There are a variety of small-scale, counter-insurgency conflicts being fought in Iraq right now. Former U.S. Marine and journalist for “The Atlantic”, Bing West, compared Iraq to the Old West of the late nineteenth century. There is no unified presence of the state. Every region, every town, is a little different. He was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program about a week ago (5/24/07) and I highly recommend people have a look. His perspective was refreshing compared to what one gets from the MSM or FOX News. He definitely doesn’t think we have “lost” and this man has been to Iraq 13 times in the past five or six years. He is an unflinching critic of Islamic totalitarianism and is willing to say where he thinks the Bush administration has made mistakes.

Here is a good article to read and share with friends. Especially those who say the GWOT has been a failure because of our war in Iraq:

Mark Harmon
The Myth of the Invincible Terrorist
Policy Review
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/6848137.html

“We are in a hard march in rough country. The “Global War on Terrorism” requires patience and perseverance, and yet notes of pessimism have become audible among our ranks as citizen-soldiers. This is not surprising. After five years we still have not caught up with fugitive Osama bin Laden. Hard-working military officers wonder aloud if the polity back home will keep supporting its military services. Politicians sound more and more partisan. Academics are no better: A professor at Harvard declares that the president’s war on terror has been a “disaster,” while at a conference in Washington in September two well-known national security analysts say we are “losing” the war on terror.

In fact, there are good reasons to judge that we are winning this global war against terrorists. And not only because we have arrested or killed two-thirds of the middle- and lower-level leaders, as well as some of their superiors and commanders. It is because terror groups all have vulnerabilities. They are human organizations with human problems; al Qaeda is no exception. For all the talk of the new “flatter” al Qaeda organization, rarely does anyone ever mentions that a flatter organization means less organization, and that in global war, that cannot help Osama bin Laden.

The history of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency is rich, and the last four or five decades offer good lessons in terrorism’s vulnerabilities and counsel on how to exploit them. What follows here is a review of some of those. ”

[article continues]

He was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal 5/2707. Check that too, if you have a chance.

You can find links to Bing and Harmon’s segments here:

http://www.c-span.org/videoarchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Series,WJE&ArchiveDays=30

Lastly, it’s pretty clear to anyone who has even spent a bit of time studying these sort of things that it will get much, much, bloodier when the U.S. decides to leave. Sunni are not killing Shia and Shia are not killing Sunni because of the occupation. If anything, the presence of U.S. forces is unifying these people against us. Once we’re gone they will start killing each other with a vengeance. This is a society where the Shia majority was kept down with a brutal use of force for decades. A lot of people have family members who were killed by the Baathists.

It is difficult to convey the complexity of the way DOD works to someone who has not experienced it. This is a massive machine with so many departments and so much beaurocracy that no president, including Bush totally understands it.

Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and “Rice Bowls” which are never mixed.

Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exhorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon’s many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 10 years.

What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing and SAIC. If you would like to read how they control our government, please see:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703

Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues – with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.

Please examine the following link to testimony given by Franklin C. Spinney before Congress in 2002. It provides very specific information from a whistle blower who is still blowing his whistle (Look him up in your browser and you get lots of feedback) Frank spent the same amount of time as I did in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) but in government quarters. His job in government was a similar role to mine in defense companies. Frank’s emphasis in this testimony is on the money the machine costs us. It is compelling and it is noteworthy that he was still a staff analyst at the Pentagon when he gave this speech. I still can’t figure out how he got his superior’s permission to say such blunt things. He was extremely highly respected and is now retired.

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm

The brick wall I often refer to is the Pentagon’s own arrogance. It will implode by it’s own volition, go broke, or so drastically let down the American people that it will fall in shambles. Rest assured the day of the implosion is coming. The machine is out of control.

If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting on this blog entitled, “Odyssey of Armaments”

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html

On the same subject, you may also be interested in the following sites from the “Project On Government Oversight”, observing it’s 25th Anniversary and from “Defense In the National Interest”, inspired by Franklin Spinney and contributed to by active/reserve, former, or retired military personnel.

http://pogo.org/

http://www.d-n-i.net/top_level/about_us.htm

You mean like they do in Palestine? That would be great, because you know, the Palestinians cannot be criticized. Neither should we.

We can just tell our victims to examine the root cause of why we hate them.

God, liberals are so clever.

If we want the nation that you describe here, let us have it. Institute a draft, raise an Army of at least 12,000,000 men, and I am saying men, I don’t think we need any more girl soldiers like the 115 pound wonders we have now, and let us start being feared and respected around the world. Let us finish the job in Iraq ands get a government we like; let us enforce all UN Resolutions; let’s even go back to Viet Nam and overthrow that slave master regime.

But no more talk and no more half measures. Let us have a country that is a military power first and foremost.

Neo neo is a wonderful warrior and certainly like her hero Joe Lieberman a scourge to liberal traitors everywhere, but she is too old and too female to actually fight anywhere. We need young men trained to wage war at the drop of a hat.

And Neo neo is correct about history too. I think My Lai was either staged or an act of bravery and I have long wondered why author Tim O’Brien is allowed to claim he served a Tour of Duty in Nam, like Oliver Stone claims, even as these two are allowed to claim soldiers in war zones do terrible things and then claim they witnessed such acts.

By definition good men like Americans cannot do evil, even in war. We need better history and artists and filmmakers besides patriotic text books. I recommend Japan which admits no guilt over WW 2: Japan honors its dead.

Our army is a volunteer army that is overextended in a war that a real military power would have ended two years ago by force.

Again, sadly, I wish people who get the warrior religion in their old age were useful as fighters but they are not. Especially when they are women.

Solution? sweep the Liberals out of text books, teach an Ann Coulter America as wise and good caretaker of freedom everywhere and always, and teach boys on Sesame Street that someday it will be there privilege, honor, and most of all duty to fight and die for their country as it fights enemies everywhere they dare to even squeak against us.

Then we will have freedom and peace and then Neo neo won’t have to experience a change of life conversion in which she discovers that everything she thought was wrong and everything the other side thought was right.

Read the reports:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/

http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/duelfer.html

Something which you have demonstrated time and time again is completely beyond your ability.

Maybe this should be a contest to see who can pay attention.

My God, it already has been hasnt it?