There is a reason why some nations supported the US in Afghanistan, but not in Iraq.
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Why then, are so many traditional allies not with the US in Iraq?
You're mixing two things here. Whatever the reasons countries had for not supporting the war in the first place, that is water under the bridge. Whatever those reasons were, they're irrelevant to the current situation in which the multinational mission in Iraq is authorized by the UN, which has asked the UN member nations to help with Iraqi security and the rebuilding of institutions and establishment of democratic government.
Every bit of evidence points to Bush and his handlers being single focussed on Iraq even before 9/11 Considering that the previous administration was also focused on Iraq, I don't find that too surprising. We had been, w/ British help, maintaing nofly zones and getting our planes shot at regularly.
...on watch when 9/11 happened. True, but I recall this little bit of Richard Clarke's testimony to the 911 Commission:
GORTON: Now, since my yellow light is on, at this point my final question will be this: Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001, based on Delenda, based on Blue Sky, including aid to the Northern Alliance, which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?
CLARKE: No.
Do you honestly believe that any president, Republican or Democrat, would do anything but track down those responsible for 9/11 and also initiate a set of extensive changes to domestic security? I think any President would have responded to 911 by making domestic security changes and trying to track down OBL. But unfortunately, I am not sure any and every President would have put troops into Afghanistan as quickly (I recall a lot of nonsense being bandied about re. the dreaded Afghan winter and the problems of attacking a Muslim nation during Ramadan). I'm not sure any and every President would have delivered the "with us or against us" message to Pakistan and other nations which had been supporting the Taliban government. I find Bush is still being criticized by some Democrats for that tough, allegedly extreme, rhetoric.
Do you not think that money would have been better spent focussed on global terrorism? Simply citing the amount of money spent on Iraq doesn't demostrate that absent the Iraq conflict that sum would have been spent on global terrorism. Nor do I see any reason to think the fight against global terrorism is being starved for funds.
G.W.'s own dad didn't overthrow Iraq in Gulf War I because there was "no exit strategy" and a bloody unwinnable mess would ensue. Was that his reason? I thought it was concern over holding together the int'l coalition.
.couldn't even run a successful oil company, in Texas of all places.
PS: Having spent many years consulting for big oil, I have some insight as to just how dumb that makes the man.
Do you remember the boom and bust years of the late '70's and '80's? A lot of money was thrown at the industry in the laste '70's and then in the '80's a whole lot of people lost their jobs and businesses. Just like the tech boom and bust of a few years back. Were all the tech companies which failed run by dummies too? |
