Guys, this is not a new song. There was a massive disconnect with Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer with the de-Baathifaction orders that were done. Before the administration decided they would invade this was not thought through step by step. This had long standing consequesnces that we are dealing with today. It boggles my mind at how much tax payer money has been spent on the basis of some of the stupidest moves ever made in American foriegn policy. We could have gone a long, long way to making great headway if all the Iraqi professionals were courted and utilized immediately on the American side. This one thing showed the complete stupidity of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Cheney.
Some would argue about Vietnam but the dumbest moves were really made by SV President Diem himself from 1956-1963 in pissing off the indiginous people there. By the time we decided to step back in the damage was already done.
WE, the US Government, were the ones that have really pissed off the indiginous people of Iraq for the last three years. All doctors, lawyers, engineers, and college profs had to be Baathists or you were KILLED by Saddam. They wanted Saddam gone too. Our administration completely missed this and did not use any of these people. What idiots to think this, did Rumsfeld think he was 'colonizing' Iraq? I guess so huh.
There have been trained Iraqi engineers that were NEVER used to help rebuild because of this Victorian age perception of demonizing the 'enemy' and those who are in 'the other country,' basically all Baathists in this scenerio.
The flawless logic of our adminstration...
Saddam was a Baathist
Baathists are evil
therefore...
All Baathists are evil and worship Saddam
This would be like Wernher von Braun never being used to help build the NASA program to what it is today. He was a genius but unfortunatley had to work for the Nazis.
So why did the stupid Neos Cons not follow this following script with utilizing Iraqi professionals, we had a much more intelligent set of people running our government back then appearantly. Look at how fast Von Braun and his engineers were put to work WOW, many of the things we know today as engineering breakthroughs would have never happened if it were not for us thinking about TALENT instead of Nation Socialism, maybe peace in the ME could be acheived much faster if we can think in the following terms:
Quote:
Wernher von Braun's surrender to the Americans
The Soviet Army was about 160 km from Peenemünde in the spring of 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Afraid of Soviet cruelty to prisoners of war, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. Forging a set of orders on SS stationery, von Braun authorized a convoy to move 5,000 personnel south through war-torn Germany toward the American lines. The SS had meanwhile been ordered to kill the German engineers and destroy their records. The engineers, however, had hidden these in a mineshaft and continued to evade their own troops. Upon finding an American private, von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, greeted him with the words "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender."[5] The American high command realized the importance of the engineers and immediately sent soldiers to Peenemünde and Nordhausen to capture the remaining V-2s and their parts before destroying both sites with explosives. Over 300 train-car loads of spare V-2 parts ultimately found their way to America. Many members of von Braun's production team, however, were captured by the Russians. The V-2 rocket plans that had been hidden near Bad Sachsa in Germany were later recovered by the US 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment.
American career
U.S. Army career
On June 20, 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America. Since the paperwork of those Germans selected for transfer to the United States was indicated by paperclips, von Braun and his colleagues became part of the mission known as Operation Paperclip, an operation that resulted in the employment of many German scientists who were formerly considered war criminals or security threats (like von Braun) by the U.S. Army [8]
Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, collaborated on a series of three educational films.The first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Base, just south of Wilmington, Delaware, on September 20, 1945. They were then flown to Boston and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents. These would enable the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.
Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation just north of El Paso. While there, they trained military, industrial and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. They helped to refurbish, assemble and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. They also continued to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications. Since they were not permitted to leave Fort Bliss without military escort, von Braun and his colleagues began to refer to themselves only half-jokingly as "PoPs", "Prisoners of Peace".
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Bush turns to one-time dissenters on Iraq
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