“Kelly’s attitude aside, was Cheney and Bush wrong to invade Iraq?”
They were absolutely right to invade Iraq. With the intel that was coming in, it would have been negligent for any President not to invade Iraq, at that time.
The error was in sticking around to nation build. 250 killed in military phase. 4,200 killed in nation building phase.
The biggest lesson learned is that 1. Some cultures simply aren’t ready to live in constitutional republics, and 2. Nation building is long, ugly and protracted and Democrats will come in and screw it up even worse.
Candidate Bush, in the debates preceding the presidential election in 2000, specifically criticized “nation-building”
following a military intervention (such as that of Bosnia).
So, like his “read my lips” father, once again a Bush went back on his words, and the nation paid the price as the result.