Yep….
This site is quite accurate representation of smug british attitude wrt its attitude towards anything
american,

Its only because we’re so much better.

but for the most part US did get this war right

What does that mean? Im unsure how you’re defining ‘for the most part’ let alone measuring it. The premise for war has been shown to be demonstrably false; the actions post occupation criticised by republicans themselves. Without ignoring the present state of iraq and the rationale given for war how on earth can you say for the most part they got it right?

Their is a silly comparison to vietnam that is brought out, then the comparisons to colonization of india is brought on and on.

Silly in what sense? Detailed comparisons are obviously nonsensical; but taking in the overall picture why is it silly to ask whether there is a military solution to the present problem, or even if there was a military solution to saddam hussien? You probably disagree with Clinton but as he said the only insurgency that has been put down since WWII was by the british in malay; it took 15 years and the insurgents were from a different ethnicity.

Besides most american make the comparison

But Iraqis know that US will leave, and do want them to clean iraq up and get the oil flowing before leaving
and also perhaps issue some student visas so that their children can attend graduate school in US

If they have the money to choose id always suggest Europe; but each to their own.

Or maybe, just like us, the iraqis have a complex voting background. The war in iraq isn’t widely supported and tony blairs opinion rating is shit, as is new labours. We voted in the lesser of 3 evils. Picking up one area of concern and mapping it to an entire manifesto is odd. The reason elections aren’t polls is they deal with more than one issue.

Yep….
This site is quite accurate representation of smug british attitude wrt its attitude towards anything
american, but for the most part US did get this war right. Their is a silly comparison to vietnam that is brought out, then the comparisons to colonization of india is brought on and on.
But Iraqis know that US will leave, and do want them to clean iraq up and get the oil flowing before leaving
and also perhaps issue some student visas so that their children can attend graduate school in US

as it was mentioned of mr stewarts show that
the only poll that counts is the election.
With that said, no iraqi would want US to leave

Or maybe, just like us, the iraqis have a complex voting background. The war in iraq isn’t widely supported and tony blairs opinion rating is shit, as is new labours. We voted in the lesser of 3 evils. Picking up one area of concern and mapping it to an entire manifesto is odd. The reason elections aren’t polls is they deal with more than one issue.

Kulvinder – What I meant was that while the Marshall Plan did a lot to rebuild Germany, the main purpose of it was to help the US allies in Europe. It had to be – how could you justify spending shitloads on a nation culpable for it’s own and everyone else’s destruction, while leaving the nations Germany destroyed with nothing?

broadly yes i know which is why i questioned this

Kulvinder – you’re wrong, the largest part of spending in the Marshall Plan was not ont he UK, it was to rebuild those nations who fought alongside the US rather than against the US. Why on earth should it happen any other way?

the per capita assessment was made of the contributions, it wasn’t wholly winners take all

If you want to know what the UK government squandered the money on, I disagree with what your link says – the welfare state didn’t come for free and I reckon that’s where the bulk of the money was squandered (or wisely spent, depending on your POV of course).

You’re free to disagree, i go with his analysis.

The demands on Germany post WW1 may have been unfair, but as Germany never met them – in total they only ever paid an eighth of the reparations due – that can’t be blamed for Hitler.

Yes, the great depression occured and noone could have met those payments, hitlers rise and the irritation with the tov and the young plan in particular came before the repayments ceased. Im not sure what to say if you’re going to ignore the opinions of german industrialists at the time as well as the boost the young plan gave to nationalist politicians like hitler and hugenberg. No credible source claims britian and france in particular were the only causal factor in the rise of hitler, but without ignoring a great chunk of history they can’t be set aside as being part of the landscape that led to his rise.

Also, where did facism in Italy, Spain, Hungary etc. come from? It’s one of my pet beefs, this, the UK and France desperately blaming everyone for the rise of facism except the facists. Stop it, and think a bit.

They had their own reasons, im not sure whats so controversial about saying certain factors were more prominent in particular cases.

For the resources I’m sure Iraq can make plenty of bricks. But not much else – if you want clean water and electricity safely into every home, if you want to rebuild factories and ports, if you want to open hospitals and schools you’re going to need an awful lot of kit, kit that can’t be found in Iraq. So it has to be shipped in. And TVs are needed too. People who don’t know what’s going on get frightened then dangerous, and a whole new government has to get it’s ideas and plans across to everyone.

The aid revolves around money and expertise, the contractors are obliged to sort out logistics on their end and factor in such payments when making the bid. Unless you’re suggesting the private sector is more ineffecient than the public i really can’t understand your reasoning. The contracts have to be completed in a specified time scale, having more ‘transports’ would have no impact on the timescale. The comparison with post wwii germany is bizzare.

I didn’t blame the media for causing the problem – just for making it worse than it need be.

The conflict was unpopular with many US major allies, but I blame the UN over the US for that. Saddam spent a fun 12 years crowing about his victory over the rest of the world and none of his neighbours were under any illusion he’d learned his lesson. He was good at getting people on his side, too – firstly his support for Palestinian attacks on Israel and his reborn islamism, secondly in promising the French etc. plenty of cheap oil as soon as the dastardly US and UK had stopped hassling him.

So we had the UN dithering with a dangerous expansionist dictator they’d already slapped down once and couldn’t find the will to do it again, even though he was ignoring treaties, resolutions and flipping them the bird. See the Mighty Moustachioed Ming defy the whole world! Man, what a champion!

The US entered a conflict which was unpopular with the majority of the public in all it’s ‘major’ allies. Given the run up to the conflict, the standard stalwarts of blue helmet forces weren’t too likely to be keen on helping with reconstruction. One didn’t have to be particularly presient to realise that reliance on outside help might end up in over stretch at some point.

Then you have a general estimating that ‘several hundred thousand’ troops would be required to keep the peace. No, this clusterfuck was entirely of the US’ own making, and you can’t blame the nasty bully boys in the media for that.

Now that is not to say that there isn’t a certain attitude in parts of the media. However – discounting the usual suspects – this is in large part an effect of the early part of the war, where heavy handed news management was attempted alongside mismanagement of the occupation (the looting of Baghdad being a prime example).

The demands on Germany post WW1 may have been unfair, but as Germany never met them – in total they only ever paid an eighth of the reparations due – that can’t be blamed for Hitler. Also, where did facism in Italy, Spain, Hungary etc. come from? It’s one of my pet beefs, this, the UK and France desperately blaming everyone for the rise of facism except the facists. Stop it, and think a bit.

For the resources I’m sure Iraq can make plenty of bricks. But not much else – if you want clean water and electricity safely into every home, if you want to rebuild factories and ports, if you want to open hospitals and schools you’re going to need an awful lot of kit, kit that can’t be found in Iraq. So it has to be shipped in. And TVs are needed too. People who don’t know what’s going on get frightened then dangerous, and a whole new government has to get it’s ideas and plans across to everyone.

Aparrantly UK military leaders now believe that Afghanistan is a more worthwile and winnible battlefield.

Kulvinder – you’re wrong, the largest part of spending in the Marshall Plan was not ont he UK, it was to rebuild those nations who fought alongside the US rather than against the US. Why on earth should it happen any other way?

We didn’t fight the americans in wwii…

on top of that, the spending on the UK was more investment than aid – we owed them big time and that investment allowed us to pay off the debt. I believe we only finished paying off that debt a couple of years back. I’m proud we paid it, though.

and in the war to end all wars before that we took on another load of debt as well as making incredibly unfair demands on germany at the time

Still it really doesn’t matter, everything is done on credit these days. The entire iraq war is deficit financed, even the US can’t saddle itself with an additional $5 bn/month requirement. All congress appropriations for iraq (and the rest of the ‘war on terror’) including reconstruction is done on a tab. I suppose some clever quant somewhere is trying to make sure their debt to the US is cancelled by giving money to the US for iraq.

In WW2 the US had just moved an enormous army to Europe, and on top of supplying them were supplying various European armies. The infrastructure was there to keep the aid flowing, which it wasn’t in Iraq. Don’t underestimate the value of a merchant fleet – you can’t airlift factories to Iraq, and you can’t airlift enough of their products either. The bulk of the kit still goes by sea.

You’re thinking of aid in terms of ‘things’. The US bureaucracy and their contractors are there to oversee spending not ship things in. This isn’t about tvs or goods its about services. The money is wired over, the american consultants the US hire (halliburton, blackwater etc) either hire out locals to do the manual work or if its sensitive work as with their mega embassy in baghdad they bring in other arabs – mainly kuwaitis.

The aid revolves around money and expertise.

I’m not blaming the 101 keyboard corps either. Because I have no idea who they are?

In WW2 the US had just moved an enormous army to Europe, and on top of supplying them were supplying various European armies. The infrastructure was there to keep the aid flowing, which it wasn’t in Iraq. Don’t underestimate the value of a merchant fleet – you can’t airlift factories to Iraq, and you can’t airlift enough of their products either. The bulk of the kit still goes by sea.

If you want to blame the 101st Keyboard Corps for the present situation that’s entirely your perogative. I’d say the person who went on record to state that it was ‘hard to believe’ that keeping the peace would take more troops than that required to overthrow Saddam was somewhat more to blame.

Not many other countires go in for rebuilding after a war, do they?

Most nations find pre-emptive regime changes followed by national reconstruction an odd concept

Europe was war ravaged, but the USA wasn’t and there were far, far more transports available to get resources into theatre than there are nowadays. Far more people, too. And nobody was wondering if it had been the right thing to do, or if we shouldn’t just leave Jerry to it and hope the nazis didn’t get back in.

I meant resources in terms of money and mainly the experience gained in 60 years. I don’t think having more ‘transports’ would be massively benefitial to the military contractors/sub-contractors that work in Iraq. Besides their quote for completing a particular job in a certain amount of time would include logistics. Incidently the largest portion of spending in the marshall plan wasn’t done on west germany but on Britain.

Plans for war are notorious for not covering all angles, but that’s because it’s an art and a science like no other and you never have the time or knowledge to cover all angles. The generals do try, but as we have seen intelligence is not reliable. In the case of Iraq it’s unforgiveable though – we didn’t win hearts and minds across Afghanistan so how did they get the idea we would in Iraq? I’m not defending the US on this one, rather attacking the media who have done all in their power to make the situation worse.

How many serious journos think this really is an attempt by the US to control Iraqi oil fields permanently? Why did the BBC devote the bulk of it’s article on the handover from Britiash to Iraqi forces the other day to casualties elsewhere in Iraq, despite having run those as seperate stories? The BBC is well respected and widely read, and if they want to report bad news as bad news they should also report good news as good news. Failure to do so is resulting in everyday people being killed.

I can’t see why shaky support among the Spanish for example should give the US pause in their planning though. Those forces were only ever token and at least that was planned for. They were mostly engineers with just a few infantry to protect them, and only posted to the quiet areas.

Chris Stiles – The numbers are insufficient because too many countries aren’t playing their part.

Bert – in times of war the plans you make have to be able to survive changes, the US went into it with it’s eyes wide open and an understanding of just how shaky some of the support it was drawing on was – a majority of the public in all it’s allies were against the action.

In any case, I can’t see the EU providing an additional 250-300K soldiers.

Can’t fault you on the Texan thing, mind.

Kulvinder – I include US domestic opinion in world opinion. The Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany after WW2 took over two years to be agreed upon let alone for reconstruction to start. In Iraq the media and the Iraqis seemed to expect it to start straight away and be booming along in a couple of months. It’s not that easy.

In a war ravaged europe and exhausted world with far worse lines of communication and far fewer resources to hand. Im not really sure what to say if your argument is we should compare the success or lack thereof in iraq with 60 years ago.

So why would Bush’s son feel the need to avenge his daddy?

hes texan?

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.