Agreement in Iraq

Remember a year ago or so when we all thought Iraq would be the issue that would dominate the election. It seems like a distant memory now.

This week there was finally a status-of-forces agreement that the Bush administration has been negotiating for months. This is going to allow US troops to remain in the country after the UN agreement expires at the end of this year.

The story in the Post states:

"The total withdrawal will be completed by December 31, 2011. This is not governed by circumstances on the ground," the spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told Iraqi reporters, pointedly rejecting the more conditional language that the U.S. government had sought in the accord.

So now there is a time table to withdraw from Iraq with no conditions. No matter is going on in Iraq come December 31, 2001, US troops will be gone. In other words the Bush administration completely caved. No more BS about how a time table will let terrorists know how long they have to wait until they begin their attacks again. No well will get out only if some set of conditions are met. Nope none of that at all.

The Iraqi Parliament still has to approve the deal. So there is always the possibility that this might not happen. If that should happen, then there is precious little time to come up with something else since the UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

I thought this was an interesting point in the story:

American officials have pointed out that there is nothing stopping the next Iraqi government from asking some U.S. troops to stay. The Iraqi military is years away from being able to defend the country from external attack, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

I can see almost no circumstances where any Iraqi government would want US troops to stay longer. More fantasy from the Bush administration on Iraq.

Back to Stop Loss

Stop Loss is the policy used by the army to extend soldiers combat duty. The important thing to point out here that this is beyond the time when that combat duty should have expired. In other words, their tour of duty is being extended involuntary. The main reason for this is of course the situation in Iraq.

The army said that it was going to stop doing this but now that is not the case. According to a story in USA Today:

The number of soldiers affected by stop loss peaked in 2005 at 15,758. Gates ordered stop loss to be minimized in January 2007. It fell to 8,540 in May 2007 but rose to about 12,000 in March and has stayed near that level. The troop buildup in Iraq and extension of Army tours from 12 to 15 months last year resulted in more stop-loss orders.

This is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start. It seems to me a simply question of fairness. The soldier has fulfilled his term of the enlist; the government should honor its side of the bargain as well. The strain this puts on troops must be incredible. I also can't see how this helps in retaining soldiers either.

The article continues:

If demand for U.S. combat troops stays constant through 2009, Moose said, the number of soldiers affected by stop loss will remain at about 12,000. "Stop loss is a function of how many units are preparing to deploy," he said. "We only use stop loss when we have to."

I really don't think the question is if. If not in Iraq then they will be needed in Afghanistan.

This is another legacy left to the country by the Bush administration. They simply did not plan the war well enough. The people who are suffering for it are our troops. And that is just wrong.

Remember Iraq?!

Remember when Iraq was going to be the be all and end all of issues for this presidential election. It now seems almost like a quaint after thought.

Well it is still out there. And some rather important news has happened or perhaps better put not happened there.

The draft security agreement between Iraq and the U.S. has been delayed by the Iraqi cabinet. This agreement defines the role that American troops can play in the country once the UN mandate expires at the end of this year.

It seems that the presidential election here my be playing a role in the lack of the agreements passage. See this story in the Post:

"We cannot rule out the possibility that there are some groups that want to delay the issue until after the U.S. elections," prominent Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman told The Associated Press. "They think that it is better to deal or to reach a better understanding with the new administration and they are not in a hurry."

The problem with that is the new administration won't take office until January. The question needs to be asked, if the agreement is not approved by the time the mandate expires, what happens to US troops in Iraq during this time.

The story in the Post states:

Without an agreement, or an extension of the mandate, the U.S. military would probably suspend operations because there would be no legal basis for the mission.

How do you go about suspending the operations of some 150,000 or so American soldiers in Iraq? Doesn't this seem to open up the possibilities of all sorts of attacks against American troops? How would they respond if attacked? Now indeed this might be political posturing on the part of the Iraqis in hopes of getting a better deal. But one would hope that someone, somewhere in the Bush administration would be figuring out how to proceed if the worst should happen. And, considering how the Bush administration rarely if ever does consider the worst case, the importance of securing an agreement takes on even greater importance.

A Timetable But Not Really a Timetable

Well it seems there's deal for withdrawing American troops from Iraq by 2011. Interesting what Bush said on the subject in May of 2007:

"It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing," he said last May. "All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength -- and begin plotting how to overthrow the government and take control of the country of Iraq. I believe setting a deadline for withdrawal would demoralize the Iraqi people, would encourage killers across the broader Middle East, and send a signal that America will not keep its commitments. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure -- and that would be irresponsible."

But, from an administration that has become an expert at splitting hairs and seeing the world one way when everyone else sees it the exact opposite, this from Secretary Rice:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said Thursday in Baghdad, "We have agreed that some goals, some aspirational timetables for how that might unfold are well worth having in such an agreement." Her use of the term "aspirational" suggested that the timetables would be linked in some undisclosed way to the attainment of measurable progress in the security, political and perhaps economic fields.

Even it the timetable is aspirational (whatever the hell that means), it is still a timetable. It will be interesting to see what spin the Bush administration applies to convince people it is not a timetable. How exactly are they going to fool the terrorist into not knowing when the timetable says when American troops will be gone.

Dam Froomkin of the Post has a great story on the coverage of this story.

It's also interesting to see how McCain will spin this one. In his "what things would look like at the end of my first term" speech a few months ago McCain envisioned "winning" the war in Iraq. But troops would be out by 2013 which is two years after the Bush agreement calls for.

It looks much like what Obama is currently proposing as he said: 'They are working on a plan that looks, lo and behold, like the plan that I've been advocating. I will encourage the administration to move forward with it.'

Obama's overall draw down would be slightly quicker than the one in the Bush agreement but the agreement would move troops out of combat operations in Iraqi cities by next summer faster than envisioned by Obama.

So why the cave by the administration? Well I guess I should be charitable and say why the change of heart. It seems to me the Bush administration thought it could force down the throats of the Iraqis an agreement the Iraqis found completely intolerable. One has to wonder if this administration was a bit more forward thinking and flexible if such an agreement could not have been concluded much earlier.

It also seems the Prime Minister Maliki was playing to the home crowd when getting tough with America. There are regional elections in Iraq in the not too distant future and Maliki didn't want to appear to be America's stooge. Also the UN mandate allowing American troops to stay in Iraq expires at the end of the year. So time was running out.

Thankfully time is also running out on this administration something we can all be grateful for.

Obama On The Road

Seems Obama's road trip is turning into an unqualified success. There are a few more days left for him to muff something up but it does not appear that will happen.

John McCain couldn't be more upset at the trip and the coverage that Obama is receiving. McCain first complains that Obama hasn't been to Iraq or Afghanistan and hasn't met with General Petraeus. So when Obama does just that McCain gets all bent out of shape. McCain also gets ticked off at all the coverage Obama is getting. I'm waiting for McCain to start jumping up and down like a five year old saying it's unfair.

As to the notion of a time line or time horizon or a commitment to withdraw troops well it seems the Iraqis are on board for the that:

"We are hoping that in 2010 that combat troops will withdraw from Iraq," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said after Obama met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki _ who has struggled for days to clarify Iraq's position on a possible timetable for a U.S. troop pullout.

Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, said after meeting Obama that Iraqi leaders share "a common interest ... to schedule the withdrawal of American troops."

This comes from a story in the Post.

What's sad is that the draw down of American troops means they in all likelihood they will not be going home but will end up in Afghanistan. Where by the way they are desperately needed to combat a resurgent Taliban. Another thing the Bush administration failed to get right.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the campaign.

The Forgotten Forgotten War

If Iraq is the forgotten war, then Afghanistan is the forgotten forgotten war.

Well not any more. In the month of June, there were 28 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan. That's one less than in Iraq. The only thing is that the American force in Afghanistan is one-quarter the size of the force in Iraq. It means Afghanistan is extremely deadly to American forces right now. Most likely it will be for some time to come.

The Taliban is on the move. It kept it's head down for a few years and regrouped and is now at it again. Of course they were able to do this because the US was all caught up in the fight in Iraq. It now seems the military wants to send more troops to Afghanistan but can't because of Iraq.

This from a story in the Post:

"I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there."

This statement comes from no less than Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It says to me we are in trouble. The idea is that, as things improve in Iraq and there's a draw down there, we send those forces to Afghanistan. Some experts think it might take a couple of years to accomplish that. My question is do we have a couple of years to wait. The Taliban certainly won't be waiting a couple of years.

One of the short term ways to solve this problem is to extend the tours of duty of soldiers. See the story here.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is doing combat operations in the volatile south, will stay an extra 30 days and come home in early November rather than October, Marine Col. David Lapan confirmed Thursday.

There are assurances from the Pentagon that there will not be an extension beyond those 30 days. But then again in early May no less than Secretary Gates said "no one has suggested even the possibility of extending that rotation." So this recent assurance should be taken with a grain of salt.

President Bush has stated that there will be a increase in troops sent to Afghanistan in 2009. Of course the details on how that will be accomplished are few.

Once again the lack of proper planning on Iraq is directly impacting our ability to defeat the Taliban, al-Qaida and other militants in Afghanistan. Chalk another one up for the Bush administration.

The idea of moving the troops from Iraq (once things are stable in Iraq) to Afghanistan posses a couple of questions. At what point does the equipment start to give out? How many tours of duty are these soldiers supposed to go through before they get a break? Or our leaders just going to keep using them until they are ground into the dust?

They deserve to be treated better. Most of all they deserve not to be forgotten which unfortunately has happened with the was in Afghanistan.

Problems with Iraq Treaty

Seems the Bush Administration is running into some problems with negotiating their "security framework" with Iraq. See this story in the Post. Here's a revealing quote:

The Americans are making demands that would lead to the colonization of Iraq, said Sami al-Askari, a senior Shiite politician on parliament's foreign relations committee who is close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "If we can't reach a fair agreement, many people think we should say, 'Goodbye, U.S. troops. We don't need you here anymore.'

From reading the story it sounds like Bush and friends want to put American bases all over Iraq. The original idea was to have over 200 facilities across the country. How could this not be interpreted as a long term permanent presence in the country? And wouldn't these "facilities" as the story refers to them not be targets for terrorists? The number the Americans want has since come down to 58.

It makes you wonder if the administration is having problems with the Iraqis what problems they will have with Congress. And Congress on this one had better not roll over as they have in the past. I guess the White House is getting a little concerned about how Congress will react:

In Washington, the White House hastily organized a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, respectively, demanded Monday that the administration "be more transparent with Congress, with greater consultation, about the progress and content of these deliberations."

This is a treaty with Iraq no matter what the Bush Administration may want to call it and as a treaty it has to be ratified by the Senate.

Distrubing News from the Army

A very disturbing report out from the Army this week. Here's a story about it in USA Today and also from the Post.

There has been a record number of suicides reported in the Army. It's the highest since the Army started counting in 1980.

From the Post article:

"We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute _ mainly the longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that's very, very busy right now," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

The incredible strain the wars are putting on our troops is simply unacceptable. It once again shows the whirlwind we are reaping from the lack of proper planning by the Bush Administration in every aspect of this war.

About the only good thing that can be said is the Army has recognized the problem and is aggressively taking steps to try (try being the operative word here) to combat this issue:

The efforts include more training and education programs for troops and their families. Officials also have hired more mental health workers, increased screening to measure the psychological health of soldiers and worked to reduce any stigma that keeps them from going for treatment when they have symptoms of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and other emotional problems.

It seems once again we have failed our soldiers. It seems once again this administration in particular has failed them. Thankfully this administration's days are numbered. Let's hope the next one will immediately take steps to really and truly support our troops.

Learning as We Go

This from our president on Iraq. A couple of stories on his speech at the Air Force Academy. From USA Today and the Post.

Here's the quote I was referring to:

Today, we're helping emerging democracies rebuild under fire from terrorist networks and state sponsors of terror. This is a difficult and unprecedented task -- and we're learning as we go.

I think the point that should be added is the Bush administration is learning as it is going. I think it needs a remedial course because it is so far behind the curve it is pathetic.

Bush goes on:

we learned from hard experience that newly liberated people cannot make political and economic progress unless they first have some measure of security.

Gosh I don't know it seems to me a pretty easy concept to grasp. Something people have been saying for a very long time but that the Bush administration would not listen to. The need for more troops to secure the country. But oh no we can't do that. We have to learn the hard way. Yeah like getting hit over the head by a 2 by 4.

And once again the age old axium of the Bush administration we have to have patient.

I think it is easy to say we ran out of patient with these learning challenged guys a long time ago.

State of the Military?

Here are a couple of stories regarding the state of the military. They don't paint a particular bright picture of what is going on.

The first one is from a couple of weeks ago in USA Today. It involves the use of stop-loss by the military in this case the army. This means that a soldier can have his enlistment extended to increase army troop levels. From the article:

Soldiers affected by stop loss now serve, on average, an extra 6.6 months, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. Key leaders at the small-unit level — sergeants through sergeants first class — make up 45% of those soldiers.

We're not talking a small amount of time here. Also the extension of duty often happens in a combat zone. It's not like they are shipped State side. "For the 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for a portion of Iraq south of Baghdad, about 1,500 of its 22,500 soldiers is serving under stop loss, according to Maj. Alayne Conway."

The reason for all this is of course the lack of proper planning by the Bush Administration on the way the war in Iraq would be played out.

The second story is also from USA Today. It's about the condition of army barracks that are soldiers are forced to live in. This all got started when a father of one of the solders video the conditions at Fort Bragg. This is where his son got to live after coming home from Afghanistan. You should follow the link in the story and watch the video. It will really make you angry.

Let's see peeling paint, missing ceiling tiles, water fountains that have been removed but the pipes to the fountain leak in sewer gas, a bathroom that backs up and we're talking about inches of yellow water on the floor (guess what that's from). The list goes on. There was a promise of new barracks for the soldiers at Fort Bragg but that never happened. Seems to me the least we can do for these brave men and women is give them a decent place to live before they go off and risks their lives again in Afghanistan or Iraq.

From the article:

The Pentagon says the proportion of recruits who remain in the service is 15% higher at bases with high-quality housing. That sentiment led Peter Singer, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, to wonder why it took one soldier's father to prompt the entire Army to action.

"It's sad that it took a YouTube video to cause the military to face what is a serious issue that affects morale and retention," Singer said. "That's not how the system is supposed to work."

But more and more that seems to be the way the system is working. Someone other then the military brings the issue out in the open. Then people are falling all over themselves to fix the problem. The mess at Walter Reed immediately comes to mind.

It is not entirely all the military's fault. The military is involved in two wars. For the average person Afghanistan and Iraq doesn't have any impact on them at all. Maybe, if there was a little more impact, people would be more concerned about how the soldiers in the military are being treated.

Five Years, 4,000 Dead and Counting

We passed the fifth year of the war last week and today was the 4,000th casualty of that war. Here's the story from USA Today.

There seems to be little end in sight to this. Unless of course there is a change at the presidential level. In other words a victory by the Democrats.

There is also a great opinion piece also in USA Today about the lack of sacrifice on anyone's part besides those in the military, their families and friends. I have long thought that the United States is not at war; its military is. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq only touch the average American's life by what he watches on the news.

The piece in USA Today makes some very good points:

... more important than noting how many have died is to remember what an extraordinarily unfair share of the burden those fighting in Iraq have borne. Never has most of the country been so spared the personal suffering of so long a conflict.

And this point really hits home:

The real answer is that if most Americans were asked to sacrifice in serious ways, their support for the war — already weak — would likely erode even more. Only by asking very little has the administration been able to sustain a war that was supposed to be over in weeks or months.

It could not have been said any better.

Total Contempt

If you want to get a sense of what Dick Cheney thinks about democracy in the United States you need look no further than his comments on the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Here's an exchange he had with Martha Raddatz of ABC News:

Raddatz: "Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives."

Cheney: "So?"

Raddatz: "So -- you don't care what the American people think?"

Cheney: "No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn't had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there."

There a small little problem with that. The opinion polls really have not fluctuated at all. And to compare this administration with the one of Lincoln's is nothing short of obscene. It also reinforces the point that this administration cannot be out of power soon enough.

USA Today has a great editorial on this subject. It says in part:

Cheney, in particular, has long since squandered his standing to criticize others on this subject. On March 16, 2003, three days before the invasion, he was asked on NBC's Meet the Press whether an invasion might not unleash "a long, costly and bloody battle with significant American casualties."

"Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way," he replied, "because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." Two years later, he said on CNN's Larry King Live that the Iraqi insurgency was "in the last throes."

I guess he was a little off on those two predictions. So for him to say we are winning in Iraq must be taken with the grain of salt it so richly deserves.

Just Sad

This is a story that appeared in a recent issue of Time Magazine. It is the story of Sergeant Gerald (GJ) Cassidy and how the Army did not take proper care of the injuries he sustained in Iraq. He was in an Army medical facility when he died. In essence the army killed him through neglect.

He was at an army hospital receiving treatment for severe migraine headaches. He was on methadone. This from the article:

Horrifyingly, it appears that Cassidy lived for up to two days after falling into a stupor. Forgotten and alone, he sat in his room until he died. "My God, he was there for three days, and no one even found him. That's a huge scandal," says Dr. William Kearney, Cassidy's Army psychiatrist. Regulations that require a soldier to show up for formation three times a day or be tracked down were widely ignored, say soldiers who stayed at Fort Knox. "You could easily linger for two days in a coma," Kearney says, "and if anybody had opened his door, they would have found him unconscious and they would have called 911."

The article continues:

Just as the Pentagon failed to anticipate the duration and cost of the Iraq war, it has been woefully unprepared for the waves of wounded who return home needing care. Earnest, hardworking medical personnel haven't been able to handle the deluge. At Fort Knox, Cassidy and more than 200 other soldiers were placed in a newly created Warrior Transition Unit (WTU). The Army is spending $500 million this year on such units, in which troops operate as a military detachment and continue to be paid. After a 2007 Washington Post series focused attention on poor conditions at the service's flagship Walter Reed hospital in Washington, the Army created the units to streamline the care of Army outpatients. There are currently 8,300 soldiers in 35 WTUS. One in 5 suffers from TBI, PTSD or both.

Once again the total lack of any "post war" planning by the Bush Administration is costing soldiers their lives. The tragic part is this is barely mentioned in the media. It is outrageous.

There are the usual oh we'll do better and this has shown we've got to work harder. "Now the Army is rushing to catch up, setting up screening tools and treatment plans to deal with TBI and a "center of excellence" dedicated to the challenge."

How many times do we have to hear this excuse? How many more soldiers have to die because of neglect and incompetence before something is really done? How come the public isn't more up in arms over this?

We make a big point, from the President on down, of saying how we won't forget the soldiers who have gone to war, how we'll honor them when then come home.

When does that rhetoric become a reality?

I know the troops are dying to find out.

A fifth of soldiers at PTSD risk

That was the headline of a story in USA Today recently. The story starts:

More than five years of recycling soldiers through Iraq and Afghanistan's battlefields is creating record levels of mental health problems, as about three in 10 GIs on their third tour admit emotional illnesses, according to an Army study released Thursday.

The report goes on to say:

The report underscores concerns raised by military leaders that the current year-long break soldiers receive between successive 12- to 15-month combat deployments is far too short for them to recover. In fact, certain mental illnesses such as PTSD grow more intense as the soldiers prepare to go back into combat, the report shows.

Once again we are shown how the complete lack of planning by the Bush Administration is placing our soldiers at risk. If there'd been a post war strategy beyond Mission Accomplished our soldiers would not be going through this. But there wasn't and they are going through it. And it seems at every step along the way the military is trying to play catch up. I'd say there not doing a particular good job at it.

In for the long haul

Word comes today the Secretary of Defense Gates in favor of a suspension of the draw down of troops in Iraq.

The notion put forth by the administration that there would be a greater reduction of troops beyond those involved in the surge is now over. This should not come as any surprise. This had been standard operating procedure of the Bush Administration since the beginning of the was. Always the promise of a reduction in troops but somehow it just never happen.

Gates told reporters traveling with him in Baghdad that he was leaning toward recommending "a brief period of consolidation and evaluation" before further reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a Defense Department release.

Estimates of how long such a pause would last have varied from 30 to 90 days. The amount of time needed to withdraw a brigade -- as many as 75 days -- would effectively mean that troop levels would remain steady from late summer until the end of President Bush's term in January 2009.

It means there will be 130,000 or so troops in Iraq at the end of Bush's term. The exact same number that were there over a year ago. One can only hope that the next president will bring the rest of them home as quickly as possible.

Suicides in the Army

A tragic story on suicides in the army.

Yet another failure on the part of the Bush Administration in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. From the article:

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments. Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.

To get some perspective on the above numbers: By comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there were 11.05 suicides for every 100,000 people in the United States in 2005.

It is so wonderful to have Bush saying how much success we are having in Iraq in the State of the Union. Applauding how the surge is working. A surge which should have taken places years ago. Or perhaps we should have had enough troops to do the job from the first place. Again it is good to know this “success” is coming on the backs of the ordinary solider that this country is incapable of taking care of properly once he returns home.

The article continues:

The study, which the Army’s top personnel chief ordered six months ago, acknowledges that the Army still does not know how to adequately assess, monitor and treat soldiers with psychological problems. In fact, it says that “the current Army Suicide Prevention Program was not originally designed for a combat/deployment environment.”

Wow then let me take a quick guess and say the program is worthless!

Article on the Surge

There's a great article about the surge in the Sunday Post.

I've long thought that we can win the "surge." The problem comes once the troops go home. Has there been any change on the ground politically to make someone think things can change for the better? I'd say that that is probably not the case.

We've offered the Sunni insurgents money and arms to come over to our side and fight against al qaeda. The question has to asked has this bought loyalty to the central government. Or once al qaeda is gone will these Sunni insurgents turn against the government in Baghdad. As First Sgt. Richard Meiers stated: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

I think the final paragraph sums up how I feel about the new found optimism that this time around we've figured out a way to "win" in Iraq:

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Soldiers at home

Here's a very sobering story from Men's Health about the care or lack of care soldiers receive when they get back to the U.S.

The story follows three men from the same Marine company in Iraq. It tells their story of their combat experiences. They all fought in Fallujah. It then recounts how well they've been doing at home. You can sum up the article by saying one of the guys is lost, one is probably going to be ok and one is doing "fine". I'm not entirely sure I you can define fine after reading what these guys have been through.

Paul Rieckhoff is agitated. I've just recounted Lambert's story, and as a U.S. Army veteran and founder of the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Rieckhoff has heard and seen it all before.

"Stories like that just piss me off," says Rieckhoff, a former first lieutenant who led an infantry platoon on more than 1,000 combat patrols in Baghdad. "The reality is that mental-health issues are probably one of the greatest threats facing Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. But our country is not ready to care for them. Contrary to what our president keeps telling us, we're not a country at war. Less than 1 percent of this country is at war. Our military is at war. Our military families are at war. Everyone else is shopping or watching American Idol."

I think the above paragraph really sums up one of the many problems with this "war" or I guess I should say these "wars" if you remember to include Afghanistan. To me this is the one problem, the way soldiers either in Iraq and Afghanistan or here at home are treated, that pisses me off more than anything.

This article gives a good look at the lack of care for our soldiers. It's nice to run around and say we support our troops and put little decals on our cars saying the same. But when it comes right down to it that's just lip service. The article concludes this way:

George Orwell said, "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

Fred Lambert, Chris Sipe, and Ricky Mayer are such men. So what do we owe them in return?

And on this Thanksgiving, I think that is a very important question to think about as we sit down and have dinner.

Back to Iraq

I haven't written much on Iraq lately. It has sort of dropped down in the headlines and the TV news.

There was however a very interesting article in the Post Outlook section on Sunday. It's by a former soldier, William Quinn, who was in Iraq for about a year. He is now a student at Georgetown University. He has some very interesting perspectives on the war and how the war effects people in this country. Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

The war didn't just seem to be taking place in another country; it seemed to be taking place in another universe. There I was, in desert camouflage, wondering how all the intensity, the violence, the tears and the killing of Iraq could really be happening at the same time that all these people were hurrying to catch their flights to Las Vegas or Los Angeles or wherever.

and this:

Six years later, 9/11 doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on most people's lives. But it has had an enormous effect on mine.

He ends the article by saying this:

I'm proud to be a student at Georgetown. Though I find some aspects of campus culture discouraging, I have a lot of respect for my professors and peers. But there are still days when I think about what it must be like back in Baghdad -- and wonder whether that's where I should be.

This points out the huge disconnect between those people fighting the war and everyone else in the country. When you get right down to it, the only people feeling the effects of this "war" are the soldiers in the military, their family and friends. Otherwise I cannot for the life of me figure out how the average American is impacted by this conflict at all.

Maybe, and this is a big maybe, the instability in Iraq has contributed in a very small way to the increase in gas prices. But that's a really big maybe.

As I've said on many occasions, if you are fighting a war then the whole country needs to be involved in it. The Bush administration has asked for no sacrifice by the American people. And for that matter neither has any Republican or Democratic politician. It is in short a disgrace.

Imagine Franklin Roosevelt saying during World War II oh don't worry folks we'll defeat the Japs and Germans without any sacrifice on your part what so ever. We won't retool industry to make modern weapons; we will just use the stuff from the last war. No you cannot imagine that at all.

There is of course a huge disagreement in this country on the war. It has been so badly managed on ever level possible. But my point is that if you go to war the whole country has to go to war. And unfortunately that's not the case. And the men and women fighting the war deserve better.

IED Training

This is from an article from USA Today on the training the military is undertaking to prepare soldiers for encounter IEDs in Iraq. This from the article:

Across the Pentagon’s entire training complex, there are no more than a few of the new Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, known as MRAPs, that are being rushed to Iraq as the latest response to the IED threat.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Mattis, selected in September to head the U.S. Joint Forces Command, told Congress in confirmation testimony that all troops are prepared when they reach combat.

But Mattis acknowledged that “units are challenged in their readiness by equipment needs … and (lack of) time to train.” Many don’t get to practice with the equipment they’ll use in combat because there’s only enough to supply troops already in the theater, he said, and they don’t reach a combat-ready state until “just in time” for their deployment.

If they don’t have the equipment they are going to use in Iraq to train on, how could anyone say the troops are "prepared" when they reach Iraq. One also has to ask the question why this hasn’t been going on since the first encounters with IEDs:

In recent years, that training has evolved and improved dramatically, but “it hasn’t been quick enough,” says Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of the 1st Army, which trains all National Guard and reserve troops in the mainland USA. “It’s gotten better and better, but we’re still a long way from perfect.”

and this

The lag in IED training mirrored the reluctance of top Pentagon officials to acknowledge the potency of the insurgency — and the persistence of IEDs.

“We had a period there where the Pentagon wouldn’t even acknowledge that there was an insurgency,” says Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., who chairs the House Armed Services subcommittee on military oversight. “So we were behind every step of the way — on training, equipment, technology.”

These days, with far more robust instructional programs in place, there still isn’t enough time and money to make sure that all war fighters get all the best possible IED training.

There are some rays of hope:

The bigger goal is to make training at Fort Irwin — with its mock Iraqi villages and 110-degree heat — even more realistic. Native Arabic speakers are hired by the Army to play roles as insurgents, as Iraqi troops and as bystanders during training exercises. They interact with soldiers training to interrogate troublemakers or to search Iraqi homes for IED components.

“This is the best training in the world,” says Col. Steven Salazar, who heads operations at the training center. The emphasis on IEDs, he adds, “is huge.”

But once again the lack of proper planning or any planning at all, for that matter, by the Bush Administration on the war means in yet another area the military is playing catch up. And playing catching up is costing American soldiers their lives.