsa]

9. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll try to catch it tonight. nt

[struggle4progress]

7. Our mission in Iraq:

(1) Bankrupt the Federal government, following the ideological agenda pushed by Grover Norquist since the Reagan era, and simultaneously to distract from the general dismantling of Federal agencies
(2) Raise fuel prices to benefit the Gas-Oil-Petroleum crowd
(3) Undermine international institutions and treaties
(4) Help Rs consolidate an authoritarian regime in the United States, under the guise of the necessities of war
(5) Strengthen Fundamentalists' support for Rs, by maintaining the spectre of an apocalytic war in the Middle East
(6) Remind the rest of the world that we spend a lot more on the military than they do (40% of total world military expenditures is ours), giving us lots of big bombs, which we can drop without qualms
(7) And following the model established in the case of former CIA asset Noriega in Panama: take-out Saddam before he said too much about his long-term relations with the CIA

Might be a few I've left out

[Uncle Joe]

8. I'm looking forward to this Frontline episode.

Thanks for the thread grahamhgreen.

Kicked and recommended.

[tabasco]

10. Total utter bullshit.

Army planners at the top levels are very smart people. They knew damn well there would be an insurgency.

Keane is lying his ass off, trying to make it look like an honest mistake.

The Bush mafia wanted an unwinnable, neverending quagmire with US forces sitting on the Iraqi oil.

This whole disaster was intentional, not a mistake!

[index555]

11. actually rummy and bushco threw out the entire plan

that the military brass had developed for Iraq over the previous ten years.
"too expensive , we have a better plan" bushco said.
"the plan is to wipe out Iraqs military , depose Saddam , and the Iraqis will happily lay down and do whatever tricks we tell them to"

Isn't life simple when you see it through the eyes of an ideologue?