Personally, I felt that Saddam should have been forcibly removed back in '98. So, the WMD issue just doesn't matter to me.
I agree completely with his removal. That's not the point.
In evaluating whether or not Bush lied (which was the discussion), his pitch for war with Iraq makes him look either foolish (he couldn't accurately determine that the available information was either inconclusive or completely wrong) or misleading (he could determine it was inconclusive, but went ahead and mislef the public anyway). Whether you care about WMDs (I also think invading Iraq was good for the planet even if he didn't have WMDs), it calls into question George's "honesty".
As for the situation in Iraq (disaster or not), the past month have finally shown some resolve to stabilize the place, but the cost in terms of death has risen significantly due to the lack of control over the preceding year. There is increasingly a blazed earth strategy to recapture the towns ceded to insurgents. Its a shame, and it seems the greatest military in the world should have been able to execute the post-combat operations in a way that would have avoided the current situation. It's 20-20 hingsight, but that's my perogative as an observer. George is in charge of the Iraq campaign, that the successes/failures rest with him. I hope you are right that things progress well from here, but I'm not too satisfied with the track record which got us here.
As for Abu Graib, detention without representation or accusation of ciminal wrongdoing in Gitmo, maltreatment of Gitmo detainees, denial of POW or civil status for Gitmo detainees, and all the other areas where the admistration has behaved as we expect the Russians did in their Gulags, the responsibility for that behavior rests with George. The buck stops with the leader. |
