The fall of post invasion Iraq

[DeistPaladin]

We would have to stay there forever. The place was doomed to fall apart as soon as we left, be it now or in twenty years.

Indeed. If 10 years wasn't enough time, no amount of time would be.

But hey, when total victory is "just around the corner" as it was between 2003-2008, then all Bush had to do was kick the can down the road long enough for the collapse to happen under the next administration and claim, "we'd have won if we'd just stayed another year".

That was probably the plan all along.

[StealthySkeptic]

Hey, Georgie my boy, how ya doing?



Listen, buddy, can I ask ya a really important question? Please, be honest.

Do you remember when you got all of our allies to band together, save the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, and bring them democracy while they threw roses and oil at us...



Pictured above: All of our allies colored in blue. Good thing we didn't forget Poland! Who wants some freedom fries?

...and then went in and hoo-rah'd and MURICA'd and kicked some EYE-RAKI asses and were like...



I'd like to give a special thanks to GAWD for blessing our patriotic cruise missiles.

...then disbanded the perfectly usable and well organized standing army known as the Republican Guard using Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2 after popping some champagne?



I dunno LOL.

Remember how you then went like "OOPS MAH BAD" and then tried to make a new army from scratch?



The new Iraqi Army logo, circa 2007.

Eleven years, nearly five thousand American lives, countless thousands of refugees, and an estimated $1.7 TRILLION in financial costs for the war and $3-6 TRILLION in total costs based on interest rates on the debt incurred by 2053...



Red: Territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Pink: Claimed territory of the ISIL.

Was THIS the stable, democratic Iraq you had in mind when you tricked the UN with fabricated evidence of nuclear and biological weapons to give yourself the ability to invade the country?



Thought not.

[Diablo]

There was no need to disband the army. Getting rid of the senior officers would have sufficed to remove any threat they posed, which wasn't much. Once a civilian govt was in place the country would have been secure.

[Zack]

Freedom fries. That shit was terrible. Right up there with freedom toast and and homicide bomber.

[Anomalocaris]

Freedom fries. That shit was terrible. Right up there with freedom toast and and homicide bomber.

That was the time when i converted from the view that the United States on the whole was part of the solution to an improved world, to the view that United States is on the whole a big part of the problem aggrevating the backslide towards a world which should be, and was briefly within sight of being, left behind.

Subsequent actions and initiatives of the bush administration, and to a slightly less extent the Obama administration, only reinforced that unfavorable view.

[Minimalist]

Freedom Fries brought to you by republicunt assholes....

On March 11, 2003 Republican U.S. Representatives Bob Ney and Walter B. Jones directed the three House cafeterias to change all references to French fries and French toast on menus, and replace them with Freedom fries and Freedom toast, respectively.

Who else.


Remember when Dubya said "bring it on?" They did.

[Zack]

What makes that shit hilarious is that neither originate from France.

Got a chuckle out of this:

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNew...reedomland'

[Anomalocaris]

Freedom Fries brought to you by republicunt assholes....

On March 11, 2003 Republican U.S. Representatives Bob Ney and Walter B. Jones directed the three House cafeterias to change all references to French fries and French toast on menus, and replace them with Freedom fries and Freedom toast, respectively.

Who else.


Remember when Dubya said "bring it on?" They did.

It is ironic these flaky morons should choose that particular moment to so ostentatiously emphasize branding over substance.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

At least in Iraq there is Iran to help keep the whole mess from turning into a Sunni terrorist state. What do you suppose will be the reaction when Taliban takes over Afghanistan?

An increasingly unstable Pakistan, and a very nervous India.

What is so odd about Afghanistan is that everyone pretty much knows that the Taliban are going to reassert themselves. It's almost taken as a given that the Afghani National Army is going to fail miserably against them and without ISAF support. Indeed, a lot of the AHD seem intent on shooting their own trainers at the moment and I have no doubt they will defect as soon as the last ISAF soldier leaves the ground. So in effect we've giving weapons and training to people who will then turn against the Afghan government and by reduction us. Hmm, wonder when that's happened in the past?

And the whole 10+ year war would have effectively been for naught.

[Minimalist]

Apparently Maliki's "offensive" to recapture the Sunni areas is not going so well........

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/...TE&ei=5043

ERBIL, Iraq — Sunni militants captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, on Thursday as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital.

Residents near the dam and officials in the region confirmed that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, held the dam, a potentially catastrophic development for Iraq’s civilian population.

The dam, which sits on the Tigris River and is about 30 miles northwest of the city of Mosul, provides electricity to Mosul and controls the water supply for a large amount of territory. A report published in 2007 by the United States government, which had been involved with work on the dam, warned that should it fail, a 65-foot wave of water could be unleashed across areas of northern Iraq.

It's almost taken as a given that the Afghani National Army is going to fail miserably against them and without ISAF support.

Yup. And for the same reason that the Iraqi army failed and the S. Vietnamese army failed. Armies don't just need weapons and training. They need commitment, discipline and morale. They have to believe in what they are fighting for. If you take a bunch of guys who need a job in a poverty stricken area they are little more than mercenaries.

And what Machiavelli said about mercenaries remains true.

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor
safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline,
unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have
neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is
deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by
them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other
attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend,
which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are
ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if
war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should
have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by
nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on
mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were.