General (retired) thinks Iraq a general disaster

By Lee Russ

Sunday, October 02, 2005 at 01:54 PM

Adding to the voices that consider the invasion of Iraq to have been a disaster, Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom said the "invasion of Iraq was the "greatest strategic disaster in United States history," according to a piece in the Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun at http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3072005

The General also said the invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.

The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, he said, and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells.

A July column in a British paper, by Patrick Cockburn (a journalist who has spent considerable time in Iraq during the war), publicly concluded that the was was "unwinnable," which isn't much of an endorsement, either. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article301250.ece

Cockburn wrote "The war in Iraq is now joining the Boer War in 1899 and the Suez crisis in 1956 as ill-considered ventures that have done Britain more harm than good. It has demonstrably strengthened al-Qa'ida by providing it with a large pool of activists and sympathisers across the Muslim world it did not possess before the invasion of 2003. The war, which started out as a demonstration of US strength as the world's only superpower, has turned into a demonstration of weakness. Its 135,000-strong army does not control much of Iraq."

So many people know.  So few of them in the upper reaches of the US government.