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Grubble Grubble
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Monday, October 27, 2003 :::
rant
I need to talk about a fine little piece of political propaganda. That is the idea that the war in Iraq is over. Last spring, we swept in and "defeated" the Iraqi army. In many ways, this is true. Those combat units we fought fell quickly to our push. Even in heated battle, we won decisively. But we never won the war.
In fact, we actually helped create the situation we are facing right now in Iraq. Many Iraqi military units surrendered to U.S. forces rather than face a front-line war. We disbanded them and told them to go home. We didn't disarm them and we didn't even process them to find out who they were (like we did to German soldiers after WWII).
Every day, soldiers are dying as a result of insurgent actions in Iraq. This is since the war "ended." More soldiers have died since the declared end of the war than died during the war at this point.
President Bush refers to our army as an occupying force at this point. We never should have entered Iraq to begin with. This war was ill-conceived, poorly planned, and as we are now finding out, poorly executed. But we are there, so we need to do whatever it takes to protect our troops.
The first thing we can do is quit thinking we are an occupying force. We are STILL AT WAR with Iraq. The problem is, we have allowed it to become a guerrilla war. And we are still trying to fight it with front-line tactics. If we are to continue procecuting this action, we need to revert our mindset back to a wartime stream of thought.
Rebuilding is necessary in Iraq, but finish the war first. Maybe fewer of our soldiers will die that way.
/rant
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