Reasonable.
Well, no. That was not the whole reason. It was one reason. In every speech that Bush gave on the subject he listed many reasons, of which, WMDs were one.
There was: Aggressive behavior in the past, used WMDs against own people, gaming oil for food, atrocities against his own people, failure to follow the UN resolutions that were the requirement for peace after the first gulf war, violation of like 26 resolutions, supporting terrorism, needing a Democracy in the middle east, a destabilizing influence, seeking nuclear weapons, posessing WMDs.
Posessing WMDs and supporting terrorism were the disputed ones, and, the hot topics. To say they were the only reason is not to accurately portray the situation.
As for the “right now” thing, the weather was an issue as were the logistics of creating and maintaining a combat ready force for attack, and, frankly, there’s the political issue. You amass all those troops and supplies and build support in the international community and abroad and maintain a focus on the issue… If you build it up and make as much of an issue about it as Bush et al did after 9/11 you either follow through or it loses momentum, so, yeah, the timing was important. It had reached critical mass and it was either now or never.
I always thought Bush’s mistake was allowing the buildup to war to be characterized as about WMDs. He didn’t resist it, and he went along with it, and got spanked for it. To me, it wasn’t the major issue. My posts from that period will tend to bear that out if examined as a group. I thought the violation of UN resolutions for 10+ years combined with the new world order that must exist after 9/11 were reason enough. Add to the fact that Saddam was a real sonuvabitch and I don’t worry too much about the WMDs (though I, too, was pretty sure he had them.)
For me, it was about the aforementioned “Big Dawg” theory alluded to and ridiculed be Spavined Gelding. The WMDS were not the crucial issue for me, which is why I supported and still support the decision to invade Iraq.
Oy, that’s just not true. The article clearly states that the troops had orders to secure sensitive cites. They also had orders to follow the timetable for the invasion and get to Baghdad. From the article:
"You’ve got two corps commanders being told, ‘Get to Baghdad,’ and, oh, by the way, ‘When you run across sensitive sites, you have to secure them,’ " he said. “Do you secure all those sites, or do you get to Baghdad? You’ve got limited force structure and you’ve got 20 missions.”
It’s the classic case of having X things that have to be done but not enough assets to do them all. You prioritize and do the best you can with what you have. But there clearly was a mission to secure these cites and allocations to do so. They weren’t enough to do that and project enough force to subdue the country quickly at the same time. Again, I’m not strategist, but from my reading of the book I’ve referred to several times there clearly was an attempt to measure the need to fully conquer resistance quickly and secure vital or suspicious sites. When it became an either or choice it was decided that it was more important to project force according to the timetable of the rolling deployment than to risk not having enough force on hand to complete the job and give the Iraqis enough space to regroup and offer significant resistance.
Had we gone slower and secured as we went, then other sites closer to Baghdad would have time to utilize or move or loot or secure the sensitive material before we got there. It was felt that the risk of leaving it unsecured when necessary, after the territory had been taken was less than the risk of leaving it intact in Iraqi hands, and it would be better to blow through quickly.
Who designed this, who favored it, the debates that went into designing this strategy basically account for the whole of Woodward’s book Plan of Attack
Taking that into account, I find the hypothesis that Bush et al didn’t bother to secure anything because they knew that their were no WMDS to be wholly irresponsible and without merit and in contradiction of documented fact. To make this argument which is not supported by either the cited article or the facts is not particularly responsible.
I think you have to revise a lot of facts, and ignore a lot of others and otherwise engage in selective perception and revisionism (or read and buy into others who have done so) in order to come to that conclusion.
I’m not accusing you of being disingenuous. In case you haven’t noticed there are a lot of people who are against the war and a lot of people who hate Bush and the administration and want to bring it down and make it look bad. At best, they write things that color the facts and select among them to further their aim. At worst, they distort or make them up.
These sources are not all that good.
I thought Woodward was no fan of the war or the administration, but I thought he was an honest reporter in that he tried to document what the actual thought processes and reasoning were behind the decisions that were made. Since he was literally on the scene, had access to transcripts, documents, interviews and other primary material, I tend to view his analysis as being pretty credible.
If you really want to know what they were thinking, it’s a fantastic book.
Again, this is not borne out by the facts. Securing the sites was a secondary objective to completing the invasion plan. I think this was the right decision. I think that the secondary objective was not handled as well as it should have been, and that it’s a valid criticism, but again, this was a unique situation and really the first time a tactic of this type (the rolling deployment) was engaged. I don’t expect it to be perfect. I expect mistakes to be made, and I have every confidence that had the soldiers actually found nuclear anthrax or what have you, they would have secured it. They didn’t. They didn’t have time for a full inventory. They followed orders and kept moving. In hindsight they didn’t get back to all the sites as quickly as they might have.
They were kind of busy.
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I mean, based on the evidence, it doesn’t just seem likely that GWB didn’t know for sure there were WMDs in Iraq; it sounds as if he knew for sure that there weren’t!
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I don’t know where you get that. It would seem incredibly stupid for him to allow the war to be characterized as about WMDs if he knew they weren’t there. You would think we would try to deflect the issue to something else rather than go for it.
No. I’m pretty confident he thought he had them (WMDs,) was convinced that he did, and because of this failed to heed contradictory evidence and viewpoints because of it.
The idea that he knew Saddam didn’t have them just really isn’t credible. The one thing about this President, like him or hate him, is that he’s pretty transparent in his beleifs and tends to say what he means.
Again, this just ain’t true. Read the book.
Yeah. So you go in fast and wipe out resistance and conquer the whole country before he has the chance to use this stuff. Then you mop up. You don’t want to stop short of Baghdad and dilly dally in the desert turning over every rock looking for WMDs, while they may very well be getting ready to deploy a bunch of them in Baghdad. You take care of the resistance first before you start taking inventory. That was the strategy, and through hindsight it still looks pretty sound.
I don’t always get it right, and I’m as much a victim of my own preconcpetions as anybody, but I do make the effort to try to understand. That’s why I read Plan of Attack. I read Charlie Wilson’s War to try to understand what led up to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the makeup and psychology of Al Quaeda. I read John Kerry’s autobiography and the Swiftvets book to understand Kerry. I read Living History by Hillary Clinton. I read Dereliction of Duty I read Slander by Coulter and Franken’s first book.
I try to read from both perspectives and I try to read some “impartial” material, though it’s tough to find.
Without offense, I think the “Bush knew there were no WMDs” argument is ignorant, wholly without merit and promoted by cynical people who know better and picked up and believed by people who don’t. I think the “It was incompetant to not secure suspected sites during the war,” is a hyperbolous conclusion from a valid criticism. To characterize it as “they didn’t bother” or “care.” is simply not born out by the facts. It was initially a conscious decision in setting priorities for completing the conflict with the available force. The faster you do it, the quicker you wipe out resistance the safer you are and the fewer people get killed. The tradeoff is that you don’t secure everything you should. They knew that. It was a conscious decision.
They weren’t as good as they should have been in securing things after the fact. That’s for sure. Valid criticism.
Thank you. At the same time, have some confidence in your high opinion of me. I’m not being disingenous. This topic that we’re discussing about the rolling deployment was one I was involved in extensively in '03 and one I’ve read up on. I beleive that it’s not being characterized accurately here. The plan was a good one, it was followed, and it worked pretty well, but there were tradeoffs, and there are very valid criticisms to be made after the fact.
They do not support the conclusion of either incredible incompetance, or knowing fraud.
As for how I can think Bush was wrong about the WMDs but still support the war… The WMDs were just one reason and for me, not the strongest by a longshot.
Thanks, and good night.
