Who do you think is responsible for our failure in Iraq?

It starts with the wrong-headed notion that you can win a purely political war. Lack of vision to end state, lack of cultural awareness and inefficient planning significantly contributed as did war profiteering. I was in Kuwait from 2000 to 2003 at the US Embassy. I watched this all come together. In 2000, Condi Rice, a fellow at the Hoover Institute, in The Economist, scolded then President Clinton of getting embroiled in Somalia and in 2003 she was the principal architect of what became the failed efforts in Iraq. When the first attempt: ORHA went down it flames it had provided enough time for State to rally and consider a triumvirate with 3 regional governors. The appointees were so bad it was scrapped and Breamer came in as a modern Caliphate. He ruled by edict. He fired all of the professional soldiers and disbanded the Army. He failed to pull the Iraqi Dinar from circulation and replace it with scrip until new bills could be issued. Failing to do that meant the old Ba'ath party guys kept BILLIONS to hire the guys Breamer fired. Two of Saddam's Lt. Cols became the immediate Deputies to al-Baghdadi and are the principal leaders of Daesh (ISIL/ISIS). Breamer insisted on religious identities being put on the Iraqi National ID card. This got a lot of people killed, either getting their eyeballs drilled out or decapitated (Shi'ial/Sunni). I worked in Baghdad in 2006 as a contractor. I know we hired unqualified, inexperienced contractors, some with with no actual skills in their area who simply never went to work and lied on their time cards while they hung out at the pools in the Green Zone. I knew of two people being identified as being complete frauds - after long service in country. Nobody knew and nobody seemed to care. However, the food was EXCELLENT and we often said the food service should be classified. We ate on china whenever a Congressional delegation came through, which was pretty often. We ate steak routnely and Sunday roast and lobsters were not to be missed. Haliburton overcharged for goods (toilet paper was especially poor - made in Poland, green, globs of glue making it mostly unusable), split mattress sets so one person had the mattress and one the box spring (but charged Uncle Same for full sets. The Iraqi leadership we promoted were all corrupt, but they were Shi'ia, so that was OK. A Supply commander (Brigadier General) had all supplies delivered to his compound -- an outdoor warehouse/bazaar for appliances. He was selling them. The Navy commander was charging his divers for the air they used in diving to clear the harbor. Soldiers sold their rifles for $900 because we could not get linkage to set up a military justice system and give them even non-judicial punishment. We simply gave them more rifles. 400,000 M-4s, many of which now see service with Daesh. We didn't put LOJACK systems into any of the big ticket items we gave them -- police cars (a bunch were stolen on arrival and used to kidnap and later execute members of the Iraqi Olympic team. Militarily the plan was to stand up 18 Brigades in 18 Months. I don't think they could say they've effectively stood up anything. We wanted them to adopt the UCMJ (they were using British Rules of War and were resistant to accepting wholly new doctrine so they simply stalled the process. Companies were playing at developing advanced training methodologies. Nobody ever got trained in best practices. The soldiers and police officers assigned as teachers did a terrific job - one on one with the troops-- it was the Iraqi senior leadership that was incompetent. There is plenty of blame to go around and few people who will stand up and take the hit or for some even admitting they were ever there.

The majority of the reasons are political.

1) The American people are just not willing to fight like we did in WWII. Admittedly that's because of the combined influence of the panty-waste, limp-wristed liberals and the "blame America first" wacko, both darlings of the media. But Bush should have recognized that and planned for sufficient violence to end the war quickly and decisively.

I was in Kuwait in 2003, waiting for the war to start. Bush expected Saddam to back down, which any student of Arabic strongmen would say is highly unlikely. Then March got around, we had 12,000 troops stacked up like cordwood in a base built for 1500, and Bush was advised that we needed to go, or wait to September, to avoid fighting in the summer (which we did anyway.) And don't forget that we intended a two-pronged attack, with the northern force leaving from Turkey.

So there were definite planning problems, largely because Bush wasn't ready for Saddam to persist in defiance.

2) More or less a follow on to number 1, we had no definite plan for what to do when we won. We didn't pacify behind us, and the Iraqis who surrendered didn't have any leadership or guidance.

An example, the mujaheddin took some families prisoner and threatened to kill them if the soldiers didn't get back in their tanks and attack. So 11 tanks came down the road and were slaughtered by the British forces holding Basra.

3) We knew some of the bad guys weren't going to play nice. Mookie is the prime example. We should have arranged for someone to drop a rock on his head. 90% of the problems with the Shi'a in Baghdad were Mookie's responsibility.

4) We allowed the Iraqi government to play while we paid. We should have insisted on them taking more responsibility, or not let them in power in the first place.

5) Both in Iraq and In Afghanistan the family of a suicide bomber receives money, generally about $5000, which will feed a family for about 20 years. One big reason the Iraqi and Afghan armies have no balls is the soldier is often the only moneymaker in the family, and the family will starve if he dies. We should have recognized this and insisted on at least equivalent payments to help them find some guts.

First, I question the decision to remove Saddam from power. Sure he was an evil bastard, but then, so are most leaders in that part of the world. We knew he had WMDs because we sold him the weapons during the Iraq/Iran War. Even though we were unable to verify there existence many years later, it caused conflict early on when they could not be located and that was the excuse the Bush Administration used to invade. All of that is water under the bridge so to speak now. The takeover of many parts of the country by radical muzzies illustrates the mistake of not leaving a sizable force there to ensure something like ISIS did not occur. We should have realized after al Queda tried to seize power while we were there, that another group of radicals would attempt the same. The situation there now is the fault of the current administration in my opinion. The muzzie in charge has demonstrated how he feels about our military and our nation many times and none have been positive. Just my opinion and I could be wrong.

My generation should have taken out Saddam out in 1991.... that was the failure

BHO

I hold the current administation to blame for he current state of affairs in Iraq. I am in no way attempting to be partisan but President Obama and his administration have been in charge for the past seven years and need to quit placing their foregin policy gaffs and failures on the President Bush.

The Arab Spring which ushred in a lot of the turmoil in the Middle East is a direct result of President Obama making his trip and speech at the University of Cairo and making a call for change in the region during his first year in office. Add to this the obvious failure and lack of leadership on the part of the President and the United States to take the lead on numerous security and defense issues. The President had one goal - make a hasty retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan. All our enemies had to do was sit and wait. We have a President who does not acknowledge Islamic Terrorism; underestimated ISIS; coddles the Muslim Brotherhood; exchanges terrorist leaders for an Army deserter; and now refuses to call the Taliban terrorists.

President Bush is responsible for 2001 to 2008 and the failure and successes in that period just as President Obama is responsbile for the failures and small successes during his adminstration.

During the prep for Iraq at Ft. Stewart during the Warfighter exercise in December 2002 & January 2003, we kind of knew what the outcome would be. It was a conventional war turned into an insurgency. The maps we used were of Algeria. The French endeavour there was considered an unwinnable war. It was not pretty. At the end of our exercise, it just ended without much being obtained except to win militarily but not totally. Pretty much just like how Algeria ended up for the French. Operation Iraqi Freedom was there to end the cat & mouse game Sadaam was playing. He played the robber with his finger in his pocket making us believe he had WMDs that he really didn't have. Him & his sons had to go but beyond that, there was no total victory to be had there. It was a barely settled region before the European influence 100 years ago. They have to settle their country now even if it's not pretty.

I am not sure you can figure that out in anything less than a encyclopedia set worth of books. Do we just talk about OIF, or go back to when we helped Saddam into power or when we played both sides of the Iran/Iraq conflict or when we encouraged the Kurds and Iraqis in the south to rebel after the First Gulf War and then left them on their own. I got out right before 9/11 so I didn't go, but it seems to me that it was mostly civilian leadership that failed. The troops did everything there were asked and trained to do and more, but it was like we never had a real objective of what victory was.

I think most of the responsibility for the current situation falls on al-Maliki and the government. They didn't want to lead or be inclusive, they wanted to settle old scores and created a toxic environment for a large portion of their population

I blame the Iraqi government it was deteriorating prior to ISIS so to me they took advantage of the situation.

This is a difficult subject to broach on this forum because, for so many of us, Iraq is not yet far enough removed for those of us who were there to maintain objectivity. And, with the global rise of ISL, it has now boomeranged back into our professional lives as a potential hotspot.

At this point, it's difficult to assign blame, and we should probably refrain from trying to find a correlation between the withdrawal in Iraq and the rise of ISL. From what I have observed, the rise of ISL is directly related to what happened, and is still happening, in Syria.

As long as there is a United States of America, there will always be an ISL, or an Al Qaeda, or a Taliban, or an Al who gives a shit. The point is, they are waging a war of ideology whose message is oppression and subjugation. They will wage that war on all free people until those free people appropriately and proportionately discourage them from doing so.

So, who is to blame for our failures in Iraq? I do not know. Bremer made some decisions that adversely impacted our mission in Iraq. The Coalition Provisional Authority, staffed with twenty something year old college graduates who had no experience in the area in which they were assigned, made decisions that adversely impacted our mission in Iraq. Executive decisions on enhanced interrogation techniques adversely impacted our mission in Iraq. Military leaders that did not understand counterinsurgency made decisions that adversely impacted our mission in Iraq. Congressional representatives who never engaged in debate on the justification that we used to invade Iraq.

If we have failed, then our failure is as a nation. We bear a collective guilt for what we did because we allowed people in positions of public trust to pursue personal agendas rather than pursue policies that were in accordance with our democratic principles.