Bush Aknowledges Iraq "miscalculation"

"President Bush said today that he miscalculated the conditions when he sent U.S. Troops into Iraq.
In a separate interview with USA Today, Bush said Thursday that he believes he made the right decision to invade Iraq and thinks voters will not deny him a second term even if they disagree with the war"


story.news.yahoo.com.../ap/20040827/ap_on_el_pr/bush_interview&cid=694&ncid=716


To me, this is a load of crap. He knew exactly what he was getting our men and women in uniform into when he invaded Iraq to begin with. This war has nothing to do with Terrorism. That war was in Afghanistan. This was a simple case of solving his daddy's vendetta with Hussein. He got what he wanted, but our soldiers are losing their lives for his personal gain. Can we honestly agree and support that decision? I support our troops 110% however, I DO NOT support the reasons for invading Iraq or this unnecessary war! Just my opinion.

Yeah I agree, this is a total load of crap.

from the article:

The insurgency, he maintained, was the unintended result of a "swift victory" that led to Iraqi troops disappearing into the cities and mounting a rebellion.

Um, actually, the US DISBANDED the Iraqi military after the invasion, putting 350,000 to 400,000 out-of-work militarily trained Iraqis on the streets.

www.cnn.com...

So that's either Bush lying, or he's so damn stupid he doesn't remember that. Tough call.

"The president has to make hard decisions. My job is to confront problems not pass them on. And the American people have seen me make the hardest of decisions. That's just going to have to be a part of their decision-making process."

Confront problems and then "miscalculate" them, and only admit your failing after 16 months? Is that the President's biggest challenge?

Is it a hard decision to send hundreds of thousands of troops into combat based on falsehoods and lies?

You would think that if it WAS such a hard decision, they would have, oh, I dunno, taken more time to PLAN what would happen in Iraq after the military victory.

Destroying is simple. Rebuilding isn't.

So he made the difficult decision to send troops into a foreign country, but when it came to the decision on what to actually DO in Iraq after the victory, he brushes that one off.

And what about making the difficult decision to ban any pictures of American soldiers' coffins? What about the difficult decision to block the 9-11 Commission as much as possible? How about the difficult decision to tell the terrorists to "Bring It On!"?

Because there is more work to be done to make the world a freer and more peaceful place. It is essential that America lead in the 21st century in order to defeat the ideologues who use terror as a weapon, in order to secure the homeland, but also in order to spread liberty.

More sophistry of the lowest form. The Bush Adminstration uses terror as a weapon. OH NO ORANGE ALERT! CAREFUL! BE VIGILANT! Pfft.

George W. Bush: Making the world a freer and more peaceful place through heavy ordnance.


And what the *@&$ is this "spreading liberty" horse hockey? PLEASE someone name me a way that the USA has spread liberty. Please.

They've spread more hatred, anger, and depleted uranium than anything.



[edit on 27-8-2004 by Jakomo]

Originally posted by WuvLove
"President Bush said today that he miscalculated the conditions when he sent U.S. Troops into Iraq.
In a separate interview with USA Today, Bush said Thursday that he believes he made the right decision to invade Iraq and thinks voters will not deny him a second term even if they disagree with the war"

Isn't that special? If he was serious, he'd fire Rumsfeld. He's not, though. He's just talkin' outta his a$$. As usual.

Finally people that agree with me!

my comments on this here (for anyone who cares):

www.abovetopsecret.com...

-koji K.

The army and especially the Republican Guard wasn't completely disbanded. It did largely disappear. Remember when the whole Iraqi government seemed to vanish? That was representative of the of the military leadership. Tariq Azis said that he'd turn Iraqi cities into jungles. There was no way an Iraqi general had a hope of putting up anything more than delaying actions. They knew it'd be a long haul and they're in for the long haul. Question is, are we in for the long haul? Republics traditionally are not fit governments for foreign wars, especially long campaigns.

Considering what they're up against, the insurgents seem to be doing a good job. Hit the oil pipelines and pumps which debase the war aims, and keep up urban warfare at a level that doesn't exhaust their forces, then blend in with the population after 'negotiated' surrenders before they're completely crushed.

taibunsuu:

The army and especially the Republican Guard wasn't completely disbanded. It did largely disappear. Remember when the whole Iraqi government seemed to vanish? That was representative of the of the military leadership.

Read the CNN article I referenced.

www.cnn.com...

Sweeping away remnants of pre-war Iraq, Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, on Friday dissolved the Iraqi Armed Forces, the ministries of Defense and Information, and other security institutions that supported Saddam Hussein's regime.

An American senior coalition official said the move effectively disbands the Army, the Republican Guard and the Revolutionary Command Council, among others, and cancels any military or other ranks conferred by the previous regime.

"These actions are part of a robust campaign to show the Iraqi people that the Saddam regime is gone and will never return," the official said.

It also puts an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 soldiers out of work, as well as an estimated 2,000 Information Ministry employees....

...The order also suspends conscription and turns the property of the armed forces and other dissolved entities over to the Coalition Authority.

So technically, they officially disbanded the Iraqi Army and put all these guys into the streets, unemployed. With their pre-exisiting weapons training.

The disappearance of the government ministers is not the same as the dissolving of 400,000 military personnel in a newly conquered country.

In hindsight it seems like a pretty stupid mistake to make.

(edit: The dissolution of the Army, not your comparison.)





[edit on 27-8-2004 by Jakomo]

Yeah I read that article a long time ago.

I have NO idea why it was done this way.

The problem of a defeated army has been addressed by the US before. In WW2 in China the US met up with Japanese soldiers right after Japan's surrender, and immediately after they were fighting together.

Then again, the current war ignored many precedents and lessons from the past, so it's not surprising.

I supported getting rid of Saddam and Sons and didn't care what reason he gave. For myself, speaking only for myself, I can say that he could have come on tv and said "They're murderous scumbags who need to die and we're gonna go kill 'em" and I'd have cheered him on regardless of WMD.

Having said that...

I can't believe he didn't see this coming. I remember talking with friends about it all when he first gave the ultimatum before going in. We debated which would be worse, the invasion or the aftermath. It's not like other places where our guys have uniforms and their guys have uniforms and we bang away until one group gives up and everything changes. They have suicide bombers, a seemingly unlimited supply of "insurgents" who freely cross borders to blow our guys and the Iraqis up at will. They have financing and weapons stashed all over the place. No way we could just bomb here and there, round up some bad guys and walk away clean. This won't ever stop until they stop it themselves in the Middle East. At best, we could remove the tyrannical government they had and help set up a new one, but that's it. We're not going to get any kind of real peace over there. I figured we'd have a lightning strike, bad guys out, new guys in and let's roll. This could go on forever if we actually try to lock the place down into what Westerners consider "control".

Maybe we should have said something at the time?......Oh hang on, we did.

Funny how hundreds of millions of people around the world saw this coming, but Bush didn't.. makes you wonder doesn't it..

Yeah, don't forget all the protests that circled the globe where MILLIONS of people protested this war.

Screw the millions. Those whose countries weren't even getting involved are irrelevant to me. It can't always be "majority rules", which is all democracy really is. If 51% of the people win, 49% get screwed, so none of that ever really mattered to me.

I always think of those guys getting put through a wood chipper or being tortured until their backs were broken or any number of horrible things Saddam did to those people for decades. I bet the guy who was next in line for watching their wives be raped and killed before they got beaten to death were glad we came. I'm glad their soccer team can go back, win or lose, and not be tortured for their performance.

And don't yap about our Abu Ghraib abuses because they're not anything compared to what those people went through all that time. I don't agree with them and am glad they got busted and it's being turned out into the light of scrutiny. Everybody always goes back to that when they know damned well what I'm talking about. Compare Saddam to Lyndie England and it comes up way way short on our side.

As for this topic of him miscalculating, it would seem this is even more of a black eye for our intelligence. Shouldn't they have known enough about the region and their fierce anti-Westernism, and specifically their anti-American feeling, to have been able to see this was going to be a problem? Or was an easy aftermath just assumed?

Well well well what have we here lol. Fools rush in and it appears President Bush is the greatest fool of all time.

I have a quick question for everyone at this great forum. Would you let Mr. Bush manage your retirement fund?

I bet 100% of people will respond no (with good reason) but around 50% of people think he should manage our entire country. What a joke!

HAHA MRDEPENDABLE. I couldn't agree with you more

They fired Shinseki because he said we're gonna need about 350,000 troops.

The majority of people over there want peace and are willing to support the new government.

One of the problems is we got conned by retards who never saw combat into going in there with what, 135,000 troops?

And this guy has the gall to call himself a war president who makes the big decisions. lmfao.

Shrub's getting 'out strategorized' by a bunch of barefoot guys with RPGs.

Oh wait, his dad did that in Somalia too. Doh!