Concentration camps have existed for centuries. They are standard military protocol for containing individuals who cannot be allowed to roam freely. If they were created, next to no one would care.

When was the last time you heard someone complain about the concentration camps that existed in the Second Boer War? It is only when concentration camps are intentionally made death camps do people complain about them and even then, that occurs long after the fact. If the US both did institute concentration camps in Iraq and made them death camps, no one would have said anything about them until long after the US had withdrawn its troops from Iraq.

Unless the Iraqi people are being held in concentration camps until the Iraqi oil reserves are drained, the United States is not and cannot be in Iraq for oil.

If all of the Iraqis were being put into camps, any that are outside of the camps would be quite easy to find, especially if they fired a weapon and upon finding them, the troops would kill them. Within thirty days, all of Iraq's population could be contained within a small area with only what the US gives them and there would be no insurgents to attack US troops. If the US truly is in Iraq for oil, US troops would not be tip-toeing around Iraq while the Iraqis run free.

 

Holy cow, let's put this guy in charge! All wrapped up in thirty days... then he can pose in front of one of his concentration camps with a Mission Accomplished banner hanging off the barbed wire.

When Cheney says "We'll be greeted as liberators," or "We're turning the corner" it tells me that we have failed at exactly those two things. This administration has a Plan A for the war, and Plan B is to make Plan A work. Do we even know what victory is any more? What is the definition of victory? Crush the military opposition- done. Change the regime- done. So what else? Train the Iraqi army? Excuse me but boot camp takes six weeks, not years and years.

We are building a $600 million embassy in Iraq. It will be the size of the Vatican, and will have blast resistant walls and volleyball courts. That should tell you right there that we plan to stay for a long time and we plan for it to continue to be dangerous for a long time.

If anyone thinks we went to war to liberate the people, topple a bad evil dictator, or to protect us in some way:
1. Were there peoples of the world more oppressed than in Iraq? I say throw a dart at the African continent and you'll find more starvation, disease, and violence than in Iraq.

2. Were there dictators more ruthless or unstable than Saddam? I'm not incredibly familiar with world leaders but I believe at the very least Kim Jong Il is off his rocker.

3. Were there nations that posed more of a direct threat to the U.S.A. than Iraq? Certainly. North Korea and Iran come to mind.

 

Sure it does. But have you read the kind of problems they are having? The Insurgents are killing and blowing up the police and Army troops and disrupting the training in various and successful ways.

I survived Marine Corps boot camp, and no one was there trying to blow me up or kill me when I graduated. No one tried to kidnap and behead me. Dealing with those things might have made boot camp a little bit longer. No one paid me to become an informant or threatened to kill my family if I did not help them attack the Marine Corps.

It's not easy, it's not fun, it's not cheap, but you don't CUT AND RUN. Ever. Stay the course, get the job done.

And no place else in the world with a "bad dictator with oppressed people" has as much strategic importance to the USA as the Middle East does.

 

Good point.

What is "the job?" A safe and secure Iraq? Wouldn't that be accomplished by us leaving?

...because of the oil. I fully understand that most of the world's supply is controlled by countries which are lukewarm to us or worse. Strategically it is vitally important to make sure we have access to it- but there are other ways.

Every day that we have troops over there we are cultivating future enemy combatants. If you had enemy soldiers driving up and down your street, kicking in doors and taking away fathers and husbands, you would learn to resent and hate them. For the security of Americans home and abroad I would suggest we put down the stick and back away from the hornet's nest.

 

Well, the media and all the experts I have read quotes from say that if we leave before Iraq is secure (meaning the Iraqi Army and police are in place and armed and supported enough to keep the Insurgents and civil warriors at bay) then the country will decay into Civil War between the Shiites and the Sunnis and possibly the Kurds.

We need to try to prevent that from happening, and just leaving and saying, "OK , you boys just settle your differences. Last man standing, just give GW a call." will not be getting the job done.

We could end up with another nuclear-bomb-seeking fool ( like Saddam was and like the wacko in Iran is) being in charge of Iraq. Don't you see the point of not allowing that to happen?

 

That is true; the insurgents are killing and blowing up the Iraqi police and army, but the problems that are being encountered in Iraq are not in training Iraqi troops, but in having an underequipped, underfed, unpaid Iraqi army.

The entire reason the Iraqi army's casualties have been so high and possibly part of the reason for US casualties is that the US military until recently has been unwilling to supply the Iraqi troops with any sort of weapons or supplies. After the 2006 elections in the US, the US military has sold humvees to the Iraqis, but not much else.

That is why we need to have so many troops in Iraq and that is why things are occurring so slowly. That is also why the insurgents have been able to kill so many people (i.e. Iraqi civilians, Iraqi police, Iraqi troops and coalition forces, in order of most to least casualties) in Iraq as they have, as the Iraqi troops in their present condition are simply unable to saturate their own country and that is why the US military has tried to saturate Iraq with US troops.

There is actually a reason for this. In the past, when US arms were supplied to middle eastern countries, they were used against the US a decade or two later. My personal opinion is that the US should supply the Iraqis with equipment used in the beginning of the Vietnam war, which is up to par with the equipment of most modern armies, but not good enough that it would inflict as many casualties on US troops as modern military equipment would inflict if it is used against the United States, with the exception of things like humvees, which would pose a little more risk to US troops than their Vietnam era equivalents if enemy combatants used them. However, my personal opinion is not what the US military is executing in Iraq and it instead opted to have the Iraqi army use what was left of Hussein's military equipment and what other coalition members donate.

Every defense analyst in the country says that if we leave Iraq before we are done (i.e. now), problems will escalate there such that we will forced to return within a few years and the problems (e.g. casualties) will be substantially greater (i.e. the difference will not be in percentages but in order(s) of magnitude).

 

No, I don't. We are not World Police. How about another approach... let nations have weapons up to their armpits. You've got nothing to worry about if they're your friends. Trying to keep other countries from having power is a pretty paranoid worldview.

 

I seriously doubt that. I don't have time to search now but I bet I can find a great deal of defense analysts that say that Iraq is already like the wild west. People are already dying at a tremendous rate and if we leave at least we stop dying.

 

Many of these countries will NEVER be our friends. This is a complicated matter. Whether or not we should have stuck our nose in this business is one thing. But leaving now should not be an option. I agree that we must set a time-table and clear directives to the Iraqi government to self-secure (and soon!), so that we CAN get the heck out ASAP, but leaving now will send the country into chaos.
The insurgent approach is to try and make it SO unbearable for us to be there that we will lose our will, and then we'll leave. That's exactly what they want, becasue they KNOW that right now (if the US were gone), that they could topple the fledgling Iraqi gov't - probably pretty quickly. Civil War and genocide are likely. Not to mention Iran's glee (if we left now). Don't think for a second that they wouldn't jump into the fight for control of Iraq. Then, most likely, wholesale terrorist activities would not only be tolerated, but welcomed - and funded. This is a sticky wicket. Painful as it is, now is not the time to cut bait.

 

Steve (gumby) thanks for that very succinct summary. I agree wholeheartedly.

There WILL be a correct time to leave, and that will be based on what is happening politically and socially in Iraq.

NOT based on what is happening politically and socially in the USA.