>The news I continually hear paints a very bleak picture of the incompetence that got us where we are today.
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>I was listening to talk radio yesterday and they had on a retired soldier supplied by OperationTruth to rebutt the talking points Bush has been making the last several days. Several of the soldiers key points:
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>1) When he was deployed at a location where Bush was making a speech from most of his buddies didn't even know Bush was coming to make a speech. Once they found out, they could care less. This was in answer to a question about the complaints many people have made about Bush using troops as a backdrop for his speeches.
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>2) There was some document he was supplied with when he was deployed to Iraq describing the mission. IF Tracy is reading this, she could maybe supply some details. But this type of document describes the 4 phases of the mission. With phase 4 being the wind-down. His document had "TBD" on phase 4. He said most soldiers believe that phase 4 is still in a "TBD" status.
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>3) Then the discussion moved over to the Iraqi's coming up to speed to defend themselves. The first part of this was how come generals said 1 or 2 months ago there is 1 Iraqi battalion that is fully qualified to work on their own. But Bush quoted something like 40 or 80 yesterday. The soldier stated that the first reason for this discrepency is that the main document that describes the different levels of training to expect with the Iraqi troops leads to another document that basically says nothing. So its a question of semantics as to what number to use.
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>4) The next statement by the soldier was very serious. He discussed a situation that was mentioned in the Los Angeles Times last week. That Shiites are torturing Sunnis now as payback for Saddams days. The soldier mentioned that an important fact to keep in mind is that even though these Iraqi soldiers are wearing Iraqi army uniforms, their allegence lies not with the Iraqi govt. It lies with their tribe, mullah, etc. He said his buddies who are being deployed now are very afraid since we are starting to heavily arm the Iraqis. The question is how much can they be trusted?
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>All in all, we still have a very ugly situation.
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Perry,

First, thank you for the information.

Second, "ugly" doesn't begin to describe this.