WP: Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy

[enough]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11227-2004May8.html

Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy
U.S. May Be Winning Battles in Iraq But Losing the War, Some Officers Say

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page A01


Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq.


Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading and being voiced publicly for the first time.

Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, "I think strategically, we are."

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. "Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically," he said in an interview Friday.

"I lost my brother in Vietnam," added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. "I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."

snip> much more

[radfringe]

1. Iraq policy is now '97 per cent disaster'

Focus: Iraq prison abuse scandal
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212697,00.html
Catastrophe

---snip---

Suddenly an administration that seemed immune to bad news from Iraq has been forced on the defensive as the images of Harman and her colleagues cheerfully abusing prisoners in their charge have emerged as a metaphor for the coalition's failures in Iraq.

That it has been a catastrophe for US foreign policy is asserted by usually robust senior Pentagon officials who claim privately that Iraq policy is now '97 per cent disaster' and the war is no longer being planned but crisis-managed from day-to-day. And catastrophe was the word used by the beleaguered Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his humiliating appearance before Congress.

[unblock]

2. perhaps they should try broadcasting lies on iraqi tv news

for instance, they could run a poll that shows that 65% of iraqis rate shrub as the best liberator ever.

and that 58% say they're better off than one year ago.

and 76% say loss of life, limb and/or children is worth it for freedom.

they could show similar results with/without nader in the poll.

[ex_jew]

3. I loved tough guy Wolfowitz whining that no one had the stones

to complain to him personally. What a schmuck !