http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segid=7346&schedID=439&category=After+Words
But somehow I do not think you will
Posted on 08/28/2006 10:51:04 PM PDT by woofie
This is all I can find about Ricks on FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1679263/posts
barf alert.
This is the type of person who could disparage the good names of all of those who fought for this nation during WWII. Given enough time and manipulation you could find "stuff" to write any type of trash book.
Did we have a plan to fix Germany when we set about killing Hitler?
There is no way I will read this trash. I won't have to anyway. The rats will be on all of the shows spewing the content as fact.
I never hear any of these "critics" comment on Afghanistan ....The same administratiom and military folks were involved in that war. Was it a success ? If so Why? Was it a failure like iraq is supposed to be? I think the critics like Ricks got some explaining to do
Actually we did. Planning for postwar Occupied Germany began in 1940 (by the British, pretty confident move considering the Blitz was going on). In the US, There was planning done by the War, State and Treasury Departments all through World War II. Though its fair to point out the game plan FDR signed off on in 1944 (the Morgenthau Plan)-- which would have stripped Germany of its industry and left it as sort of a Central European Vermont-- was scrapped at war's end when we saw that we needed a strong Germany (or rather West Germany) to counter the Soviet Bloc.
I imagine Ricks' point in the book is there was postwar occupation planning done, both the State Department and Centcom had been working on it since the 90's, but all that work was scrapped when Bremer rolled in with his crew. Its impossible to say whether things would have gone better with the State Department's original plan.
http://www.booktv.org/General/index.asp?segid=7346&schedID=439&category=After+Words
But somehow I do not think you will
"How in the world they let a flake like this get away with spewing this kind of nonsense.......and no one has the common sense to stand up and cry "Horsesh*t" at the top of their lungs is totally beyond my comprehension.
Thanks. I've watched about the first fifteen minutes of it and have to get ready for an early work day. Depending on the interviewer and interviewee, "After Words" can be excellent or unwatchable. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of this one later today.
Most knowledgeable people felt and still feel that it would take at least five years for things to settle down in Iraq. One main goal, the toppling of Hussein, has been achieved. The other part is much more difficult, and I've never heard any statement from any admin official saying that it would anything other than difficult. Of course no one can predict accurately what would happen after the sacking of Hussein and the subsequent attempt at democratization. It's never been done in an Islamic country before. That doesn't mean it shouldn't have been tried, and Ricks doesn't offer good enough reasons why it shouldn't be. If he thinks that Hussein was not a severe threat to our security, then maybe he should ask Bill Clinton why he thought it fit to pass the Iraq Removal Act in 1998.
I think the terrorists planting roadside bombs and sniping at innocent people are responsible for the violence in Iraq.
What a concept.
This is a great book, if you're interested in some harsh truth. It's easy to dismiss it as an anti-Bush hit piece, but it's simply not. As someone who's set foot on Iraqi soil once or twice (and some other of the GWOTs garden spots), I'm very committed to winning the war on Islamic fascism. I've been a part of it on many levels, and have a pretty broad view of how things are going. That said, we've got to examine our mistakes and fix things, the way we were trained to do, or it's going to be a very, very long war.
So far we've been very hesitant to honestly look at what went wrong, for political reasons, but it's time that we did. There's a reason we're still at this war 3 years later, and it's not because Zarqawi was a modern day Ho Chi Minh. We should have been done with this already, and ready to hold the line against Iran and North Korea by now. The truth of how the occupation was conducted may hurt, but it's time we looked at it.
Let's see. Ricks' book about how the US supposedly was lead by incompetent boobs and screwed up everything sold 55,000 copies.
A book about a guy's Labrador (Marley & Me) has sold over 1,250,000 copies.
People don't care what he had to blovate about.
I saw him interviewed by Russert last Saturday and even with his obvious anti-Bush bias he does raise a whole lot of valid points. And one point he makes is that with all the mistakes made, all the false starts and botched attempts to end the attacks, not a single high level commander has been relieved for their failure. Colonels come in, screw things up, go home, and then a year or two later they're back again as a brigadier general. It isn't that we don't have people who have a clue on how to fight the insurgents, it's just that none of them are running the show.
recognizing my lack of the credentials that you present, doesn't the establishment of a government there that has some hope of gaining the allegiance of the people trump a lot of the horror stories? (see Khalizid WSJ 8/23/06: 94% of Iraquis support a unified state)
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