#2 Verlaine should take this - and write us a book, lol. Yeah, I'm pretty free with his time, lol - apologies, bro. But he has insights into how this evolved that we have seen only at second or third hand and only as presented by the MSM. I will kick off the festivities - and hope that he sees this story and decides to jump in.
[my take]
I would like to point out that this is not the usual WaPo hit piece, full of unnamed sources and innuendo...
It is chock-a-block full of direct quotes from US soldiers on the ground, directly involved, whose asses are on the line - just ask Cpl Stanton's unit and his family.
Certainly, WaPo is well-known for cherry-picking, factual omissions, and dizzy lies - it has few rivals in that particular "journalistic art", but one would have to have one's head all the way up one's ass to dismiss the reality these people are drawing for us, people who actually know what the fuck they're talking about, completely out of hand.
There are many villains who deserve "credit" for the situation, primarily the DAWA / SCIRI Shia block (Jaafari, Jabr, Malickme, Sadr, Chalabi - the whole stable of MM tools) --- but these Us troops are not among them. They are carrying the water - and being targeted and killed for their selfless efforts.
To make sense of this situation, you have to turn back the clock to the pivotal moments since March, 2003... My list, below, is just off the top of my head. I'm sure it could be seriously improved upon if one took the time to examine the timeline and the circumstances prevailing at each point. Please, feel free to add / delete / correct, lol, as if you wouldn't, anyway...
1) The abandonment of the hammer & anvil invasion strategy because of Turkey's Muzzy perfidy. Result: Sunni / Ba'athist / AlQ stronghold in the Sunni triangle, complete with huge piles of ca$h, weapons caches, and a wide-open border with Syria for the ancient ratlines to exploit. The "insurgency" begins - with the coalition troops as the primary target.
2) The political (State Dept-style) stupidity which prevented a belated crushing of the Sunni Triangle after the fall of Baghdad. An example: the failure to allow Fallujah I to proceed.
3) The intervention of Sistani to save Tater in Najaf and, by doing so, save the militias all over the south and in Sadr City. After all, they were political allies of the Shia block - which would clearly take power in the coming elections. These militias grew and evolved. An element which exacerbated the situation over time - the following begins here but continues through to present day - was the BS soft-power approach of the UK - and I blame the MoD and their FO for helping to make a bad situation into a catastrophic fucking failure in the south. The UK troops could, and did, kick ass when the situation was manageable and their leadership had the stones. But that was long ago - now they are irrelevant redoubts in a sea of Shia / Qom bullshit.
4) The day the provisional government of Allawi, back when the coalition was in nominal control of security, handed off to the first elected Shia-controlled government and these rat-bastards were given direct control (especially veto power) over security and coalition operations. The magic word, "sovereignty", was proclaimed which put the brakes on doing anything substantive independently thereafter - i.e. if any Shia were in the killzone - and it has been one helluva quick downhill ride since that moment. Somewhere around this time, election time, the Sunnis shifted to killing civilians, for the most part, because it hurt to get hit back and now the Shia were the actual center of power.
5) The total subversion of the police - under the Shia IM - and the rise of the Death Squads. Now we have a bona-fide two-sided war - with the coalition in the middle. That's pretty fucking sucky. Double the fun with us having our hands tied due to the Shia "government".
This is where we are, now, and these good people, brave people, are telling us what they face.
You'll find a few linky-links in this comment which support the comments from our troops...
I waaaay sorry if this doesn't make some happy or they feel I'm being unfair, but the facts describe reality - and reality just is. Accept it or live in fantasy.
[/my take]
Fire away. |
WaPo, Page 1