The prime minister of Poland, the U.S.’s staunch ally in Iraq, has publicly said post-war nation-building efforts in Iraq have “failed totally,” reports The Scotsman and countless other media outlets today.
Marek Belka said the US and its allies made a mistake by basing its post-war plan for Iraq on the same model used for Germany after World War II, notes Amy Goodman on Democracy Now today. “Belka said ‘It failed totally. Many mistakes, major mistakes, have been committed’.”
Terrible news: CNN TV just reported that the 14 Marines killed today by an IED device are from the same Ohio unit that lost 7 Marines the day before. (CNN via Raw Story.)
PHOTO CAPTION: “Poland’s Prime Minister Marek Belka (C) is escorted by security after meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani during a courtesy call at the Presidential Office in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone July 26, 2005.” (Yahoo News/Reuters)
It’s stuff like this that makes me think the Bushies really are looking for a way out of Iraq.
Who are we down to now, in our Coalition of the Billing? Have the Marianas Islands pulled out yet?
Spain’s gone. Poland’s gone. Italy is on its way out. Britain hasn’t said so yet, but they’re going too.
I know the Bushies think they make reality, but by this point even they have to realize there are limits to what they can do. And real costs when they fail to achieve their objectives…
One of the articles I read this morning while prepping this said that Poland plans to pull its troops in 2006 (?).
Question…I think I read somewhere in the past day or so that these Marines were in the reserves. Is that correct?
Marek Belka said the US and its allies made a mistake by basing its post-war plan for Iraq on the same model used for Germany after World War II
Except, the US’s post-war plan wasn’t based on Germany after WWII, and this sounds especially ridiculous to me who argued against the war just because of that.
If this were like Germany, there would have been one million occupation troops not trained to be trigger-happy, there would have been a Marshall Help rather than propping up Halliburton’s and Bechtel’s pockets for doing not much of worth; Bremer’s focus would have been on getting everything running again rather than on pushing Iraqi state companies to the sidelines and forcing the installation of US-made equipment everywhere (even if replacing French, German and Russian parts would have been much cheaper and let locals use their expertise); elections would have been organised in a continuous way, rather than as a propaganda effort after much fiddling around with possibly friendly forces in Iraq in various positions, and so on.