today's headline

[stefan]

with all due respect to the honorable soldiers in iraq, and to those who will find themselves there in the near future,
today's headline solemnly reminded me of the wisdom and premonition embodied in a quote by president bush sr ...


Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq ...
would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.

Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be
an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.
--George H.W. Bush
A World Transformed, 1998

[scoutabout]

That was true at the time, but as situations tend to do, things change. The risk was too great to do nothing.

I took 2004 off from working, and spent a considerable amount of time researching and following various issues. I'm no Bush supporter, but I'm not a Bush hater either. I think my analysis ended up being quite objective.

Based on the information available at the time, Iraq posed a potential threat to the security of the United States. Bush didn't lie or fabricate intelligence. Two Senate investigations, an investigation by the U.N. and another by British Parliament have produced zero evidence of intentionally false or fabricated intelligence. Was some intelligence faulty? Obviously so. Was it produced to support the case for war? Despite all the scrutiny, no evidence of that has been produced. Now that the Dems are in power, there will be impeachment hearings (despite Pelosi's promise to the contrary). If they find that evidence was manufactured or doctored, I'll be the first to call for impeachment and imprisonment on war crimes.

If we had never invaded Iraq and it came out years later that there was intelligence indicating there could have been a threat to the U.S., the same people would be screaming for Bush to be impeached and imprisoned for not taking action.

Was oil part of the decision to go to war in Iraq now? No doubt. Establishing a U.S. friendly competitor to OPEC was certainly part of the equation. Oil is a resource that is key to national security. This certainly isn't the first time a U.S. President has considered oil as part of foreign policy. From FDR to JFK to Clinton, every President has made sacrifices and concessions to ensure our supply of oil.

In response to the inevitable argument that if we attacked Iraq we should attack North Korea, Iran, and others, I say attack 'em all. I think part of the rationale involved "setting an example" by invading Iraq. It worked in the case of Libya. They backed off their stance pretty quick when they saw what could happen. It is conceivable that the invasion of Iraq has caused both Iran and North Korea to second guess or at least slow-down their actions. The situation was altered by our invasion, so we'll never really know.

Let's not even waste bandwidth discussing if the war was "conducted" properly or not. History will tell the true story, but there certainly appears to be enough bad decisions in execution to go around.

Like I said in another thread. The Bush administration has done enough stupid stuff that we don't need to make anything up. They can be attacked for numerous poor decisions. The decision to go to Iraq? While it can be debated (like any decision), there certainly wasn't any lying or misleading going on that we are aware of. If so then I guess Hillary, Kerry, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton were all lying. They all said that Iraq was a threat, and the majority of Congress obviously felt strongly enough about it to authorize war if Iraq wouldn't abide by the numerous U.N. resolutions passed to keep Iraq in check.

None of this was really in response to the comment you posted, but it got me thinking and I started typing. Flame on.