Army angry at Bush over Iraq, former Y. professor says

OREM — An expert in international relations says current and former chiefs of branches of the U.S. military are furious with the Bush administration for sending them into a war they cannot win.

"The Army is angry at this administration," said Omar Kader, former executive director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and director of the United Palestinian Appeal, who spoke Thursday at Utah Valley State College. "They were given an assignment that can't be done."

Kader, a Provo native who also has worked as a professor and administrator at Brigham Young University, said President Bush was "sold a bill of goods in this administration and without" that it was possible to invade, conquer and claim victory in Iraq in six months.

"And he bought it," he said.

Bush and his advisers were so sure of a quick and conclusive win, says Kader, that the administration was able to get Congress to allocate $20 million for a countrywide victory party when the troops came marching home.

That money, obviously, he says, has never been spent.

But the reason the United States hasn't been able to gain — and maintain — an upper hand in the war in Iraq isn't because the country's military was ill-prepared or understaffed. It's because of the region's long-standing instability as a result of volatile political and cultural clashes between Shiite, Sunni and Kurd factions, he said.

Kader, who also is founder and CEO of Planning and Learning Technologies Inc., a Virginia-based company that helps teach emerging democracies how to govern themselves, also warned that war may erupt throughout the Persian Gulf if the United States isn't careful in the Middle East.

And that, he said, could lead to a massive oil shortage.

Forget about gas at $5 a gallon, he said, "there probably wouldn't be any for awhile."

But the Bush administration, he says, which according to some reports has already made plans to launch an attack on Iran, is being advised to remain in Iraq to make sure Iran, whose leaders detest the United States and have since a U.S.-supported overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the 1950s, does not take control of the region.

If Iran, among the nine countries to have nuclear weapons, takes control of the region, Kader says, Iran, which was named by Bush as part of an "axis of evil," would then be in charge of the world's oil and gas resources.