Iraq calls for former officers to rejoin army-(get saddam too while you at it)

IHT ^ | NOVEMBER 3, 2005 | By Edward Wong The New York Times

[Flavius]

BAGHDAD The Iraqi government issued a broad call Wednesday for the return of officers from the disbanded army of Saddam Hussein. The move was a major step aimed at trying to drain the insurgency of military recruits and bolstering the nascent Iraqi force being trained by the Americans.

The Defense Ministry said in a written statement that all former officers who had held the rank of major or lower could go to recruitment centers in six cities across Iraq throughout November.

The ministry has been quietly recruiting ex-officers for more than a year, but the announcement marks the first time it has put out a widespread

[armydawg1]

This might work, but keep an eye on these guys, you cover their back, dont let them cover yours, at least to start with.

[clee1]

Uh huh.

[shrinkermd]

Machiavelli's The Prince once was on the West Point reading list. In this book the author stated, "...nothing is more difficult than to replace and established order...the loser fights fiercely while those who will benefit do not experience the benefit and are lacking in direction..." That is my paraphrase so it isn't exactly what Machiavelli said and I am not going to look it up.

In any case, Wolfowitz et al choose not to just replace the leaders of the Saadam regime, but chose, instead, to replace the whole regime out of whole cloth. The upshot was fierce resistance from those defenestrated and tepid, slow response of the new power elite.

So, now we have a new policy compromising the original decision but instituted by the Sunnis. Hope it works!

If journalists were really as smart as they think they are they would review the Boer War. Here, 45,000 part time farmer warriors almost beat 300,000 British men of the line. To beat them the Brits had to ensconce the entire Afrikaner population into camps. The British did win the war, but the Afrikaners won the peace--apartheid was the eventual outcome.

Similarly, I believe Iraq is wending its way to an amalgam of Islam an militarism. In this sense we won the war but will lose the peace.

As an afterthought, why does not some military historian review and write about the Boer War. It heralded our current post-modern wars and introduced in a devestating way smokeless gunpowder, the machine gun and modern guerilla tactics.

[elhombrelibre]

The insurrection in the Philippians is also worth reviewing.

[jveritas]

Comparing the Boer war to the Iraq war is the "dumbest" analogy I have ever seen. Where did you come with this number of 300,000 British soldiers in South Africa that fought in the Boer war?

[shrinkermd]

Sorry you feel that way but the statistics are correct. Incidentally, this is an excerpt regarding casualties:

"...The war that resulted from the clash of these two opposing interests would last for nearly three years, cost the British government £201 million and result in 120,201 British and Imperial casualties....

Makes Iraq seem like a cake walk, eh!

Seriously, the Afrikaners hit the British early and even invaded the Cape. Vastly outnumbered they fought on with an army mostly comprised of part-time farmers. It was the smokeless gunpowder that permitted them to hold back kill Brits and then run to fight later someplace else.

My only original interest was the high casualty rate among the Afrikaners in the prison camps. Take healthy people, put them in unsanitary conditions and thousands die of simple disease like measles.

The URL for some of this is: http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/pages/boer.html. From the history of the British Army.