re: #147 Hecuba’s daughter

Iraq was not Afghanistan; it was a modern country with a functioning national government, just like Germany, and not run by religious fanatics. So my naive belief was that we could do what we did in Germany: eliminate Saddam and his worst henchmen and get the nation operational. Of course, we still have forces in Germany 75 years after the war was over. So that might have been a flaw with my plans.

We had a window of opportunity to do that; but de-Baathification, and then installing our green zone people who had no experience whatsoever in city management, or water systems or electricity, or policing, banking, or any of the other things a civil govt needs (a bunch of 24-year-olds who”d been chosen by the Bush admin on the basis of where did they stand on abortion or gay rights)…

I remember a story a couple days after we “won” that invasion, ended the bombing, etc, the entire work crew showed up at a Baghdad power station ready to get to work putting it back together, and our soldiers sent them home. We sent home everybody who knew anything at all about any job, and tried to rebuild from scratch with all new people who had zero training.