Monday, July 06, 2009

Surge shoulda happened in 2003

It is said that hindsight is 20/20, and although I appreciate Mr. Powell's acknowledgement of the mistakes made in Iraq, it still hurts to think that the deaths of many Iraqis could have been prevented. Imagine what the outcome of invasion would have been if the US had sent as many troops as were sent in 1991.

Powell says Iraq surge should have come earlier

WASHINGTON (AP) — Colin Powell says the U.S. took too long to strengthen its forces in Iraq after Baghdad fell early in the war.

Powell, the nation's top military officer under President George H.W. Bush and secretary of state for President George W. Bush, said the decision to use a lighter force to defeat the Iraqi army was correct. But he said in a television interview broadcast Sunday that the younger Bush's administration should have realized the initial success in 2003 was only the start of a longer fight.

"Unfortunately, the war wasn't over" after Baghdad fell and Saddam Hussein was ousted, Powell said. "The war was just beginning. And then it took us, in my judgment, too long to recognize that we needed to put more force in.

"I think we would have been in a much different place if we had surged in the fall of 2003, rather than many years later," he said on "State of the Union," on CNN.

continued

No comments :