The Verdict

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group led by James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and Bush family adviser who was co-chairman of the commission concluded Wednesday. Nearly four years, $400 billion and more than 2,900 U.S. deaths into a deeply unpopular war, violence is bad and getting worse, there is no guarantee of success and the consequences of failure are great, the panel of five Republicans and five Democrats said in a bleak accounting of U.S. and Iraqi shortcomings. The implications, they warned, are dire for terrorism, war in the Middle East and higher oil prices around the world.
The report noted that Iraq costs run about $8 billion a month and that the bills will keep coming. "Caring for veterans and replacing lost equipment will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars," the commission said. "Estimates run as high as $2 trillion for the final cost of the U.S. involvement in Iraq."
Who has to make good of the loss?
2.
The lately declassified plan, obtained by the National Security Archive and released to the public contradicted repeated assurances by President George W. Bush that he strictly followed recommendations by US generals in his quest for success in Iraq.
But the plan drafted by the US Central Command in June 1999 as a result of interagency wargames contained a set of recommendations that got mysteriously "forgotten" once Operation "Iraqi Freedom" got under way.
More than 70 experts from the Defense and State Departments, the CIA and the White House, who took part in the wargames dubbed "Desert Crossing", believed it would take at least 400,000 US troops to stabilize Iraq following the removal of the government of Saddam Hussein, the document showed.
The intervention, they insisted, must be "swift, large-scale, and decisive."
Instead, the number of US troops in Iraq has never topped 160,000 and currently stands at about 144,000, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arguing that a large US "footprint" in Iraq would be counterproductive.
Does it not show how politicians meddle in areas they are least competent to add anything fruitful? War is one that could have disastrous results as a result of a bunch of nincompoops wanting to play hero. Where a political solution was needed in the Middle East the President allowed personal considerations to cloud his judgment. VP Cheney had his own interest to pursue a war. War on Terror as translated by President Bush and his team in Iraq shall remain certainly a classic example and studied by scholars in the years to come.
benny