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Edinburgh, Saturday, November 29, 2003
David Irving
comments: YES, WAFER THIN IS THE distance between
The War that Could not be Lost and The War
that Cannot be Won.
If we ignore the muddled
metaphors (an economy "purring at a
satisfying rate") and slipshod
cliché-ridden prose ("events ...
going badly wrong", a phrase he repeats
twice in two lines) and the sloppy and
suspicion-arousing reliance on anonymous
and perhaps non-existent sources ("an
intelligence analyst", "an Intelligence
source," "I was told" -- at least US
journalists have the decency to add the
placebo, "... who asked not to be
identified") we can regard Andrew
Neil as one of the best UK
journalists; former editor of The
Sunday Times, he hosts a regular
morning BBC television programme in London
which is often a joy to watch.
Here he launches the
spectacular claim that the actual number
of Iraqi Resistance ("terror") attacks on
US ("coalition") troops is not 22 or
thirty per day, or whatever figure is
currently being spouted in official news
conferences by the US military, but nearer
to 130 per day.
I wonder what Washington
will have to say to that? |
Inside story of
how Washington is losing its bottle Andrew Neil IN NEW York the mood is buoyant
as the American economy continues to purr at a
satisfying rate, but 250 miles to the south in
Washington DC there is increasing private gloom
among those in the know that events in Afghanistan
and Iraq are going badly wrong -- and growing
despair about what to do about it. President Bush's bold Thanksgiving trip to
Baghdad gave US troops a much-needed fillip and he
said all the right things. But behind the scenes
the war on terror is going badly wrong in its two
main theatres. "In both places it is worse than you
think," I was warned before arriving in the US
capital for a series of off-the-record briefings.
The warning was accurate. Take Afghanistan first. You don't read or see
much about it these days. The reality is grim. The
Taliban is resurgent; al-Qaeda is there too, but
not as relevant as it was. Attacks on aid workers
are soaring; many are refusing to leave the urban
areas. The warlords are back in control of the
countryside, where opium production is already
above pre-invasion levels. "Afghanistan is a
narco-economy once more," said one intelligence
analyst. The Taliban regularly mounts attacks in the
rural areas and is expected to hit urban centres
with greater force. "If they knew how weak we
were," confided one intelligence source, "they
would have done it already." Coalition forces are
confined to Vietnam-style strategic hamlets from
which they emerge for operations only in great
force, before returning to their enclaves. Hamid
Karzai's grip on power is tenuous. 'There are
now an average of 130 attacks
a day on coalition forces' Last week the Los Angeles Times reported
on its front page that loads of recruits are
quitting the fledgling Afghan army because of
pitiful pay. The US won't provide figures, but an
Afghan officer said: "We have roughly 6,000 trained
soldiers, out of whom no less than 2,000 have
left." The US says it plans to have 70,000 soldiers
in the force; nobody has any idea from whence they
will come. Yet despite the deteriorating situation in
Afghanistan, a huge amount of US military assets
have been shifted to Iraq. The Germans now make up
the biggest part of the coalition forces along with
various other European contingents. Washington
fears they will not stay for long when casualties
start to mount. "The prognosis for Afghanistan is
miserable," was how one US intelligence source
concluded his briefing. 
IT IS not much better for Iraq. There are now an
average of 130 attacks a day on coalition (mainly
American) forces; almost 100 coalition troops have
been killed in November
[2003], the
grimmest month so far. "We only have a third of the
forces we need to fight the insurgents," one former
US diplomat told me. The intelligence is threadbare
too: US commanders have no real idea who they are
up against, except that they are well-organised
remnants of Saddam's Ba'athist regime,
supplemented with some al-Qaeda-type
Islamo-fascists. "We still don't really know who is
behind the attacks," I was told. "So we just go
around kicking doors in - which is exactly what the
enemy wants us to do."
The US forces might lack purpose or direction
but there are plenty of both to the insurgents'
attacks. The UN was specifically targeted; it is
now effectively gone from Iraq. Next were the
various non-government organisations trying to
assist in building a better Iraq; they, including
the Red Cross, have also headed for the exit. Then
it was the turn of what few allies America has in
Iraq, specifically the Italians. Those most at risk
now are Iraqis co-operating with the US. Last week
a US commander reported a slackening of attacks on
his own troops because the insurgents were
concentrating on assassinating those they see as
quislings.  Now
it is the Americans themselves who seem to be in a
rush for the exit. On September 22
[2003]
Condoleezza Rice, the president's national
security adviser, attacked France for suggesting a
speedier transfer of power to Iraqis. Yet since
President Bush summoned Paul Bremer,
his Iraqi governor general, to the White House,
that is exactly what is happening. Bush wants a
substantial withdrawal of US forces before next
November's elections. Former Pentagon favourite,
Ahmad Chalabi, is dismayed: "The whole thing
[the speedier transfer of power] was set up
so President Bush could come to the airport in
October [2004] for a ceremony to
congratulate the new Iraqi government."
The consequences on the ground are apparent.
Until recently, US forces took 12 weeks to train
Iraqis for the new police force; that has been
speeded up to one week. No proper checks on
individuals are being done, so trainees have been
infiltrated with insurgent spies. US intelligence
officers were horrified to discover recently that
the insurgents even had details of Bremer's
schedule. Bush is fond of saying that America did not
spend so much in men and materiel to liberate 25
million Iraqis only to succumb to a ragbag of
insurgents. Yet it looks as if that is exactly what
is happening. The insurgents have noted that a few
very big bombs have already forced Washington to
speed up its exit strategy; that can only result in
even bigger bombs. No wonder the neo-conservatives in the Bush
administration are in retreat: their policy of
replacing Middle East tyrants with democracy and
functioning economies is in grave danger of falling
at the first hurdle, largely from lack if American
willpower. The consequences of defeat and retreat,
of course, are so grave that I cannot believe any
US president can contemplate it for long; but what
exactly Bush plans to do about it is a mystery
which nobody I met in Washington was able to
resolve. © The
Scotsman 
... on this
website
We Are Paying The
Price For An Infantile Attempt To Reshape The
Middle East-
"They're
getting better," Chuck said approvingly. "That
one hit the runway"
-
The hunt
for weapons of mass destruction yields --
nothing
-
Official Is
Prepared To Address Issue Of Iraqi
Deception
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