Swompdonkey

Iraq Five Years On:

I just watched No End In Sight, the Academy Award nominated documentary about the Iraq war. It's a remarkable film, and will no doubt bolster the already robust case that the people that sent American troops into Iraq really had no plan (or at the very least, a severely flawed plan) and no clue of what to do once they had won the war.

My guts were in knots watching the anguish on the face of the former Colonel and CPA official talk about how his Iraqi counterparts greeted Jerry Bremer's de-Ba'athification order and the disbanding of the Iraqi army with chagrin and disbelief. No wonder. The movie point to those two measures, among others, as catalysts for the Iraqi insurgency and while this is probably an oversimplification, it is obvious in hindsight that no good could come from firing a million able-bodied Iraqis from their jobs and setting them loose on the streets with weapons within reach.

The movie has its flaws, of course, and it must be viewed with a critical eye --nary a mention is made of the animals that came to call themselves Al-Qaeda in Iraq, for example, and the Iranian infiltration is also glossed over. The eye-rolling and smugness of Obama's now shitcanned policy advisor Samantha Power becomes tiresome, particulary when during an interview she smirks annoyingly as she offers an anecdote about a Lebanese diplomat referring "bullets in the eyes" of American representatives -- botching it, according to my wife, who knows the actual expression in Arabic.

It is particularly tragic to think that some of the logical measures advocated in those early days and weeks are only now, five years on, being implemented in that tortured land with almost startling success, those ideologues who opposed them (Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld) having been consigned to ignominy, and the dustbin of history.

For what it is worth, I think this gets the Iraq narrative right, even though the tinfoil hat brigade will still squeal “it's all about oil!"

If that is the case, my only question is

What the HELL happened?


***

9-2?

Way to run up the score, jerks!

Did Probert feed some poor bombardier his jersey too?

I'm kidding. Classy move by some NHL greats to play road-hockey with the boys.