Was Bush really a "fundie"? Also, how smart/dumb was he really?

[Kobal2]

@PhillyGuy

Yes, no joking, that is how it was looked at by not just most Republicans, but, also by most Senate Democrats, and by the third of House Democrats who voted for the Gulf War resolution. (I don’t agree that the Saddam regime was secular, but that’s a minor point.)

Oh, I’m not denying. I’m just saying y’all were bloody silly.

[septimus]

@PhillyGuy

1. The idea that wars are caused by the decision of an individual leader, especially one in a democracy, is questionable. I would look at economic, social, and political causes.

2. GW Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was the culmination of a long series of steps from which it would have been extremely difficult to back down. … As for moderate Congressional Democrats, they were also pushing him to invade on grounds of those weapons of mass destruction that almost everyone, not just the CIA, thought Iraq still had.

But if Bush had been seen to have backed down from invasion threats, that would have been quite unpopular…

This digression is more-or-less off-topic, but your remarks are too counterfactual to ignore. Surely open-minded intelligent Americans know, at least in hindsight, that the 2003 Iraq War was the result of cynical disinformation by Cheney et al. Exploring the “alternate universe” of what a different President would have done is easy, since Al Gore was one of the few outspoken critics of that War:
www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html

It is true that there was strong political pressure to take action, and that Congress would be eager to follow the President’s military lead. That is not in dispute. What is wrong is to claim that Iraq was an obvious target for anyone but a cynical President. That choice of target made little sense. Kissinger admitted, in so many words, that the purpose of that War was to “humiliate radical Islam.” Rice admitted, IIRC, that Iraq was picked as target mainly because it would be easier to defeat than Iran.

If we were in BBQ Pit, I might express surprise that I still have to explain this to intelligent Dopers so many years later.