The only winner was Iran.
Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner!
If US intelligence was to be beleived it was probably right to invade. However, we had no plans for what to do after Saddam was removed. We then decided to do the nation building nightmare that Colin Powell demanded.
The Iraq war showed numerous chinks in the US’s proverbial armor:
US intelligence is a bloody joke! They lie, they get Americans killed and wounded time and again with their mistakes. They are never held accountable for their failures and lies. They presume to make decisions above their paygrade and they think they deserve to choose the president instead of the people.
The US military while it can kill anything put in front of it quickly was shown to have no forward thinking strategic visionaries. Afghanistan itself showed 20 years of failure on the strategic level. They are not even conventional thinkers, much less out of the box strategist.
The US military does not fight to win at the strategic level and allows American GI’s to die needlessly with their micromanagement of forces on the ground. In Vietnam it was said we fought with one arm behind our back, in Iraq we were handcuffed and allowed to kick with one foot-—sometimes.
I supported the war initially but after 2016 and the behavior of the entire US government and both parties, throw in Covid and one can see the government would rather lie than get near the truth and the people are not to be trusted and are the enemies of the state.