The Economist had much snark to offer regarding Ricks' writings on the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq, and I danced with glee as I read it, for this truth coming out may save many of our soldiers' lives.
Thomas Ricks, a reporter with the Washington Post, has written the latest of several excellent compendiums of these blunders. Many, especially in the war's run-up and early months, are well-known: the fake pre-war intelligence; the failure to commit sufficient troops to the invasion; or to plan for its aftermath, and so on. But Mr Ricks has dug up enough new sources to justify revisiting them.
Oh, wait! You mean its getting worse over there?!?!?!?! Ricks pulls no punches on this point:
It has been markedly worse each time, in terms of security. On my first trip, in April-May 2003, we would walk out on the streets of Baghdad at night, albeit with caution. Even on my second trip, in the summer of 2003, I would feel comfortable hopping in a car and driving 100 miles north from Baghdad to Tikrit. To do either of those things now would be suicidal. In January and February of this year, Baghdad felt worse to me Mogadishu did when I was there in 1993 or Sarajevo did when I was there a few years later. It appeared to me that there was no security, except what you provided for yourself with armed men and careful planning. One Army major described the city to me as being in "the pure Hobbesian state" in which everybody is fighting everybody.
This Ricks guy is persistent and thorough:
His research took in 37,000 pages of official documents, hundreds of interviews and access to e-mails that, according to one survey, have been written weekly by 95% of American soldiers in Iraq.
And what do our soliders have to say? Our presence in Iraq is an adventure, not a war of necessity, and this attitude has unfortunately extended all the way down to the line, with robbery, rape, and murder apparently being the order of the day.
Most controversially, he describes widespread abuses against Iraqi citizens, including hostage-taking, murder, torture and theft, committed by American soldiers who did not understand why they were in Iraq or what they were supposed to be achieving there. Only a small minority of these crimes, perhaps, such as those at Abu Ghraib prison, have so far come to light.
Anyone who cares to inspect the happenings in Iraq at even a slightly deeper level that Faux News sound bites can't help but finding this stuff. I really hope that come 11/8/2006 there is going to be a withdrawl plan put in motion, as waiting until 1/31/2007 will just mean two hundred more dead United States soldiers.
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