I did not mean to let George W. off easily. I DO believe that between Gore, McCain and Bush, W. Bush was uniquely UNQUALIFIED to understand or appreciate the threat from Al Qaeda – he had NO FOREIGN policy experience and the “experts” he depended upon had experience that was out-of-date. Wolfowitz NOT knowing about the danger from Osama …
I did not mean to let George W. off easily. I DO believe that between Gore, McCain and Bush, W. Bush was uniquely UNQUALIFIED to understand or appreciate the threat from Al Qaeda – he had NO FOREIGN policy experience and the “experts” he depended upon had experience that was out-of-date. Wolfowitz NOT knowing about the danger from Osama Bin Laden was very telling.
More directly to your point, I think that George W. Bush was NOT a very intellectually able man, and seemed to be consumed at times with an almost hyper-testosterone affect. Whatever it was, he seemed very uncurious about the drivel that Ahmad Chowdry, Dick Cheney, Don Rumseld and Paul Wolfowitz fed him in regards to the “hazards” of Saddam’s Iraq. He and his administration seemed totally unprepared and unaware that by invading Iraq, they were eliminating a powerful foe of Iran, and that they seemed to have been caught completely unaware by the looting of Iraqi government buildings and the likely results of their asinine decisions to disband the Iraqi Army and to ban any past member of the Baath Party from future Iraq governments. The colossal blunder to invade was compounded by the stupidity with which the initial occupation was handled and the region is less stable from those criminally stupid and foolish decisions made during 2002 and 2003.
Well said. I have thought long and hard about how it was that Bush (43) was such a complete disaster as President (and I challenge anyone to argue otherwise). And I finally decided it was because he was simply in over his head. That and his new-found religiosity made him think that as long as his motives were pure, somehow God would make everything turn out all right. Although there were many awful things that Bush (43) did, everything else pales in comparison to the Iraq War. And the counterarguments you mention were only some of the reasons it was so stupid. Besides "eliminating a powerful foe of Iran" (as you put it), there was also the idea that
"we would be greeted as liberators" as if once Sadaam was gone we could simply head home (and don't forget that "democracy would flourish). When I heard that, it sounded like they were comparing it to the Allies liberation of Paris. And, sure enough, Cheney was quoted as saying just that. The idea that they couldn't see the difference between liberating France (which had a functioning "home-grown" civil government for years before the Nazis) and "liberating" Iraq (which not only didn't have a functioning "home-grown" civil government then but had never had one at any time in the past) totally escaped me. P.S. I assume you are referring to Ahmad Chalabi, not Ahmand Chowdry
Good point - about that being greeted as liberators and being showered with flowers.... It made me think that Dick Cheney and others were smoking or snorting some sort of hallucinogenic substance. The repeated denials that there was an insurgency and that there was any need to bring in the type of equipment like MRAPs instead of HUMVEEs to protect our soldiers from the IEDs. Such criminally stubborn and stupid insistence that there was NO Insurgency because the big-shot civilians in the Pentagon said that there was NO Insurgency. All during the time when our soldiers were fighting an insurgency that was started at least in part by ex-Baathists and ex_Iraqi army members who were angry about being turned out of their jobs.
Yes, I did mean Ahmad Chalabi, who was supposed to be able to become the leader of the new "free" Iraq. That effort was another of the complete failures associated with the invasion of Iraq. - What a god awful mistake that was!
I did not mean to let George W. off easily. I DO believe that between Gore, McCain and Bush, W. Bush was uniquely UNQUALIFIED to understand or appreciate the threat from Al Qaeda – he had NO FOREIGN policy experience and the “experts” he depended upon had experience that was out-of-date. Wolfowitz NOT knowing about the danger from Osama Bin Laden was very telling.
More directly to your point, I think that George W. Bush was NOT a very intellectually able man, and seemed to be consumed at times with an almost hyper-testosterone affect. Whatever it was, he seemed very uncurious about the drivel that Ahmad Chowdry, Dick Cheney, Don Rumseld and Paul Wolfowitz fed him in regards to the “hazards” of Saddam’s Iraq. He and his administration seemed totally unprepared and unaware that by invading Iraq, they were eliminating a powerful foe of Iran, and that they seemed to have been caught completely unaware by the looting of Iraqi government buildings and the likely results of their asinine decisions to disband the Iraqi Army and to ban any past member of the Baath Party from future Iraq governments. The colossal blunder to invade was compounded by the stupidity with which the initial occupation was handled and the region is less stable from those criminally stupid and foolish decisions made during 2002 and 2003.
Well said. I have thought long and hard about how it was that Bush (43) was such a complete disaster as President (and I challenge anyone to argue otherwise). And I finally decided it was because he was simply in over his head. That and his new-found religiosity made him think that as long as his motives were pure, somehow God would make everything turn out all right. Although there were many awful things that Bush (43) did, everything else pales in comparison to the Iraq War. And the counterarguments you mention were only some of the reasons it was so stupid. Besides "eliminating a powerful foe of Iran" (as you put it), there was also the idea that
"we would be greeted as liberators" as if once Sadaam was gone we could simply head home (and don't forget that "democracy would flourish). When I heard that, it sounded like they were comparing it to the Allies liberation of Paris. And, sure enough, Cheney was quoted as saying just that. The idea that they couldn't see the difference between liberating France (which had a functioning "home-grown" civil government for years before the Nazis) and "liberating" Iraq (which not only didn't have a functioning "home-grown" civil government then but had never had one at any time in the past) totally escaped me. P.S. I assume you are referring to Ahmad Chalabi, not Ahmand Chowdry
Good point - about that being greeted as liberators and being showered with flowers.... It made me think that Dick Cheney and others were smoking or snorting some sort of hallucinogenic substance. The repeated denials that there was an insurgency and that there was any need to bring in the type of equipment like MRAPs instead of HUMVEEs to protect our soldiers from the IEDs. Such criminally stubborn and stupid insistence that there was NO Insurgency because the big-shot civilians in the Pentagon said that there was NO Insurgency. All during the time when our soldiers were fighting an insurgency that was started at least in part by ex-Baathists and ex_Iraqi army members who were angry about being turned out of their jobs.
Yes, I did mean Ahmad Chalabi, who was supposed to be able to become the leader of the new "free" Iraq. That effort was another of the complete failures associated with the invasion of Iraq. - What a god awful mistake that was!