SEE YA':

Hawks push deep cuts in forces in Iraq (Bryan Bender, November 22, 2004, Boston Globe)

A growing number of national security specialists who supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein are moving to a position unthinkable even a few months ago: that the large US military presence is impeding stability as much as contributing to it and that the United States should begin major reductions in troops beginning early next year.

Their assessments, expressed in reports, think tank meetings, and interviews, run counter to the Bush administration's insistence that the troops will remain indefinitely to establish security. But some contend that the growing support for an earlier pullout could alter the administration's thinking.

Those arguing for immediate troop reductions include key Pentagon advisers, prominent neoconservatives, and some of the fiercest supporters of the Iraq invasion among Washington's policy elite.

The core of their arguments is that even as the US-led coalition goes on the offensive against the insurgency, the United States, by its very presence, is stimulating the resistance.

"Our large, direct presence has fueled the Iraqi insurgency as much as it has suppressed it," said Michael Vickers, a conservative-leaning Pentagon consultant and longtime senior CIA official who supported the war.

Retired Army Major General William Nash, the former NATO commander in Bosnia, said: "I resigned from the 'we don't have enough troops in Iraq' club four months ago. We have too many now."

Nash, who supported Hussein's ouster, said a substantial reduction after the Iraqi elections in January "would be a wise and judicious move" to demonstrate that the Americans are leaving. The remaining US forces should concentrate their energies on border operations, he added. "The absence of targets will go a long way in decreasing the violence."

Yonadam Kanna, secretary general of the Assyrian Democratic Movement and a member of Iraq's interim National Assembly, also backed the US-led removal of Hussein. He now says Washington must "prove that the United States is a liberator, not an occupier."

The great lesson going forward is that we should have turned over sovereignty immediately, scheduled elections sooner and left quicker. The Middle East is not WWII Germany or Japan--the people are oppressed; not oppressors.

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REVIEW: of Hell Is Over by Mike Tucker (Shawn Macomber, November 22, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)

“Americans have no idea of the horror Saddam perpetrated,” U.S. Army Specialist Eric Debault tells Tucker. “All this was on my mind, standing there in the desert, looking at the skulls and bones. I would consider Saddam as the Anti-Christ…Saddam ranks right up there with Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini – with every brutal dictator who has ever carried out crimes against humanity.”

The tragic, brutal thread running through the entire book is that of animalistic brutality and torture: Beatings administered with chains, mower blades, wooden bats, and pipes. Electric charges administered to various parts of the body, including the genitals. Men drowned standing up. Common criminals enlisted to help Iraqi guard in the beating of prisoners.

In presenting these interviews in their entirety, Tucker has gotten out of the way of the victims and produced one of the most moving accounts about the terrors of pre-war Iraq. There is none of the phony context of a Dan Rather newscast, nor is this a simple recitation of facts that slowly dilutes them of their impact. The emotion and humanity of the victims is on full display. They are angry, and sad, and traumatized, yet still proud and defiant.

Tucker uses the last chapter of the book to make an impassioned plea on behalf of the Kurdish people, who now see themselves as firm allies with America in the War on Terror: Do not take the Kurdish people for granted again. Their wounds still smart from Kissinger turning a blind eye to genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1975 and the failure of the American government to support the 1991 uprising against the Ba’athists. Despite it all, they have stood by America, and in their interviews, more than one Kurd expresses love for America and an interest in becoming, “the 51st state.” Kurdish forces, backed by American Special Forces took Mosul early in the war. They have since been ordered out of the city, and the keys have been handed over to “reformed” former Ba’athists. In this global war, it is as important to know our true allies as our enemies. We must stand by the Kurds this time. This liberation must not be a sweet dream between nightmarish realities.

Some see America’s war with Iraq as having begun three years ago, while others take the long view and push the origins of the conflict back to 14 years ago when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Kurds war, however, stretched over the course of more than four decades. For them, the events of the last year was “no rush to war.”

“Oh, I cried on April 9, 2003, I wept,” a Kurdish man, Kawa Fathi Massom, tells Tucker. “My daughter asked me, ‘Why are you crying?’ And I looked into the eyes of my children and I told them that all their lives I’d lied to them. That I’d always told them they’d have promising futures but that I knew I was lying and I hated myself for that…I can say, with my soul at peace, that now, my children, you have a future, and we have the Americans to thank for this.”

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 22, 2004 10:41 AM