One of few military people who had much-more sense than his peers was the late Gen. William Odom, who in 2005 way-understated the horror: ‘“The invasion of Iraq may well turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history.”‘
Odom, who died in 2008, couldn’t fully grasp a decade ago how intense, and widespread that nightmarish disaster.
And apparently, we’re trying to take Odom’s dictum beyond further — just today, Defense Honcho Ash Carter announced 100-to-150 special ops are in-bound to Iraq, where or whatever, he wouldn’t say, other than the troops were to ‘“put even more pressure” on ISIS.’
Another vicious episode of a most-vicious circle.
(Illustration found here).
The above-mentioned, and now well-known, ISIS would not exist without two events — the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, which fell into the current proxy conflict.
Iraq is/was the key, though.
ISIS becoming out of the idiot-chaos of the invasion took a hard-fact turn as former US special forces chief Mike Flynn dumped the load in an interview published Sunday at Spiegel-Online, and pointed the finger of liars fate.
Flynn, most recently director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, regrets the mess:
SPIEGEL: In February 2004, you already had Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in your hands — he was imprisoned in in a military camp, but got cleared later as harmless by a US military commission. How could that fatal mistake happen?
Flynn: We were too dumb. We didn’t understand who we had there at that moment.
When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, “Where did those bastards come from? Let’s go kill them. Let’s go get them.”
Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction.
SPIEGEL: The US invaded Iraq even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
Flynn: First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based. Then we went into Iraq.
Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again.
SPIEGEL: The Islamic State wouldn’t be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret …
Flynn: … yes, absolutely …
SPIEGEL: … the Iraq war?
Flynn: It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him.
The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state.
The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq.
History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.
Yet so far nothing but history…
Related topic from the Guardian today — news the US invaded Iraq despite reports from South African experts no WMD existed there:
‘God, Spies and Lies,’ by South African journalist John Matisonn, describes how then president Thabo Mbeki tried in vain to convince both Blair and President George W Bush that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would be a terrible mistake.
Mbeki’s predecessor, Nelson Mandela, also tried to convince the American leader, but was left fuming that “President Bush doesn’t know how to think.”
(Illustration found here).
South Africa was well-acquainted with Saddam:
South Africa had a special insight into Iraq’s potential for WMD because the apartheid government’s own biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s led the countries to collaborate.
The programme was abandoned after the end of white minority rule in 1994 but the expert team, known as Project Coast, was put back together by Mbeki to investigate the US and UK assertion that Saddam had WMD — the central premise for mounting an invasion.
Read the whole piece for details, but the truth is in the details. After a South African team inspected Iraq in late 2002: ‘On their return, they reported that there were no WMDs in Iraq. “They knew where the sites in Iraq had been, and what they needed to look like. But there were now none in Iraq.”‘
And George W. and The Dick said fuck you…and walked, and continue walking…