«Irak-Desastre» trae nuevas secuelas :
The top US general in the Middle East has said that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war. Army General John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al-Qaida, with the rise of fascism in Europe in the ’20s and ’30s that set the stage for World War II. «If we don’t have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we’ll go through World War III tomorrow,» General Abizaid said in a speech on Friday at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston. He said that if not stopped, extremists would be allowed to «gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend». He said the world faces three hurdles in stabilising the Middle East: easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism and dealing with Iran. «Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq,» said General Abizaid, who this week warned Congress against seeking a timeline for withdrawing US troops from the country.
Fue solamente una conferencia con el título»La larga guerra » Sin embargo su contenido ha sido explosivo en momentos en que tras los resultados electorales, USA e Inglaterra estan pensando en dejar Irak .
Si no tenemos la capacidad de enfrentarnos a la ideología islamista estamos a las puertas de la tercera guerra mundial ya que la situación es identica a los momentos preliminares de la segunda guerra.
Todo ésto lo decía el comandante supremo de las fuerzas americanas en Cercano Oriente por USA John Abizaid.
Abizaid muestra un escenario horrible.
Si los extremistas no son detenidos tendrán armas de destrucción masiva y el peligro que ello implica es inimaginable.
La conferencia estaba dirigida a defender la presencia de USA en Irak. Segun el general el problema de terrorismo e inestabilidad de Medio Oriente además de Iran tienen su lugar de encuentro en Irak .
Imad Mustapha, embajador sirio en USA, dijo al «New York Times» que se entablan conversaciones entre Siria y EEUU para lograr la estabilización de Irak.Bush lo ha desmentido oficialmente.James Baker se habría encontrado en septiembre en NY, con importantes personas del regimen sirio. Entre ellos el ministro sirio de asuntos exteriores Mualid Muallem.
Por otra parte Blair defiende a su manera la presencia en Irak. Al canal de noticias Al-Dschasira respondió a la pregunta de si la misión en Irak era un desastre con un rotundo SI. Sin embargo le hechó la culpa del fracaso a las fuerzas chiítas y sunitas, segun él, maniobradas para desestabilizar al gobierno por la qente de Al Qaida y por Iran.
Desde USA tampoco hay buenos comentarios sobre la política militar americana en la guerra de Irak
Infowar» de USA:
«We have an entire new discipline of strategic communications in the administration, information operations in the military and global outreach in the rest of the government and yet there isn’t a soul, including Donald Rumsfeld, who thinks that we are winning the information war.»
By now it should be clear that the Rumsfeld-Cheney approach failed to produce either a successful or sustainable war.
But that does not mean that the opposite approach get better results.
So as Bob Gates prepares to take the reigns, and government begins to develop a new strategy for Iraq, we should be honest about what works and what does not.»
Y en otro comentario agrega:
«The ultimate lesson of the Rumsfeld doctrine is that technology and firepower can not substitute for people. And yet the dominant pro-military and muscle-bound Democrat impulse — to imagine that more troops, more people and overwhelming force, can still salvage an Iraqi effort — is also wrong. Throwing resources at Iraq ignores that the country is beyond the tipping point and outside of our ability to influence how it will go (other than to get out and get out of the way).»
«Much more agile and more expeditionary» is how outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described where U.S. military forces are today in his final television interview with Brit Hume on the Fox News Channel.
«This institution,» the Department of Defense, the Secretary said on Friday, «was designed to fight big armies, big navies and big air forces, and that isn’t what we’re doing today…. We simply have to be able to deal with irregular warfare and the asymmetrical challenges that are so advantageous to the enemies.»
Mr. Teflon was only too happy to pin all decisions regarding the number of troops in Iraq on retired Gen. Tommy Franks and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Though it is unseemly that Rumsfeld is unable to take any responsibility to the Iraq quagmire, in a way he is right. The uniformed military has always been split with regard to how many soldiers and Marines were needed in Iraq. Early in the war, there is no question that Rumsfeld and his big brains in the office of the Secretary of Defense rejected calls for heavier forces to defeat the Iraqi army and topple Saddam Hussein, but since «mission accomplished» as commanders on the ground — particularly Army commanders — have called for increases and surges, they have mostly been thwarted by their own.
Proposals for increases have been rejected at the Joint Chiefs level. Gen. John Abizaid, the Central Command theater commander or Gen. George Casey, the Iraq commander, have brought forth proposals for more in the «tank,» the closed decision changer where Pentagon horse trading is done.
Here are the dynamics: Do you really need more? Where are you going to get the resources? How are the forces going to be sustained? What are they going to do that is different? What are you willing to cut? The dynamics of the interrogation and the questioning ultimately is more responsible for combat commanders «withdrawing» their request or seeing the light.
Word «comes down» that the political decision-makers aren’t going to look favorably on an increase request. The Washington military elite — the Chairman, the Vice, the director of the Joint Staff, the head of plans and policy — lets it be known «offline» that the debate is closed, that «people» at higher levels are getting irritated, that there are bigger fish to fry. Field commanders return with their tails between their legs, they redouble their efforts, they change tack. But this is how the system works: No one actually is ever making a firm request for an increase and no one is taking a stand to say «no.» In this way, Rumsfeld can claim that he has never turned down a combatant commander’s request for more troops.
I’m sure we’ll read in the histories of the Iraq War ten years down the road that there were all sorts of proposals and contingencies and nascent requests, but the record will be miraculously thin on how those requests just never seemed to go anywhere.
«There hasn’t been a minute in the last six years when we have not had the number of troops that the combatant commanders have requested,» Rumsfeld said Friday. Given the dynamics of decision-making, Rumsfeld is both lying and telling the truth.
The real question though should be, was there a time in the last six years when it would have made sense to have more.
The Rumsfeld answer: Oh gosh, it makes no sense to ask what could have been, to second guess those who where to uniform, golly me. In fact that’s what he said: «There’s no rule book,» he told Hume. «There’s no guidebook. There’s no program that says when you get up in the morning it’s this.»