Interesting article :)
Ugh...
Purdy on 2003-11-13T16:09:54
The article was too lengthy... I surrender!
;)
In all seriousness, I'm just glad I don't live in Iraq, have to be deployed in Iraq (much less be in the military) or really worry about it. Same goes for Afghanistan. I just don't have the stomach for war, strife and conflict.
At the same time, I respect those whose job it is to deal with the situation.
Anyway, still too early to expound with more meat.
Peace,
Jason
"right"
pudge on 2003-11-26T19:04:01
Let's look at the three claims:
The first was that the threat posed by Saddam was not imminent, and that's borne out by all available evidence That's a nice straw man. The Bush administration never called the threat imminent. The fact is, the Bush adminsitration said over and again that we don't know all of what Iraq had, but because Iraq was failing to comply with Resolution 1441, we were not going to wait around any longer to find out.
Yes, there is more to the story than that, but if this article can be overly simplistic, why can't I?
The second claim was that democracy-building in Iraq was going to be a lengthy, difficult, bloody process This was never denied by the U.S.
third, the French correctly predicted that the Muslim world would perceive a U.S.-led intervention lacking the explicit blessing of the United Nations as illegitimate This was never denied by the U.S. Everyone in the U.S. government knew that the key to acceptance was an Iraqi-selected government. Why do you think the U.S. has been pushing for an Iraqi constitution and elections since Day One?
Also, FWIW, the Arab League accepted the Iraqi Governing Council representative into their fold. To say the Muslim world sees the current situation as illegitimate is, once again, a gross oversimplification.
I readily admit that the Bush adminstration talked up the rosy perspective of things on the way in. They spinned it as best they could. But on these points, there were no illusions. We knew it would be tough, we knew we would not be accepted in the long term. We knew we had to get Iraq back on its own two feet and turn over power as soon as they were able to handle it. That's been the goal from the beginning.
