a plurality still believe that it was the best thing Washington could do, and an overwhelming majority of 77 percent believe Washington now has the responsibility to remain in Iraq until a stable government can be put in place.
Boy are you a selective reader...
Overall support still exists for remaining in Iraq to finish the job....
The framing of the questions you cited were misleading because EVERYONE would make a knee-jerk reaction that, given our current lack of success in finding WMDs, maybe we should have spent more time finding out about them..
But that's clearly a ludicrous question given the facts at hand. Every nation on the UNSC concurred that Iraq was in material breach because IT HAD NOT PROVIDED SUCH INFORMATION, NOR WAS IT MAKING ANY ATTEMPT TO DO SO.
EVERYONE would have liked to "find out more" about Iraq's WMD programs. But by what means was this miracle going to occur and how much time was it going to take??
We still haven't received proper accountability of those 6,000 warheads that spurred the majority of the inspection stand-off since July, 1998. Hell, Iraq didn't even provide the long demanded documents (confiscated from the hands of the inspectors at that time) until November, 2002.. And STILL NO EXPLANATION OR ACCOUNTABILITY related to them..
So how were we going to "find out about" Iraq's programs minus completely occupying and strip-searching it as we're doing now??
As for "international backing", it wasn't going to come to any greater extent than was evident from the passing of 1441..
Because it was clear that while France and Russia were unable to deny the material breach by Iraq, they obviously didn't have any economic interest in enforcing that binding UNSC resolution. They NEVER would have backed the use of military force, just as neither of them wanted to back it in 1991 (France only backed Desert Storm when they realized they had more to lose than gain by remaining an observer).
And hindsight is 20/20.. At the time of the war launching we had this poll result:
Once the war was launched, however, strong majorities rallied behind the decision to go to war and told pollsters that Bush had waited long enough for a diplomatic solution.
There is serious danger is running a nation's foreign policy strictly by public opinion. Because public opinion, often being uninformed of the nuances, or responding to less that objective questions, is prone to alter their opinion based upon the facts.
Here's something you should stand by for GST.. If this Weekly Standard article about the Bin Laden/Saddam link gets tremendous airplay and credibility, you're going to see those poll results SKYROCKET support for Bush's decision to attack Iraq.
Absolutely skyrocket that support... And it will steel US public opinion that we had no recourse but to "drain the swamp" in Iraq.
Furthermore, it will steel support in favor of dealing with other potential supporters of terrorist groups, particularly Iran and Syria.
Hawk |
