Ambassador to Iraq '91 says US position in Iraq now -"we're f#cked"

Quotes

Josh Marshall: So, setting aside why we're in Iraq, how we got there, whether we should have gone in in the first place, where are we now? Where do you see our position right now?

Joseph Wilson: Well, I think we're fucked.

-- Joseph Wilson, acting Ambassador to Iraq 1991, speaking frankly




http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0303.html#091803639pm



more transcript excerpts -

TPM sat down with Wilson this Tuesday ...

TPM: It is September 16th and it seems in the last couple months in Iraq we've basically gone through--quickly gone through--three phases, as near as I can tell. We had a period where there were fairly constant guerilla attacks, and then things escalated with a series of major bombings, and then the administration--first in sort of fits and starts and then in two or three major moves--did this reconfiguring of their policy. The president came forward with his budget request and the new overture towards the United Nations, and we're still trying to negotiate some sort of new arrangement with the international community. So, setting aside why we're in Iraq, how we go there, whether we should have gone in in the first place, where are we now? Where do you see our position right now?

WILSON: Well, I think we're fucked. I think the--we should have learned from the bombing of the United Nations building that there was all sorts of anti--not just American but anti-international presence--pressure building within Iraq. And I think we should have reacted rather quickly to that by attempting to truly embrace the United Nations in the sense of internationalization. A crime against the United Nations should have been perceived as a crime against us all, and we should have been much more aggressive in ensuring that we did everything we could to help the United Nations through that period. And that would have meant really trying to draw them into something that, as I said the other day, would help us change "latitudes and attitudes" in Iraq (to quote Jimmy Buffett). And by that I mean what you need to do is, you need to aggressively persuade Iraqis that what we--the rest of the world, not the United States, the rest of the world--are doing is attempting to assist it through this difficult period and assist it in reconstructing itself in a new, modern, post-Saddam Iraq.

We didn't do that in a positive way. We made all the right noises about de Mello's death and the deaths of the United Nations people, and then we made some noises about how this is an opportunity for the international community to realize its interests are at stake as well. I think we should have been much more aggressive in embracing this crime against all of us, because at the end of the day the United Nations bureaucracy is nothing more or nothing less than the will of its membership--and we are the predominant member of the United Nations. We should not have shied away from that. I think that the bombing of the ayatollah in Najaf was the real clarion call to us and the rest of the world as to how dire a situation we find ourselves in. I say that because it was very clearly an attempt to draw the Shi'a off the sidelines. Now, the Shi'a populate the south between Baghdad and Kuwait--in other words, the route that we are going to have to take one of these days when we leave Iraq.

The Shi'a have been content with what I consider to be a tactical ceasefire, tactical truce with the United States. They've been content with that so long as they're able to consolidate their control, political control over the villages in the south and the towns in the south, and so long as the Americans were killing Sunni on their behalf. That means that if you were Sunni, that they eventually would have to kill--if in fact there's a war between the Shi'a and the Sunni. Now the bombing of Najaf made very clear that the Sunni were not going to go along willingly, either by being killed by Americans or by not resisting what they think is going to be a Shi'a push for power.

more............

This is a conversation from early September--seems to be
an attempt to circumvent the profanity rule here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=463744

2. The subject line of a discussion thread and the entire text of the message which starts the thread may not include profanity, excessive capitalization, or excessive punctuation. Inflammatory rhetoric should also be avoided.