(June 8, 2016 at 2:41 am)Minimalist Wrote: Tomorrow when I'm back on my computer instead of this tablet I'll send you an excerpt from And Then All Hell Broke Loose.
It is actually worse than you imply.
Thump,
From Richard Engel's book.
Quote:Another factor in the decision to invade Iraq was that the war in Afghanistan, which began less than a month after 9/11, had been too easy. To use a phrase military leaders love, the US “overlearned” the lesson of Afghanistan. In just three months after 9/11, at a cost of only a billion dollars and one American life, US airstrikes, 110 CIA operatives, and 300 Special Forces scored a decisive victory. Working in concert with Afghan tribesmen, who were paid according to the amount of lethal force they used against the enemy, the United States toppled the Taliban and prompted a hasty retreat by al-Qaeda, which at the time only had several hundred fighters. The small American force in Afghanistan would likely have captured Osama bin Laden after the battle at Tora Bora in December 2001, but the Defense Department, pointing to its early success, rejected the request for eight hundred additional soldiers to chase down al-Qaeda in the rough mountainous terrain.
If those eight hundred troops had been sent in and bin Laden was captured or killed back in 2001, it is possible the United States would never have invaded Iraq. Perhaps the defense establishment, the Iraq war lobby, and the neocons around the president would have been satisfied that Washington got its revenge after 9/11 and had something to show for it, bin Laden’s head. Instead, toppling the Taliban and sending al-Qaeda into hiding was a quick, mostly covert, and cheap affair. Washington had little to point to and tell the American people that 9/11 had been avenged. Ousting the Taliban should have been the end of the Global War on Terrorism, known by the ugly acronym GWOT, but the United States couldn’t walk away from the blackjack table. Aside from Bush’s personal, family preoccupation with Iraq, the generals at the Pentagon hadn’t got their piece of the action. Afghanistan, at least at first, had been so easy and quick, many assumed Iraq would be just as simple, with far greater rewards. Iraq would be a real war, with troops in uniform, where officers could win medals and command men in battle, far different from the CIA-led mission that tossed out the Taliban in the blink of an eye. Even though the Iraq war would prove to be a failure, its proponents were right about a few things. How many generals did the American public know before 9/11? After the war, how many became presidential advisors, special envoys, lobbyists, consultants for arms manufacturers, and analysts for oil companies and hedge funds? So the United States went into Iraq, expanded its military operation in Afghanistan, rotated 2 million troops through the war zones, left seven thousand Americans dead, fifty-two thousand wounded, a million US veterans filing for some form of disability, caused the deaths of two hundred thousand Muslims—perhaps many more, depending on the estimate—spent a few trillion dollars, and created some choice real estate for hyperviolent extremists.
So yeah. The Pentagon had its agenda too.
