No shit. And many, many people of many different political persuasions saw that the two were not distinct before Bush’s Misadventure. You can’t call something a success if it is clearly causal in a subsequent catastrophe.
It’s a bit like saying that Cheney successfully pulled the trigger on his shotgun. His shooting his friend in the face was a separate “miscalculation.”
What’s even worse in the case of Bush’s Bumfucking of Iraq is that they specifically and deliberately, in advance of the “successful” invasion, rejected plans that might have made the post-invasion portion of the mission a success as well.
Didn’t the State Deptartment have a plan that the Bushites decided to ignore ? Not that I think that that or any plan would have worked very well, but having a plan might have made it less of a total disaster.
Yes - see a summary of the New York Times piece here.
I think its safe to say that any plan would be better than, “Gee, let’s get the kids from the Heritage Foundation to run Iraq. It’ll be a good externship opportunity for them.”
Call me a jerk, but I didn’t care enough about the Iraqis 5 years ago to wish my country to assume the costs of replacing their government. The costs are multifaceted - money, lives (both US and others), international standing, failure to respect state sovereignty, opportunity costs both home and abroad, and many more.
As you note, Iraq was not the only nation with a horrible leader. I do not recall, however, that that was the stated reason for our invading. I thought it was something about a “gathering” threat or somesuch. Wasn’t that what you referred to regarding the mistaken intel? No one disputed that Hussein was an asshole. Many folks disputed whether he posed a realistic imminent threat to the US or anyone outside of Iraq.
Nor do I recall our country having a policy of invading all such unfortunate countries. In fact, I seem to recall express disavowals of any interest in “nation-building”, which now seems to be the primary explanation and justification for what we are doing. You mention Darfur. I imagine we could identify at least 10 countries in Africa and Asia with leadership regimes at least as oppressive as Hussein’s. But I do not recommend that our country unilaterally overthrow those governments in any but the most extreme situations - most likely involving active attempts at genocide. I’m not aware that such was going on or imminent at the time we invaded. Please correct me if I am mistaken.
As I recall it, we had some pretty extreme restrictions and sanctions in place. No, they were not entirely effective, but then and now I favored them, their costs, and their limited success over the unpredicatable success and predictably high costs associated with going to war and occupying a foreign nation.
It is interesting how your rationalizing changes over time, but the one thing that remains constant is your belief that we were right, whatever the ever shifting justifications then and now.
I can prove that not only were there no WMDs in Iraq, but also that this Administration knew there weren’t any. On the day the war began, we “simply” rolled into Iraq from Kuwait. Had we any information (as Rummy and others claimed) that WMDs were located in Iraq, we would have dropped troops in the areas where the WMDs were believed to be, as our first act, and the troops would have had orders to find the WMDs and hold the territory at all costs until reenforcements arrived. That didn’t happen, thus the only conclusion is that Buscho knew Saddam didn’t have jackshit to begin with.
Yeah, it doesn’t help me sleep any better at night, either.
Tuckerfan, the stupidity of the Bushistas goes even further than the lies you just mentioned. Even when they did know where weapons (maybe not of “mass destruction” but plenty lethal, as the ensuing years have shown) were stored, they didn’t have any plans to secure or destroy them before the looters arrived. Remember al Qaqaa and the 377 tons of high explosives that disappeared? veteransforamerica.org
I read somewhere, can’t find the cite just now, that military analysts calculated that just from that one site the resistance made off with enough explosives to continue the present rate of IUD attacks for something like fifteen years without any resupplying.
