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Originally posted by: Mavdog
Take a look at the list of countries ID'd as involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom and almost all are either a) providing overflight clearance or b) naval support/vessels.
OIF webpage
I can't see how the figure is what is tossed around (22K ?) unless it includes sailors out at sea.
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Well ok but you gotta do a little bit more than that to fuel your cynicism. There is at least 10K britsh and I believe ~2k polish, 1.5k spanish, japanese etc. It doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me.
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I never called the current situation "a disaster" but it clearly is more chaotic than it could be if there had been better planning. Wolfowitz (and others in the current admin) is responsible for this lack of planning.
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Well I find it hard to argue with that statement. My garden would be better if I had better planning to.
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In that there were no WMD, nor any scuds to take care of, those items aren't issues that would prevent a plan for post war Iraq from being put into action. Those are straw man arguments...
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Why do you wear a seat belt when you drive? You didn't have a wreck the last time did you, so why did you spend the effort and resources to buckle up. Since you didn't have a wreck you didn't need it. It's far from a strawman, it had to be planned for and resourced. The "rolling" start was predicated on their being WMDs there. Why do you think guys were wearing chem suits anyway. It was a more important task (imho) than worrying about the post-war. First goal was to win it. Since we were in a "quagmire" 5 days into it, it was not at all certain that it would last less than 30 days or so.
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The plan should have been to have a multi nation "police" prescence ready to hit the ground as soon as the armed forces were through with their attack, which would have been about 10 months ago. This should have included muslim and non muslim personnell so that there was NO perception that they were occupiers but rather that the world was ready to help Iraq. I know that we are trying to help Iraq, you know it too, but I'd expect to the average Iraqi fed disinformation by their government for decades they aren't entirely sure.
All it would have taken is for a more deft diplomatic plan for post war Iraq...but then diplomacy clearly isn't the strong suit of this administration.
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You "MAY" be right, but I'm not convinced. Even with a "police force" in place they would still have had to contend with tanks, soldiers for example. The one thing I can see that jumps out at me was the firing of the iraqi military. That might have been a mistake. But it looks like an honest one that I would have probably made.
As far as the average iraqi's, the latest polls from that region show t hat they understand our motives much better than the people who read our media do. For example the iraqi muslims in britain for example have a much lower opinion of the effort than the local iraqis do. And it's no wonder with the BBC blaring out their anti-war drum.