re: #36 jvic

I have never understood why we invaded a secular Arab state while leaving an Islamist dictatorship untouched next door (not to mention another across the Gulf). What was the grand strategery?

Maybe the plan was that Iran would be shocked and awed into capitulation while we were being strewn with roses and greeted as liberators in Iraq.

There was no proper plan. W. had a bug in has about Saddam since before his first election. It was personal, I will grant him that. However there was no plan. I remember him very clearly talking about how his goal was not to do “nation building” in Iraq before going in. Of course that was his failure from the start. Had we put enough boots on the ground from the start and not tried for “shock and awe” and actually secured water and electricity and the needs of the Iraqi people, we might have had a chance of making this more clean. We did not, by design, because Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney arrogantly assumed that the Iraqis would just roll over and welcome us and be good little doggies. The war was mismanaged from the top from the start in terms of any sort of viable exit strategy.