The Bush Administration's Missteps With Iraq

Ali A Allawi   (former Minister of Trade and Minister of Defense in Iraq )

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order."

"More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society."

    From his book "The Occupation of Iraq," published by Yale University Press.

The Americans disbanded Iraq's army, which Allawi said could have helped quell a rising insurgency in 2003. Instead, hundreds of thousands of demobilized, angry men became a recruiting pool for the resistance.

• Purging tens of thousands of members of toppled President Saddam Hussein's Baath party — from government, school faculties and elsewhere — left Iraq short on experienced hands at a crucial time.

• An order consolidating decentralized bank accounts at the Finance Ministry bogged down operations of Iraq's many state-owned enterprises.

• The CPA's focus on private enterprise allowed the "commercial gangs" of Saddam's day to monopolize business.

• Its free-trade policy allowed looted Iraqi capital equipment to be spirited away across borders.

• The CPA perpetuated Saddam's fuel subsidies, selling gasoline at giveaway prices and draining the budget.  Yahoo News

  I guess that I am going to be  spending some of my time reading this entire book. This should be a very interesting take on things.

Tags: Ali A. Allawi Iraq Bush Saddam Hussein

Defund The War

You Can't Hurt a Troop by Defunding a War

Submitted by davidswanson on April 8, 2007 - 1:51pm.

OutOfIraq via Democrats.com

By David Swanson

When Senator Russ Feingold and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid propose cutting off the funding for the war, they are proposing the only thing that can possibly benefit U.S. troops. In fact, there is no way to make any sense of the idea that they could possibly be hurting U.S. troops. The funding is not for the troops.

When President George Bush claims that the money is for the troops, he is quite simply lying. The funding is not for the troops.

When Senator Barack Obama or Senator Carl Levin claims to want to pressure Bush to end the war, while at the same time promising to fund the war forever in the name of funding the troops, we are being told something that cannot possibly make any sense. The funding is not for the troops. It is for the war. You can't end the war while providing it. You can't hurt a troop by denying it.

Tags: U.S. Troops Iraq war defunding