The Iraq War retrospective Thread

[kandrathe]

As I said, it was obvious before the war that: (a) the Bush administration was peddling intelligence without regard for its truth or reliability to sell the Iraq war;

I agree with that.

(b ) there was a significant chance that a US invasion in the middle east would lead to disaster.

I'm not seeing a disaster. I'm seeing some huge challenges. What are you seeing? I see an insurgency that was able to grab an early foothold, and that has been largely rooted out. I see a ton of money pouring in, with very little of it going toward actual construction because all the projects need additional security. I see the Shia south aligning themselves with Iran, as it always was and always will be. I see the Kurdish north establishing a powerful Kurdish identity and making Turkey, Syria and Iran a little nervous. I see a fearful Sunni minority worried about all the payback they are due from the years of abuse they inflicted on the Shia and the Kurds. These things were issues frozen in time from the time that Iraq was formed. Frozen just as Yugoslavia was frozen, by dictatorship and heavy handed repression.

I didn't say it was obvious that Iraq had no chemical weapons . It is clear that, since Iraq did not in fact possess such weapons (not withstanding your hopes of finding them even now buried somewhere in the desert), the evidence for them was far from conclusive.

Pete is correct. If they exist, we failed to secure them.

But so what if Iraq had chemical weapons? What vital threat would that have posed to the US? Nuclear materials might be another issue, but there was no credible evidence that Iraq had them (despite the administration's irresponsibly loose talk about aluminum tubes, mobile bioweapons labs, niger yellow cake, mushroom clouds,

In terms of going to war I believe the WMD issue was a red herring.

... and all the rest of it) nor was there any credible evidence that Iraq was working with al Qaeda. In fact, it was clear that Iraq, basically a secular dictatorship, was a very unlikely co-conspirator.

From the 9/11 commission report, page 79,

"To protect his own ties with Iraq, Turabi reportedly brokered an agreement
that Bin Ladin would stop supporting activities against Saddam. Bin Ladin
apparently honored this pledge, at least for a time, although he continued to
aid a group of Islamist extremists operating in part of Iraq (Kurdistan) outside
of Baghdad’s control. In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major
defeats by Kurdish forces. In 2001, with Bin Ladin’s help they re-formed into
an organization called Ansar al Islam.There are indications that by then the Iraqi
regime tolerated and may even have helped Ansar al Islam against the common
Kurdish enemy.

With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met
with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995.
Bin Ladin is said to have asked for space to establish training camps, as well as
assistance in procuring weapons, but there is no evidence that Iraq responded
to this request. As described below, the ensuing years saw additional efforts to
establish connections. (link)

So what I'm saying is that now knowing this, the threat was there but not realized other than the Iraqi supported "poisons" base that Ansar al-Islam had just south of Kurdish territory. However, if you put yourself in the shoes of an intelligence analyst in the mid to late 90's and you know that high ranking Iraqi's are meeting in Sudan with known high level al Queda, what would you believe?

I'm not referring to the military aspects: many bad things happen in war, one reason why you should be damn sure what you're doing before starting one.

“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.” -- Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz

I was referring to the total lack of planning by the administration for the post-invasion phase, which was criminally incompetent in my view.

I think this war was unique in how quickly it was executed. The pencil pushers couldn't keep up with the tanks. There was a definite vacuum between destroying the administration and rebuilding it which was exacerbated by the swiftness in which every city fell almost simultaneously. The problem of re-establishing civilian authority quickly enough to prevent the chaos that ensued was beyond the capability of any nation, including the US. Moving fast was a good tactic for winning the war, but a bad tactic for securing the peace.

I disagree. Hussein did not decide to invade Iraq, Bush did. That was entirely his choice, not Hussein's.

Here is our fundamental disagreement. If you don't believe that Saddam's regime made actions that brought about the need for war, then we will never agree on any of the smaller points either.

It's true that congress made a big mistake in failing to prevent the war with it's authorization of the use of force in Iraq, and those democrats who were too cowed to vote their conscience bear some responsibility for that. But the only meaningful opposition came from democrats (Robert Byrd, whom I'm not always a fan of, gave a great speech before the vote, which was unfortunately not listened to), and it is the republicans who are most to blame. (According to Wikipedia, the yes/no vote Republican vs. Democrat was 215/6 vs. 81/126 in the House and 48/1 vs. 29/21 in the Senate.)

You can blame the Republicans if you like, but they were likely going to align with their President. It was the Democrats who didn't believe in it, that voted for it anyway you should be most upset with. The democrats had 50 votes to Republicans 49 in the Senate, they could have stopped it if they believed it was the wrong thing to do.

My vehement opposition to the Iraq war is not based on party politics. Blair in the UK is highly culpable for his role in supporting the war, and had Clinton done what Bush did I'd be just as opposed. But the fact is: Bush started this war.

You mean the one in 2003, yes. Who started the one in 1991?

I wasn't aware that Fox News, for example is a "left-wing" media venue, or has no foothold in TV "news".

Yes, there is one. However, there are 10 to 20 channels depending on where you live on the other side of the debate.

It was very easy to offer an alternative: don't invade Iraq. Now, I agree, there are no good alternatives left.

Ok, so you leave Saddam in power, and then what happens? We lift sanctions? We allow him to rebuild his military industrial capabilities. Then, what happens?