By: Logan Murphy @ 10:41 AM – PDT
Michael Ware joined Anderson Cooper on Thursday night’s “AC 360″ to discuss the surge in Iraq. Ware had just returned to the United States after being embedded with US forces in Iraq and was clearly disturbed by what he was hearing from General Patraeus and politicians, pointing out the vast differences between the “almost delusional nature of the debate that’s underway” in our country and the realities he witnessed on the ground.
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Cooper: Where does the so called surge – others would say just escalation, where does it stand? How’s it going? Too soon to tell?”
Ware: “Oh, way too soon to tell. But what I can tell you right now that, in terms of Baghdad, if you want to look at it through a microscope without looking at the rest of the country the surge will have an impact. But at the end of the day if America wants to win in Iraq it would need to surge the whole country. But it can’t. So what it’s done in Baghdad, you’re seeing changes in the violence. You hear these politicians saying sectarian murders are down, yes that’s true. But at what cost? American deaths are up.”
Filed under: politics
Yea, from what I’ve read, the conventional wisdom was that a few hundred thousand troops would be needed for Iraq to have a chance. No one in the media really asks why this administration (Rummy in particular) felt confident in sending 140k. I think it’s a good question. Whether you agree that the invasion was a good idea or not (I don’t), one has to ask the “what the hell were they thinking?’ question when it comes to prosecuting the war.
Oh, here’s the link War game foresaw failure of US in Iraq