Bush Administration's Latest Puppet

[unhappycamper]

http://www.ivaw.org/

Garett Reppenhagen
Branch of service: United States Army (USA)
Home: Washington DC, Maryland
Served in: Ft Knox Kentucky Vilseck Germany Camp McGrath Kosovo FOB Scunion Baquaba Iraq

Garett Reppenhagen was a US Army Cavalry/Scout (with the 2-63 Armor Battalion) and completed a nine month peace keeping mission in Kosovo and served as a Sniper in Operation Iraq Freedom II in Baquaba Iraq. Garett was honorably discharged on May 31st 2005 after being involuntarily extended by a ten month Stop-Loss. Since returning from Iraq Garett has become an advocate for veteran’s rights and benefits in the Washington DC based organization Veterans For America. Garett has been seen on BBC, CNN and other news programs as well as many newspapers and magazines. Recently the lyrics of a poem he wrote “Letter from Iraq” was turned into a song by the punk band The Bouncing Souls. Currently Garett is on the Board of Directors for the Iraq Veterans Against the War.



Bush Administration's Latest Puppet
by Garett Reppenhagen | Thu, 09/20/2007 - 4:10pm
Failed Surge

Statement from an IVAW member currently deployed in Baghdad, who wishes to remain anonymous. Hopefully with an increased effort in the movement we can end this illegal occupation and bring our brothers and sisters home soon. Here is the entire message:

By now we've all heard about the latest “successes” in Iraq out of the mouth of the Bush Administration's latest puppet and scapegoat, General David H. Petraeus.

General Petraeus was right to make the distinction between Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda in Iraq since we now know that Al Qaeda was not an entity in Iraq prior to the invasion. He left out that it is our involvement in Iraq that is the reason that Al Qaeda never seems to have problems meeting their recruiting goals. Also, mentioning Al Qaeda is a sure way of tying Iraq to 9-11, an important link in the minds of many Americans, even if not actual fact.

General Petraeus even mentioned that the number of ethno-sectarian deaths have dropped in Baghdad. What he failed to mention is that elements of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh al-Mahdi have employed the tactic of force moving populations to create Shia neighborhoods free of Sunnis and vice versa. Iraqi people are becoming increasingly afraid of leaving their neighborhoods to venture out into their country. The permanent Iraqi Police checkpoints make it difficult to navigate the roads without bribe money and if you're a Sunni, you just might not want to be caught at the checkpoints. The Iraqi Police have been known to casually look the other way while Sunnis get kidnapped or even while bombs are planted for "Coalition" forces. He also failed to mention the cherry picking of evidence in order to base his lies on his interpretation of fact.

General Petraeus mentioned the number of Iraqi Security Forces are growing, but said it was "amid continuing concerns about the sectarian tendencies of some elements in their ranks." This was good because those "some elements" are estimated to hover around eighty percent. The Iraqis I speak with on a near daily basis can't count on the Iraqi Police for anything and don't trust them with their security. In the Sunni neighborhood of Dora, the Iraqi Police are known to blare from their vehicles to the local population that if they are real men, they will come out of their homes and face the police. When a police force openly declares war on its population, that's security! That's democracy! None of our law or policymakers even asked what we are doing to quell this sectarianism within the security forces. Is it too hard to tell them that we are doing nothing to fix that particular problem? The Iraqi Police, after five years, still don't have the logistical means to fix any of their equipment that breaks down. The training of sectarian police, the supplies that they use... that's all being done at American taxpayer's expense.

General Petraeus mentioned that the local people of Anbar have risen up against Al Qaeda. Isn't that what the anti-war crowd has been saying for a while now? That the Iraqis can be trusted with their own security? It may be tenuous, and I'm sure that even these local tribal leaders would still rather see their country free of Americans, but it goes to prove that no, the Iraqi people don't need us to solve their problems for thems. There's another lie debunked straight from the horse's mouth! Maybe Dave will join Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The General also told us, point blank, that for all the extra troops and strategy and time and money and blood invested, that violence levels are back to where they were at... summer of 2006? Is he joking? The average Iraqi knows that America can't keep them safe. It's true that the security improves when Americans are in the immediate vicinity, but the minute we turn a corner, that security is gone. Weapons of mass destruction, Saddam, the military has accomplished everything it set out to accomplish. It's time to give the Iraqis the freedom we originally promised them. They're proving that they can be trusted with their own security. What the General failed to mention is that it wasn't the surge that sparked the Iraqis taking control, it was the talk of withdrawal. Up until now, the Iraqis haven't had to take control or risk their lives because we were willing to do that for them, now they're understanding that play time is over.

In typical military fashion, they've boiled everything down to numbers, but only the numbers that the military cares about. The number of Iraqis who have left their country to seek a better life somewhere else are not definitively known nor is the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion. General Petraeus has said before that there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq and it's becoming increasingly more clear that we're just staving off the inevitable. All the American and Iraqi blood being spilled in Iraq is just a stall, a stall for sectarian political reconciliation that has, at best, a fifty-fifty chance of working. Oh, and he left out suicides which, for the Army, have reached a quarter-century high.

General Petraeus didn't disappoint when he said more time was needed. Of course it is! There's no money to be made in ending the war! And Iraq has been very good for his career while simultaneously ending 3700 other soldier's careers and ruining a countless number of wounded soldier's careers. The General said he would offer another assessment in March 2008, whistling his favorite tune "the next six months will be critical." Did he fail to mention that there is still no end to the war in sight?

The surge was the wrong answer and sent the wrong message. Prior to the surge, there was not one soldier I could find who thought the surge would be a good idea. We all knew that it would just add more sitting ducks into this complicated equation. The numbers don't tell us that for the American combat arms soldier, after four and a half years of conflict, Iraq is still just keeping your fingers crossed and praying that you don't die or end up permanently disabled from an IED or that as long as we are still in Iraq, that the light at the end of the tunnel can't shine through.

It is important that the anti-war crowd know that it should not lose heart or give up the fight just yet. We're having our own "civil war" at home with the soul of our country at stake.


http://www.ivaw.org/

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Great Post !!

[glowing]

2. A real assesment of the Iraq war....