August 2007

Bush's Legacy?

What in the world will it be? I mean, Nixon and Carter managed to salvage their names with foreign policy and building houses. They were perceived by the public as, overall, having been bad presidents but with redeeming values.

So what about Bush, Jr.?

Let's face it, he wasn't an intelligent president. Like Reagan, there is widespread suspicion he was a prop. Unlike Reagan, he got America involved in some horrifically expensive wars: Reagan just got America involved in some horrifically expensive military buildups and embarrassing deals with drug dealers and terrorists.

I have a feeling Bush, Jr. will have a legacy as perhaps the ex-president most targeted by terrorist groups. But I don't see him doing anything useful with the rest of his life. He hasn't been useful up until now, so why change so late in the game?

I Know Where the Missing Iraqi Weapons Are

190,000 missing weapons in Iraq, go the headlines, not to mention 135,000 missing body armor pieces and 115,000 missing helmets. And I know where they are.

No, I can't go get them, but that's just the way it goes. Anyway, the weapons are in the hands of people who should not have gotten them in the first place: insurgents, terrorists, and criminals. OK, so you're saying, "no duh!" Fair enough. But how they got there is the real story. They could have gotten there from two different flows.

One flow would be from infiltrators in the Iraqi forces. An insurgent, terrorist, or criminal shows up to work one day and grabs a stack of guns when nobody's looking. That's the easiest way to do it. If anyone asks questions, quit and go back to your insurgent, terrorist, or criminal job and let someone else infiltrate.

The second flow would be corruption among those who handle the weapons. They need something the insurgents, terrorists, or criminals got, probably drugs or prostitution, but most likely drugs. This sort of thing happened all the time in Vietnam and Afghanistan and it's not limited to the US forces.

Of course, these would be the unaccounted losses explained. I'd want to take a closer look at the losses that are properly accounted for. In World War 2, Ukrainian resistance fighters would join the Nazi SS division Galizien and then go into battle against the Russians. They'd report massive casualties. In reality, they were faking their death numbers to cover for guys who left that division after getting training and equipment from the Germans. Those "deaths" would free up more slots in the division for Ukrainian resistance fighters and it made that unit look like it had lots of heavy fighting. It did, but nowhere as fierce as reported. Similar things can happen in Iraq.

Then there's the grunt on the field. He wants something the insurgents, terrorists, or criminals have and is willing to trade his gun for that thing. He finds a way to have his gun properly "broken down" so he can get a replacement and the "defective" weapon never gets back for repairs. Maybe it's unaccounted or maybe the accounting is just crapulent at times in the chaos of the front line clerk's offices. But then, the guns wind up in the hands of the people he's fighting.

A veteran of the Afghan War, the Russian one, wrote that when the enemy is shooting at you with your own weapons, your side has lost. We can now confirm that the Iraqis are shooting at us with our own weapons.