I don't view it as argumentative at all. Healthy discussion.

Aren't we still in Afghanistan? Aren't we still hunting, killing and disabling the Al Qaeda network?

Is this war larger than Osama? I haven't heard or seen from him in a while. Is it truly important to have the body of Bin Laden? (I think so...but will it ever happen?)

But back to the question. Given the circumstances, the mindset was different. It's easy to say now that we should only be in Afghanistan and not Iraq.

As it's been said, this "war" is bigger than just al qaeda, don't you think?

Excellent choice of words and a very well thought out perspective.

I share the same viewpoint. The next President has a job I do not envy. There is no "exit strategy" as people talk about until the job is done. Will it go on forever? I have no idea. I hope not.

I'm honestly tired of each side going back and forth about why we're in Iraq. The point of it is we're there and what will we do going forward.

Soldiers are in the field. Families at home miss their sons, daughter, spouses, and friends. They're doing what they signed up to do and want to be home as much as anyone. Discounting their mission can only be harder on their morale.

I think that the biggest fundamental mistake made was that when Bush came into office, he surrounded himself with a group of senior advisors who shared a homogeneous world view, with nary a dissenting voice in the lot. That view included turning Iraq into a "model of democracy" and establishing an ally (puppet?) in the Middle East. As is said about children: "give a child a hammer, and everything looks like a nail". Willfully or not, this group saw all information in the light of wanting to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein, and dismissed any information that contradicted a need to do so. They found an utterly corrupt Ahmed Chalabi, who gave them all the "data" they could want to confirm what they thought, without any checks on the validity of that "data". If you think about the history of the justification for invading Iraq, the only constant was "we should invade Iraq".

There's all sorts of information coming out that indicates there was plenty of dissention in the intelligence groups about things like the aluminum tubes, the Niger uranium forgeries (who was it that made them, and why?), and linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda. All in time to realize there was serious doubt for every one of the justifications (except, of course, that Saddam was a bad person).

As for your items, there is no linkage between the first two points. Indeed, there was far more linkage between al Qaeda and Iran (or Saudi Arabia), but that went against the pre-determined end point: get rid of Hussein in Iraq. For the third point (DHC), do remember that the Bush administration fought very strongly against forming this department.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

few things:

one is that you assume the decision to invade iraq was made post-9/11, which may not be the case. there is some evidence that iraq was already on bush's mind before 9/11(i.e. immediately asking if iraq was involved after the incident occurred--to me that says he had some focus there already).

two: i could forgive a lot of things if this was a "we won't get this opportunity again, so it's now or never, mr. president" type decision. but that wasn't the case. there was time for a good deal of intelligence gathering and reflection. there was no need to rushto a decision, especially when there were already troops engaging the taliban and hunting for osama(and there is some implication of needing to make a quick decision in the way you laid out the factors).

third: why iraq? we are talking about a war on terrorism. while iraq has terrorist contacts, they were certainly no worse than countries such as syria or iran. add to the fact that iran was/is attempting to go nuclear(and there was more evidence of their attempts at gaining nuclear capabilities than there was for iraq--hell, israel had bombed won of their nuclear reactors in the 80's already).

seems to me that bush came into office seeking to address the "iraq problem" and that nothing in the course of events made attacking iraq a necessity.

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f/k/a mclamb6

-- I'm honestly tired of each side going back and forth about why we're in Iraq. The point of it is we're there and what will we do going forward.

I would agree, but I think the arguments keep coming up because we are talking about who should be our president over the next 4 years. To make this assessment you have to look at the decisions that have been made in the last 4 years by Bush and what got us there. Regardless of how you feel about him, he will be and should be judged by these actions. Obviously, you also want to consider what you think each man will do to improve the situation. Unfortunately, both are more focused on their view of the past that we aren't hearing a lot of what they'll do in the future.

One also has to consider that Iraq had shown itself to be an active aggressor nation (1991 Gulf War) and had been, prior to 9/11, noncompliant to the UN.

There was a precedence with Iraq. Hussein was a leader who was more than a blow hard. He had taken action in the past. So no one can say there was no intent or a history of blowing hot air.

Which also leads to the question...the million dollar one...would Hussein and Iraq eventually need to be overthrown and dealt with? If we had waited, how long would it be before we'd have to face the issue again?

I agree. We have to look at what decisions have been made in the past. We have to also put those decisions in context as well.

So let's level the playing fields and attempt to make an apples to apples comparison of each candidate and their decisions. While it is impossible to be able to put Kerry and Bush on the same level playing field back when the decision was made we can look at the decisions made while one was a Senator and the other was a President.

It's very easy for Kerry to say now what he would have done back in 2002/2003 when the decision to go to war was being made. He had the luxury of making a decision but not being held to the ramifications of the final decision. He voted for the war. Which is all he could have done at the time as a Senator. Which is the way Bush went. Bush had the unenviable duty to make the final decision to take military action. Again, going back to that time, he had the permission of Congress, American citizen sentiment, and Coalition support backing him on this. Intelligence, now suspect, at the time seemed somewhat credible. More credible than the evidence that pointed to the notion that Al Qaeda was going to attack the United States by planes, but went unheeded. We now know the result of the Al Qaeda threat and how real it was. Do you think Bush was going to assess risk differently after the attacks of 9/11? Bet you he did.

-America had recently been attacked on its own soil by Al Qaeda killing 3000+ people. In response war was launched in Afghanistan against the Taliban and the Al Qaeda network.

That was our statement to the world that if America is attacked we will respond in this way. We had the world on our side and I felt we were doing what it would take to protect ourselves.

I don't know why but we decided to get side tracked and now we are in Iraq. What does that state to the world in your minds? Apparently it alienated us from a few countries and we no longer have their support like we did right after 9/11.

I wouldn't call it a side-track. I'd call it being on the offensive against a country that appeared to be a threat at the time.

Yeah but the goal was to make sure 9/11 didn't happen again. Was Saddam Huessin closer to making that happen again or was Osama Bin Laden when we chose to attack Iraq?

... actually it's just not worth it...

Making 9/11 not happen again was most certainly one of the goals but was it/is it the only goal?

I think Osama was busy running from forces in the mountains and worried about staying alive rather than planning another attack whereas at the time we weren't really sure what Hussein was up to other than it was something that didn't look good.

We keep hearing about how Bush took his eye off the ball by going after Iraq and leaving Afghanistan behind but I don't believe for a bit that to be the case. From a military standpoint we're capable of multi tasking.

The only thing your military is capable of is is getting it's ass kicked in multiple countries, like it's being shown daily on the news all over the world.
You do have the best army, it's too bad you are the Nazis in this case. Remember what happened to their superior army? Remember what happened to Arab armies when they tried attacking Israel in '67?
Remember Vietnam?

It's impossible to conquer armed people.

There is no justification for this war.
Even if Saddam had nuclear weapons that wouldn't be enough, as he had as much right to have them as you do.

Man you need some help. Where are you from? Last I checked we are not setting up concentration camps dedicated to the genocidal killing of an entire religious or ethnic group. Your comparison to the Nazis is lame and innacurate. Armed people are conquered all the time, usually by better armed people. saddam had no more right to nuclear weapons than the international community allowed him to have. I assume you live in a country that belongs to the UN and took away his right to have nukes.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Well, I've just finished reading the complete Iraq Survey Group report on Saddam's Iraqi regime and the report from the Congress on the Oil For Food program. Very depressing to me, now knowing that no matter what was going on with the sanctions program, that no matter how well-intentioned the original idea of the Oil For Program was and that no matter what further resolutions we would have put forth in the United Nations Security Council, nothing would have come from it.

It appears evident to me, that a systematic effort of obfuscation, concealment of technical know-how and infrastructure, with the ultimate aim of being able to again readily produce chemical blister agents (mustard gasses) in a very short amount of time after sanctions were lifted (as little as 3 weeks, if the regime were willing to sacrifice certain dual-use production equipment to get it out to the field rapidly), was the aim of Saddam and his regime.

I also readily admit that, in light of the release of the ISG's report, it does not look as if Saddam and the Iraqi regime had any remaining usable stocks of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, but I also point out that he did make every effort to retain know how and certain rocket delivery systems in violation of UN resolutions in order to immediately begin reconstitution of his programs once free of sanctions.

Given that point (not having any available WMD), I also point one to yesterday's editorial in the Washington Post, which is hardly a rah-rah cheering society for any Republican administration, in which it is noted that NO president, given the information available at the time, could have done anything but come to the SAME conclusion as to Iraq's intentions in the WMD theater.

The ISG report points out a few salient items:

#1. Saddam wanted to end sanctions while at the same time preserving the capability to reconstitute his WMD programs when sanctions were lifted.

#2. Saddam's primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of his regime.

#3. The Oil-For-Food program rescued Baghdad, and Saddam. The regime quickly came to see that Oil-For-Food could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

#4. By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to reduce to meaninglessness many of the effects and aims of the sanctions and to undermine international support for them. "Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999".

#5. "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability...." "He intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare capabilities..."

#6. (And what I've been saying was a prime mover behind Saddam's behavior from 1991 to 2003) "Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy..." Unfortunately, as I've said, the posturing and the fact that "One aspect of Saddam's strategy of unhinging the UN's sanctions against Iraq centered on Saddam's efforts to influence certain UN Security Council permanent members, such as Russia, France, and China and some non-permanent (Syria, Ukraine) members to end UN sanctions..." caused Saddam to fatally miscalculate his chances at getting out from under the sanctions, appearing as if he SEEMED to still have WMDs (to counter the strategic threat posed by Iran) and isolating the United States from its other allies on the UNSC backfired on him and precipitated an attack by the United States in March, '03.

"Under Saddam's orders, the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs formulated and implemented a strategy aimed at these Security Council members (Russia, France, China, Syria, Ukraine) and international public opinion with the purpose of ending UN sanctions and undermining its subsequent Oil-For-Food program by diplomatic and economic means" (From the ISG report).

It seems clear, if one reads the report, that Iraq mightily desired to retain as much of the technical know-how and as much equiment as it could keep while still qualifying it as a "dual-use" product to start up WMD production as soon as it was out from under the sanctions. It is also clear that Saddam and his regime were busily co-opting permanent members of the Security Council through bribes and monies from the UN Oil-For Food program in an effort to have the already-weakened sanctions lifted and the United States isolated from its traditional allies (France and Germany).

It is also clear that sanctions were a failure. The ISG report states that "....by mid-2000, the exponential growth of Iraq's illicit revenue, increased international sympathy for Iraq's humanitarian plight, and increased complicity by Iraq's neighbors led elements within Saddam's regime to boast that the UN sanctions were slowly eroding. In July 2000, the ruling Iraqi Ba'athist paper, Al-Thawrah, claimed victory over UN sanctions, stating that Iraq was accelerating its pace to develop its national economy despite the UN "blockade". In August 2001, the Iraqi Foreign Minister Sabri stated in an Al-Jazeerah TV interview that UN sanctions efforts had collapsed at the same time Baghdad had been making steady progresson its economic, military, Arab relations, and international affairs".

As I've said before, for those to say that President Bush deliberately lied to get us to attack Iraq, well....they engage in intellectual dishonesty. Even the Washington Post came out and said that no president, given the information available from many of the world's intelligence services, could have come to anything but the same conclusion as to Iraq's intentions and the imminent threat posed by Iraq, which continued to posture, for its own strategic reasons, as if it still had WMD.

You can fault Bush and his administration for acting on faulty intelligence, if you just can't refuse to admit that Iraq brought this upon itself, but to those that say that the sanctions should have been given more time, and that they were working, I point out that the sanctions had already failed according to the Iraqi government itself, and that certain permanent members of the UN Security Council had already been co-opted by Iraq and were working against the very resolutions that were promulgated by the Council in the first place.

I wouldn't have created the dept. of homeland security. Bush was right to initially oppose this.

I wouldn't have signed the "Patriot" act. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety...." -- B. Franklin.

Wouldn't change a thing about Afghanistan. Bush was right to listen to his commanders and use a small force.

re: Iraq : Would've listened to the intelligence reports and more importantly the weapons inspectors. Which means when my chief inspector (Kay?) told me that Iraq probably had weapons (He did say this didn't he, I can't remember?) and wasn't disarming, I would've at least started a bombing campaign.

If war was the only option (not sure if it was)... As soon as I found out that our intelligence and inspectors were wrong, there would've been major house cleaning and head rolling.

#1. Saddam wanted to end sanctions while at the same time preserving the capability to reconstitute his WMD programs when sanctions were lifted.

Saddam didn't have a vote about ending sanctions. That decision was under our control.

What information in the report leads you to conclude that even if he had been able to produce blister agent weapons, he intended to use them against the US?

#3. The Oil-For-Food program rescued Baghdad, and Saddam.

Another program under our control, not Saddam's. Mend the program, or end it.

"Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999".

And what was the state of sanctions after 9/11? Still near a de facto end, or strengthened as a result of increased American pressure?

#5. "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability...." "He intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare capabilities..."

I say again, it doesn't matter what he wanted. It was essentially up to us. And what did he intend to do with those missiles, had we lifted the sanctions for some inexplicable reason?

#6. (And what I've been saying was a prime mover behind Saddam's behavior from 1991 to 2003) "Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy..."

Ahhh. . . That's key, don't you think?

It is also clear that sanctions were a failure.

Disagree. They were failing at one point because we let them fail. After 9/11, we got serious, and the sanctions improved.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Did you notice the quotation marks? The majority of my post was directly from the ISG report itself. Here's a few other things to ponder:

Saddam was using the Oil-For-Food program for the specific purposes of undermining the sanctions regime by isolating the U.S. from its allies on the Security Council and regaining his WMD capabilities. (ISG Report)

The continuing theme throughout the whole 1,000 page report by Duelfer is that Saddam himself, in interrogation by analysts with the ISG, and others within the regime (Tariq Aziz and LtGen Sabir 'Abd-al-Aziz Husayn Al Duri), had the clear aim of reconstituting the WMD program once free from sanctions. No amount of increasingly-weak pressure by a co-opted UNSC was going to change that objective reality, as the report itself lays out in hundreds of pages devoted specifically to Sadddam's intent to get out from under the sanctions.

The countries actually named in the ISG report as recepients of Iraqi bribery are France, Russia and China. These countries had Security Council veto power and were a "coalition of the bribed and coerced", to paraphrase a certain Democratic Senator, and had been set against us by Iraq to fight a proxy battle for them against us in the SC. By every measure, the de facto end to sanctions had already occurred. Proof enough of this is provided in the report.

There is a reference to bribery of an AMERICAN weapons inspector in the report. Most likely, Scott Ritter, chief propagandist of the "let sanctions work" wing, and the man most often propped up as an expert on the workings of the UN sanctions program.

Are you denying that our intelligence agencies, and those of every other interested country, said that Saddam had WMD? The National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, read before the Congress on Monday, July 21, 2003, clearly stated that Iraq still had them. In fact, the judgement in the House of Representatives was that "we judge that Iraq has continued its WMD program in defiance of UN restrictions and resolutions. That Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions. If left unchecked, it will probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade..."

WMDs were one reason, among many, cited for going to war against Iraq. But, by dint of repetition in the press and among those out to capitalize on this for political reasons, it seems to be mistakenly thought that that was given as the ONLY reason, which it was not. The President has ALWAYS given multiple reasons for liberating Iraq, including the moral neccessity to relive the Iraqi people of Saddam's oppression and concomittantly beginning the reformation leading to the democratization of the Arab world.

The objective reality will always trump the subjective, if one cares to read and listen to the facts as they have been laid out by disinterested parties.

Did you notice the quotation marks? The majority of my post was directly from the ISG report itself. Yes, I noticed. I also noticed the selective manner in which you pulled from the report, hence my questions.

The continuing theme throughout the whole 1,000 page report by Duelfer is that Saddam himself <>had the clear aim of reconstituting the WMD program once free from sanctions.

First, you ignoring the part about why he had the aim of reconstituting the WMD program. And you're ignoring the fact that it wasn't up to him whether or not he ever got free from the sanctions. Both of which are critical facts.

Are you denying that our intelligence agencies, and those of every other interested country, said that Saddam had WMD? The National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, read before the Congress on Monday, July 21, 2003, clearly stated that Iraq still had them.

Aren't you the same kahuna who was saying just a few days how knowledgeable people in govt sneer at the unreliability of SNIEs? I don't deny that they said it, I say that they were pressured into it by the administration, which seemed clear to me at the time. Especially since most of the specific "intelligence" they cited was quickly discredited. The yellow cake, for example.

WMDs were one reason, among many, cited for going to war against Iraq.

They were the PRIMARY reason. The other reasons were spun later, and we probably still haven't seen the end of the evolution of Bush's justification for the war. It shifts weekly.

if one cares to read and listen to the facts as they have been laid out by disinterested parties. If by disinterested you mean objective, I consider myself in that category.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

Sorry I took so long on this one. I went over to the base pool for a swim session and have just now returned. Anyway......

I can put the whole report into the record, if you'd like. It still doesn't change the fact that the theme is that he was nearly free of the sanctions by the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and that he was on the verge of gaining that freedom through bribery and co-opting of permanent members of the Security Council. No amount of continuation of sanctions, were we even able to pull that off with the complete weight of the international community standing against us and clamoring for lifting of the sanctions, would've changed the fact that Saddam had corrupted the Oil-For-Food program with the aim of rendering the sanctions moot.

As I said, you believe that the U.S. was going to be able to stand completely against total international opinion, and the opinion of almost every permanent member of the UNSC, as to the lifting of all UN sanctions. I don't believe that this would been possible. It is my belief that only because the attacks of 9/11 occurred, and the objective reality shifted, were sanctions not lifted within a short time of Bush's assumption of the Presidency. Certainly no later than 2002, as it appears likely. After all, France, Russia and China were bought off. I notice that you don't dispute that assertion. What you stand on is the degree to which we would have been able to stave off the inevitable. I don't think it would have been long, looking at the conditions present in the UNSC and in the General Assembly. Certainly only Britain and one or two others would have stood with us.

I did say that about SNIE's. I'd say that I'm pretty familiar with them, having had experience with them in the past. SSNco (Marty) probably has the most experience with SNIEs and NIEs, but he doesn't come over to the Lavender room and get dirty :-) It seems,though, that a baseless theory of some kind of a scheme by the Bush administration to rush headlong into a war on the basis of nothing but thin air is being propounded, so I find that one is forced to illustrate that John Kerry, for one, and many others in both houses of Congress relied upon these documents for their bottom-line assessments. But I forget, Kerry relied completely and totally on the information put forth by a Republican president to make his decision because he missed every meeting of the Senate intelligence committee "in camera" since 9/11. As I said before, that speaks of a lack of seriousness on his part and makes me suspect him of being a lightweight.

You also bring up "yellow cake". My reply is that the intelligence world (both "humint"/ human intelligence and "sigint"/signals intelligence) is not easy nor frangible. You go with the best info you can get, and you rely on the people in charge (in this case, CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA, NRO, the French, the British, the Russians, Egypt, Israel and others) to get it to you. You evaluate it yet again and then you make your play. As I've said, even the Washington Post has editorialized just yesterday that no president could have done anything but what Mr. Bush did, given the intel he was presented with. But, he'll have to answer for that on the 2nd, won't he?

Suffice it to say that I hardly think that he'd recklessly gamble away an almost certain guarantee of a second term, given his sky-high approval ratings after Afghanistan, just to get some sort of revenge on Saddam Hussein for trying to assassinate his father, the elder Bush. He felt that the Iraqi regime presented a serious, if not immediately imminent threat and that he acted to prevent yet another 9/11 from occurring. Truly, if Afghanistan was in answer to the first attack, it is most likely that Iraq was overran in order to prevent another 9/11 just down the road. Colin Powell has said that failure to act now was analogous to just "kicking the can down the road". After all, unless you pick the can up, you're just going to have to deal with it a little later and go through the whole exercise all over again.

You say presence of WMDs were the PRIMARY reason. I disagree. I could be easy to draw this conclusion because of the constant drumbeat of repetition in the media as to this being the sole reason. We all know the attention span of the people and the media in issues such as these. Media outlets tend to glom onto the one, sexy, all-encompassing reason as a sort of "Unifying Field Theory". Never mind that Mr. Bush constantly reminded people back then that he was not willing to sacrifice the safety of the American people on a whimsical hope that Saddam was suddenly going to alter his behavior, and that he had brutally murdered hundreds of thousands in Iraq and in other countries in the region. And also that Iraq had violated on a consistent basis every one of the many UN resolutions and was implicated in the financing of terror attacks (through rewards paid to the surviving families of suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank), and had sealed his fate through dissembling and untruthful submission to the UN of Iraq's "Currently Accurate, Full, and Complete Declaration" (CAFCD) in response to yet another UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 1441)

From the ISG Report: "Given Iraq's investments in technology and infrastructure improvements, an effective procurement network, skilled scientists, and designs already on the books for longer range missiles, ISG assesses that Saddam clearly intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems and that the systems potentially were for WMD".

The given meaning for the term I used (disinterested) certainly means "objective". But that applies neither to you nor I, sir.

"objective". But that applies neither to you nor I, sir.

Sure it does. Or if you want, only to me. ;)

Objective doesn't mean without opinion. I objectively weighed the case for war and found it wanting. I didn't pre-judge it ahead of time based on politics or other considerations.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."