Saddam could restore utilities after our bombing attacks. We couldn't.

[NNN0LHI]

http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=400012

Lessons from Iraq

<snip>When the United States occupied Germany at the end of World War II, key officers were given a 400-page manual, laying out such key details as who might be responsible for keeping the electrical grid going, how to work with the local mayor.

Saddam could restore utilities after our bombing attacks. We couldn't. Common Iraqis came to believe we couldn't be that inept. We must be punishing them by keeping the electricity off. The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) came to stand for Can't Provide Anything.

In Iraq, planning was so poor that the key forces in Baghdad had to rely on a Lonely Planet Guidebook to find the Central Bank and National Museum.

There was the Army lieutenant who observed sewage flowing down an open gutter and dammed it up, only to find out he had short-circuited the town's sanitary system.

In an increasingly complex world, we will have to learn not only how to defeat an enemy, but how to feed nations, build bridges and run power grids. snip

Creating part of the force they would fight, American officials disbanded Saddam's army. This essentially left thousands of unemployed officers with weapons in their hands.

To oppose them, the Vinell Corporation (not the U.S. Army) was paid $48 million to train 22 battalions. Six took the field in 2003. Most of those fell apart.

[pretzel4gore]

1. Iraq! Kerplaaaat!!

As many still don't know, Iraq isn't a factor in the junyer bush phenomenon story- the TIME that has passed was the big issue. bush wasn't elected in 2k. repeat, Junyer was NOT ELECTED in the 2k farce (election)...
What does that mean?
The overthrow of the US legal authority in 2k election was not the 1st time the 'great game' had been played on our shores at our ultimate expense. The murder of JFK, garish and freaky and in broad daylight as it was, was a coup (and notice how 'they' still fake belief in the 'lone gunman' theory see gerald posner)...watergate also probably was. The entire reagan era was phony- if ronald was elected, it was by slim number, and that after the US newsmedia beat the Carter admin like Hunter Thompson's 'family mule' (and all the bs stats on earth never convince me otherwise)...the point of this is that the stage was set for the 2k coup, but ...the bush gangsters weren't just playing white house, they really believed the mindless rightwing nonsense their media spouts, and the difference was that the 'democrats' had by 2000 become repuke in all but name anyway, and taking control of the US government hardly gained the busheviks anything- even rightwingers admit Clinton was the best republican prez ever; Al Gore probably would have been too(?). But, for some very shabby reasons, a long line of sneaky dealing by the rightwing needed the payoff of a junyer bush presidency, and they got it. The mass media had long been helping the rightwing, and gaily helped the bush gangsters fukk over the American people AGAIN in the 2k election. But feudalism isn't going to return, not if its future victims (the people) have a say, and...well 911 fixed the media's wagon, fixed it good. Damn the torpedoes! There is no return to normalcy, to 'law'n'order' etc after 911 (staged like a badly written movie) for those who bush can drag down with him, iow the US mass merdia...on the spinning log we've been running on these last 6 years, the 'people' needed to think they thought what cnn/foxnews etc told them they thought, or else! Iraq filled one part of the media need for fake news to fill airtime for those years (and so what if a few thousand troops get killed? so what if economy is ruined, or famous US dollar is redone as funny money?) SO what?
The important thing is junyer finishes his 'mandate' and fades away like reagan did. The US can/will leave Iraq whenever it's conveeniet....just watch