Iraq: "Utter Debacle" says Military Expert

Tony Blair is in Oz talking the talk! - freedom, joining the US and Australia fighting for democracy, taking on extremists, etc. etc. Needless to say PM Howard echos the same platitudes and script.

However, away from the world of fantasy in which Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsie, Condi and Howard reside this:

"Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies."

Who said that? Some ratbag radical or do-gooder? No, it was Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the US Army and founding member of Delta Force. Read the full interview [from dailynews.com] and something of the background of Haney here.

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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