I agree with you about getting into this war in the first place. I do, however, think there are two major issues that can be separated out:
1. lying about war
2. incompetently prosecuting said war
They are both important because if they had done #1 which was terrible but had succeeded in taking over for the Baathists and brought peace and prosperity to Iraq, very few people would have been talking about #1. Bush, Wolfowitz, Feith, Cheney, Rummy, Rice, etc. would have gotten away with lying about war.
IMO, Bush and all of his people should be jailed for lying about war. Unfortunately, most Americans probably don't care about that or about preventing this act in the future. They just care that the news from Iraq is overwhelmingly negative and pessimistic while the costs climb.
The incompetence in this war is serious. Wolfowitz's estimate was $1.7 billion because the Iraqi oil industry could pay for reconstruction and because the war would take a couple of weeks with peace reigning immediately thereafter. Rummy said that the Army Sec was wrong, it wouldn't take hundreds of thousands of soldiers (500,000 or thereabouts) for a country of 25 million, he had a new plan for a high-tech army. We would be down to 30,000 in Iraq shortly.
Bremmer said that all those armed soldiers could go home and, BTW, so long to things like pensions and jobs and income. Bremmer said we're going to de-Baathify everything which included operations of utilities and things like that.
Every single step in this illegal war has been thoroughly messed up. Now, this is the best we can expect?
- peace reigns tomorrow and we have just spent $356 Billion and the lives of 1700 soldiers to put in place an Islamic theocracy with its strongest ties to....IRAN.
Them thar are pretty dang lousy returns. |
