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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Jay the Obscure: [QB] [QUOTE] [URL=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001204.html]Situation Called Dire in West Iraq[/URL] Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 11, 2006; Page A01 The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents. The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq. One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost." The "very pessimistic" statement, as one Marine officer called it, was dated Aug. 16 and sent to Washington shortly after that, and has been discussed across the Pentagon and elsewhere in national security circles. "I don't know if it is a shock wave, but it's made people uncomfortable," said a Defense Department official who has read the report. Like others interviewed about the report, he spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name because of the document's sensitivity. Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar. Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago, said people who have read it. These people said he reported that not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence. Those conclusions are striking because, even after four years of fighting an unexpectedly difficult war in Iraq, the U.S. military has tended to maintain an optimistic view: that its mission is difficult, but that progress is being made. Although CIA station chiefs in Baghdad have filed negative classified reports over the past several years, military intelligence officials have consistently been more positive, both in public statements and in internal reports. ----[/QUOTE]Just so you can see the size of Anbar Province, here is the graphic the [i]Post[/i] included with the story. [IMG]http://flareupload.pleh.net/uploads/19/Anbar.jpg[/IMG] You might be asking yourself how, the American military with all the might it possess is not doing so well in the post-initial conflict stage of the invasion of Iraq. We might find the answer in this story I found posted a [URL=http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/09/failing-to-plan-is-planning-to-fail/]Crooks and Liars[/URL]: [QUOTE] [URL=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801797.html]Rumsfeld Forbade Planning For Postwar Iraq, General Says[/URL] Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said. Brig. Gen. Mark E. Scheid told the Newport News Daily Press in an interview published yesterday that Rumsfeld had said "he would fire the next person" who talked about the need for a postwar plan. Scheid was a colonel with the U.S. Central Command, the unit that oversees military operations in the Middle East, in late 2001 when Rumsfeld "told us to get ready for Iraq." "The secretary of defense continued to push on us . . . that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay." Planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4" -- plans that covered post-invasion operations such as security, stability and reconstruction, said Scheid, who is retiring in about three weeks, but "I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that."[/QUOTE] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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