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Dick Lanier's avatar

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

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John Kendrick's avatar

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.

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John Kendrick's avatar

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!

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