Richard Tafoya
Apr 1st, 2007, 11:35 AM
Defense News:
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2660463&C=america
The Iraq war has left the U.S. military “in a position of strategic peril,” retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has warned in the wake of a recent trip to Iraq.
“This whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle,” McCaffrey writes in a March 26 memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs.
...
He cited problems with the Army’s equipment readiness and availability, as well as the quality of the recruits coming in, many of whom continue to be the best young kids in America, [but] some of whom are now without question drug addicts, non-high school graduates, [with] felony arrest records, etc.
...
McCaffrey paints a similarly gloomy picture of the situation in Iraq, which he says “is ripped by a low-grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3,000 citizens murdered per month.”
“The population is in despair,” he writes. “Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.”
...
Three million Iraqis, including many of the country’s educated elite, have fled the country, McCaffrey notes.
In the land they left behind, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “has little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged,” writes McCaffrey. “It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2660463&C=america
The Iraq war has left the U.S. military “in a position of strategic peril,” retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has warned in the wake of a recent trip to Iraq.
“This whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle,” McCaffrey writes in a March 26 memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs.
...
He cited problems with the Army’s equipment readiness and availability, as well as the quality of the recruits coming in, many of whom continue to be the best young kids in America, [but] some of whom are now without question drug addicts, non-high school graduates, [with] felony arrest records, etc.
...
McCaffrey paints a similarly gloomy picture of the situation in Iraq, which he says “is ripped by a low-grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3,000 citizens murdered per month.”
“The population is in despair,” he writes. “Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.”
...
Three million Iraqis, including many of the country’s educated elite, have fled the country, McCaffrey notes.
In the land they left behind, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “has little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged,” writes McCaffrey. “It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds.