[Paul46360]

JUST STFU AND GO AWAY.
Or..your speaking makes the other options sound SOOO MUCH BETTER.

[Popman]

Not to defend Jeb Bush, but it’s pretty obvious he was too quick to defend his brothers decision and missed the full question...

I think we have all done that at times....

Still not going to vote for him...

[logi_cal869]

Did anyone really believe he’d have stated anything to the contrary?

Really?

[nuconvert]

It wouldn’t have been a mixed bag, if Bush had ignored the liberals and really taken out all the people that needed to be and then gone into Iran and destroyed the leadership there.

The problem isn’t that Pres. Bush went into Iraq, but that he allowed his hands to be tied there with ridiculous rules of engagement and then didn’t go into Iran to get rid of the current gov’t there. (which btw would have been relatively easy at that time ....not so easy anymore)

[SomeCallMeTim]

I sometimes feel like a lone wolf saying these things to people.

First of all, W didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. Given what was “known” at the time, it would have been irresponsible to allow Saddam to stay in power.

But, as this author points out... even now, the decision looks to have been justified. The biggest mistake made was by Obama in completely removing our forces.

[nomad]

Well I wouldn't!

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

"yes,he would still have gone into Iraq in 2003, as his brother did when president".

Of course he would have, because Jeb is owned by the same foreign powers as George.

[bigbob]

I agree with him. Saddam had to be removed.

[Romulus]

Not one word about the regional destabilization that unleashed radical islam to destroy Christian communities existing since apostolic times. Not one word.

But when have neocons ever given a thought to such things? Demented with dreams of secular messianism, America has been wreaking havoc worldwide like an out-of-control giant’s child for over a century now.

[Lorianne]

No we should not have gone into Iraq just to get rid of one bad guy. They have an endless supply of them. We’d be there for eternity.

This is stupid. We should ONLY go to war based on OUR national defense, period ... not to help some Muslims kill other Muslims.

I don’t care for Obama but it’s not fair to blame him for the Middle East erupting into sectarian religious civil wars. These have been going on for over 1000 years ... way before Obama, Bush or the USA for that matter.

These religious civil wars between Muslims have ZERO to do with us.

[dfwgator]

I should have been understood that if we removed Saddam, it would require a commitment of at least twenty years to stay in Iraq afterward.

[combat_boots]

We have to concede that the contrast of these situations could not be more stark:

Not good: Saddam and no nukes or WMDs (not true-sent to Syria, another Baathist regime, along with what exists in Iraq now and was suppressed by Rove(?))

Good: Iran and nuclear ambitions, potentially already having nuclear weapons they developed or got from N Korea

[stylin19a]

nobody talks about it, but taking out Saddam required that his 2 sons also be taken out.

regardless, something had to give with Saddam eventually. He was making a mockery of “Food for Oil”, “No Fly Zones” etc...

[Billthedrill]

The premise of this question is nearly always false: that GWB made the decision in some sort of tabula rasa situation with nothing else going on around it to influence him. He was handed the festering butt end of a ten-year-old shooting war in a time of considerable international destabilization. No decision-maker is ever accorded the privilege of "knowing what we know now," and it is grotesquely distorting to attempt to judge him or her on the basis of a decade and a half's hindsight. It's a stupid mind game played for no other purpose than to advance the speaker's sense of superiority.

There was no "good" course of action available, not even inaction. Action leads to the presumption that he could have foreseen the actions of his successors. Inaction leads to the sort of "why didn't we stop Hitler before" questions that are equally futile. Given what he knew when he knew it he made the decision he did. That is all that has any basis of fact behind it.