Powell: U.S. made 'serious mistakes' in Iraq

AP ^ | April 9 2006 | MONIFA THOMAS

[jmc1969]

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday said the United States has made "serious mistakes" during the Iraq war that have led to the rising violence the country now faces.

"We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad," Powell told a crowd of thousands at the McCormick Place conference. "We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started, and . . . it got out of control."

Now, American troops must "stick with the people of Iraq" until order is restored, he said.

Powell, a retired four-star general, served as secretary of state under Bush from 2001 until 2005.

His remarks came a day after suicide bombers hit a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing more than 80.

[fat city]

Maybe if Powell had kicked De Villepin's ass after that UN debacle he'd have more creds.

[Naptowne]

Perhaps by "we" he meant the United States of America. You know, the country he spent his entire adult life serving.

I lurk on this site and have seen no reason to post in the past, but the vitriol and hatred expressed toward a great American like Colin Powell is outrageous. His comments are no different than the comments made by Condoleeza Rice last week, except for the fact that Powell actually is an expert on military strategy and the region. I am not one of the people who thinks that Iraq is a failure and a waste of time, and neither is Powell. He was simply stating a fact which is that the military strategists at the Pentagon and in the Administration did not adequately prepare for and expect the insurgency and this is supported by their own comments. The purpose of war is to impose your will on a nation through force, and having a larger invasion force and a more aggressive strategy following the collapse of Sadaam would have gone a long way toward doing just that. After all, Powell was the only military expert among the President's cabinet members. The naive ideologues like Richard Pearles and Doug Fifes who thought that everyone in Iraq was going to come out and sing kombaya with our troops are the reasons why the insurgency was able to grow and organize. We should have declared martial law and imposed strict curfews in the Sunni areas from the beginning, rather than thinking the war was over when we pulled down a statue.

People should also remember that if it wasn't for Colin Powell's hard work and foresight before 9/11 the US would not have been able to have such quick access to military bases all over south Asia to attack Afghanistan. Bush lost his to most efficient cabinet members when Powell and Ashcroft left the administration.

[Pittsburg Phil]

Ah, Mr. Affirmative Action himself has spoken.

[Terpfen]

So why did it happen, then?

I wish I knew. No one ever bothered to dig up the reasons for the change.

[LibLieSlayer]

I used to think differently, but I now KNOW the truth. Powell was a BIG mistake!

LLS

[Renegade]

Powell? Who's he ?( sarc.)

[manwiththehands]

Powell is running out of things to say.

[ac-rep]

I agree it's all about context.I spent a year in Iraq as a machine gunner for a combat engineering unit and I found the people there pretty much pacified.Sure we hit allot of IED"S,but fire fights were very rare.The problem is that the press doesn't have the security infrastructure to tell the full story even if they wanted to.There's no reporters roaming the streets of Bayji,ramagen, tikrit,al-synia,there are no ABC news beuraus in Sammara,they all huddle down in the green zone and regurgitate lopsided casualty figures back to the states and call it news.You always see "soldier killed" as a banner headline for instance,but when have you ever seen "insurgent" killed make it to the top story? The fact is Iraq is a COUNTRY more than just the city of Baghdad.How would we like to be defined as a country just by the crime in New york or Los Angeles?

[weegee]

Y'know, your words might carry more weight if you had posted more than 2 dozen times in 2 years on FR.

[gafusa]

Option two. No Iran, No Syria, No problem.

[gafusa]

although it is the only way to win. Very true We should have written the interim constitution ourselves, the one the Iraqis wrote is a disaster. They picked the European model, where Afghanistan picked the US one. I think that is the main reason for the trouble in Iraq. The government the picked is barely workable in a well establish country. We should have created a government, then given it greater freedom as it gained experience in operating a country. On hearts and minds, propaganda. It can still be the truth, but reported to make us look better. The newspaper bribes that the liberals whined about was a stroke of genius. The military did a great job, the problem was not with them. It is not the military's job to create governments. The problem was the state department and CIA being controlled and run into the ground by a bunch of naive Clinton hold-over liberals with no clue. Which Powell should have fixed, at least for the state department.

[pointsal]

Well, for openers, Powell is a long-term bureaucratic suckup... CYA from the get go...

[Unicorn]

He milked affirmative action dry.

[Sam Cree]

Powell has sometimes been accused of being overly cautious, but I think he is a good man, and a good soldier.

"Now, American troops must "stick with the people of Iraq" until order is restored, he said."

That comment is right on the money. The other comments at least make sense too, whether they are welcome or not.

[Red6]

I agree fully.

Most soldiers do NOT agree with the reporting on Iraq. Most don’t see Iraq as failing; most didn’t see themselves as left in the dark by an administration that didn’t want to supply body armor or armored HMMWV’s. The MSM does not like to report on the fact that over 75% of the in Iraq deployed troops voted for Bush! They want stories about recruiting shortfalls but find when the Army meets its goal not news worthy. They like stories on high casualty rates but find all time lows that are holding steady in the last MONTHS hardly news worthy…………..

I was in the infantry as an Airborne Ranger in Iraq OIF 1. I deployed with 1AD and then stayed for an extra 4 months with 1CD in Baghdad. Judging from the MSM one would think that Baghdad is all of Iraq! You’re absolutely right. When I was in Baghdad the Sheridan and Palestine hotels were the MSM’s base of operations. They seldom left their area and reported from the Sheridan roof top to give you an Iraqi sky line but all awhile they were still within our perimeter. Much of what they reported was hearsay, second hand information that was fed to them by their little informants. I understand that later after we left the security at these hotel’s was handed over to the Iraqis and the MSM left to go to the Green Zone. I wasn’t sure about that, but your statements seem to confirm what some of my friends told me.

Most the media does not care about Iraq. Most the media dislike Bush. Many in the media see the soldier as low life scum, morons who are beneath them; yet they like to stay behind our perimeter and profit from our blood. Their reporting often I found was tainted with an editorial sense to it. Unsolicited qualifying remarks loaded the articles which were spun in some way near always. Seldom did you have: “Just the facts” and often they didn’t even have the facts right on which their whole article was based. Seldom did they correct themselves, and when they did, it never got the circulation and attention which the erroneous message had. Example: The quote on quote mortar then bomb or rocket attack near some hotels in Baghdad on Thanksgiving 2003 which later turned out to be two guys siphoning fuel from tanks in an illegal gas station like setup which caught fire. The correction ran on the ticker on bottom a few times while the erroneous story was a headline that was speculated about by the “experts” of CNN and others for hours until they reluctantly ran the correction in the ticker.

The most eye opening experience in Iraq for me was not the horror of war. It was no disappointment in my fellow soldier. It was not even a US public that fully stood behind us. No, it was a media that in search of a story was looking for failure and conflict even if it meant literally staging a picture, taking things out of context etc. The media in our nation is out of control. It’s no longer news which we have. It’s editorial packaged as news. It’s complete garbage which lacks often even factual correctness when you’re talking about places like Iraq where they don’t really have access or free movement.

The NYT’s of all papers went with us on a mission to Karbala and elsewhere in our pursuit of Muqtar Al Sadr (whom we almost killed – the bandage on his arms was from a Predator Hellfire which took out one of the cars in his convoy and he got hurt / ETAC from 1AD, 1BDE). What’s the point? When they came with us the reporting was very different. If you go back to April 2004 (I believe) and review the stories in the NYT’s about the battles in these cities you’d see their reporting was more factual and even had a positive sound to them. Where they forced to write positive stories or where they sheltered from the ugly aspects? No. They had real information and a bigger picture to write about. Look at a lot of the stories by the media from there today. It lacks any substance, which is exactly what you state.

Seeing how I separated in Sep 2005 and have not been back to Iraq since July 2004 I do not feel I have an accurate picture anymore. However, I know for a FACT that what I’m fed by CNN is no accurate picture. The best insight I imagine of Iraq and what is really happening you could get if sitting in on the daily SITREPs at the Corps level. On SIPRnet you’ll find a lot of factual, confirmed information that is insightful and useful. But CNN I found to be junk. Pure junk that literally made you no smarter on the topic. You can best describe it as entertainment, a news soap opera. I can’t filter out truth from hearsay in these stories anymore since I have no first hand knowledge as in 2003. So I generally shut up in the posts that relate to what is going on there. I only know for a fact that which I saw and experienced while I was there, and it didn’t at all jive with what CNN was pumping out back in the US which thanks to satellite we could even watch in Iraq. I imagine it’s the same today, but I have no personal baseline of “known facts” against which I can evaluate the quality of information put out. So I resign to the fact that I will be a mushroom reference Iraq and it’s progress. Occasionally I’ll hear of a major event like the elections, adoption of a Constitution, phasing in of new currency, the Iraqis being half the troops involved in these missions etc. These milestones in reality were only possible because of many small little events that led up to them along the way, but those I will never hear about. If your Battalion trained or worked with some Iraqi unit and set them up, I’ll never hear it unless you tell your story.

I made it a point while in Iraq to write back not “propaganda” but what I saw, which was completely different than what was reported. I’m not the only one. Bit we don’t own the microphone. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN etc do own the microphone and they pump out that what a Carville, Dan Rather and Turner thinks will help their agenda. That’s just my opinion.

[Berlin_Freeper]

Powell is a single man who can only speak for himself, NOT the country. He needs to make clear what HIS mistakes were at the very least before pointing fingers at others.

President Bush was reelected with the most votes in US history WITHOUT Powell. Both you and Powell best remember that or yes, we will be pointing out the facts.

[Berlin_Freeper]

"Yes, Abu Ghraib was the media's fault."

Abu Ghraib was the fault of a few losers who happened to be in the Army. The Army itself reported about the abuse itself and ended it with criminal trials.

The media totally blew it out of proportion and tried to make it seem like the whole Army was run like that. That lie helped the terrorists propaganda. That IS the media's fault.

"Foreign terrorists flooding into Iraq was the media's fault also."

The media only report on the negative without telling the success stories we have against the terrorists, therefore the media encouraged many terrorists to go to Iraq because the Left Media makes it seem as if they are winning when they never were. That IS the media's fault.

"Whenever anyone points out mistakes that occurred or criticizes the administration, just blame the media."

Abu Ghraib and Terrorists encouraged to go to Iraq are NOT the mistake of the Bush Administration. You now have all the time in the world... come back with a single "mistake of the administration" or be exposed for the fool idiot that you are.

[Berlin_Freeper]

"Perhaps by "we" he meant the United States of America."

Powell is a single man who can only speak for himself, NOT America. He needs to make clear what HIS mistakes were at the very least before pointing fingers at others.

President Bush was reelected with the most votes in US history WITHOUT Powell. Both you and Powell best remember that or yes, we will be pointing out the facts.

[Berlin_Freeper]

My apologies, I posted to you in error. Have a nice day.

[bonfire]

Excellent post, DC> And RIGHT ON!