Word: civilian
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...made sense to send troops in the first place. Even a complete idiot could see that the removal of Saddam Hussein would give rise to civil war and a bloody Shi'ite takeover. We have wasted more than $350 billion, lost another war, caused more than 50,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, reduced the country to anarchy and incurred the hatred of much of the world. And now we're proposing to continue on this insane course...
...During the prime minister's short time in office, the state institutions the Bush administration worked so assiduously to build with Iraqis have broken down almost entirely. The Iraqi Army, a force the U.S. hoped would hold Iraq together as the country's nascent civilian government developed, is years away from the ability to do so. Whether the army is making progress toward that end, or splintering into sectarian factions, is unclear to many U.S. soldiers tasked with training Iraqi forces on most days now. Certain units think nothing of simply ignoring deployment orders issued by the prime minister...
...Meanwhile, some civilian Iraqi government agencies such as the Ministry of Interior have become franchises of the Mahdi Army militia. And Iraq's parliament was essentially dissolved in November, when Sadr's loyalists began a boycott at his behest in protest of Maliki's meeting with President Bush. As the White House crafts its new approach to Iraq, little of the government appears salvageable even in the eyes of leaders like Muttlag who are staking their careers, and sometimes their lives, on the eventual success of a civilian government. With so little material left to work with in Baghdad, many...
...LONG AGO, THE GOAL OF U.S. FORCES IN Iraq sounded straightforward: liberate the country and turn it over to the Iraqi people. Now U.S. strategy is a vast, many-headed monster: disarm or kill the insurgents, hunt down al-Qaeda, rebuild the electrical and energy grids, establish civilian order, work with political parties to speed a stand-alone government, keep an eye out for Iranian influence--and try not to get killed in the process. According to Kagan, the newly enlarged forces would reorder those priorities and make protecting the Iraqi people Job One. How? With what retired Lieut. General...
...brass isn't keen on a surge, they also know a bargaining chip when they see one. While Rumsfeld was in charge, the Joint Chiefs were muffled, too scared to say boo in public if it meant crossing the civilian boss. But in early December, once Rumsfeld had resigned, the Army and Marine Corps chiefs increasingly went public with their long-standing gripes that Iraq has stretched their forces to the breaking point, damaging recruiting and diminishing readiness. Bush moved quickly to quell this startling revolt: within days he hinted that he might ask Congress to enlarge the overall size...