Text 14561, 56 rader
Skriven 2007-05-14 21:11:04 av Josh Hill (973.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: unions
==================
On Mon, 14 May 2007 23:19:07 +0100, Andrew Swallow
<am.swallow@btopenworld.com> wrote:

>Josh Hill wrote:
>> 
>> No one seriously believes we can win the war, Andrew. Things just keep
>> getting worse and worse, and the public isn't going to send the
>> million or so troops that would be necessary to change that.
>> 
>Then think again.  Anti-insurgency wars have been won.

Sure. And the historical studies that establish the number of troops
necessary for victory in this sort of war say that we don't have
nearly enough.

The Generals have been saying this since before the war began, but the
Bush Administration refused to listen, which is one of the main
reasons we're in the mess we're in:

'In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the
Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army
general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar
Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D.
Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost
of fighting and rebuilding the country. 

'Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war
of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K.
Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be
needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have
put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed
articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon
budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60
billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible
to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent
of rebuilding afterward.'

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:O5yjCLu4UYoJ:www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2003/0228pentagoncontra.htm+gen+shinseki&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us


Right now, the word is that we'd need hundreds of thousands of new
troops. But we don't have them and we aren't going to get them unless
we can get the Iraqis to fight as Iraqis rather than as Sunnis or
Shites or Kurds. Which we can't. Hence, the war is lost.

-- 
Josh

"The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet
that people have the right to live life as they please,
as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. . . .
The radical right has nearly ruined our party. Its members
do not care about the Constitution and they are the
ones making all the noise." - Barry Goldwater
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)