Containment (which we did NOT, and do NOT, know about and had to assume was NOT happening since Saddam was NOT cooperating with Res 1441) that requires 200,000 troops on the border is buying far, far too little at far too high a price.
I think we could argue this point ad nauseum...and I will give you the point that we should not have had to constantly pressure them for compliance.
Bush can do nothing right in your eyes, can he?
Actually, I identify with W in many ways...we share more than a few similarities in our upbringing...and I expect politicians to screw up frequently, it goes with the job, no problem usually.
But I break with Bush the most over the way he seems to relish taking human lives...the odd little face he made in the debate talking about the capital punishment he had carried out, mocking Karla Faye Tucker's pleas for clemency, pumping his fist and saying "Feel good!" when announcing the invasion.
I know, they are small details, but I feel a visceral repugnancy thinking about any of these moments...I can think of no other US President who ever had such a creepy, inhuman quality in this respect.
They don't sit for months and years in tents away from home in a desert where the temperature rises to 130 degrees. If anybody is stupid enough to order them to just sit like that, morale and readiness will suffer for it.
I don't know, I'm not there, but I suspect that sitting in the tents in Kuwait was a picnic compared to patrolling Baghdad these days. |
