Posted on 01/09/2006 7:30:37 PM PST by jmc1969
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday night in the Twin Cities that he harbors no regrets about the U.S. invasion of Iraq but acknowledged wartime mistakes and warned that Iraq's eventual government might not be as broad-based as American leaders had hoped.
In a speech at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, he urged nearly 1,000 people to pray for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the people of Israel. Powell called Sharon, who suffered a major stroke last week, a man of peace.
Powell said that the world is in better shape now than at any point in his life. He said fascism and communism have been defeated and that while terrorists can blow up buildings and take hundreds and even thousands of lives, they cannot remake this country the way Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union would have.
Powell turned serious when talking about Iraq, and many of the audience's questions focused on the war there, which has taken the lives of nearly 2,200 U.S. troops. The mistake in Iraq was not that the U.S. invaded, he said. It was that "we didn't have enough troops to take control on the ground'' and didn't immediately impose martial law in order to protect the various ministries and infrastructure throughout Iraq. And, when given the chance by a questioner to outline the good things being accomplished in Iraq, Powell gave a mixed review.
He noted that local governments are taking over in the towns and that schools and hospitals are being built. But more would have been done to improve the oil infrastructure "if not for the insurgents. If we had smashed the insurgents in the beginning,'' we wouldn't have had to spend as much money now battling them and rebuilding all they are destroying, Powell said. But there will be even more problems if the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis cannot work out an inclusive government, he said.
An audience member asked about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Powell said when he delivered a speech before the United Nations in February 2003, he was convinced by the intelligence reports of the CIA, Israel, Britain, Germany, Spain and others that Saddam Hussein had them.
"Either he got rid of them quickly or Saddam Hussein might have thought he had them,'' Powell said. "We don't know.''
Despite setbacks in Iraq, Powell said, he expects American troops to begin leaving Iraq this year because "we can't sustain it with the troops going there four, five, six times'' and because Iraqi soldiers are better trained. But to much applause, he said, "We can't be weak-kneed. We can't walk away.''
As I said before the Pentagon didn't decide that we needed an Iraqi Army until after the Madhi uprising and the First Battle of Fallujah.
Wolfawitz admitted in his interview on the Pentagon Channel in October that up until April 2004 envisioned an Iraqi without a real Army like post war Japan.
Wolfawitz all but said in that interview that the Pentagon didn't take the insurgency seriously until after the Madhi uprising and the first Battle of Fallujah at which time they figured out there was a real problem that couldn't be dealt with by 100,000 US troops alone.
I meant to say they envisioned.
W did retire him. Powell is a private citizen.
"No. He sounds pretty good here. Many have long said we needed more troops"
Yes, but the CYA factor here is THIS:
- Powell was promising in 2003 that we would get more international support ... it never came, we got good pledges from UK, Poland, and some other nations like Japan, but the well went dry soon and the UN was totally unhelpful.
People forget that was a part of the plan too, but it didnt happen.
"Rumsfeld's need to prove his small, hightech forces theory. Those failed. "
Wrong, The 3 week war was a stunning success and *proved* the validity of the mobility and light approach.
The only problem was that Iraq as a society also melted down, because the post-baathist society was also a post-totalitarian one. They can be very anarchic.
The post-war situation proves nothing right or wrong about how to wage hot wars, it only tells us that if you occupy a country that was once a police state, you need to recreate the police pronto.
The reason why our Military is the finest in the world is because we adapt to our mistakes.
In the Army we use, an AAR, After Action Review. That basically tells us what we did wrong and how to improve it.
Most other cultures and countries do not utilize this method. They uphold status and "never" being wrong. So, every engagement they do. They don't learn from it. Because they didn't do anything wrong.
We have made mistakes. And we will improve those. It is in our nature. But, don't fall for the cover of not making them. If you do. We will never improve our next problem.
That's interesting.
Do you have a source for that statistic, or was it an educated guess?
Iraq is a boiling pot. It took Saddam a half a million man army using complete terror to keep a lid on that pot.
We could defeat Saddam's army with 150,000 troops.
But, we needed a large effective force over 300,000 strong to keep a lid on the boiling pot that was Iraq. It didn't have to be US troops. It could have been Iraqi troops. That was were the real mistake was made. Deciding that Iraq would only need a tiny 60,000 man strong military that only would mainly find and despose of land mines while we fought the insurgency. After the Madhi uprising and the first Battle of Fallujah they figured out Iraq needs a real army.
"Deciding that Iraq would only need a tiny 60,000 man strong military that only would mainly find and despose of land mines while we fought the insurgency. After the Madhi uprising and the first Battle of Fallujah they figured out Iraq needs a real army."
Actually, they figured that out a lot sooner, even in 2003. They planned a bigger army then that, they just didnt plan it to fight a bitter insurgency.
The problem has always been the slowness in getting them up and trained... so IMHO the one decision that could have made things dramatically better would have been retaining the army, then at least a trained cadre would have remained.
They could have weeded out the bad apples rather than wholesale replacement.
Again JMHO. Hindsight is always 20/20. There was always a plan to build the army, it just was a matter of what to expect they would fight.
If you recall they had some units that in arpil 2004 were too green to fight and it didnt go well. that was Iraq's CDC. After that they realized the Iraqi army would need elite anti-terrorism units and they have been training them at it since then. Iraqi units are getting pretty good now.
You mean your errors in 1991, right Colon.
As Powell said, we should have imposed Martial Law immediately. We should have controlled the Syrian border, immediately. We should have dealt with that Sadr runt, immediately.
We could have used Tear Gas or other riot Gas on the Sadr group, but because it is the military it is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. We need to overhaul the GenvCon to allow non-lethal gas or agents. We could then take down city blocks in Fallujah or Tikrit or elsewhere and identify all persons a lot more safely.
Why isn't Powell making the above recommendation, or anyone else for that matter?
Thank you. I feel like an idiot. I thought Powell was still on the W's payroll in some capacity after Condi assumed his role.
What is your take on Pwell's recent remarks?
Even if we had more troops, we also needed more armored vehicles likely unavailible at that time. Number of the troops was not the only factor.
A war is not like some cutsey little sitcom, with a perfect ending. The WOT was not perfect, human errors were made, but that's the way with all wars. It is better to learn and then move on instead of endless whining.
Powell is dead on, but then Powell's take is not that much different than Bush's. You couldn't know that by listening to the media though. The media has a wonderful way of magnifying even slight differences.
It was something that I read on the FR some time ago.
Oh. Well, that's got to be an authoritative source.
Thank you.
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