You have to excuse me my friends for writing about Iraq, for two days in a row, but it just creeps me out. What I mean by this is that there seems to be a bunch of amateurs in charge of the troops. I say amateurs because I can't believe that someone would be so uncaring as not to provide the proper security. Yesterday I talked about how a mortar round should not be allowed to be fired near the base, but now we hear that it wasn't a mortar but a suicide bomber that set the blast off.

Building a bridge in Iraq
Photo Source: US Army

Suicide bomber? That is even much worse for security than a mortar round. How could a bomber get into the base in the first place? It would be very naive of us to believe that every Iraqis working in the base is on our side. The question should really be why are Iraqis working on the base? This seems easy to answer, WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TROOPS TO DO NON COMBAT CHORES. In my day, soldiers would be scheduled to do KP (Kitchen Patrol) just like any other duty. But of course we had enough troops in those days to do this. But this just show us that you can not secure a base with Iraqis on it. I am not saying that they are all against us, indeed most could even be on our side, but it only takes one to blow up a bomb.

I can think of several ways to get on a US base undetected but I don't want to mention them and give anyone any ideas. Security is no joking matter. There are people that make security their life's work. What would they do in a situation like this? There are several things I can think of that might work on a large base. One is an electronic finger print system for entry and exit. Of course I am assuming that this base contains only Americans. Each soldier would put his thumb or another finger on an electronic plate and it would register against a database of prints. The same thing might be accomplished by a retina scan. That is where your eye is scanned. Each eye is different, like a fingerprint. I am sure that many other methods could also be used but of course these would all fail during an attack when everyone might be running to either get in or our of the camp.

The newspapers are saying that the bomber had worked on the base for a couple of months. I would love to know what the criteria is to allow an Iraqis to work on a US base? I mean even if they pass the harshest of clearances, they are subject to coercion by threats to their families and friends. Aren't we just asking for trouble with this policy? Why is it that we don't seem to learn from our past mistakes? Look at Saudi Arabia when hundreds of our men were killed because of poor security when a truck drove up to the barracks that was loaded with explosives. Lets get better security, get rid of Iraqis help, have unmanned planes circling over our camps so we can check for infiltrators. Why are we spending all this money on research if we are not going to take advantage of the fruits of that research?

Do you remember when we first invaded Iraq this time around, we were told that the Iraqis will love us for liberating them. We were never told that some of them would hate us for the same reason. Those that were in any position of power hate us for what we did. They have no intention of allowing a legitimate election to take place. THEY WANT THEIR POWER BACK ! We promised to get the country back on its feet and many people there are disappointed since they no longer have the basic utilities. We went into Iraq without any plans for the peace. My god, people have been feuding there for thousands of years. Some say, lets break Iraq into three countries, one Sunni, one Shiite and the third Kurdish. Turkey has let us know in no uncertain terms that they will not stand for a Kurdish. country on their border, so that idea is dead. The Kurds have been our allies through this whole thing and they must be included in any form of government. This situation reminds me of Yugoslavia. When Tito ran Yugoslavia. everything went along pretty smooth. Even though it was a communist country it had the most of any iron curtain country. Then Tito died and the rest is history, Serbia attacked, Croatia attacked, Montenegro fought etc. Everything just went to hell.

Don't get me wrong, Sadam was a tyrant. But should we use the US armed forces to remove every tyrant.? Why would we need the UN if we were going to police the world? Well we are in Iraq now and if we get out, the country will fall since it is in a volatile part of the world and can no longer defend itself against conventional warfare. We really got ourselves into a mess this time and don't think our rulers don't know this by now. The rest of the world knows this also, and that is why they are not helping us. They thought we weren't too bright going in this time.

During the first invasion of Iraq President Bush Sr. stopped the complete destruction of the Iraq army because he know what would have happened to Iraq if we left a void there. They would have been taken over by Iran. I can not be sure, but the same thing might happen if we pull out this time. Would that affect the balance of power in the region? I guess so but it might not be significant. Economically it would make Iran a much stronger country due to the huge amounts of oil in Iraq.

It seems to me that Iraq is going to be a drain on our resources for a long time to come or fall into the hands of Iran. Only time will tell.