Book Review: The Terrorists of Iraq

benrothke writes: The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting random typewriter keys for an infinite amount of time will eventually be able to create the complete works of Shakespeare. Various scientists such as Nobel laureate Arno Penzias have shown how the theorem is mathematically impossible. Using that metaphor, if you took every member of United States Congress and House of Representatives and wrote their collected wisdom on Iraq, it's unlikely they could equal the astuteness of even a single chapter of author Malcolm W. Nance in The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014. It's Nance's overwhelming real-world experiential knowledge of the subject, language, culture, tribal affiliations and more which make this the overwhelming definitive book on the subject. Read below for the rest of Ben's review. The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014, 2nd Edition author Malcolm W. Nance pages 404 publisher CRC Press rating 10/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-1498706896 summary Definitive text on the Iraq War written by one of the few Americans who truly understand the issue Nance is a career intelligence officer, combat veteran, author, scholar and media commentator on international terrorism, intelligence, insurgency and torture. In 2014 he became the executive director of the counter-ideology think tank the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideologies (TAPSTRI).

While it's debatable if most members of Congress could elucidate the difference between the Sunnis and Shiites; Nance knows all of the players in depth. He understands and describes who there are, what they are and how their methods work. His unique analysis provides an in-depth understanding of who these groups are and what they are fighting about.

The book details how the many terror groups formed to create the Iraqi insurgency that led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Nance places the blame on the Bush administrations 2003 invasion of Iraq that lead to the destabilization of the country. While the war was based on faulty evidence, the insurgency was created by myriad mistakes, misperceptions and miscalculations by L. Paul Bremer, who lead the occupational authority of Iraq during the war.

A common theme Nance makes throughout the book is that the US ignored history and didn't learn the lessons of the Iraqi revolt against the British in 1920 or the events of the Vietnam War. Those lessons being that insurgents and foreign terrorist operations were much more effective despite the enormous manpower and firepower that the U.S. troops brought to bear in Iraq.

Nance details how much of the coalition's strategy was based on wishful thinking. He writes that Washington never had a realistic plan for post-war Iraq. Only Saddam Hussein, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the ex-Ba'athists has a definitive strategy for what to do in post-war Iraq. Unlike the Americans, they mobilized the right resources and persons for the job, with devastating and horrifying effects.

The book writes of the utterly depravity and evil nature of Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay. Following the first Gulf War. Qusay revealed a brutality to match both his father's and brother's. The Hussein family was responsible for the death and torture of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraq's and others.

The insurgency was and is made up of countless different groups. Some of these groups number under a hundred members, others in the tens of thousands. Nance details who these groups are, their makeup and leadership structure and what they hope to achieve.

Nance quotes Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks who described the insurgency as dead-enders; namely small groups dedicated to Hussein, and not large military formations or networks of attackers. Yet the reality was that Hussein started creating the insurgency in the months before the invasion. Rather than being a bunch of dead-enders, the insurgency was a group that was highly organized, heavily armed, with near unlimited funds based on looting hundreds of millions of dollars.

From a reporting perspective, the book details how the U.S. government made the same mistakes in Iraq as it did in Iran. Underreporting U.S. casualties, over reporting enemy losses, and obfuscating how terrible the situation on the ground was.

The term IED (improvised explosive device) became part of the vernacular during the Iraq War. The book details how the insurgency used the many different types of IED's (including human-based IED) at specific times and places for their political and propaganda goals.

Nance writes that the biggest gift the U.S. gave to Osama bin Laden was to invade Iraq. The invasion provided him with an opportunity for inspirational jihad. bin Laden envisioned a holy war with heroic men fights against desperate odds in the heart of historic Islam, just like the first battles of the Prophet Mohammed.

Nance spends a few chapters dealing with ISIS and how it came to be. There are multiple iterations of the group, which developed as the Iraq mess evolved.

The book closes with a disheartening overview of the current state. Nance writes that the Middle East is in far more danger from destabilizing collapse of states due to the effects of the American invasion today than it has ever been.

As ISIS is currently the dominant force in Iraq; Nance states that he fears ISIS will have no intention of going back to being a small insurgent group. It will attempt to consolidate captured terrain. It will offer the Sunni a chance to rule under it at the technocrat level, but that is when the pogroms will start.

In the end, Nance writes, the Islamic caliphate will attempt and fail at creating a popular Iraqi-Syrian nation out of stolen governorates. But unless confronted quickly and forcefully, it may become an isolated jihadistan from which no end of terror will spawn.

For those that want to truly understand the Iraq conflict, Nancy is eminently qualified and this book is uniquely superb. There is no better book than The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014 on the subject.

Reviewed by Ben Rothke.

You can purchase The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014, 2nd Edition from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews (sci-fi included) -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. If you'd like to see what books we have available from our review library please let us know.

Comments

Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the "reviewer" Thomas Friedman's ghostwriter?

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

its only incoherent if you are a dumbass.

want me to xplain it to ya?

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

ok...so I am not a scholar...who is Thomas Friedman?

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[ShanghaiBill]

ok...so I am not a scholar...who is Thomas Friedman?

He is a neo-con idiot, one of many, who predicted that American troops would be greeted by Iraqis as heroic liberators, and that Iraq would soon be a beacon of democracy, and pave the way for peace and love throughout the Middle East.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Shakrai]

He is a neo-con idiot, one of many, who predicted that American troops would be greeted by Iraqis as heroic liberators

They were, at least by the Shia and Kurds. Of course, we fucked that up, through our own incompetence, and of course the Shia never going to be particularly happy when we got in the way of their pogrom against the Sunnis. The whole country is an artificial creation that is destined for the trash bin of history; everything we're seeing now would have happened eventually without our intervention. Fake countries rarely survive when their strongman dies. Our mistake was in being the one to break it, thus owning the problem.

Recent events (Libya) suggest that we still haven't fully digested this lesson. If you're gonna blow it up you should probably have a plan for what happens afterwards.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

well the book is the exact opposite.

how the iraqi's despised americans.

so certainly ain't friedmans ghostwriter. unless it was an attempt at irony.

thanks for the info about him.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

The reviewer is a pedantic moron who is more in love with himself than any book.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

Every country is fake. We tend to forget that after they've been around for awhile. It's a form of bias. The whole anti-colonial "artificial states" argument has no substance. There's no dichotomy between "natural" and "unnatural" nation-states. The reasons why some stick around and others turn into hell holes is, like many things, not amenable to simple explanations.

Believing in such simple theories is precisely how we ended up thinking that Iraq was a slam dunk. Remember, we were told that Iraq, much like other dictatorships-cum-democracies around the world, was a modern nation with an educated elite and a large middle-class. The very things that we were told were responsible for bridging ethnic divides in successful countries everywhere.

Anyhow, it's only been 15 years. Countries like the UK, for example, took hundreds (if not thousands) of years to become non-violent. The U.S. seemed to be solid until the Civil War. Basically, how about we dispense with the lofty rhetoric and highfalutin political theories and focus on more concrete problems and solutions. History will play out in ways we haven't even begun to fathom.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Penguinisto]

Of course, to be fair it likely didn't help that the current administration decided to yank nearly all US troops out of the country before the job was done, either.

No matter your feelings or opinions on how the war began or was handled during the Bush administration, you cannot deny that finishing it properly should have been a top priority no matter who started it. Consider, if the allies had withdrawn from Germany that soon after WWII, the Nazis (or a derivative group thereof) would have arisen once more, and Germany would likely still be a mess today. Instead, post-WWII the allies (for better or worse) kept occupation for years on end, slowly passing control, then autonomy, then self-defense, etc to the post-war German government ( well, governments, as we did have two of them for the longest time thanks to the USSR.)

Why this wasn't done properly in Iraq is a serious head-scratcher, especially given that Iraq was indeed an artificial country (thanks, England!), and doubly so because of the regional culture plus pre-existing secular tensions. It would have been a long, expensive road, but it was certainly at least doable.

Incidentally, it probably didn't help that Syria went straight to hell in recent years, either - or that Iran has been working like hell behind the scenes to keep things unstable. But to be honest, those only serve as stronger arguments for keeping treasure and troops committed towards reconstruction in Iraq (and maybe a bit of that towards keeping Iran's little activities clamped down as hard as possible).

Long story short: anyone who tries to place the blame for the mess on any one person or political party is an idiot. There's plenty of blame to go around on this one...

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no dichotomy between "natural" and "unnatural" nation-states.

Yes, there is, when the "unnatural" nation-states are imposed over a completely different and conflicting set of tribal and ethnic boundaries.

See: Yugoslavia.
See: Iraq.
See: Israel.

Remember, we were told that Iraq, much like other dictatorships-cum-democracies around the world, was a modern nation with an educated elite and a large middle-class. The very things that we were told were responsible for bridging ethnic divides in successful countries everywhere.

Except anybody who believed that was an idiot. The middle class was exiled, imprisoned, or exterminated under Saddam Hussein. An educated class of lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc? Those people fled the moment they had enough money to get out. What was left was a ruling political class (largely the Sunnis) who brutalized and mauled the impoverished underclasses (Shia, Kurds) with complete impunity. The administration was *wrong* on Iraq being a cake-walk, and we got it wrong for a lot of reasons, but not a single one of them had to do with anybody legitimately expecting a resurgence of some sort of educated middle class in Iraq.

History will play out in ways we haven't even begun to fathom.

And looking to the "unfathomable" ways history has played out in the past is instructive for what "unfathomable" direction it might take in the future. Pretending that a state such as Iraq or Yugoslavia is indistinguishable that was fabricated out of whole cloth by colonial powers from one that evolved out of a centuries-long history of blood, negotiation, and tribal interests is stupid.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

ok...so I am not a scholar...who is Thomas Friedman?

He is a neo-con idiot, one of many, who predicted that American troops would be greeted by Iraqis as heroic liberators, and that Iraq would soon be a beacon of democracy, and pave the way for peace and love throughout the Middle East.

Shouldn't Mr. Nance be arrested on the basis of his affiliation with terrorist groups in Iraq? He claims to be a writer which may be his cover for writing terrorism training and operations manuals under the guise of "definitive work on terrorism in Iraq."

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of the conclusion of a book written by some pseudo-intelectual, the capacity of a slashdot summation to get it wrong, and offer multiple off the mark analogies should not be underestimated. The wholesale slaughter of shitty muslims, whether commited by monkeys, congress, battleships, or desert sun, however inneficient, is generally considered a good start.
Incidently, Penzias can not have relied on an infinite number of mokeys to prove his rebuttal, because of course, infinity is an abstract idea, as is philosophy. Which is why many scientists and people who write about death suck so bad at philosophy and physical reality. The trick is being able to spot a stooge, especially a liberal stooge. Aliberal stooge

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly...Bush 2 started the 2nd Iraq war which destabilized it all.

Had he not done that, there would be no ISIS in Iraq.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

Whitney Houston:

"Greatest Love Of All"

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

Everybody's searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs
A lonely place to be
And so I learned to depend on me

[Chorus:]
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

[Chorus]

And if, by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Shakrai]

Regime change in Iraq was stated US policy, signed into law by Bill Clinton. The AUMF was approved by Congress, with a bipartisan vote. None of this is to defend GWB, simply to point out the GP is accurate when he said there's plenty of blame to go around.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

You made a false claim. The current administration did not decide to yank troops out of Iraq. The Bush administration made an agreement with the Iraqi government on when US troops would be withdrawn. See Pact, Approved in Iraq, Sets Time for U.S. Pullout. It was, as nearly every bit of policy from the Bush administration related to Iraq, optimistic and a bad choice.

The Obama administration tried to extend the presence of US troops in Iraq, but the Iraqi government denied the request. See Despite Difficult Talks, U.S. and Iraq Had Expected Some American Troops to Stay for just one of many contemporaneous articles on the attempts to keep US troops in Iraq.

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around, but, contrary to your claim, the reason troops were pulled out of Iraq was because of an agreement between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

I agree, that's why I said, "there is plenty of blame to go around".

The primary example the GP used to illustrate the point, though, was incorrect. The reason US troops were pulled out of Iraq when they were was because the Bush administration's agreement with the Iraqi government.

Your comment about President Clinton is true, but, isn't really relevant. It wasn't about invading Iraq, it was about supporting opposition groups in Iraq.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Shakrai]

I don't think anybody seriously believes that BHO was willing to spend time, resources, or political capital on securing a status of forces agreement with Maliki's Government. He viewed himself as elected to "end" wars and conducted his foreign policy accordingly, at least until the rise of IS. I'm skeptical that it's BHO's "fault" per se, but I'm also skeptical of those that give him a complete pass on this issue.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

" was indeed an artificial country (thanks, England!)" or you could have just left well enough alone but No you Smelled $'s typical American arrogance!

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

The facts are clear and incontrovertible:

• The reason we pulled troops out of Iraq was because of an agreement made during the Bush administration.
• The Obama administration couldn't change that without the approval of the Iraqi government.
• The Obama administration requested the Iraqi government extend the deadline, but the Iraqi government denied their request.

You can believe whatever you want about how hard the Obama administration tried, but that doesn't change the facts of the matter; the claim made by the GP was false.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Silly...Bush 2 started the 2nd Iraq war which destabilized it all. Had he not done that, there would be no ISIS in Iraq.

And if you want to blame someone over the original destabilization and insurgency that helped the original proto-ISIS / al-Quaeda in Iraq get started you really need to blame Paul Bremer. The career diplomat who was in charge of the Provisional Authority that originally governed Iraq. He disbanded the Iraqi Army on his own, without White House or Pentagon approval. So he is primarily responsible for US troops patrolling Iraqi streets and searching Iraqi homes. In past US wars and US occupations the US military removed high ranking officers of the enemy military and had some of its middle and junior ranking officers repot to US officers and these former enemy military officers and their enlisted men did patrols or searches on their own or jointly with the US. But Bremer f'd up such a plan and put disgruntled ex-army on the streets and out of work.

Want an example of how the US military normally handles such things when they are given the choice? After the surrender of German forces in his zone Major Richard Winters (of Band of Brothers fame) ordered the German commander to have his men collect all weapons in town and despot them at the town hall. German troops went from building to building, home to home, collecting weapons. A couple days later Winters went to town hall to inspect the weapons. He found that the German troops had collected every weapon, not just military, but civilian too. Hunting rifles and shotguns, antiques, etc. He told the German commander that he had only wanted the military weapons collected and ordered that the civilian arms should be turned over to the major's office and that civilians could come in and collect their property.

Also some patrols in the area were joint patrols. A couple of German troops would accompany a patrol and these German's would generally handle the stopping of vehicles and interacting with drivers, etc.

Things would have probably gone very differently had the junior officers and enlisted men of the Iraqi army been retained and employed for policing Iraqi's streets, under US supervision. As was done in Germany and Japan and in some areas liberated from Japan. The US used surrendered Japanese troops reporting to US officers to maintain the peace until local authorities could put together their own government and police forces.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

The primary example the GP used to illustrate the point, though, was incorrect. The reason US troops were pulled out of Iraq when they were was because the Bush administration's agreement with the Iraqi government.

Its not that simple. Since the departure of the occupational forces was occurring under the next President's watch it was left to the next President to negotiate a residual force for ongoing stabilization and support of the new Iraqi government. Unfortunately that next President was not interested in leaving such a residual force behind, he wanted all out at any cost.

Your comment about President Clinton is true, but, isn't really relevant. It wasn't about invading Iraq, it was about supporting opposition groups in Iraq.

Apparently Hillary Clinton thought invasion was a valid option for regime change when it came time for her to vote in the Senate.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

Yes, it is actually that simple. If, as you stated, it was being left to the next president, the withdrawal should not have been included in the agreement.

Your understanding of what the Obama administration wanted to do is also false. They negotiated with the Iraqi government to leave troops behind. The Iraqi government said no.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

The Obama administration tried to extend the presence of US troops in Iraq, but the Iraqi government denied the request.

That is not really true. Things like a lack of immunity for US troops were used as an excuse to leave. The Iraqis opened with such a position in past negotiations and gave in once sufficient money and resources were added to the deal. Its a negotiating tactic. The problem is the new administration did not want a deal, they wanted all out at any cost, so this initial position became a convenient impediment to a deal.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

The Obama administration tried to extend the presence of US troops in Iraq, but the Iraqi government denied the request.

That is not really true.

Nothing you wrote backs up that assertion. The Obama administration requested US troops be allowed to stay in Iraq after the negotiated deadline. The Iraqi government said no. Yes, the two governments negotiated, and you have your belief about how that went, but that's your belief. I'm just talking about the facts of the situation.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Uberbah]

Regime change in Iraq was stated US policy, signed into law by Bill Clinton.

Never understood the point of this old saw, as Clinton never tried to invade Iraq or actively depose Saddam.

The AUMF was approved by Congress, with a bipartisan vote.

Yes, they voted for it. They didn't talk about voting for it. And the only Dem to offer an unequivocal 'I fucked up' apology is persona non gratta because he only fucked one person he wasn't supposed to.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

The Obama administration tried to extend the presence of US troops in Iraq, but the Iraqi government denied the request.

That is not really true.

Nothing you wrote backs up that assertion. The Obama administration requested US troops be allowed to stay in Iraq after the negotiated deadline. The Iraqi government said no. Yes, the two governments negotiated, and you have your belief about how that went, but that's your belief. I'm just talking about the facts of the situation.

Actually you ignore some facts. Fact 1. No immunity was a deal breaker. Fact 2. No immunity was an opening position in past deals and was negotiated away.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Shakrai]

The fact of the situation is that BHO was sitting in office when things went to shit. I believe it was a Democrat that said, "The buck stops here." BHO doesn't get a pass here.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Rinikusu]

So... how many years would you have given it, at a cost of a billion dollars a day? Hrm? And how would you pay for it, hrm? 12 fucking years in the hole and yet YOU STILL WANT TO STAY THERE. Fuck off and die.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaaahahahahaha! This stupid m***** f***** doesn't know American troops were, in fact, greeted as liberators! He must watch C(linton|ommunist) News Network and read the New York Slimes. I bet he wasn't aware of the Iraqi pilot who confessed to transporting chemical weapons from Iraq to Syria during the eighteen-month run-up to war, either. Democrats are complete ignoramuses.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Yes, it is actually that simple. If, as you stated, it was being left to the next president, the withdrawal should not have been included in the agreement.

You are absolutely mistaken. Bush 2 negotiated the withdrawal of the combat troops that he had put into Iraq, essentially an occupational force. The withdraw was on the next President's watch. What was left to that next President to negotiate was a deal for non-combat non-occupational troops. Advisors, instructors, anti-terrorist units, liaisons for Iraqi combat units (i.e. links to US air support), stabilization forces (ex Korean DMZ), etc. An important distinction being that this residual force would be functioning in a fully sovereign and fully independent state.

Your understanding of what the Obama administration wanted to do is also false. They negotiated with the Iraqi government to leave troops behind. The Iraqi government said no.

The negotiation was a farce. Obama wanted all out at any cost, he did not want a successful negotiation and acted accordingly. Taking the no immunity position as final, not something to be negotiated away as was done in the past.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[stridebird]

Yup, Paul Bremmer - CPA1. His first act as Emperor of Iraq. The clumsy and sinister "de-ba'athification of Iraq".

and put disgruntled ex-army on the streets and out of work

...with all their weapons. Don't forget that part. He didn't disarm them first. No time for shit like that.

Paul Bremmer. Donald Rumsfeld. These two guys really need to put their hands up and say sorry. They fucked it up so bad. It's tragic.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

I'm just talking about the facts of the situation.

Oops there is a 3rd fact. Fact 1. No immunity was a deal breaker. Fact 2. No immunity was an opening position in past deals and was negotiated away. Fact 3. The Iraqis granted immunity in Dec 2014.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

Neither of those claims are pertinent. You are discussing the negotiations, not the fact that the Bush administration made the agreement that caused the withdrawal of the troops.

Also, while the first is true, the second is false.

Quoting from Immunity for troops was Iraq deal breaker

Immunity is a standard agreement wherever U.S. forces are deployed.

Look, I get it, blaming President Obama for an early troop withdrawal has become accepted truth for many. That doesn't mean it's true, though. You have two options - continue to cling to a falsehood, defending it with ever more unlikely claims, or move on.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

The fact of the situation is that BHO was sitting in office when things went to shit. I believe it was a Democrat that said, "The buck stops here." BHO doesn't get a pass here.

Again, there's plenty of blame to go around. Blaming President Obama for the troop withdrawal, though, is blaming the wrong administration.

BTW, the Iraq situation went to shit long before President Obama took office. Anyone that doesn't acknowledge that is either ignorant or being dishonest with him/herself.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

Your first two claims were dealt with above.

The immunity agreement given by Iraq for fighting against Daesh is different than the one required in 2011.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Darinbob]

He's like Gordon Freeman, but without the crowbar.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

No, I'm sorry, I'm not mistaken. The agreement made by the Bush administration held the force of law. It was an error to make that agreement; it, as so many other choices made by the Bush administration in Iraq, was overly optimistic. If the intention of the Bush administration was to leave behind a force, they had the opportunity to negotiate inclusion of the forces at that time. They did not. The Obama administration tried to renegotiate the agreement with Iraq and was denied.

Again, your understanding of the negotiations is false. Troop immunity is a standard part of any agreement when the US deploys troops to a foreign country.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Darinbob]

There was a great deal of unfounded optimism all over the place at the time. People genuinely believed that things would work out great as long as Saddam was out of power and we set up our own puppet government. Not believed it as in thinking that it would be great for the US, they believe it would truly be great for the Iraqis too. People were out in full force for the re-creation of a state, like they were reliving post WWII Germany or Japan.

One of the first early laws they tried to get implemented as an overhaul of Intellectual Property laws. Yup, they had as a priority to impose the stupid US version of copyright and patent laws.

I was working on wireless mesh internet at the time, but we had just shut down that division. We got a call shortly after saying "please, send me all the units you have, I want to set up an ISP in Iraq!", but we had to explain that we were shut down and couldn't do that. It was really odd, because the country didn't even have reliable power service yet, the infrastructure was in shambles, and this guy from the states thinks he's just going to roll in and make a bunch of money with the internet? Modern day carpetbagger.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Darinbob]

I think they did believe this would happen. They were wrong about it, but they believed it. They let their hopes create bias which overrode the intelligence briefings and common sense.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

it also didn't help that the Obama administration interfered with the Iraqi national elections to push "their guy" at all costs -- to the dismay of the military and other who knew about the situation in the country -- instead of supporting the guy that actually won.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

It was relatively stable in 2009 after a lot of hard work by the Iraqis and members of the US coalition. It went back to shit not long after the Obama admin bailed on negotiating the agreement with the Iraqis and then meddled with the Iraqi elections. It is much worse now that when he took over, largely due to his administrations actions.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they did believe this would happen. They were wrong about it, but they believed it. They let their hopes create bias which overrode the intelligence briefings and common sense.

Which is why I said:

The administration was *wrong* on Iraq being a cake-walk, and we got it wrong for a lot of reasons, but not a single one of them had to do with anybody legitimately expecting a resurgence of some sort of educated middle class in Iraq.

Rumsfeld and Bush were not crowing about some sort of "middle class revival" in Iraq - they were crowing about all the poor oppressed people greeting us with kisses and roses. If the BBC knew that the middle class was "wiped out" in Iraq in 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1949205.stm), you can be sure that nobody in the US military or intelligence services had any expectation that a bunch of impoverished Shia would suddenly, magically become doctors, engineers, lawyers, and other "middle class" professions as soon as Saddam Hussein was deposed.

We got it wrong, but nobody was predicting some sort of deus ex machina in the form of a middle class suddenly springing to life in Iraq.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Also, while the first is true, the second is false ... Immunity is a standard agreement wherever U.S. forces are deployed.

No, you are misunderstanding the second. Apologies if I was unclear. When I wrote "Fact 2. No immunity was an opening position in past deals and was negotiated away." I was referring to the Iraqi position and their eventual acceptance of immunity in past deals, and which by the way they just did in Dec 2014.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Your first two claims were dealt with above.

The immunity agreement given by Iraq for fighting against Daesh is different than the one required in 2011.

Yes. The point is that the Iraqis were and still *are* flexible on the question of immunity. The 2011 failure was one of offering them an insufficient deal. The 2011 negotiations were a farce on the US side.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

It was an error to make that agreement; it, as so many other choices made by the Bush administration in Iraq, was overly optimistic.

Well, yes, he was overly optimistic that the next administration would negotiate in good faith rather than engage in political theatre.

If the intention of the Bush administration was to leave behind a force, they had the opportunity to negotiate inclusion of the forces at that time.

Again, the Bush administration felt that since those forces would go into the field under then next President's watch that the next President should negotiate the terms.

The Obama administration tried to renegotiate the agreement with Iraq and was denied. Troop immunity is a standard part of any agreement when the US deploys troops to a foreign country.

You misinterpreted my previous statement, apologies if I was not clear. My reference to negotiating away the immunity issue was in reference to the Iraqis do so. Of having the Iraqis eventually agree to immunity as they had always done in the past and have done as recently as Dec 2014.

As for Obama's negotiation. They were a farce, political theatre. He wanted out entirely, the Iraqi initial position suited this goal. Therefore the Iraqis were not offered a sufficiently sweetened deal as was done in the past.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

its only an incoherent metphor cuz u can't cant it.

wize up.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[invid]

Why this wasn't done properly in Iraq is a serious head-scratcher, especially given that Iraq was indeed an artificial country (thanks, England!), and doubly so because of the regional culture plus pre-existing secular tensions. It would have been a long, expensive road, but it was certainly at least doable.

If the Germans had been putting IEDs under their AutoBahns for a decade after 1945, and continued to kill each other by the thousands, it's hard to imagine how we could have forced it to be the industrious, Bier drinking, techno loving paradise it is today.

Re: Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Shakrai]

I was actually referring to the entire geopolitical situation, not just Iraq. Russia is slicing off parts of neighboring countries, we decapitated Libya (after the guy gave up his WMDs, incidentally, great message to send there....), threw Mubarak under the bus, did nothing while the Iranians crushed a reform movement, the list goes on and on.

The only good thing BHO did with foreign policy was to begin to normalize relations with Cuba. That was long overdue and he deserves some credit for that. The rest has been an unmitigated disaster. The World now looks a lot like it did before WW1, except instead of mustard gas we'll now get to contend with nuclear weapons when the shit hits the fan.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

Thanks for clarifying, but the clarification doesn't help your position, which, it's become clear, is simply this: even though the Bush administration negotiated the troop pullout, it's the Obama's administration's fault that the agreement was followed.

It appears to me that the way you came to this position is because you believe that the Bush administration always intended for the agreement to be renegotiated and if the Obama administration had really wanted to leave US troops in Iraq, they could have.

Those beliefs are unsupportable.

When the Bush administration made the agreement, the US was in a position of power. If the Bush administration had wanted to keep open the open to leave US troops in Iraq, they could have made that part of the agreement. When the Obama administration tried to renegotiate the agreement, it was not in a position of power. The Iraqi government already had what they wanted.

Could the US have found something to concede to Iraq that would have kept US troops in Iraq? Probably. You cannot know what that would have taken, though, and so your blithe assertions that things could have simply been "negotiated away" illustrate nothing but your naïve understanding of the political situation.

You're trying to blame the Obama administration for not correcting an error made by the Bush administration. That position isn't logically supportable.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

Sorry, the offer by the Iraqi PM of a immunity agreement in the fight against Daesh says nothing about the willingness of the Iraqi parliament to give US troops immunity in 2011. In 2011, the Iraqi PM made the same offer, but, as even he acknowledged, it was meaningless, since the parliament had to agree. They were unwilling to agree.

Look, it doesn't matter how far afield you go trying to support your claim, you will fail. The facts really are simple and incontrovertible. Your can either choose to accept them or live in your own imaginary world where the mistakes of the Bush administration are really the fault of the Obama administration.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Thanks for clarifying, but the clarification doesn't help your position, which, it's become clear, is simply this: even though the Bush administration negotiated the troop pullout, it's the Obama's administration's fault that the agreement was followed.

A gross misrepresentation. Its not following the old agreement that was the problem. Its failing to negotiate the follow on agree that is the problem.

It appears to me that the way you came to this position is because you believe that the Bush administration always intended for the agreement to be renegotiated

Absolutely not. There was an intention that a new President who would have to deal with Iraqi security would negotiate his own agreement, not inherit his predecessors.

When the Obama administration tried to renegotiate the agreement, it was not in a position of power. The Iraqi government already had what they wanted. >Could the US have found something to concede to Iraq that would have kept US troops in Iraq? Probably. You cannot know what that would have taken, though, and so your blithe assertions that things could have simply been "negotiated away" illustrate nothing but your naïve understanding of the political situation.

Untrue. The Obama administration scaled back the offer of troops to 3,000 to 5,000 and the Iraqis thought that too few to make any difference so they had little motivation to take the public heat or granting immunity. The politicians in Washington had determined that Iraq was unlikely to slip back into chaos so the Pentagon's suggestion or 15,000 to 20,000 was rejected by the administration. Even with a sufficient sized force the Iraqis needed more time to work out the internal politics of granting immunity. The administration's pressing of the Iraqis for their public position on immunity before they had worked out the internal politics forced a public statement of no immunity which game the administration cover to walk away.

Giving the Iraqi's a larger anti-terror and training force, more equipment, a box or two of money and more importantly more time to work on their internal politics would have most likely yielded very different results. As it had always done in the past.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Sorry, the offer by the Iraqi PM of a immunity agreement in the fight against Daesh says nothing about the willingness of the Iraqi parliament to give US troops immunity in 2011. In 2011, the Iraqi PM made the same offer, but, as even he acknowledged, it was meaningless, since the parliament had to agree. They were unwilling to agree.

No. The Iraqis needed more time to work out the internal politics but the US administration forced them to take a public stand before this had been done, so that stand was naturally no immunity. The US administration got the political cover to completely leave as they wanted all along.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

Stop making things up in a poor attempt to prove your belief is valid. We'd already had that agreement with Iraq for years. There was no surprise in requesting that it continue.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[Saanvik]

No, I didn't misrepresent your position at all. You fail to accept that the reason US troops were taken out of Iraq in 2011 was because of an agreement that was negotiated by the Bush administration; instead you focus on the failure of negotiations to change that agreement. If the Bush administration had not made a bad agreement, no renegotiation would have been required. The fault, if there is any, is in the original agreement. That's plain and quite obvious.

You keep talking about this supposed "intention" for changing the agreement. It simply makes no sense. If that intention existed, why didn't the Bush administration make it part of the agreement?

Your last paragraph slips off into wishful thinking again. No, the Iraqi government wouldn't have changed their minds if we committed to leaving more troops behind.

No, the request for immunity wasn't a surprise. The Iraqi government knew the existing agreement and knew that immunity would be part of any future agreement.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

Stop making things up in a poor attempt to prove your belief is valid. We'd already had that agreement with Iraq for years. There was no surprise in requesting that it continue.

You fail to understand the events. There was no surprise in the US requirement. However in the post sovereignty post occupation arab spring environment there was great political reluctance for Iraq to grant immunity. al Maliki had said that he needed time to negotiate with parliament and time for the government to frame things in an acceptable way to the public. The Obama admin sabotaged these efforts by demanding a public statement by Iraq on immunity before such internal negotiations and planning had taken place, forcing the Iraqi government to state no immunity for the moment.

Re:Well that was an incoherent metaphor

[drnb]

You are fundamentally misinformed. Both the US and Iraq expected the next US President to negotiate a *new* agreement for the status of US involvement for 2011 and beyond. The old agreement was a formal diplomatic end to invasion and occupation. For political and diplomatic reasons the new agreement had to be separate from the old.

The US requirement for immunity was not a surprise. al Maliki has stated that he needed time to negotiate with Parliament and time to formulate a framing for the Iraqi public. The US failed to give him this time, forced him to take a pubic position prematurely. al Maliki had also stated that US offer was insufficient and many of those in the Iraqi government were not willing to take the political heat of immunity for such an ineffectual token force. That a much better deal would be required to go down that path.

An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[NotDrWho]

career intelligence officer

Was he one of the career intelligence officers who claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Or was he one of the career intelligence officers who completely didn't see 9-11 coming at all? Or perhaps was he one of the career intelligence officers who had no idea where Osama Bin Laden was until some random tipster called them up and told them his address?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[k6mfw]

Perhaps like many in authority, didn't question the intel prior to 2003 invasion because they were destined to earn a lot of money from the invasion and later contracts awarded during occupation.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[NicBenjamin]

So figuring out what secretive people are doing is really hard, because they're (you know) secretive and shit; therefore we should never trust what anyone who works in the field says about the field?

FYI: actual intelligence officers didn't miss the boat on Iraq's WMD. Their boss was convinced by a con-man telling him what he wanted to hear, and their job is to back up the President. They didn't know 9-11 was going to happen the way it did, but it was pretty clear something was going to be tried by Bin Laden.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

> Was he one of the career intelligence officers who...

According to his wikipedia bio, he was out of the service before 9/11. That bio reads like it was written by his agent, but I think a basic fact like starting his own company in early 2001 is unlikely to be false.

It also says his B.A. is in arabic. I think that puts him head and shoulders above most of the career intelligence officers you are inveighing against.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

He was a 'security' contractor in Iraq who got ousted shortly before Rumsfeld did. Which shows up in his book as mostly misunderstanding the success of the surge, and how the insurgency was defeated sufficiently for Obama to call the war over.

What is this doing on Slashdot? And what does someone have to do to get a book review published here? I wrote a review of If Hemingway Wrote Javascript, which is a better book and actually related to tech. Why is this stuff showing up on Slashdot when reviews of tech books are not?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knew Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, America supplied them.

What the chickenhawks were squawking about was satellite photographic proof that Saddam was making new weapons.

By the time Bush II invaded Iraq, the old ones had pretty much rusted out.

Excepting the ones Saddam had already expended on his own people while the US did nothing.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's one of the "career intelligence officers" who missed the memo about not admitting that one is an intelligence officer.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

> FYI: actual intelligence officers didn't miss the boat on Iraq's WMD.

I'm sorry I don't have any links handy to back this up, but the impression I've received over the last couple of months (because of the hyping of Judith Miller's non-apology tour) is that the intelligence officers did miss the boat ... but only because there was no boat. That no one had commissioned any serious intelligence regarding WMDs in Iraq since circa 1998 and that when the Bush administration asked for an assessment the only information available was seriously out of date. The deadline imposed on them was such that there was no time to generate any new intelligence.

The bush administration chose to ignore that the intelligence was seriously out of date, probably because it said what they wanted it to say.

That is the reason everybody can 'truthfully' say that according to the best intelligence available at the time, Iraq most likely had WMDs. Nobody ever mentions that the intelligence was woefully out of date.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[bkmoore]

....What the chickenhawks were squawking about was satellite photographic proof that Saddam was making new weapons.

We don't know what the satellite photos showed. They were never made public. The irony is we got our best intelligence on Iraq's WMD program from Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspections. But we ended those when we started making ultimatums to Saddam Hussein... and in doing so, lost the best intelligence source we ever had on Iraq.

My personal theory is Saddam probably thought he had WMD, even if he didn't. Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly the kind of ruler you could say no to more than once. Mussolini's thought he had an air force on par with the German Luftwaffe or the RAF. The reality was the generals moved the few planes they actually had to whichever airbase Mussolini was visiting. The other theory is the Saudis were right; Saddam knew he had no WMD, but admitting it would have been a sign of weakness, especailly with Iran next door. Either way, our "career intelligence officers" and our political elite seemed to lack the street smarts to critically question the evidence. Maybe they didn't even want to. Donald Rumsfeld promised a 90-day holiday in the desert.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

since when are reviews of tech books are not on slashdot?
they are always around.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all useless adults who never outgrew the top sekrit treehouse no girls allowed phase of their childhood. They've never benefited anything except a career as a useless government functionary.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Boronx]

We'll revenge their deaths when it's convenient, I guess.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[IhateMonkeys]

Fuck you Hans Brix!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[k6mfw]

following up on this thread, I read a little more about this book, I was thinking maybe the author was one of few experts calling foul on Bush and Co. intelligence data but was squelched because they wanted to invade Iraq no matter what (I remember in 1990s many hawks were claiming we need to get back into Iraq and "finish getting rid of Saddam." Regarding 9-11, that provided a great excuse to do that. Of course, since nobody in US knows the difference between Sunni and Shia, and other details, new messes such as ISIS are created.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Uberbah]

The only thing the splurge did was get more people killed, both occupier and occupied.

and how the insurgency was defeated sufficiently for Obama to call the war over

Obama wanted to extend the war, not end it. But the Iraqis refused to let U.S. forces go on committing mass murder with impunity, so Obama had to adhere to the withdrawal timeline negotiated by Bush.

And who wants to die fighting a retreating enemy?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Uberbah]

My personal theory is Saddam probably thought he had WMD

He didn't, but he wanted his neighbors to think so. If that seems like paranoia, just look at Libya and Syria. If Assad had a powerful military, it's not as likely that Saudi Arabia and Qatar would be sending armed "freedom fighters" over the border.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[CanadianMacFan]

The problem was that the US, and other countries, have moved away from sending people out to gather intelligence first hand and have placed their trust in technology to gather it for them. It's a poor substitute because it can't understand the people that you are trying to gather information about. It doesn't get the nuances in messages that only two people who know one another or are from the same culture would understand.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

Obama wanted [theatlantic.com] to extend the war, not end it. But the Iraqis refused to let U.S. forces go on committing mass murder with impunity, so Obama had to adhere to the withdrawal timeline negotiated by Bush.

That's a popular theory, but it doesn't seem backed up by the evidence. It looks like Obama merely grabbed onto that as an excuse to leave. Check out this New Yorker article for example. From the reports, Obama was not pushing to leave troops, he was stalling and looking for a way out:

President Obama, too, was ambivalent about retaining even a small force in Iraq. For several months, American officials told me, they were unable to answer basic questions in meetings with Iraqis—like how many troops they wanted to leave behind—because the Administration had not decided. “We got no guidance from the White House,” Jeffrey told me. “We didn’t know where the President was. Maliki kept saying, ‘I don’t know what I have to sell.’ ” At one meeting, Maliki said that he was willing to sign an executive agreement granting the soldiers permission to stay, if he didn’t have to persuade the parliament to accept immunity. The Obama Administration quickly rejected the idea. “The American attitude was: Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible,” Sami al-Askari, the Iraqi member of parliament, said........Many Iraqi and American officials are convinced that even a modest force would have been able to prevent chaos

Obama seemed to affirm that fact when he was debating Romney. He said:

MR. ROMNEY: [W]ith regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should have been a status of forces agreement. Did you —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That's not true.

So it seems pretty clear Obama was against leaving a small force in Iraq.

Blaming the Bush timetable is silly.....he had several years to change the timetable (and not to mention that Bush was an idiot so doing anything because that is what Bush planned is utterly moronic. If Obama said, "I did this because Bush planned it" then I would have significantly less respect for him if he really meant that).

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Saanvik]

Blaming the Bush timetable is silly.....

No, it's not silly. It wasn't a timetable, it was a legally binding international agreement. The Obama administration negotiated with Iraq to extend the timeline for withdrawal but the Iraqi government would not approve it. The US government could either abide by their agreement with the Iraqi government, or ignore the Iraqi government's rule of law.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

It's as if you didn't even read my post. Read what you are responding to before blabbing on.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

no...read his bio and you will see that.

why slander a good man and patriot before reading the facts?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you make claims than questions?

your questions show you don't know and you are slandering the books author.

there are over 20 videos of him on youtube showing that he didn't believe iraq had wmd.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

nance did!!

its the entire congress and house of reps who went along with g. bush and allowed the war to start.

dead americans, yes.
wmd, not one found.

sad, tragic.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

why is everyone freaking over the book review?

so it's not C+++++++ book or java or python.

it seems like a good book...so why not let it be read?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Saanvik]

Is this in response to my comment? If so, your response is off base.

The facts are quite clear. The Bush administration negotiated a planned troop withdrawal with the Iraqi government. The Obama administration negotiated with the Iraq government to change it. The Iraq government denied the request by the Obama administration.

Your claim that the Obama administration had several years to change the agreement is true, but the Obama administration would never have had to make that attempt if the agreement made by the Bush administration were not in place.

Your whole argument boils down to this: "If the Obama administration had really wanted to keep troops in Iraq, they could have. Since troops didn't stay, they didn't want them to stay badly enough. Thus, the lack of US troops in Iraq is the fault of the Obama administration." It's nonsense.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[tinkerton]

Assad did have a powerful military. That didn't stop the Saudis.But I agree, the whole WMD excuse was made into something important by people who knew very well that Iraq was almost defenseless. As Wolfowitz said in the runup to the war 'I could take Iraq with 10000 men'.(If I recall correctly). If Iraq had been strong everything would have been different.So it was important for Saddam to appear strong. I've heard claims that oh dear Saddam fooled us into thinking he had WMD. Bollocks.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[tehcyder]

No, he's one of the "career intelligence officers" who missed the memo about not admitting that one is an intelligence officer.

You're allowed to be an ex-intelligence officer, surely?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

Your whole argument boils down to this: "If the Obama administration had really wanted to keep troops in Iraq, they could have. Since troops didn't stay, they didn't want them to stay badly enough. Thus, the lack of US troops in Iraq is the fault of the Obama administration." It's nonsense.

No it doesn't. You completely ignored the facts presented in my post. You're basing it on your preconceptions. Good job.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Anonymous Coward]

Link from 2002: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Infighting among U.S. intelligence agencies fuels dispute over Iraq

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon and the CIA are waging a bitter feud over secret intelligence that is being used to shape U.S. policy toward Iraq, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The dispute has been fueled by the creation within the Pentagon of a special unit that provides senior policymakers with alternate assessments of Iraq intelligence.

Administration hawks who have been leading proponents of invading Iraq oversee the Pentagon unit, which is producing its own analyses of raw intelligence reports obtained from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies, the officials said.

Click the above mcclatchy link to read the entire article. It was written by 2 functioning journalist named Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay; both from Knight Ridder Newspapers. Compare their work to stenographers & parrots such as Judith Miller of NYT. Both journalist wrote about 15 articles concerning the neocon takeover / Iraq invasion back in 2002/3; well worth a look.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/200...

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Saanvik]

It doesn't? Here I thought I was basing it on what you actually wrote, which included

Blaming the Bush timetable is silly.....he had several years to change the timetable

You claim that President Obama had several years to change the agreement, neglecting the fact that the Iraqi government had to agree as well. You further blame him by including multiple quotes claiming that he didn't try to keep troops in Iraq. The implication is clear - if he wanted to keep US troops in Iraq, he could have. That's simply false.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

The implication is clear - if he wanted to keep US troops in Iraq, he could have. That's simply false.

I gave quotes that showed Obama clearly didn't want the troops to stay. The articles I linked to demonstrate that the Iraqis wanted the troops to stay.

You are wrong. But don't worry, most people are wrong sometimes.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Uberbah]

Assad did have a powerful military.

Syria's annual defense spending is around $3 billion dollars. Saudi Arabia's is around 25 times that amount.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[tinkerton]

Syria's defense was good enough to hurt a lot. Saudi Arabia doesn't care much about that because they're not attacking directly. They're avoiding open military conflict. The same with Turkey. The only ones actually openly attacking Syria is Israel, but even they are mostly working indirectly by supporting those inside.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Uberbah]

That's a popular theory

You misspelled indisputable fact.

It looks like Obama merely grabbed onto that as an excuse to leave.

At the same time he was tripling forces in Afghanistan and arranging them to stay there till the mid twenty twenties? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Obama was as serious about withdrawing from Iraq as he was about reforming NAFTA or closing Gitmo.

Blaming the Bush timetable is silly.....he had several years to change the timetable (and not to mention that Bush was an idiot so doing anything because that is what Bush planned is utterly moronic.

It's really not hard to understand. If you had hostile foreign troops occupying your land, would you want to extend them immunity to shoot you on the street for no reason?

The articles I linked to demonstrate that the Iraqis wanted the troops to stay.

See above.

But don't worry, most people are wrong sometimes.

Yes, you are.

I gave quotes that showed Obama clearly didn't want the troops to stay.

And I could spend all day posting promises from Obama's 2008 campaign. Broken promises. Moreso than most politicians, you ignore what he says and pay attention to what he does. And what Obama does is invade, occupy, bomb and assassinate with the best right wing conservative hawk you can name. Because he's one of them.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

ok, so you didn't read my post, and you're ignorant.
Is there anything else you'd like to say?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Uberbah]

That's the problem for you: I did read your posts. All of them in the thread. The notion that Obama was a cut-and-run peacenik who couldn't wait to get out of Iraq - at the same time he was tripling forces in Afghanistan and extending that occupation another 15 years - requires a level of willful ignorance that goes far beyond 11.

He's a nightmare rightwing freakshow. The greatest farce of our time is the battle between the Obamabots, who think he's a helpless bystander constrained by Republicans, and the wingers complaining about Obama being soft when he's the worst Dem warmonger since LBJ.

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

The notion that Obama was a cut-and-run peacenik who couldn't wait to get out of Iraq - at the same time he was tripling forces in Afghanistan and extending that occupation another 15 years - requires a level of willful ignorance that goes far beyond 11.

I never said he was a peacenik.

It actually matches what he's said for a long time......Iraq was the 'bad' war, Afghanistan was the 'good' war (not that he's been particularly competent running the Afghanistan war, either).

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[Uberbah]

It actually matches what he's said for a long time.

You mean it matched the rest of his false campaign promises.

Iraq was the 'bad' war

More campaign rhetoric - and they were both bad wars. If Obama had been president in 2003, he might not have launched a full scale invasion. Instead, he might have spent 7 months bombing the country in full violation of both the Constitution and the War Powers Act, as he did with Libya. Fun fact: Obama's own vice president vowed to support Bush's impeachment in 2007 if he had done the same thing with Iran. And instead of kidnapping innocent targest and torturing them, he would have simply murdered them with drones. And he could have funded extremists from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to come in as "freedom fighters", and we'd have had ISIS a decade early - fun for everybody.

But Obama's extension and expansion of the occupation of Afghanistan is a complete and utter debunking of the notion that he wanted to 'cut and run' from Iraq, and that's a fact that you and the Obamabots are just going to have to deal with. Do you guys meet for coffee on Tuesdays to discuss talking points?

Re:An intelligence officer? Well he MUST be expert

[phantomfive]

But Obama's extension and expansion of the occupation of Afghanistan is a complete and utter debunking of the notion that he wanted to 'cut and run' from Iraq,

no it's not lol, it's pretty clear a person can have two different strategies for two different countries. It's pretty clear that Obama didn't want to stay in Iraq. I'm still not sure why you disagree.

and that's a fact that you and the Obamabots are just going to have to deal with

Obamabot? Are you saying I'm some kind of Obama fanboy or something?

Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on. This is purely a political piece. Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

The role of technology is minimal. The role of science is minimal. The role of math is minimal. The role of computers is minimal. The role of software is minimal.

This is purely a political submission. It has no place here.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG!!!! this is terrible...

like a good nazi...u shall only talk tech. u shall only mention STEM topics!

Slashdot ist nur für die Technologie, die Sie nazi.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[halivar]

My first thought was Dice clickbait; but on second thought, I realized that Slashdot's readership is becoming more and more hyper-political and hyper-partisan, and that's why pure science and nerd culture posts have only the title displayed on the front page, and political, religious, or other contentious posts go in the "Top of the..." list. I blame an influx of people from 4chan and Reddit.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

...stuff that matters then?

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Nidi62]

Come on. This is purely a political piece. Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

The role of technology is minimal. The role of science is minimal. The role of math is minimal. The role of computers is minimal. The role of software is minimal.

This is purely a political submission. It has no place here.

Just on the IED front the ingenuity, sheer amount, and the different types of IEDs that have been found should get any pyro/electronics nerd excited. How the different tribal and religious militias interacted with themselves, the government, and the coalition is interesting as well. Hell, my Master's thesis was on the efficiency of using militia in counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd call that topic pretty nerdy. And don't forget, politics(Especially international politics) affects all of us, from the price of gas to the strength of your economy.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

My first thought was Dice clickbait; but on second thought, I realized that Slashdot's readership is becoming more and more hyper-political and hyper-partisan, and that's why pure science and nerd culture posts have only the title displayed on the front page, and political, religious, or other contentious posts go in the "Top of the..." list. I blame an influx of people from 4chan and Reddit.

It's cute you want to try and get the rest of the world to recognize the sub-trolls from 4chan as human..

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Shakrai]

My first thought was Dice flamebait; but on second thought,

Fixed it for you. :)

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

yer sooo correct....14 kittens have died since this was posted.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the topic is important...maybe there is more to life than linux....expand your horizons.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch the "This Day on Slashdot" widget on the main page. Each day it shows the continual decline of Slashdot from purely technical articles of more than a decade ago to today's clickbait articles on politics and religion.

And I was there. I have a couple of 5 digit UI's with max karma. I won't even log in anymore.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

::::why pure science

slashdot was never pure science.

it was a lot of wannabees...but u never saw anyone with a Phd speaking to the matter.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being curious, I decided to see what stories were posted here a decade ago on May 18, 2005.

The difference between then and now is astounding. I didn't see a single story that was obvious out of place. Each and every one of them was relevant!

The only one that was remotely political, "Your Rights Online: Washington State Outlaws Spyware", was directly related to the Internet and software, unlike this submission.

None were about social justice.

They were all about science, technology, gaming, the Internet, and other relevant topics. I couldn't believe it!

Whenever somebody says that the standards around here haven't fallen, all we need to do is look back a decade to see how bad things actually have become. Slashdot today really is just a ghost of its former glory.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

times change....is that so terrible?

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you are correct...maybe the readers are changing.

if the site doesn't change along with it, then it will just die in a flame.

remember byte magazine? people longed for the good ole days of byte. but times changed, byte didn't and byte is history.

slashdot is changing...for the better.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

you probably miss your 64kb of memory?

do you long for the days of floppy disks?

take me down to paradise city of the early days of slashdot....

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Dice clickbait?

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[AK Marc]

Nerds are interested in politics. This is news for nerds, not tech news. That you confuse the two is your problem, not Slashdot's.

Re:Why the hell is this on Slashdot?

[tehcyder]

My first thought was Dice clickbait; but on second thought, I realized that Slashdot's readership is becoming more and more hyper-political and hyper-partisan, and that's why pure science and nerd culture posts have only the title displayed on the front page, and political, religious, or other contentious posts go in the "Top of the..." list. I blame an influx of people from 4chan and Reddit.

When people say things like this it always makes me wonder whether they think there is some requirement to read every story and every post on slashdot.

Monkey theorem? Yeah right.

[SpankiMonki]

Honestly, I think that monkeys could produce better legislation (in the same amount of time) as our current US Congress.

Sorry, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's Ben's insight into Iraq that makes him so much more qualified to speak on the matter than politicians? I know he didn't write the book but I expect the review to be from someone of knowledge, not just another political goon looking to drum up support for his agenda. If I wanted that kind of insight I'd go back to the politicians.

Substantially correct, but . . .

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

What is meant by the U.S. government made the same mistakes in Iraq as it did in Iran.? The U.S. has not invaded Iran any time recently.

Just how the weapons became ubiquitous is also not touched on in this summary: Saddam Hussein had an armory. The U.S. forces took that armory. Then they carried on towards Baghdad, towards the major prize and *glory* (cue exciting music). One undefended armory.

One thing that totally stank is that the whole thing was then lost in U.S. party politics. The Republicans lied about having lied and all their supporters started claiming black was white and that the weapons of mass destruction had really existed. We are getting the same kind of crud now from the St Petersburg Propagandazentral with respect to the Ukraine.

Another thing that stank was the sacking of pretty much all Baath party members. Being a party member was a requirement for many kinds of job, sacking all these people created a large pool of disaffected people. This was known at the time but the idiots in charge "knew better". I found it difficult to believe that so much stupidity was not malicious.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Tim the Gecko]

I assume this should be Vietnam, rather than Iran. This is from the earlier point that "the US ignored history and didn't learn the lessons of the Iraqi revolt against the British in 1920 or the events of the Vietnam War".

Certainly "Underreporting U.S. casualties, over reporting enemy losses, and obfuscating how terrible the situation on the ground was." sounds like a good summary of what was done in Vietnam.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Reid]

That Iran bit threw me, too, but I suspect he meant Vietnam.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[ShanghaiBill]

Another thing that stank was the sacking of pretty much all Baath party members. Being a party member was a requirement for many kinds of job

The Baath Party was made up of people that believed in a secular society, a strong unified Iraq, and preventing Iranian domination of the Persian Gulf. Since these were also the goals of the United States, the Baath Party ban had the effect of banning from government all the people that agreed with us on the future direction of Iraq ... and now we are disappointed that somehow Iraq has become a fragmented Islamic state controlled by the Shiites in Iran.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[benrothke]

Thanks. You are correct, that should have been Vietnam, not Iran.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[alen]

and after WW2 we allowed the Nazis to remain in power under a different name where in Iraq we kicked out anyone in the Baath party and made them unemployable and then wondered why people began to shoot back at us

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[CrimsonAvenger]

and after WW2 we allowed the Nazis to remain in power under a different name where in Iraq we kicked out anyone in the Baath party and made them unemployable and then wondered why people began to shoot back at us

It should be pointed out that the people who decided to let the Nazis remain in power after WW2 were thoroughly castigated by pretty much everyone.

So perhaps the lesson learned from that episode was that letting the former government workers continue to work after we'd ousted the government was a bad idea....

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Vietnam was a boondoggle

Why is this idiocy so prevalent? Why do people accept this stupidity as factual truth? Why is everyone so content on sucking their own dicks over such blatant ignorance?

In Vietnam, the US completed every tactical goal it had. Once the US handed the power back to France did everything "fall out"
Now, we're standing roughly 50 years after the Vietnam war. Vietnam is almost exactly how we wanted it. It's embracing capitalism, and it's a beautiful country that Americans are welcome to visit any time they want.

The proof is in the pudding. The US won the war for Vietnam.

Apparently, the planet now considers the US as "losing a war" the minute that our attrition rate rises around 3-4% -- or the media's precious feelings get hurt. I say that's a complete misunderstanding of history. It's misdirected optimism when it comes to war. You are the types of people that brought your picnic baskets to the Battle of Bull Run, and yet you haven't seen anything brutal enough to scar your delusion that "nobody really gets hurt in a war"

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

So you think the entire Republican party was in on it? Wow. Just wow.
 
I agree that there was probable cause for skepticism and I also agree that there is a few people in the higher ups that probably "knew" better. But to think that a single party came about with a conspiracy of this size and nature within a couple of years of a completely different administration in a different party either shows that you're not thinking too much or that both parties were in on it or that you're a goose stepping shill for "the other guy."

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[avandesande]

You should review your history a bit- from wikipedia:

In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected prime minister. He became enormously popular in Iran after he nationalized Iran's petroleum industry and oil reserves. He was deposed in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, an Anglo-American covert operation that marked the first time the US had overthrown a foreign government during the Cold War.[92]

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[MightyDrunken]

According to Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine part of the reason to exclude Baath party members from the Government was to simply sack nearly everyone in the Iraqi Government. The US had an agenda of privatising Iraq and freeing its markets and it didn't need a local Government to slow them down.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Xest]

That's the common Americanised view of how you could've made Iraq go better, but this is precisely the sort of ill conceived view that I suspect this book is trying to deal with.

The problem is that the Baath party was brutal. Like, really brutal. We're talking about the people who gassed the Kurds, who had no qualms with using human shields, and took no issue with putting power drills through the eyes of captured PoWs as a form of torture.

Given that, it'd be naive to think that that country wouldn't have collapsed into chaos at some point anyway in the exact same way that Libya, or Syria has. You would've also needed to moderate the Baath party to a level whereby it wasn't just gagging for an uprising too.

But, and this is something that review and presumably the book itself in more detail refers to and that's the fact that the Baath party didn't just vanish into non-existence.

In Western media we're constantly being given the impression that IS is a rag tag bunch of bandits. A bunch of local militants and a bunch of foreign militants that have teamed up to cause a bit of case. This begs the question, if they're so rag tag then how the hell are they managing to run a defacto state with all the institutions you'd expect from a state (even if rather warped) like courts, banks, industry, tax collection, communications, media and so on. How are they managing to stand firm against a standing army backed by the most powerful airforces in the world? How are they managing to stand firm against Iranian forces and militias? Against the Syria government with it's battle hardened soldiers and it's typically not available to rag tag militia Russian/Iranian equipment?

The answer? Because the idea that IS is just a bunch of rag tag militants is wholly false. IS is in large part the modern incarnation of the Baath party. Those atrocities they carry out? they're straight out of the Baath party's playbook from the last 40 years. That defacto state they run? It's got all the qualitities of a state because backing it are many professional judges, politicians, and business folk from Saddam era Iraq. Those battles they're fighting? those cities they're capturing? those are the cities they were born in, or served in under Saddam, these are the generals that fought powers like Iran in the 70s and 80s and won, those are the foot soldiers who comprised Saddam's Republican Guard which was one of the most effective special forces units in the region in the 80s and 90s. Every now and then, evidence of this slips through:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

When you stop thinking of IS as a rag tag bunch of militants, and start understanding that much of their backbone is comprised of the remnants of Saddam's regime it makes a lot of other things clear. Those atrocities IS carries out? it's not simply because they're evil people (though they are), it's a continuation of the sort of shock and awe horror tactics that Saddam's regime was famous for. When you understand that much of IS is comprised of professional special forces and experienced generals from Saddam's era fighting in the regions they lived in and served in, it starts to be a lot more understandable as to how IS has made so much progress in Iraq. Then finally, in the context of your point on Iran, you begin to understand why IS and Iran are so interested in fighting each other, why the Kurds are willing to so vehemently fight IS even outside of their own territory helping the Yazidis in Iraq, and pushing well beyond Kobane and Kurdish Syrian regions - these are old scores that are being settled. It's the 80s Iran-Iraq war in continuation.

IS can stand up to nation state's standing armies, because it is a defacto nation state with a professional standing army of battle hardened experienced soldiers who know where the military bases are, how they're laid out, how to assault them, and where the guns are hidden, precisely because they used to be garrisoned in them. They know ho

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[tehcyder]

and after WW2 we allowed the Nazis to remain in power under a different name

Well, apart from the ones we tried and hanged.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[tehcyder]

IS is in large part the modern incarnation of the Baath party

Except that IS has a religious rather than secular ideology.

Those atrocities they carry out? they're straight out of the Baath party's playbook from the last 40 years

Hitler, the PIRA and Pol Pot all carried out atrocities, that doesn't make them ideologically similar.

Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief system in its own right.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Xest]

"Except that IS has a religious rather than secular ideology."

Right, in the same way that the Taliban preach strong anti-homosexual views and cite that as a reason to fight the west because it dares to offer them equality all whilst having sex with boys?

If you haven't figured out that religion is commonly used as a tool of recruitment and control then you're probably out of your depth here. Throughout pretty much the entirety of human history religion has been claimed as the ideology and purpose, whilst simultaneously being ignored by the people who are leading those groups because they know it's an effectively tool for rallying the footsoldiers whatever you do and don't believe about it. For Saddam's old guard, when you no longer have the country, and know that Iranian funding and militias are moving into your country, there was simply no better option that to rally the Sunnis against Iran's staunch Shia movements.

"Hitler, the PIRA and Pol Pot all carried out atrocities, that doesn't make them ideologically similar."

Right, but Hitler, the PIRA, and Pol Pot weren't active in Iraq in recent history either. The fact that others have carried out atrocities in history is neither here nor there, the point is that Saddam's regime is the player in the region that has the most experience deploying these sorts of atrocities and using them as effective propaganda tools. IS isn't simply carrying out atrocities for the sake of it, the high profile ones are incredibly well planned - if you think it's as simple as "An infidel, lets kill him!" then you need to explain why they've kept John Cantlie alive when others have been beheaded. IS only carry out atrocities where the propaganda value is greater than the value of keeping them alive, that is, they don't carry out high profile atrocities because they're unthinking warped psycopaths, it is entirely planned, and done entirely with a propaganda goal in mind.

This is quite distinct to what Hitler did, because in contrast the worst atrocities such as the Nazi death camps were kept entirely secret.

But the irony is, in parroting popular myth you've highlighted that there is plenty of fodder out there who aren't aware of the fuller picture, highlighting that their methods work. You think they're just a bunch of rag tag terrorists, you think there's no organisation and that they'll go on surprising you by defeating organised forces.

The worst part is, a lot of it is even quite easy to verify. It's not even much of a secret that Adnan al-Sweidawi, one of Saddam's top lieutenants is in charges of IS' military council. It's not a secret that another of Saddam's lieutenants, Fadel al-Hayali is ISIS Iraq deputy. It's not a secret that the now deceased Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, America's King of Clubs from Saddam's regime was leading his own force that was instrumental in taking over Mosul, one Iraq's biggest cities, on behalf of ISIS. There are plenty more examples.

It's really only some elements (albeit some of the most prominent) of Western media that try to condense it all down into a ISIS = Terrorists = Unthinking bad people type simplistic world view, then act surprised when they turn out to be incredibly effective, more so than mere unthinking bad people could ever be. Unthinking bad people terrorists are folks like those who did the Glasgow airport attacks whereby they did more harm to themselves than anyone else, but it's pretty clear that the folks in Iraq/Syria are rather more competent, organised, and effective than that. That's precisely because they're led and run by experienced smart people (though still rather horrible smart people either way), not unthinking wannabe jihadists, no matter how simplistic some of the media want to try and make it.

Re:Substantially correct, but . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

This is it exactly. Spiegel recently did an investigation into this with actual IS documents. The worst of the Baath party melted into and/or formed IS. The brutality is a cover, for duping recruits, and for scaring the enemy.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-files-show-structure-of-islamist-terror-group-a-1029274.html

I want to read this book and I hardly read books anymore. Hopefully my local university will get a copy. There is a large gulf between what this author is saying and what you get from most of the media regarding IS. And as for the charge that this shouldn't be on slashdot because it's not about geeky things... Since I'm an AC nobody gives a shit and will probably not read this, but slashdot is about 75% useless. Most of the comments are predictable. Most of the stories are dumb and/or I already saw them elsewhere days ago. But this kind of thing is seriously important to all of us. And it requires intelligence to understand. I personally kinda geek out on this stuff! :)

I've never been in the military, and there's a good chance I'll never see combat. But against the advice of a great many people in the west, the west (specifically the US) started this shitstorm a decade and a half ago to three decades ago, depending on how you count... or a century ago, etc. And it's a nightmare state rising up, that we (in the US especially) are largely responsible for, that both presidents fucked up containing (more Bush than Obama but both). IS is going to shape our collective future. And there was absolutely jack shit nothing that I personally did which enabled this. I didn't vote for Bush or Obama. I didn't fight over there and kill and/or torture innocent people. But boy is my country responsible for this, and I feel personally responsible for knowing what the hell is going on there... partially so I can encourage my elected representatives to do the "right thing," partially so I can understand what the combat vets went through (and will go through) on both sides of the wars, and mostly so I can actually just know what's going on. Knowledge is good. And this kind of thing is so, so much more interesting than stupid tech marvel writeups that show up on slashdot. I'm a software developer too for what it's worth. :) IS is the real deal. Chips with new features or Microsoft making an ass of itself? Meh, small potatoes.

Infinite

[Livius]

Monkey keystrokes and infinite time does produce the works of Shakespeare.

So let's show monkeys a little more respect than comparing them members of Congress.

Re:Infinite

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to provide a proof? Seems obvious to me that the universe would experience heat death long before monkeys could recreate the works of Shakespeare. Just think of the possible permutations. We're talking 26 to the power of every alphabetic character in the collection of Shakespeare. And that's disregarding spacing and punctuation. That's an insanely large number. The heat death of the universe would come within a blink of an eye relative to the time it would take for monkey's to randomly chance upon the the correct permutation.

Re:Infinite

[Livius]

It would take longer than the lifespan of a monkey too.

It's an idealization.

Re:Infinite

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a wrong idealization. It's treated as a fact that proves that almost anything is possible at the scale of our universe. But in fact such a thing is not possible in our universe. Even given infinite time it's not possible--there's a finite amount of energy in the universe, and it's much less than would be required to randomly permute our way to the works of Shakespeare.

It's a pithy saying that has no more substance than saying "all things are possible with God". God is also an idealization, BTW.

Re: Infinite

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seem to grasp the concept "infinity".

Re:Infinite

[CrimsonAvenger]

Hmm, I take it you missed the "infinite time" part that went along with the "infinite number of monkeys"?

Re:Infinite

[MightyDrunken]

If you have infinite monkeys then you can generate infinite energy too.

Re: Infinite

[tehcyder]

You don't seem to grasp the concept "infinity".

It's a mathematical concept, not a description of the real universe.

Re:Monkey theorem? Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not a theorem. Your statement is a law!

Oxymoron

[Registered Coward v2]

member of United States Congress and House of Representatives ... collected wisdom

you could fit the resulting tome on a 3x5 card and still have 15 square inches of white space...

Re:Oxymoron

[reboot246]

I don't understand what was meant by the statement. Apparently the writer doesn't know crap about how our government is organized. The Congress is comprised of the Senate AND the House of Representatives.

"United States Congress and House of Representatives" doesn't make any sense at all.

Maybe he meant to write, "United States Senate and House of Representatives"?

That's okay. Even the media get it wrong most of the time. You'll hear them talking about "the Senate and the Congress" all of the time. It makes me wonder how they made it through grade school, much less college.

Re:Oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

well, I learned something today. thanks.

I am not able to find that disproof

[HiThere]

The assertion that the infinite monkeys theorum has been disproved seems incorrect. Searches for the named scientist in conjuction with monkey also fail.

IOW, I suspect the entire article is garbage. I will admit that this is based on the fact the the only easily checkable statement appears to be factually incorrect, but if it's wrong where you can check, what should you believe about the places where you can't check?

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Black Parrot]

The assertion that the infinite monkeys theorum has been disproved seems incorrect. Searches for the named scientist in conjuction with monkey also fail.

The infinite monkeytypings will eventually produce a theorem proving it one way or the other, if such a theorem exists.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Knee Patch]

There's nothing to be disproved. The submitter is just showing ignorance. I was able to find a commencement address by Arno Penzias where he shows the audience what a staggeringly large amount of time we are talking about when we talk about monkeys (or computers) randomly recreating text of any appreciable size. Tip to the submitter: Don't use phrases like "mathematically impossible" unless you really know what you are talking about. Slashdot readers fall all over themselves in their hurry to assert their superiority in these kinds of cases.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks "benrothke" has gotten the words "mathematically" and "practically" mixed up.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[kwiqsilver]

I noticed the same thing. Everything I've seen on monkey typists says that as either the number of monkeys, or the time, approaches infinity, the probability of getting a target string out of the typing pool approaches 1.

I also find it funny that in a post about a book on the Iraq debacle, the /. audience focuses on a tangential statement about probabilistics.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[benrothke]

I recollect Penzias making that statement that the math simply does not work in his book: Digital Harmony: Business, Technology & Life After Paperwork

http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-In...

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[benrothke]

My use of 'mathematically impossible' was incorrect. A different term would have proven better. Thanks.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

No its not incorrect. The Chances of a monkey randomly striking each letter necessary to carry on the one unique extremely long key that is a Shakespearean book would take longer than the the universe has in all of its time. And people who play around with ideas like infinity are getting on the wrong foot as it is. Seeing has how nothing exists that is infinite. That we know of.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[wonkey_monkey]

On Wikipedia's Infinite monkey theorem page, the very first sentence under the heading "Solution" is:

There is a straightforward proof of this theorem.

Another commenter has said that Penzias demonstrated the astronomically vast amount of time such an effort would take, but this is not a disproof of the theorem.

pages 404

Is it bad that my first thought when I read that was: "How could he not find out how many pages it had?"

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[benrothke]

thanks. Let me see if I can find his book where (I am pretty sure) he said that.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[suutar]

as in so many things, the word "infinite" makes the question both solvable and irrelevant to reality

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

Infinity is cool. The entire works of Shakespeare are encoded in the digits of pi. Later on, they appear backwards. There is one place where the forwards version and backwards version are intermingled, in an alternating fashion. They also show up in no-space camelcase: ToBeOrNotToBe...

When I say "are encoded" of course that is English shorthand for the "the probability that they are encoded approaches 1."

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

When I say "are encoded" of course that is English shorthand for the "the probability that they are encoded approaches 1."

That's really an assumption on your part, rather than a mathematical fact. There is no "probability" about it; every digit of pi is determined.
It is often assumed that pi is a normal number, but nothing like this is known to be true.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Well...ok then. "Statistically impossible" might be a better choice.

A (smallish) finite number of monkeys would be worse than a computer program to generate every possible text, since the monkeys rely on randomness and will repeat a lot of stuff, where an infinite number of monkeys will generate it in as long as it takes to pound out ~100,000 keys at random.

Still, the bottleneck is the evaluation function to sort out not just intelligible plays, but high-quality ones, applicable in both scenarios. This means humans for now, and far more than particles in the universe.

To be honest, the stench in a room filled with near-infinite numbers of computer and English geeks must be terrible.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking like a code monkey, not a mathematician. There is no java.infinitemonkey.evaluation() function that needs to be called. This is all conceptual.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a bad assumption, though. If the digits of pi are infinite and non-repeating, then even the fact that the digits may not be normally distributed wouldn't preclude finding any specific string of digits at any location in the sequence. The probability of any string being represented is 1 unless there is some unknown, but unlikely, property of pi that excludes that string. The probability of us actually finding that string is much lower.

Anyway, the distribution of letters in Shakespeare's works also aren't normally distributed.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you, like the submitter, don't really grasp what the word "mathematical" means.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

Just shut your shithole, cunt face.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

In the first place, "theorem" implies something that's mathematically proven, and therefore can't be disproved without rewriting the rules of mathematics.

In the second place, "infinity divided by almost-infinity is still infinity" doesn't really meet my idea of "rigorous mathematical proof". So no, it was never a theorem to begin with.

I remember, many years ago, reading a hilarious list of "things that a monkey would, statistically, produce long before the full text of Hamlet". It included:
  - the full text of Hamlet, except that "Polonius" is named "Hank"
  - Act I of Hamlet ending with everyone dying of food poisoning
  - a detailed account of the most embarrassing thing you ever did, complete with sworn witness statements

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. Have the infinte monkeys use Emacs, and no infinite amount of time will be enough.

Re:I am not able to find that disproof

[HiThere]

It's worse than that. The entire basis of the "infinite monkeys theorum" is that given enough random chances even highly improbable things occur. So he was not only wrong, he didn't even understand what he was describing. So why should he be believed where he can't be checked?

responsible for the death and torture of ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good questions http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7432031&cid=49720967

> The Hussein family was responsible for the death and torture of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraq's and others.

This was one sick gang but how about your "big men" in USA?
How many hundreds of thousands have Obama and Bush (young and old clown combined) managed to kill and torture?
Is Obama already under investigation? I recall he boosted how he takes full responsibility blaa blaa blaa...

Monkey scribes

[tverbeek]

Empirical evidence demonstrates that it took only a finite number of monkeys a finite period of time to "randomly" produce the works of Shakespeare.

Re:Monkey scribes

[Anonymous Coward]

i stopped at algebra 2...u win!

Re:Monkey scribes

[wonkey_monkey]

Shakespeare was an ape, not a monkey. And he didn't have a typewriter.

Re:Monkey scribes

[Anonymous Coward]

Shakespeare didn't even write what we call Shakespeare...so there!

not news for nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not news for nerds.
Nice try though, starting with the unrelated babbling about mathematics.

Re:not news for nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

please define the protocols of what constitutes news for nerds...

and what is the penalty for sharing news that is not meant for a nerd?

Re:Monkey theorem? Yeah right.

[SpankiMonki]

That's prolly why I got down modded, even though I mentioned monkeys. ;-)

Re:Monkey theorem? Yeah right.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, but first they would produce a readable slashdot summary - a feat that has at times seems almost impossible for current the editors.

Interesting inverview here

[sayfawa]

One of the Gawker sites interviewed this guy a few weeks ago. I went into it ready to criticize, but now I wish more people like him were in charge of the armed forces.

http://phasezero.gawker.com/an...

Re:Interesting inverview here

[Anonymous Coward]

holy crap!!!

i read the interview...the guy nance is a genius. and bush and chaney are idiots.

Re:Interesting inverview here

[Anonymous Coward]

The reviewer is correct. Malcolme Nance knows a lot about the topic!!!

/. v3 - Govt Trolls. Propaganda That's Paid For

[Anonymous Coward]

Who else here is old enough to remember when we used to have public forums, independent (on topic) submissions, and moderators that weren't on the payroll of big pharma or the military industrial complex?

A book review about penis enlargement would have more to do with "Internet Tech News" then this crap.

I recommend the next Slashdot Beta moves to the same color scheme of the CNN site. Then it will simply be redundant and can just shut down.

Re:/. v3 - Govt Trolls. Propaganda That's Paid For

[Anonymous Coward]

who paid what for what?

Re:/. v3 - Govt Trolls. Propaganda That's Paid For

[techno-vampire]

More important, why didn't I get any of it?

Re:/. v3 - Govt Trolls. Propaganda That's Paid For

[Anonymous Coward]

u must not be a democrat...

you mean the Resistance

[samantha]

Resisting invasion and occupation of one's country does not make one a terrorist except to the invaders.

Re:you mean the Resistance

[strikethree]

Resisting invasion and occupation of one's country does not make one a terrorist except to the invaders.

Indeed; however, that is not entirely the case in Iraq. There were numerous groups in Iraq. All said they were doing the suicide bombing of civilians to resist America. Note how the suicide bombings of civilians never stopped once America had left.

In other words, it was terrorism with a goal of NOT resisting the evil invaders but rather to take control of the region once America had left.

Concerning IEDs and such that were killing American soldiers, I would agree with you and not call it terrorism; however, America was going to leave eventually, so in theory, it could have been called terrorism with the goal of changing American policies while America was still present... God what a clusterfuck. :(

please go to soylentnews instead

[Anonymous Coward]

My first thought was Dice clickbait; but on second thought, I realized that Slashdot's readership is becoming more and more hyper-political and hyper-partisan

soylentnews developed a political bias a lot faster than slashdot did. I hope future political type stories will be done on soylentnews, as this one clearly is in the future.... I guess this things get really political on slashdot, maybe soylentnews can be talked into becoming apolitical.

Re:please go to soylentnews instead

[Anonymous Coward]

why can't u just chill...1 political posting & u think the world is coming to an end.

it's a slow news day...its only monday...only mondauy.

Weird subject matter for a book on Slashdot

[knightmad]

This is a weird subject matter for a book review to be on Slashdot. I don't want this to be dismissed like one of those "this is not news for nerds / stuff that matter" comments so I will develop further about why this is my opinion:

1. From Slashdot's own Book Review Guidelines (emphasis mine): "In particular, we're interested in reviews of books on programming, computer security, the history of technology and anything else (including Science Fiction, cyberpunk, etc.) that fits under the "News for Nerds" umbrella."

The reviewed book doesn't seem to fit any of the name checked categories and even to fit in the more general "News for Nerds" umbrella seems to be very generous for most interpretations of what a "nerd" would be in this context (of computer, technology, science fiction and cyberpunk).

2. Here are the reviews from the past 12 months. Despite of the lack of reviewers the theme is almost always related to technology (even if as a pretext to discuss infosec, law enforcement and natsec). Curiously the same reviewer that submitted this review submitted most of the barely related ones.

by Saint Aardvark: Book Review: Networking For System Administrators (subject: infrastructure, sysadmin)
by Michael Ross: Book Review: Drush For Developers, 2nd Edition (subject: web development)
by benrothke: Book Review: Future Crimes (subject: infused, cybercrime, law enforcement)
by benrothke: Book Review: Data and Goliath (subject: infosec, privacy, law enforcement)
by benrothke: Book Review: Core HTML5 2D Game Programming (subject: game programming)
by benrothke: Book Review: Designing and Building a Security Operations (subject: infosec)
by Saint Aardvark: Book Review: FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials (subject: infrastructure)

2014

by MassDosage: Book Review: Build Your Own Website: A Comic Guide to HTML, CSS, and WordPress (subject: web development)
by benrothke: Book Review: Spam Nation (subject: cybercrime)
by benrothke: Book Review: Bulletproof SSL and TLS (subject: infosec)
by benrothke: Book Review: Countdown To Zero Day (subject: infosec, cyberwarfare, natsec)
by

Re:Weird subject matter for a book on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

All of those books are technical topics. What's your issue?

Re:Weird subject matter for a book on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

besides this one...which of them are not on topic?

Re:Weird subject matter for a book on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

are the guidelines you mentioned like the constitution? or are they the gospel?
cuz if we break them, people will die. kittens will be...well ya know.

u did all that research means just 1 things...use gots toos much timz on yers hands!

Re:Weird subject matter for a book on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

not sure its Weird subject matter. maybe different, but not weird.

Re:Weird subject matter for a book on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

dont sweat the smalll stuff bro!

You're not doing the book any favors

[mr.mctibbs]

With reviewers like this, who needs critics? I sure hope the subject of the review was better written than the review itself.

Re:You're not doing the book any favors

[Anonymous Coward]

whats your issue here?

Protip

[edittard]

hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraq's

Protip: try to pair up your errors, and hope that one masks the other.

Re:Protip

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtual worlds.

Re:Protip

[Anonymous Coward]

mistakes happen...this is slashdot...u wanted perfection? read harvard biz journal.

Horse Apples!

[s.petry]

Both your position and TFA's to be perfectly clear. Members of the House, Military, and all of the various intelligence agencies are masses of people with a huge amount of collective knowledge. That "Bob" didn't know something is complete crap, because last time US Security relied on one person was... well, absolutely NEVER!

Saddam had no Nuclear weapons, and the whole story about yellow cake was fabricated by various intelligence agencies to fit an agenda. Everyone in politics and the Military knew it was bullshit, and everyone knew why it was invented by the Italian version of the CIA (which is why they attempted to hide the source). Bush was going to go to war no matter what. It was sold to the public by lots of politicians using every method imaginable (free oil, those damn terrorists, that evil dictator, etc...). The point in the propaganda game is not to convince other politicians of an action, it is to convince the public that the action is justified. That is right, the war was going to happen regardless of public opinion so it was purely justification.

Why do some people that believe politicians are stupid, do things from complete ignorance, and do things without understanding all of the possible outcomes? Well, those same people are quite frankly batshit crazy.

Re:Horse Apples!

[Anonymous Coward]

no...they are all idiots and killers.

they voted to invade iraq. they are guilty!

blood on their hands!

Re:Horse Apples!

[Anonymous Coward]

Saddam had no Nuclear weapons, and the whole story about yellow cake was fabricated by various intelligence agencies to fit an agenda.

There was lot more to it than just the yellowcake story.

Why do some people that believe politicians are stupid, do things from complete ignorance, and do things without understanding all of the possible outcomes?

Because there is tons of evidence. For example, the fact essentially nobody read the patriot act before voting on it. Or all of the non-oversight by the senate intelligence oversight committee.

These guys spend 5+ hours of their workday begging for re-election money. Of course they don't have time to pay attention to their jobs.

What is batshit crazy is believing that politicians have much of a grasp on anything- peripheral understanding sure, maybe some (one-sided) depth if a lobbyists informs them on a specific topic. But an educated opinion on anything else is rare as hen's teeth.

Re: Horse Apples!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is delusion, and then there is "take medication immediately". Since public records show the billions spent on intelligence agencies, cabinet members, think tank grants, etc... guess which category you belong to? A politician denying something is not.proof of anything except that they denied.somethings.

Re: Horse Apples!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the links there is no denial. Their is just abject ignorance.

bllsht

[prof_robinson]

More after-the-fact blame Bush BS. If what bush did was wrong, Obama abandoning them was 10x worse. And libya, 100x worse.

Re:bllsht

[Anonymous Coward]

so what's wrong with that?

Cheney still won't admit he was wrong.

and wolfowitz...what the hell.

there was WMD in Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but there was WMD in Iraq.
http://nypost.com/2010/10/25/us-did-find-iraq-wmd/

I know people who were there and more was found and just disposed of.
We USA sold it to Saddam, and that would be more embarrassing than not finding it.

That said, it was still a bad idea to take out Saddam. He was a bad player who should have STFU after 9/11.
He goaded the US into action.
Iraq is feeling the effects of Saddam KILLING any one who had a lick of sense or leadership.
The Norks will have this problem in years to come.

People have predicted that Islam will take over.
We need to keep them, where they are.
They will butcher each other and save us the trouble.
OR
They will make peace and not need to escape, and mess up civilized countries.

Re:there was WMD in Iraq

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a straw man.

We always knew there were WMDs. We knew it during the debate. The question wasn't whether there were WMDs. The question was always whether Saddam had hidden stockpiles of WMDs that the IAEA and other investigators could not catalog. Remember, the whole point of the U.N. resolution authorizing war was that Saddam wasn't cooperating with investigators.

In fact there were no such hidden WMDs. The closest thing found other than the known stockpiles were barrels of chemical weapons buried and long forgotten by everybody, including Saddam's military.

Seriously. This shit happened less than 15 years ago. It's amazing how quickly the truth of things becomes obscured.

*sheesh*

And I say this as somebody who foolishly supported the war on the theory that we couldn't trust the investigators who kept swearing up and down that there was no reason to believe that Saddam wasn't cooperating.

It's why I have no problem supporting Obama's deal with the Iranians. War hawks will tell us that we can't trust the Iranians; that they won't cooperate and will be able to shift development of nuclear weapons to unknown facilities. Well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice.... The experts are adamant and that they can reliably track the Iranians weapons development, including detecting surreptitious activities, and damned if I'm going to be pulled into another war by people spreading unsubstantiated Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

since when did ./ turn into boingboing?

[lophophore]

can we get this without the posturing? Yeah, maybe congress is 99% populated with idiots, but what does that have to do with this book? And what does this have to do with the

Since when did slashdot turn into boingboing?

the editing department needs a high colonic, me thinks. This site is losing it's relevance.

Re:since when did ./ turn into boingboing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm down...take a few breaths...

Yoga..nice ...calm...there now...

Re:since when did ./ turn into boingboing?

[Anonymous Coward]

simmer down

jus simmer down

Re:since when did ./ turn into boingboing?

[Anonymous Coward]

if u think this is spam, treat it like spam, delete it.

Not a tech book, but why is everyone freaking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok..this is not a programming/hacking/security/apache/linux/c/c++/coding book...
so why is everyone having seizures?

Is the world coming to an end and I missed it?

He missed one set

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans

Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Does he admit that we failed to predict a (blindingly obvious) Iranian campaign to destabilized Iraq that started well before the fall of Baghdad? That was a huge, huge part of the problem, and Iranian funding and policies deliberately started and funded the massive Shia-Suni bloodshed.

Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

Silly...Bush 2 started the 2nd Iraq war which destabilized it all. Had he not done that, there would be no ISIS in Iraq.

Bush 2 defeated proto-ISIS (al-Quaeda in Iraq) with US troops and Sunni tribal fighters in the An Bar Awakening. Proto-ISIS sent word to al-Quaeda leadership to stop sending fighters, that the battle was lost.

Obama's desire to abandon Iraq, to not leave a residual force resurrected ISIS/al-Quaeda in Iraq. The departure of Occupational/Stabilization forces was negotiated under Bush 2 but since it would be occurring on the next President's watch it was left to that next President to negotiate any residual force that would be left. Obama had no interest in doing so. When the Iraqis said no immunity for US troops Obama used that as an excuse to bail. The fact is the Iraqis *always* open negotiations with that position and then they *always* drop it when the US adds enough money and resources to the deal. Its a negotiating tactic, but Obama didn't want a successful negotiation. If a residual force had been left behind they would not even have had to engage ISIS directly on the ground. Such a force would have access to air support and could have called in air strikes on ISIS convoys of pickup trucks with heavy weapons traveling down open desert highways. You can't really find a scenario more vulnerable to air power, see Highway of Death from the first Gulf War. So what ISIS personnel survived would have lacked heavy weapons and would have been far more easily handled by local Iraqi forces. Not to mention with US backing these same Iraqi tribal forces beat ISIS the first time around. Its only because of US abandonment and abandonment by Baghdad too did these tribal forces decide to flip and join rather than fight.

The circumstances that led to the resurrection of ISIS is entirely Obama's doing, not Bush 2's. At least for the US' share of the blame, Baghdad's treatment of the Sunnis is responsible for a share too. Of course with greater US involvement such things had been mitigated in the past, so US abandonment had a role in that too.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Uberbah]

Obama's desire to abandon Iraq, to not leave a residual force resurrected ISIS/al-Quaeda in Iraq.

This revisionist history was already debunked in this thread before you decided to repeat it.

Obama wanted to extend the occupation, not end it. All that campaign talk about withdrawing within 16 months was a lie, just like his promises to renegotiate NAFTA, that any health care bill he signed must have a public option, and to close Gitmo.

All this Obama bashing from right-wingers, when he's been one of you all along.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

Obama's desire to abandon Iraq, to not leave a residual force resurrected ISIS/al-Quaeda in Iraq.

This revisionist history was already debunked in this thread before you decided to repeat it.

You are mistaken. Even the article you cite states that immunity for US troops was a deal killer. No immunity was a starting position in previous deals. Iraqi politicians preferred not to have the US around in those time frames too. Yet with sufficient money and resources added to the deal those politicians reversed themselves in the past. Which in Dec 2014 they did again. In Dec 2014 they voted to grant immunity to US troops due to the ISIS problem.

The fact remain that Obama wanted all out at any cost and the immunity was the perfect deal breaker. All he had to do was to accept the Iraqi's opening negotiating position and say "don't want us". He'd have perfect cover for what he wanted all along. His negotiations were a farce.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

You keep making the same false claims.

Immunity for troops is part of nearly every agreement for US troop deployment in a foreign country, and was in force in Iraq before our troops left.

The immunity granted in 2014 would not have been enough to keep the troops in Iraq in 2011. The situations are different, as are the agreements. In 2011, the Iraqi parliament had to approve the negotiation, because they had approved the previous agreement. The PM could not override that.

The truth is this - though the Obama administration negotiated with Iraq to extend US troop presence in Iraq, the Iraqi government declined to modify the existing agreement it had made with the Bush administration.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

Obama's desire to abandon Iraq, to not leave a residual force resurrected ISIS/al-Quaeda in Iraq.

I'm sorry, that's ridiculous.

Daesh already had a presence in Syria before we withdrew our troops from Iraq. Remember, they made their first attack in Damascus in December of 2011. Troops in Iraq would have had no impact on Daesh in Syria.

Going further, while military actions in 2007 and 2010 hurt al Qaeda in Iraq, they did not wipe out the organization. There's no reason to believe that a small force could have done what a full force could not except the desire to blame President Obama.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[dave420]

But Bush started the war, and without that action Obama would have nothing to mess up. Bush made up some evidence and started a war for no good reason, yet you claim it's the guy who followed him who screwed it up? If Bush's boys had destroyed "proto" ISIS, where did ISIS come from? Your fawning makes no sense. Obama has done some incredibly messed up stuff, but nothing compared to invading Iraq. Nothing even close.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

You keep making the same false claims. Immunity for troops is part of nearly every agreement for US troop deployment in a foreign country, and was in force in Iraq before our troops left.

Actually you keep making the same misinterpretation, my apologies if I was not clear. No-immunity was an initial Iraqi position. Negotiating away their position is in reference to the Iraqis wanting no-immunity but eventually granting it, *not* in reference to the US position of requiring it.

The immunity granted in 2014 would not have been enough to keep the troops in Iraq in 2011. The situations are different, as are the agreements.

Of course, the point is that the 2014 agreement proves that the Iraqis were and still are flexible. That the problem was an insufficient counteroffer from the US.

The truth is this - though the Obama administration negotiated with Iraq to extend US troop presence in Iraq, the Iraqi government declined to modify the existing agreement it had made with the Bush administration.

No. The new agreement over a residual force was an entirely separate agreement. The Bush administration thought that a future President deploying US troops to Iraq should be doing so under an agreement that this future President had negotiated.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

Daesh already had a presence in Syria before we withdrew our troops from Iraq.

I'm not discussing Syria.

Going further, while military actions in 2007 and 2010 hurt al Qaeda in Iraq, they did not wipe out the organization.

Al-queda in Iraq told al-queda leadership not to send more fighters, that they were beaten.

There's no reason to believe that a small force could have done what a full force could not except the desire to blame President Obama.

A seriously misinformed statement on your part, both in the sense that proto-ISIS/al-queda in Iraq had in in fact been beaten by US and Sunni tribal forces and in the sense that ISIS' march through Iraq could not have been stopped with a small US force. Regarding the later a small US force would be able to call in air strikes. ISIS would not have been able roll on down the open desert highways in pickup trucks with heavy weapons mounted in the bed. They would have lost all such vehicles/weapons. With only light weapons ISIS would have been more easily contained by Iraqi forces. Plus with the backing of US air power Iraqi forces would have been far more willing to stand and fight rather than flee. Again, these Sunni forces were the same ones who had beaten proto-isis in the past. It was their abandonment by both the US and Baghdad that led to their flipping sides.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush also left Iraq in the hands of an incompetent government thoroughly dominated by Shiites, an intrinsically unstable state of affairs.

And when you say he defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq, don't forget that General Petraeus's main strategy was to pay tribal leaders to do as we asked. Many observers at the time thought their loyalty would only last as long as money poured into western Iraq by the billions, and they were right.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

In 2011, the Iraqi PM made the same offer. Even he acknowledged it was pointless, since the Iraqi parliament had to agree to it, and they were unwilling to do so. In other words, as I said, this latest offer of immunity is different, and doesn't say anything about 2011.

If you think it would have been easy to negotiate US troop immunity with the Iraqi parliament in 2011, then I must say I'm impressed by your negotiating skills. Remember, the Iraqi people were sick of incidents where Americans were seen to be committing crimes but not being prosecuted. The situation with the security contractors, like Blackwater, was especially on their minds. Remember, no one in Blackwater had been found guilty of killing 14 unarmed Iraqis in Nisour Square until 7 years later. It really was not a simple thing to "negotiate away".

Let me quote the Iraqi PM, who said, in 2011 - "When the Americans asked for immunity, the Iraqi side answered that it was not possible". Your arm chair quarterbacking doesn't convince me.

It's an interesting tack you take in your last paragraph. It's illogical, but interesting. You're saying, basically, the Bush administration was willing to negotiate a troop pullout that would happen during the following administration, but they were unwilling to negotiate an agreement to keep troops in Iraq during the following administration. You can't have it both ways, sorry.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

Daesh already had a presence in Syria before we withdrew our troops from Iraq.

I'm not discussing Syria.

Oh my, that's rich. You can't talk about Daesh without talking about Syria.

Regarding your claim that a small US force could have stopped the development of Daesh; you're simply engaging in wishful thinking. The full US occupying did not stop al Qaeda in Iraq. A small troop left in Iraq almost certainly would not have been more effective. Trying to use this wishful scenario as proof that the Obama administration is at fault just illustrates the straws you must grasp at in an attempt to support your initial claim.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

I've answered these same claims several times. Nothing you write backs up the claim that removing US troops form Iraq happened because of actions of the Obama administration.

Could the agreement have been revised? Yes, it could have been. It was attempted, and failed. The requirement that such a negotiation take place was due to an error by the Bush administration. If they had not made the agreement to remove all US troops, the Obama administration would not have had to renegotiate with Iraq over leaving US troops in Iraq. In other words, no matter how many different ways you try to state the opposite, the truth is that US troops were removed from Iraq because of a decision by the Bush administration.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

In 2011, the Iraqi PM made the same offer. Even he acknowledged it was pointless, since the Iraqi parliament had to agree to it, and they were unwilling to do so.

That is not true. The Iraqis needed time to work out the internal politics of immunity but the US pushed them for a public position before they were ready so the public position was no immunity. Had to US given them the time they wanted the answer may have been quite different, as it always was in the past once the US sweetened the deal.

You're saying, basically, the Bush administration was willing to negotiate a troop pullout that would happen during the following administration, but they were unwilling to negotiate an agreement to keep troops in Iraq during the following administration. You can't have it both ways, sorry.

Its actually quite simple. Going forward the new guy won't be saddled with someone else's deal, the new guy will go forward with his own deal.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

Daesh already had a presence in Syria before we withdrew our troops from Iraq.

I'm not discussing Syria.

Oh my, that's rich. You can't talk about Daesh without talking about Syria.

You can if you are only referring to their presence in Iraq. With a proper force in Iraq then the problem in neighboring Syria is small scale infiltration and terrorism. Not a light mechanized incursion that conquers and occupies territory.

Regarding your claim that a small US force could have stopped the development of Daesh; you're simply engaging in wishful thinking. The full US occupying did not stop al Qaeda in Iraq.

Again, US forces and Sunni tribal forces did exactly that in the An Bar Awakening. The situation was so stable that the Obama administration only wanted to leave 3,000 - to 5,000 troops in Iraq since in their opinion the chances of Iraq descending into chaos were so low.

A small troop left in Iraq almost certainly would not have been more effective.

Only if you ignore history. ISIS conquered and occupied territory in Iraq through a light mechanized assault, pickup trucks with heavy weapons mounted in the bed. Such a force rolling down an open desert highway in extremely vulnerable to air strikes. Without their heavier weapons and a large number of vehicles for force mobility they would not have had the impact that they did. They would have been reduced tactics similar to those they had previously been defeated at. Plus with US air strikes at their disposal the Sunni tribal forces and other Iraqi forces most likely would never have fallen to ISIS.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

... the truth is that US troops were removed from Iraq because of a decision by the Bush administration.

Only if one ignores the fact that the Obama administration failed in their attempt at the follow up agreement that both the US and Iraqis had expected to make. Obama offered too little support, he pressed the Iraqis to make a public statement on immunity before they had worked out the internal politics for domestic consumption thereby forcing a no-immunity stance, ... a whole series of serious errors were made by the Obama administration that undermined the followup agreement.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

In 2011, the Iraqi PM made the same offer. Even he acknowledged it was pointless, since the Iraqi parliament had to agree to it, and they were unwilling to do so.

That is not true.

Yes, it is true; see No, Obama Didn’t Lose Iraq where Mr. Kahl, "the senior Pentagon official responsible for Iraq policy during the first three years of the Obama administration" said,

Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, told U.S. negotiators that he was willing to sign an executive memorandum of understanding that included these legal protections. But for any agreement to be binding under the Iraqi constitution, it had to be approved by the Iraqi parliament. This was the judgment of every senior administration lawyer and Maliki’s own legal adviser...

You continued with

The Iraqis needed time to work out the internal politics of immunity but the US pushed them for a public position before they were ready so the public position was no immunity. Had to US given them the time they wanted the answer may have been quite different, as it always was in the past once the US sweetened the deal.

That's simply wishful thinking on your part. You want it to be true so that you can blame the Obama administration.

You're saying, basically, the Bush administration was willing to negotiate a troop pullout that would happen during the following administration, but they were unwilling to negotiate an agreement to keep troops in Iraq during the following administration. You can't have it both ways, sorry.

Its actually quite simple. Going forward the new guy won't be saddled with someone else's deal, the new guy will go forward with his own deal.

Gah! The "new guy" was saddled with the agreement! That's the whole point. I can't believe you don't even understand that, which is actually the simplest part of the whole discussion. The Bush administration saddled the Obama administration with a binding agreement on troop levels in Iraq. The Obama administration tried to renegotiate that agreement but the Iraqi government refused to change it.

I'm sorry, but this last comment really proves that you simply have a belief and all the facts in the world won't change it. If you disagree, then you have to acknowledge that this claim is ridiculous. If the Bush administration didn't want to saddle the following administration with an agreement, then they shouldn't have made one that forced the troops to be withdrawn.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

No, I'm sorry, it's simply ridiculous to try to isolate any discussion of Daesh to only Iraq. All it does is illustrate that you're only interested in trying to prove your belief, not understanding the actual situation.

As has been repeatedly acknowledged by people throughout our military and government, the idea that al Qaeda in Iraq was controlled after An Bar was incorrect.

Your last paragraph is just restating your wishful thinking. Could it have happened exactly like that? Yes, in a Hollywood movie. The reality on the ground is nothing like that. Would the situation have been different? Probably. Would Daesh still control large parts of Syria and Iraq? Undoubtedly.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Saanvik]

You keep talking about this follow-up agreement. No follow-up agreement would have been required if the Bush administration had not, in their optimism, made the error in judgement that no US troops would need to be in Iraq after 2011. The quality of negotiating by the Obama administration is immaterial.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

You keep talking about this follow-up agreement. No follow-up agreement would have been required if the Bush administration had not, in their optimism, made the error in judgement that no US troops would need to be in Iraq after 2011. The quality of negotiating by the Obama administration is immaterial.

You are grossly misinformed. The Bush admin was not optimistic about the need for US support in 2011 and beyond. They merely left it to the next administration to work out the details. If anyone was over optimistic is was the Obama admin that thought Iraq was unlikely to fall into chaos and only offered 3,000 - 5,000 troops for anti-terror, training, support, liaison, etc.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

No, I'm sorry, it's simply ridiculous to try to isolate any discussion of Daesh to only Iraq. All it does is illustrate that you're only interested in trying to prove your belief, not understanding the actual situation.

No, it only illustrates that I am discussing Iraqi security and the US involvement in that. The transnational problem of ISIS is a different topic.

As has been repeatedly acknowledged by people throughout our military and government, the idea that al Qaeda in Iraq was controlled after An Bar was incorrect.

You are grossly misinformed. US military officers have reported al Qaeda in Iraq reported to al Qaeda leadership that no more fighters should be sent, that they were beaten in Iraq. Plus the Obama admin thought Iraq so stable and unlikely to fall back into chaos in 2011 that they believed on 3,000 to 5,000 US troops would be needed in Iraq.

Your last paragraph is just restating your wishful thinking. Could it have happened exactly like that? Yes, in a Hollywood movie.

No, it was the nightly news. Convoys of fighters and heavy weapons rolling down the highway were ISIS' trademark video. The vulnerability such a movement is demonstrated by earlier videos from the first Gulf War, a stretch of road that the news referred to as the highway of death.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[drnb]

In 2011, the Iraqi PM made the same offer. Even he acknowledged it was pointless, since the Iraqi parliament had to agree to it, and they were unwilling to do so.

That is not true.

Yes, it is true; see No, Obama Didn’t Lose Iraq where Mr. Kahl, "the senior Pentagon official responsible for Iraq policy during the first three years of the Obama administration" said,

Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, told U.S. negotiators that he was willing to sign an executive memorandum of understanding that included these legal protections. But for any agreement to be binding under the Iraqi constitution, it had to be approved by the Iraqi parliament. This was the judgment of every senior administration lawyer and Maliki’s own legal adviser...

Which is basically what I said in my next sentence. "Working out the internal politics" included al Maliki working out a deal with Parliament, working out a framework to present the deal to the Iraqi public, etc.

You continued with

The Iraqis needed time to work out the internal politics of immunity but the US pushed them for a public position before they were ready so the public position was no immunity. Had to US given them the time they wanted the answer may have been quite different, as it always was in the past once the US sweetened the deal.

That's simply wishful thinking on your part. You want it to be true so that you can blame the Obama administration.

No, al Maliki said he needed this time. Numerous foreign policy experts have criticized the Obama admin for forcing Iraq to take a public position on immunity before the internal Iraqi negotiations and planning had taken place. The experts considered this one of the Obama admins major blunders.

Its actually quite simple. Going forward the new guy won't be saddled with someone else's deal, the new guy will go forward with his own deal.

Gah! The "new guy" was saddled with the agreement! That's the whole point.

No. The actual point is that there is an agreement on the departure of the invasion and occupational forces. For diplomatic and political reasons that era needed a fixed and unambiguous end. This agreement, for the era of occupation, largely covered a timeframe on the earlier President's watch and only briefly stretched into the next President's watch.

Also for diplomatic and political reasons a separate deal was required with a fully sovereign and independent Iraq for future US forces that would participate in anti-terror, training, support, liaison, etc. The time frame for this era of cooperation was entirely on the next President's watch so both the US and Iraqi government agreed that this future President should negotiate the deal.

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Uberbah]

You are mistaken.

You're in outer space. The same president that's bombed twice as many Mulsim countries as Bush, the same president that tripled forces in Afghanistan over Bush levels - and arranged them to stay there through two full terms of Jeb or Hillary - the same president that joked about murdering American kids right after murdering American kids with drones, the same president that demanded the right to throw American citizens in military prisons without trial...wanted to 'cut and run from Iraq' cuz he was too liberal?

Are you out of your fucking mind?

Re:Obama, not Bush 2, responsible for ISIS ...

[Uberbah]

Even the article you cite states that immunity for US troops was a deal killer.

Which is why Obama had to give up his dreams of extending the Iraq occupation. Exactly as I said.

The fact remain that Obama wanted all out at any cost and the immunity was the perfect deal breaker.

The fact is the only thing higher than that on the right wing dumbfuckometer is blaming Clinton for Ruby Ridge, which happened before he was even elected to the presidency, much less took office. You're saying Obama was too chicken to stay in Iraq at the same time he was tripling forces in Afghanistan, and arranging for them to stay there not just through his second term, but Obama's successors second term?

The same president that has spent more on wars and spying than Bush, bombed twice as many countries as Bush, and signed the NDAA into law - along with dozens of other far out batshit crazy right wing warmonger crap actions on his resume - suddenly went all Dennis Kucinich on Iraq? The same Iraq that Obama is bombing right now because ISIS, Obama's own Mujahadin got out of hand?

Dumb. Fuckery.

The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[drnb]

By the time Bush II invaded Iraq, the old ones had pretty much rusted out.

The problem was that Saddam was actively creating the impression that Iraq did maintain them and had new weapons programs. It was a disinformation campaign to keep the Iranians guessing for the most part, to maintain the illusion of being a regional power.

No one really knew whether or not Iraq had WMD until US boots were on the ground going into areas UN inspectors were never allowed. Those who had the no-WMD position before the invasion were just as in the dark as those who had the opposite position, it merely turned out the no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct.

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[dave420]

But everyone in the intelligence sector did know they didn't have WMDs. This was known, hence all the anger when the "intel" was trotted about - people knew it was nonsense. There was no "accidentally correct", just people who knew their stuff and who screamed the claims were bullshit.

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[drnb]

But everyone in the intelligence sector did know they didn't have WMDs. This was known, hence all the anger when the "intel" was trotted about - people knew it was nonsense. There was no "accidentally correct", just people who knew their stuff and who screamed the claims were bullshit.

Nope. You are mistaken. A New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

"There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war."

"My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it."

"The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error."

"Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, ... told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”"

"Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it."

"A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted."

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[tinkerton]

By Judy Miller. Really. She's full-o-shit.

What all of the intelligence community understood was that whatever the WMD capacity was of Iraq, it was insignificant. That they were uncertain of Saddam's efforts or intents , that I can see. It's hard to prove a negative. But part of the effect of the propaganda effort was to change the question. "Saddam would like to have chemical weapons". "Saddam is trying to make them". "Saddam would make them if we normalize relations".

I think politicians on the other hand were often eager to be fooled. They were deliberately gullible because they often thought taking over Iraq was not such a bad idea. Because of a simple logic that removing something bad would make things better. Because they thought it a good idea to redesign the neighborhood. Because they didn't see any other way to end the blockade. Because being perceived as being fooled was preferable to being perceived as afraid to row against the current. Because they thought it was going to succeed and didn't want to be on the wrong side afterwards.

In practice what happens with propaganda is there is no real center anymore of people who really know what's going on. Everyone is just believing someone elses lies. The same is still going on about Iran.

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[drnb]

The bottom line is that Saddam possessed and had use chemical weapons. He had a nuclear program, Israel bombed it. He lost a war to the US and the cease fire required him to destroy any WMD. He did not comply, he worked to keep it a mystery as to what he still possessed, an attempt to keep Iran at bay. If he had complied with the cease fire terms and allowed UN inspectors to witness destruction, burial, etc; allowed UN inspectors complete unfettered access there would have been no doubt and no invasion. However given the paranoia of an immediately post 9/11 environment such a failure to comply could not be tolerated nor the risk that he may possess something be allowed to continue. That is why so many democrats were initially on board.

Eventually the invasion became a political wedge issue and the above truth got lost in all the noise.

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[tinkerton]

I think the relation between your narrative and reality is very weak. WMD were not a driving force for the US invasion. They were merely the alibi. You've got the reasoning behind the alibi wrong, but even if you had it right it would already be missing the point. The 'doubt' there was left was only about a theoretical question. WMD or no WMD: then one shell of mustard gas proves the WMD thesis. But if the question had been 'significant WMD, enough to be militarily relevant' then there was no doubt. The bottom line is the US took Iraq because they could, and people went along with the alibi to save face.

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[drnb]

No. The WMD possibility was a real concern. Things that you seem not to be considering: Post Gulf War Saddam was actively hostile to the US. He fired on US aircraft enforcing a no fly zone occasionally, this zone being another thing he agreed to in the cease fire. Saddam actively supported terrorists, they may not have been al-Qaeda but they were groups that had attacked and killed Americans. Beyond support he also provided sanctuary to foreign terrorists who had killed Americans and allowed them to live in Iraq. All this and more led President Clinton to state that it is the policy of the United States to remove Saddam from power.

Also as the cited New York Times journalist (cited a couple of posts up) found in her investigation into how everyone got Iraq wrong in the days leading to the invasion, some of the things that turned out to be true included: the UN reported 1,000 tons of chemical agents were unaccounted for and WMD was eventually found (years after the invasion and initial searches) and the sarin nerve agent was more potent than the US thought Iraq had the capability to produce and former UN inspectors have stated that Saddam planned to reconstitute WMD programs once the UN signed off on Iraq and left.

Things are far more complicated than you suggest. Yes, actual motivations for war and how war is sold to the public often differ. WMD was oversold. However as even Clinton had stated Saddam had to go, he was an ongoing threat, and in a post 9/11 environment his antics would just no longer be tolerated. 9/11 changed the US' level of tolerance.

Re:The no-WMD crowd was accidentally correct

[tinkerton]

Sure, things are more complicated than I'm claiming. But I was well aware of what was happening while it was going on. You're using as reference the most egregious cheerleader of the WMD campaign.

Do you think people currently care about Iranian WMD? Not only did they never exist, nobody even would care if they did.It's just an alibi. Of course you need to make a lot of noise about it to make the alibi work.

The Terrorists of Iraq?

[nickweller]

There were no 'terrorists' in Iraq until the US overthrew Saddam Hussein in the second Iraqi war. Saddam Hussein being a one time hitman and CIA agent who, under US instruction, wiped out the leaders of the Ba'ath Party and installed himself dictator. Was Americans best buddy in the middle east until he went broke invading Iran and invaded Kuwait in retaliation. Anything else you read is retrospective self serving neocon revisionism.

Re:The Terrorists of Iraq?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there were. If you recall, a few weeks before the invasion, Abu Nidal, a long time terrorist wanted by the West, was gunned down in Baghdad, where he had been living the last several years. If Saddam had no interest in supporting terrorism, why did he host Nidal?

Actually, any work on the subject of any Muslim country that glosses over the role of Islam in the turmoil of that country ought to be discredited. The summary doesn't discuss to what extent Islam was behind Saddam's role in the post 9/11 period, but those who say it was nothing, or claim that he was a secular leader have it completely wrong.

Saddam was 'secular' only in the sense that he wasn't Shi'ite, which in Iraq, would define Islam, being the majority sect. An important thing to understand about Islam is that it is whatever the majority sect in a region is. So while Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, all claim to be 'Islamic', there are differences in their definition. In Saudi Arabia, Islamic means Wahabi, in Iran, it means Khomeneite, in Iraq, it means Shi'ite, in Syria, it means Sunni. Since that's what the majorities in those countries are.

So Saddam wasn't 'Islamic' in Iraq since he wasn't a Shi'ite, but that doesn't mean that he was secular. He was devout enough a Sunni to have a Quran inscribed in his blood, and add 'allahu akbar' to the Iraqi flag - something that the successor government of Iraq failed to undo. He was perfectly happy supporting Sunni Islamic groups, like Hamas, where he'd give rewards to families of homicide bombers. Conversely, the same is true about the Assads in Syria - Bashar now, and his father Hafiz before him. The Assads being Alawite, which was recognized by an Iranian sect as Shi'ite, but something that's not unanimous in the Shi'ite clergy. They too are upheld as secular, but they are more than happy to be a puppet state of Iran, and a sponsor of Hizbullah. Incidentally, this is also the reason that Saddam and Hafiz al Assad hated each other, even though both were Baathists in their countries. Saddam was a Sunni leader suppressing Shiites, and Assad was a 'Shiite' leader suppressing Sunnis. So an alliance between them - especially during the Iran-Iraq war of the 80s, was out of the question.

Also, neither Saddam nor Assad were CIA henchmen: if anything, they were heavily backed by the Soviets. In the 80s, during Iraqs war with Iran, it was the Soviets that supported Iraq with weapons, while Egypt, being a newly minted ally of the US, backed them as well, in order to get back into the good books of the Arab League, that was boycotting them due to the Camp David agreement with Israel on the Sinai. In fact, it was Egypt that got the US to lean more towards Iraq despite the latter's alliance with the Soviets - a move not liked by the Israelis. Which was what led to the 'Arms for hostages' deal that Ollie North got crucified for.

Bottom line - the US did make mistakes in the 80s and 90s by backing different Islamic countries and groups, such as Pakistan and Afghan Mujahideen groups against the Soviets. However, to extrapolate that argument and claim that the US supported groups like the Taliban, or Saddam, or ISIS is inaccurate. The reason ISIS is what it is today is that in both Syria and Iraq, Sunnis, who have been oppressed for 30+ years in the former and last few years in the latter, have combined forces to declare an Arab Caliphate built around them. And nobody will figure out how to defeat them until they come to terms with the ugly truth - that ISIS is the real face of Islam.

three paragraphs in ... ugh.

[paul mafinga]

Iraq was hardly stable to begin with. Saddam -- a supposedly devout Sunni leader who loaded the government with his insane brood of offspring, decade after decade. Desert Storm and the UN inspectors. The list goes on.

President Bush offered several opportunities to avoid the war with Iraq, mostly involving increased inspections and Saddam's resignation. None of the proposals were accepted. Some WMDs were eventually found in Iraq, but not much in the way of active programs or fresh stockpiles. It was still a violation of Saddam's UN agreements.

Circa 2005, the CIA issued a public apology on their website, admitting to the grotesque intelligence failures that mislead the President, Congress, and We the People. Most people recall DCI George Tenet's commentary to the President about Iraq's WMD programs being a "slam dunk". In all likelihood, the failures go much, much deeper.

The Al Qaeda / IS split happened because Bin Laden wanted western influences out of Muslim nations. Our presence is a direct contradiction to "perfect" Qur'anic revelation. Bin Laden did not believe that the caliphate would be restored in his lifetime, only that his grandchildren might see it. On the contrary, IS believes that Muslim nations will soon submit to a new caliphate, and that Sunnis will be in control. After 1400 years of squabbling and slaughter, it seems unlikely.

The low quality western press routinely publishes big red maps of IS control, but in reality, much of it is just connected dots between small towns in vast, empty regions. Some special forces have commented that they've entered a small IS occupied town, dropped six or so IS hoodrats, and within days a huge part of some western news map suddenly changes from red to tan. Laugh, the western press is almost pathetically incompetent.

There is a bit of humor in all of this -- democratic elections voted Shiites into control of Iraq. This does explain why IS has such a focus on Iraq though -- the Sunnis lost. Another bizarre contradiction.

Whatever the evolutionary growing pains, this is a great opportunity for Muslims to continue the path towards moderation. Most Jews and Christians accept that their texts are flawed, and many of the archaic rules can be safely disregarded. Many fundamentalist Muslims, particularly in the middle east, believe that every word of the Quran is perfect, including beheading, amputation, slavery, pedophila, global domination, and the extermination of nonbelievers.

It's really a matter of interpretation. Mohammed put in a lot of effort trying to get the Jews of Medina and Mecca to accept him as a prophet, and they rejected him. He held quite a grudge for the rest of his life. The prose of the Quran evolved about 300 years after Mohammed's death, so its a slam dunk that the Quran, like the New Testament and Torah before it, is loaded with interpretations and opinion unrelated to the opinions of its prophet.

There is a glimmer of hope, among educated Muslim women in particular, as long as they can speak in relative safety from western nations. As one can imagine, they're a bit tired of seeing their husbands and children die due to these fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran. And all the talk about getting the virgins -- women can be a bit sensitive about that kind of judgement.

For all we know, Mohammed might have promised one, 72 year old virgin. Not quite as appetizing for the fundamentalist warriors of the Quran.

Re:three paragraphs in ... ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

good points...but Bush caused the cards to crumble.

may saddam would have been toppled 2 years later by ISIS, but it wouldn't have cost the US over $1 trillion.

that's the big difference.

Re:three paragraphs in ... ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

ISIS may not have done a thing to Saddam - they may well have rallied around him. ISIS is the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria, both of which are not dominated by them, coming together and declaring a worldwide Caliphate. Their support is certainly there amongst most Sunni Arabs, and even Sunnis who are non-Arab, like Turks, Pakis, Afghans and so on.

Everything seemed good until the ISIS section

[Anonymous Coward]

It all seemed good until the ISIS section; that was a load. ISIS is not nearly the dominant force in Iraq, far from it. Both Turkey and Iran are much more powerful, however they are restraining themselves as they are playing the long game. Either one could walk in and wipe ISIS from the map, but they are much more interested in positioning themselves for an outcome that when ISIS is wiped from the map Iran or Turkey ends up as the dominant player.

Re:Everything seemed good until the ISIS section

[Anonymous Coward]

Only you could post how wonderful Turkey and Iran are...

As the powerless and weak ISIS owns Ramadi and the Sunni Triangle.

I won't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

And neither should anyone. Buy the "wrong" book today, you end on some list. Then you wonder why you get laid off, why your fresh out of college kid can't get a job, why you can't get a loan despite having a good record and so on. Oh, and why you are always singled out for searches at the airport. No thanks. These days, books are more dangerous than bombs.

Re:I won't buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

written like a pro...who knows nothing.

CIA provided faulty information ...

[drnb]

Bush made up some evidence

No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

"There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war."

"My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it."

"The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error."

"Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, ... told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”"

"Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it."

"A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted."

Re:CIA provided faulty information ...

[nbauman]

Bush made up some evidence

No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Here's how Paul Krugman described it (more convincingly, to me). GWB wasn't mislead by the CIA. Cheney had convinced him to drive Saddam Hussein out of office before he heard any of the CIA assessments.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...
Blinkers and Lies
Paul Krugman
May 16, 2015

"The invasion wasn’t a mistake, it was a crime. We were lied into war."

(First, war in Iraq was not a good faith mistake. Bush and Cheney decided to use 9/11 as an excuse to go after a secular regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. They deliberately mislead the public, making a fake case about WMD.

Second, it was obvious at the time that the case for war was fake, and that post-war Iraq would be a failure.

The question for war supporters is, "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"

Third, people who knew it was fake supported the war to establish their centrist credentials.)

Re:CIA provided faulty information ...

[drnb]

Bush made up some evidence

No, the CIA gave him faulty information. New York Times journalist has been researching how she got the WMD story wrong in her reporting back in the day and she writes in http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Here's how Paul Krugman described it (more convincingly, to me).

From Judith Miller's article again:

"OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me. None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it. The 2005 commission led by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb and conservative Republican Judge Laurence Silberman called the estimates “dead wrong,” blaming what it called a “major” failure on the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good informationserious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions.” A year earlier, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence denounced such failures as the product of “group think,” rooted in a fear of underestimating grave threats to national security in the wake of 9/11."

Re:CIA provided faulty information ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So now a self-declared Liberal's Econ blog is a reliable citation source? Why not just link to a Daily Amos blog while you're at it? Would you accept citations from Rush Limbaugh's website?

Re:CIA provided faulty information ...

[nbauman]

I was right. You were wrong.

How do you answer Krugman's question: "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"

That's Judith Miller's version. This is one of those situations where credibility and accuracy counts, and don't trust her to get the story straight. She didn't before.

I read Miller's stories in the NYT during the debate over WMDs. She gave one source who verified the WMDs, but she didn't speak to him -- her handlers pointed to a guy some distance away, and told her what he said, but they wouldn't let her talk to him. She was quoting a claim second-hand.

Yes, they fed her cherry-picked information. The information from the UN inspection team, whose members I heard interviewed on NPR, was that the US gave them the location of WMD facilities, they conducted surprise inspections, and the WMDs weren't there. The Pentagon didn't tell Miller about that.

It's not the job of a reporter to uncritically repeat the claims of high-placed sources. The job of a reporter is to check their claims with people who disagree, and get both sides. I learned that in Freshman English.

Bottom line: I knew that there were no WMDs. Krugman knew. Lots of people knew. You didn't need any fancy intelligence sources to figure that out. All you had to do was listen to both sides and see whose arguments held up. Reporters were talking to independent military experts, and the experts overwhelmingly told them that the claims weren't true. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had military experts who said they weren't true. The aluminum tubes story was provably false. The yellowcake story was provably false. How many times do you have to see their stories proven false before you realize that they're not reliable?

Re:CIA provided faulty information ...

[drnb]

I was right. You were wrong. How do you answer Krugman's question: "Why didn't you see the obvious back then?"

No, you are mistaken. Neither side knew, no one knew until US boots were on the ground. The truth is that Saddam wanted doubt, it was a defense against Iran. Being accidentally correct is not evidence that Krugman or anyone else knew for sure. As for Miller, its not simply her opinion. Various bipartisan investigations back her account.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

"There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war."

"My sources were the same counterterrorism, arms-control and Middle East analysts on whom I had relied for my stories about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s growing threat to America—a series published eight months before 9/11 for which the Times staff, including me, won a Pulitzer."

"Another enduring misconception is that intelligence analysts were “pressured” into altering their estimates to suit the policy makers’ push to war. Although a few former officials complained about such pressure, several thorough, bipartisan inquiries found no evidence of it."

"The CIA repeatedly assured President Bush that Saddam Hussein still had WMD. Foreign intelligence agencies, even those whose nations opposed war, shared this view. And so did Congress. Over the previous 15 years, noted Stuart Cohen, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, none of the congressional committees routinely briefed on Iraqi WMD assessments expressed concern about bias or error."

"Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, ... told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”"

"Years would pass before U.S. soldiers found remnants of some 5,000 inoperable chemical munitions made before the first Gulf War that Saddam claimed to have destroyed. Not until 2014 would the U.S. learn that some of Iraq’s degraded sarin nerve agent was purer than Americans had expected and was sickening Iraqi and American soldiers who had stumbled upon it."

"A two-year study by Charles Duelfer, the former deputy chief of the U.N. inspectors who led America’s hunt for WMD in Iraq, concluded that Saddam Hussein was playing a double game, trying (on the one hand) to get sanctions lifted and inspectors out of Iraq and (on the other) to persuade Iran and other foes that he had retained WMD. Not even the Iraqi dictator himself knew for sure what his stockpiles contained, Mr. Duelfer argued. Often forgotten is Mr. Duelfer’s well-documented warning that Saddam intended to restore his WMD programs once sanctions were lifted."

Obama made ISIS

[ULTROS]

Step 1. Give weapons to "freedom fighters" Step 2. Freedom fighters win "freedom" Step 3. Freedom fighters become ISIS with weapons given. Step 4. profit

OK then, now what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"But unless confronted quickly and forcefully..."

Isn't that what started this mess in the first place?

The utter depravity of Saddam & Sons

[tinkerton]

I call bullshit. Sure, they were a nasty bunch but there's a lot of those around . Saddam himself was cruel but he also thought it was necessary to be so. As dictators go, he was relatively competent. That was maybe the main reason the US turned on him: too competent. Iraq had been developing itself very well and was becoming a bit too independent and too powerful.
The sadism of his eldest son was another matter.

a SOFA would of been nice

[Anonymous Coward]

and then we wouldn't have lost most of Iraq to ISIS.

that is all.

Re:a SOFA would of been nice

[Anonymous Coward]

What does SOFA mean?

Nerve Gas

[Anonymous Coward]

Saddam had it and used it multiple times. In fact he is the only person to authorize its use in the last 50 years except for some Shining Path weirdos in Japan. He used it against the Kurds and he used it against the Iranians. The Iranians even presented samples to the UN. Many died just to obtain a sample from the battlefield.

The truth is that even without evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (which is unequivocal), Iraq was under the terms of a cease fire after unconditionally surrendering in the first Gulf War. In the time between those wars, he refused to allow weapons inspectors, fired on our aircraft enforcing a UN sanctioned no-flight zone and conspired to assassinate a former US president. All of those are acts of war or at least enough to break the cease fire.