re: #283 cliffster

What we know is that there was plenty of evidence that there were WMD’s, and that either way everyone agreed that Saddam was a threat to the world. Everyone said that. Everyone.

And that is the bottom line.

Not that it matters now, but at the time I didn’t have any problem with invading Iraq. It was mostly for emotional reasons unrelated to WMDs. Saddam was the living stereotype of a dictatorial asshat. Just watch the video of the purge of the Baath party when he first came to power. Just as a matter of morality, I don’t believe situations like those should be allowed to persist. I also realize that, in the real world, a position like that is extremely perilous at best and is no basis for a workable foreign policy, shitty though the consequences may be.

As time went on, however, I began having huge problems with the war. When info started to trickle in about under-armored and inadequately-equipped soldiers and their vehicles being converted into pasty pink mist as a direct result of Rumsfeld’s “you go to war with the army you have, so man up and go suck it” mindset, I was extremely disheartened. The longer it dragged on, the more obvious it became that Iraq was a fiasco of historical proportions. To this day I don’t have the slighest idea what the real motivation was to invade. I don’t think they ever believed there was a serious WMD threat, especially when the terrorist presence in Afghanistan, and the not merely suspected WMD threat from Pakistan and North Korea (along with several former Soviet satellites) were blatant and not really matters up for debate.

I think they probably really did believe they could steamroll Iraq and be in and out in 6 months, because they had not the slightest idea what they were dealing with. At one point, the guy in charge of counterterrorism at the FBI testified to Congress that he not only didn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiah Muslim, but he also didn’t think it made any difference. Cue Iraqi civil war that’s still blazing.

We went into Iraq head stationed firmly up ass, and it’s damned shameful, ESPECIALLY in light of the fact that Afghanistan (the actual breeding ground of al Qaeda, remember?) was put on the back burner for YEARS while we sent kids to Iraq to die for no discernible reason whatsoever.

I am also continually astonished that Gen. Petraeus — so far about the only CENTCOM guy who seems to know what the fuck he’s doing — gets insulted by the left (herpty derp General BetrayUs) for not declaring the US government to be the worst bunch of war criminals since the Khmer Rouge, and by the right for pointing out the counterproductive nature of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, for emphasizing the importance of avoiding civilian casualties in a counterinsurgency effort, and for understanding that the kind of war we’re fighting is won long-term on a small scale; it’s more advantageous to befriend a neighborhood that’s home to three bad guys than it is to firebomb a village that’s home to 100.

blah blah blah, never mind.