Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms burst into Red Crescent offices on Sunday and kidnapped more than two dozen people at the humanitarian organization in the latest sign of the country's growing lawlessness. .... On Thursday, gunmen in military uniforms kidnapped dozens of people in central Baghdad, police said. The attackers drove up to the busy Sanak area in about 10 sport utility vehicles and began rounding up shop owners and bystanders. Police said 50 to 70 people were abducted, but at least two dozen were later released.
Every time something like this comes up I want to know how we got to someplace that things this screwed up could happen. The answer of course is simple. The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. doesn't give a damn about anything. He doesn't care that he's responsible for what will probably end up being the biggest slaughterhouse of the decade. He doesn't care about the troops he's shoved into this hellhole. He willfully ignored anyone who had a different thought about how things would go in Iraq, most noteably the people who the military had designing their contingency plans for what to do if we did invade Iraq, and who had figured out you could take out the Iraqi military with a minimal force, but maintaining order would take close to half a million guys before you got to break even chances of sucess. He doesn't care where Osama bin Laden is. The situation in Iraq has degenerated to a point where it is no longer solvable. Had anyone in power bothered to act on what was already known this was possibly preventable. It is not now. The sheer manpower needs (and let's put this 20,000 troop "surge" idea away, right now, it's crap) would mean bringing in NATO, the Russians, the Chinese, and all of the Middle East and Africa. That would create even more chaos. Instead, we're doing what we've done foe decades, training the death squads. It was never time to invade Iraq, the administration lied and bamboozled us in. Once we did, it was always time to get out. |