Gustavo de Arístegui censure the US strategy in Iraq
Alameda Del Valle – The PP spokesman in the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee, Gustavo de Arístegui, said that Iraq has become a battlefield for terrorism due, in part, to the strategic errors of the United States. “Dissolving the Iraqi Army has been one of the greatest stupidities that could have been committed in the recent history of world geopolitics, and dissolving the security services and the police,” he said at the International Journalism Course organized by EL PAÍS, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the BBVA Foundation.
Figure 1 Gustavo de Arístegui | Gustavo Manuel de Arístegui y San Román
The popular spokesman, Gustavo de Arístegui, said that the decision of the former US civilian administrator in Iraq until last week’s handover ceremony, Paul Bremer, to dismantle the Iraqi armed forces after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime is to blame for much of the insecurity
situation in Iraq, and argued that at least 95% of Iraqi soldiers should have remained in their posts after the arrival of the Americans, withdrawing only those with criminal records or those who had a special connection with the previous regimen.
“90% of the security problems of the Sunni triangle come from the dissolution of the Army,” insisted Arístegui, who added that to these strategic errors is added having supported Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi leader who until recently has been the best friend of the Pentagon in Iraq and on whom the suspicion is now hovering that relevant information may have passed to Iran. “Now they [the US government] realize that he is public enemy number one. They could have realized this before,” he said.
Arístegui also assured that the torture committed by US soldiers was a “shortcut” in the fight against terrorism that “has given fuel to the radicals.” In his opinion, these methods never work. He also defended the search for the causes of terrorism in order to combat it. “The United States is obsessed with operational issues rather than addressing the causes of terrorism,” he said