Did I say that there would be "a total and instant collapse of all functions". I don't remember saying that. If I did, I plead the influence of chardonnay.
I am not the expert you are, Nadine, and it's not my nature to play the oh yeah, prove it game. I like opinions and ideas and polite exchanges. I enjoy your posts, but I hate it when people come up with these long lists of endless cites and sort of shout at you HERE! THIS PROVES IT!
I am only reporting what I remember reading several years ago as we led up to this and why I wound up with the opinion I did on the timing of the war. One of the most accurate predictions was the final chapter in Mackey's book, The Reckoning. It was a library book, so I can't "quote" for you. I do know that it dealt with the low probability of a coherent, cohesive government being formed easily, and the anarchic vacuum left if Saddam were deposed, and it opened my eyes, along with reading a lot of Friedman and some other books on the ME, to the difficulty of what we were about to do. NOt that everyone was saying don't do it. Friedman, again if memory serves, was all for it. He just had a lot of caveats and reservations.
It is a piecing together of many things that leads people to their opinions. Most people don't keep the appendix of references handy.
I think that not knowing what they would find could have been a very good reason to take a little more time. |
