Lean Left

If things continue this way, historians may one day look back at the invasion of Iraq and say “This marks the beginning of the end of the American Century”

The invasion of Iraq has resulted in Iraq’s formerly well watched and guarded chemical and bio-weapons programs being looted:

U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he’s reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.

He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. “However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair.”

The conflict in Iraq is, like Afghanistan in the 1980s, is producing and training a new generation of Western hating terrorists that are sure to fan out to the rest of the world in the coming months and years:

Two former senior Bush administration counter-terrorism officials say the danger posed to the U.S. homeland by graduates of the Islamic insurgency in Iraq is so severe that the measures needed to counter it will affect Americans’ quality of life.
Black, who until earlier this year was the U.S. State Department’s counter-terrorism coordinator, declined to elaborate.

He said Iraq had become “a university on how to conduct highly effective assassinations and bombings.” He said the skills learned by terrorists there meant that “we are likely to see increasingly innovative” means of attack.

“The survivors of the Iraq jihad will have gained tremendous operational capabilities” in traditional areas of terrorist training like the construction of large vehicle bombs, Roger Cressey, who was the White House deputy counter-terrorism coordinator during President Bush’s first term, told United Press International.

He said the creation of a new cadre of hardened Islamic terrorists was “one of the biggest unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.”

And the war in Iraq — and Bush’s refusal to prepare America for the cost — is hollowing out our Army:

But current operational demands make retention increasingly uncertain. Many military experts predict a manpower meltdown at some point in 2006.

Now comes a new Army directive that attempts to alleviate the personnel crunch by retaining soldiers who are earmarked for early discharge during their first term of enlistment because of alcohol or drug abuse, unsatisfactory performance, or being overweight, among other reasons. By retaining these soldiers, the Army lowers the quality of its force and places a heavy burden on commanders who have to take the poor performers into harm’s way. This is a quick fix that may create more problems than it solves.
(snip)
This new retention directive represents a regression by the Army, from the vaunted all-volunteer force of today back in the direction of the all-volunteer force of the 1970s, when drug use, race riots, and AWOL incidents were common among all services. The Marine Corps Historical Branch traces its own severe spiral to “the end of the draft and the pressure of keeping up the size of the Marine Corps. In the process, a number of society’s misfits had been recruited.” By 1975, the corps had so decayed that newly appointed Commandant Lewis Wilson sought permission from Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to implement a radical personnel proposal: Push the authority to discharge unworthy Marines down to the battalion level. Under the “expeditious discharge program,” commanders quickly cut 6,000 undesirables, sending a message that reverberated throughout the military, paving the way for the subsequent military performance surge credited to President Reagan.

Now the Army intends to reverse the policy, implying that battalion commanders are not able to weigh the needs of the total force against those of their units. By the time a soldier reaches the discharge point, the officers above him have already invested a great deal of rehabilitative effort. Forcing units to keep these troops—and indeed, to take them to war—puts a very heavy rock in the rucksack of any field commander who must now balance managing these subpar performers with his mission and the needs of his unit.

Add to that the destruction of our soft power to do the unpopularity of this war and the damage done to our economic power by Bush’s deficits — caused, in part, by his refusal to raise sufficient taxes to pay for the war — and it appears more and more like Iraq is the largest strategic blunder since the German invasion of the Soviet Union.