I lost 5 troops to Al Qaeda forces in 2005. They sure hte hell weren't Girl Scouts making IEDs and conducting complex attacks.
They were insurgents. To invent myths - a bogeyman - those insurgents were respun by a propaganda machine into "Al Qaeda". The lie became so obvious that they eventually relabeled insurgents as "Al Qaeda in Iraq".
Al Qaeda was a little organization based around bin Laden. It had nothing to do with angry Shia who resented your presence and our leader's gross mismanagement.
Basic military doctrine. Phase four planning. We had six months to get the electricity, water, telephone, etc all working. Every trained military man knows that. Instead, we did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Did nothing when Bremer snuck out seven months later so as to not be killed by the insurgency he created.
That resulting insurgency was predicted even in Washington in 2003 by those who know this stuff. You were fighting insurgents. You were fighting patriotic Iraqis who were pissed. And should have been pissed. Because Bremer, Cheney, Rumsfeld, George Jr, etc completely screwed it up.
Why no insurgency in Mosul when Petraeus was there? He literally stole money to perform Phase Four planning. Odiero's Colonels finally convinced him. No phase four planning means an insurgency will rise up after six months. Well understood military doctrine that you should know.
If fighting Al Qaeda, then every mugger in America is part of the Gambino crime family. And every hamburger store is a MacDonalds. You were fighting an enemy created by Americans with zero military knowledge. You should be pissed at losing five men because of incompetence by George Jr and his extremists. They created an insurgency by violating basic military doctrine. They and the resulting insurgents (and not a mythical Al Qaeda) created those deaths.
Basic military doctrine also says only one supreme leader in country. How many did you have? A General answering to Rumsfeld. And a civilian answering the to the White House. Of course the insurgency had to be relabeled as Al Qaeda. Otherwise treasonist mismanagement would have been obvious to every soldier. But then you tell me. Was Sanchez the supreme commander in Iraq? The answer was obvious. No.
A fundamental military command violation. It also defines contempt for the American soldier. A contempt that should make everyone angry. Al Qaeda was an invention to mask the real enemy: incompetent leaders in Washington.
You should know why you lost five soldiers. And why I am so angry about it. From Thomas Ricks:
If there is any tragic figure at the top of the American effort in Iraq, it is Sanchez. ... the methodical Sanchez often appeared overwhelmed by the situation, with little grasp of the strategic problems he faced. ...
"It was my view after seeing him that Rick Sanchez was exactly in the wrong place", said Richard Armitage ... "He was much too secretive. He and Bremer, if they didn't hate each other, they could barely tolerate each other, let's put it that way. ... I came away from my first meeting with him saying that this guy didn't get it." ...
On top of that, Sanchez was placed in the middle of an extraordinary difficult and tangled command situation. In other US occupations, the command has been a four star general such as Douglas MacArthur. ... Sanchez was a three star - that is, a lieutenant general - and in fact the most junior one in the US Army.
Sanchez was promoted to three star because every general asked to take that command, instead, resigned his commission. They could not find one three or four star general who would do that job.
An active duty officer said with an degree of disgust in his voice, "In Vietnam we left Westy in. In Iraq we left Sanchez in." Neither Gen William Westmoreland nor Sanchez understood the war he was fighting, this officer said.
That should have been obvious even at your level when soldier were dying to an insurgency - relabeled Al Qaeda for propaganda purposes.
Lt Gen Kellogg was on of the senior members of the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, overseeing system for the command and control of force. "I was there for all the planning, all the execution" of the Iraq war plans and later served in Iraq. "I saw it all." But what he never saw was the real plan for Phase IV - that is, what to do after toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. "There was no real plan," Kellogg said. "The thought was you didn't need it. The assumption was that everything would be fine after the war, that they'd be happy they got rid of Saddam." ...
"there was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase. ... he said in a paper later delivered at Cornell University, there was "no single plan as of 1 May 2004 that described an executable approach to achieving the state strategic endstate for the war."
Marine Col Nicholas Reynolds, an official Corp historian, agreed that he found nothing worthy of being considered a plan. ...
The reason for this omission, said Army Col Gregory Gardner, who served on the Joint Staff and then was assigned to the Conditional Provisional Authority ... was that it was seen as unnecessary. ...
According to an internal Army War College summary:
That there would be large numbers of Iraqi security forces will and able to support the occupation ...
That the international community would pick up the slack ...
That an Iraqi government would quickly spring into being permitting a "quick handoff to Iraqi interim administration..."
Obviously that could not and also did not happen. Therein lies reason for a massive countrywide insurgency, foolish and avoidable deaths in Fallujah, and the unnecessary death of your soldiers. All directly traceable to gross incompetence at the highest levels in Washington.
Basic military doctrine even defined in "Art of War". Do not disband the Army and Police. Use them as a critically important asset. Instead Bremer's first order was "Senior Party Members are hereby removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector."
He fired every competent Iraqi administrator. He created an insurgency. The CIA Station chief told Bremer, quite bluntly, what would happen.
"By nightfall, you'll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathist underground. And in six months, you will regret this." ... Bremer looked at the two. "I have my instructions."
Quess where those instructions may have come. Why did you lose five soldiers? Col Joe Anderson, one of Petraeus’s battalion commanders, later said, "All of a sudden you say these guys are not part of society ... These were guys and girls in the doctor arena, in the professor arena, that you can't do without in a running society.” Most every competent officer understands these basic military concepts.
But Bremer was not done. Next was a dissolution of the Iraqi Army and National Police. Another 300,000 to 400,000 unemployed. Were these Al Qaeda? Of course not. These were people who now had good reason to kill Americans. - the evil occupiers.
American civilian leadership demonstrated contempt for the American soldier. Over one half million Iraqis without work and without prospects. Because of American idiots, most Iraqis all but wanted to kill American soldiers within six months. As even the CIA station chief so obviously knew. Right out of basic concepts taught in “Art of War”.
Those same idiots then told you patriotic Iraqis were Al Qaeda. And obvious fabrication. So that you would not see American incompetence. Would instead blame five dead Americans on a mythical Al Qaeda.
Col King saw and heard the reaction close up on the streets of Baghdad. "When Bremer did that, the insurgency went crazy. May was the turning point" for the US occupation, he later said. "When they disbanded the military and announced we were occupiers - that was it. Every moderate, every person that had leaned towards us, was furious. One Iraqi who had saved my life in an ambush said to me, "I can't be your friend anymore."
Learn from history. Your five soldiers were victims of a lying administration that then described an insurgency as if it was bin Laden. Wacko extremists will even invent bogeyman to protect their extremist ideology. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a perfect example of lies to mask a damning truth.
Any good serviceman knows why he lost soldiers. You should have known Al Qaeda was a lie to avert blame from those who killed them. You should hold the name George Jr in contempt for the rest of your life. If infomed, you are quite angry about Bremer, orders from Washington, the subverted command structure, the intentional creation of an Iraqi insurgency traceable to ignorance in Washington, and lies routinely invented by the George Jr administration. They could not even admit why so many three and four star generals were retiring when asked to command Mission Accomplished. Any good officer material knows why your five soldiers died.
The good name of those five soldiers are now trophies directly traceable to incompentent and treasonist leadership in Washington. Their death is directly traceable to total incompentance by George Jr. Good soldiers predicted that disaster and those resulting deaths long before it happpened. Anyone with fundamental military knowledge knows exactly who turned Iraqi patriots into insurgents. And knew it was coming when Bremer, et al intentionally created a country wide insurgency in Iraq.
Why is this post so long? I am that pissed that American servicemen were uselessly massacred by a treasonist George Jr administration. No decent American should do to American soldiers what George Jr, et al did to your five men. George Jr, Cheney, et al were that evil.
