Friday, October 20, 2006

US has lost control in Iraq, says military strategist

Something most of US already know (with some exceptions), but here it is again.

Below are excerpts of an interview between Eleanor Hall and Dr. Harlan Ullman.

The World Today - Thursday, 19 October , 2006 12:22:00

Reporter: Eleanor Hall

ELEANOR HALL: A key US military strategist who counts the former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, among his students, is absolutely scathing about the current Bush administration's strategy in Iraq and says no one except the President is in any doubt that it should change.

Harlan Ullman who's now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says the US lost control of events in Iraq almost immediately after the invasion and that far from assisting in the development of democracy, the US-led allies, including Australia, have fomented chaos.

But Dr Ullman says he holds out little hope that either the escalating US deaths in Iraq or the recommendations now being developed by a senior policy adviser to the former Bush administration, James Baker, will convince the President to change his mind.

HARLAN ULLMAN: We lost control of events on the ground probably in April or May of 2003. And it's taken a long time for that recognition to dawn in the White House.

The President and the administration has refused to recognise reality. Iraq is a disaster. It is a disaster at every level, and to think that they've got a functioning government and to think that the situation is better today than it was in 2003 or 2004, or 2005, is unbelievable.

We have a catastrophe on our hands and of course we've got to make course corrections and the only guy in town who seems not to be able to recognise that, sadly, is the President.

And so under these circumstances, it's very difficult to move forward because of the power of the President, and how you get the President to change his or her mind, in this case his mind, is extremely difficult.

But of course we're on a stupid course, but that doesn't mean that we are going to change it quickly enough to make a difference.

I mean, George Bush will not change his mind, he's the President. Iraq, the government there, is divided along ethnic lines, it cannot control the militias, it cannot control anything.

And so to say we can't change our course means that we're going to lose this. And what I mean by "lose" is that Iraq becomes a chaotic state, and that chaos extends throughout the greater Middle East. And all of us will suffer for it.

And what you're saying to the President of the United States, somebody who's got a huge ego, who is very, very, very stubborn, "you are wrong". And George Bush does not want to admit he's wrong.


He still thinks you deal with a hornets' nest by hitting it with a stick - and many others don't seem to see a problem with that approach either, from what I see. But you try telling them that, and boy, like some overgrown brat who hates being told no, they start accusing you of not wanting to deal with the hornets. Throwing little tantrums.

History will not be kind to bush, the wannabe King George, nor, by association, to the rest of US.

posted by DadEO @ 10:53 PM