"The Real Iraq We Knew" (12 former Army Captains in Iraq)

[swag]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101500841.html

(via TPM)
. . .

U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.

Iraqi security forces would not be able to salvage the situation. Even if all the Iraqi military and police were properly trained, equipped and truly committed, their 346,000 personnel would be too few. As it is, Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we're gone.

This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.

There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

[tabasco]

1. More combat vet phony soldiers.

Good thing we have brave people like Rush Limbaugh to win this war for us.

[jpgray]

2. Deserves a kick

[Rene]

3. How do we possibly 'win' this war. Exactly WHO comes and sits down at a surrender table?

Perhaps it's when most of the Iraqi men, women and children are dead....and/or have fled their country. This * admin is so damn sick/so war mongering.

[swag]

4. buenos dias kick

[jpgray]

5. Kicking again

[tom_paine]

6. How long until one or more of these guys takes a bullet to the head?

I am sorry to say, this is at least 50% likely in Bush-Occupied America.

it iS less than the 99% chnace of murderous retribution that someone criticizing Hitler in the papers in 1937 would have been, so I guess that's progress.

The people who wrote this should watch their backs. I hope I am wrong about this, but we should never underestimate to what depths the Lethal Union of High Social Dominators and the gullible weak-minded Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers will sink to, in order to punish Enemies of the BushReich.

Hopefully, they will restrict their attacks to personal and financial, as they often do. But on more than one occasion, they have likely resorted to assaults and murder (just ask Pat Tillman's family) and will probably do so again.