Salon: Castles Made of Sand

[kskiska]

Hunkered down inside their massive Baghdad fortress, U.S. officials have no idea why the Iraq occupation has turned into a nightmare.

By Andrew Cockburn

Nothing much changes in Iraq. Just before the Shiites rose in revolt against the occupation, a leading member of the occupation authority in Baghdad reported that "the bottom seems to have dropped out of the agitation and most of the leaders are only too anxious to let bygones be bygones."

No, that was not Paul Bremer on CNN, but the British Iraqi expert Gertrude Bell, writing to the local military commander in May 1920. Almost immediately afterwards, most of Iraq erupted in a bloody revolt that inflicted thousands of casualties on the occupation forces. The uprising was enthusiastically supported by both Shiite and Sunni, who held joint prayer services in each other's mosques in support of the rebellion.

There is no sign that anyone in the vast fortress that is Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in the heart of Baghdad, isolated from Iraq and Iraqis by concrete ramparts and triple canopy razor wire, has any knowledge of or interest in awkward precedents like the great 1920 revolt. Nor is there any sign that any of the 3,000 officials (even excluding the high percentage of Republican Party hacks) allegedly governing Iraq understands quite why the occupation is collapsing in blood and flames.

Some in the U.S. military do have a better understanding of their enemy, certainly as compared with the empty bluster of Bush, Rumsfeld or Bremer. "It's a loose network of the willing," a Marine colonel lately returned from Baghdad told me Wednesday. "We are a hierarchy, so we look for other hierarchies to fight. But it's clear that what we are facing in Iraq is network-based. There's no one leader or leadership -- just like the first Palestinian intifada against the Israelis. That was a network of local groups who were able to give the appearance of a national movement. You can deal with that, but it takes maybe 10 years. We can't even plan for the next two months."

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/04/08/occupation/index.html

[donhakman]

1. All the neocon models

that used the occupation of Germany and Japan are out the window.

Rumsfeld did not even rely on the standard British practices of empire building by not disbanding the army of the occupied country.

US Iraq intelligence had no clue about the newspaper it shut down and the arrest order of the son of a major cleric.


What is the mentality of our current approach?
imho
Remember the Falujahmo ! - Revenge for the mercenary former Navy Seals over truth understanding and honor.Bomb the Mosque.

Bush even sent Billy Graham's son to Iraq to ... never mind, you wouldn't believe it.
It seems Bush has a mini nuclear back up plan so they don't sweat the details. So far however according to Indian nuclear scientists, we have dumped 250,000 Hiroshima bomb's worth of radiation in Iraq in the form of depleted uranium. ( about 8,000 tons )

This now opens up all our domestic nuclear plants as a fair target for terrorism that used to be considered an unbalanced response.
I think corporate America outside Lockheed and GE defense contractors have had enough. What good is paying no taxes when your family and country are gone?

Stay tuned for the news story that "despite the frequent use of mini nukes in the middle east the gasoline is perfectly fine since it was shielded underground.

I'm thinking if George only took a page from George Costanza and did everything the opposite of his first instinct, the US might be the shining example of truth and justice.