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Reply to: “If you have to debunk “war conspiracy theories” ten years after the fact, then you can be sure that the military campaign in question was a complete ‘effing disaster.”

In the real world, the fastest blitzkrieg in the history of the human race was militarily a spectacular triumph, by any serious standards. There have been many criticisms of it. President Bush sent forces in too quickly, and should have given the inspectors more time to search. Not only that, but President Bush sent forces too late, and allowed much of Sadam’s chemical arsenal to be evacuated to Syria. President Bush sent too small a force, and could not control the country. And besides that, President Bush sent too large a force, and this offended the Iraqis. We went to war to seize Iraq’s oil, and we shouldn’t have. Also, we didn’t go to seize Iraq’s oil, and we should have. President Bush relied too heavily on local allies, and they fumbled. In addition, President Bush didn’t make enough use of local allies, and put too much of the load on US forces. President Bush is too short. And besides that, he’s too tall.

(OK, I made up the last two. The rest are criticism actually leveled at President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war.) The mere fact that the criticisms of the war point in all directions, is a clue to the fact that there was no clear-cut flaw in the campaign.

Also, if you mean to talks seriously about it, you do need to acknowledge that President Bush inherited the Iraq war from President Clinton. President Clinton bombed Iraq more or less day-in, day-out, for his entire term in office. He was losing, but he did fire a lot of missiles, and drop a lot of bombs (and dropped a lot of concrete blocks). By the time the younger President Bush took office, the question was not whether to fight the war we had been fighting for the last decade, but rather how to fight it.

It does seem that, when President Bush proposed to win the war we had been fighting for the last ten years (we went to war with Iraq at the beginning of 1991, and never stopped until President Bush won it), all the newspaper editors in the United States suffered simultaneous psychotic breaks, and completely forgot that the war they had been reporting on for the last ten years, had ever existed. The campaign to win the war we had been fighting for the last decade was known as “Preemptive War”. The war he inherited from President Clinton was call “George Bush’s War of Choice”. The strike by the third largest alliance in the history of the human race was “Acting Unilaterally”. Referring to the fastest blitzkrieg in history as “Being Bogged Down in a Quagmire”, was trivial by comparison.

I’m tempted to say “You can’t make this stuff up.” Obviously, I would be wrong, because someone did make this stuff up, and that’s the ultimate proof of feasibility. But anyone who fell for any of this, should take it as a warning. The lies don’t get more obvious. Anyone who fell for any of them, can be sure that the same liars have fooled him about other things, too.

I don't really dispute anything you've posted there. Nothing I've ever said in opposition to the invasion of Iraq was ever based on media reports like the idiotic criticisms you've referenced there.

The only error in your thinking is the way you present the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a continuum dating back to the first Gulf War in 1990-91. You are correct in describing it this way, but that doesn't necessarily make it justifiable. In fact, when the Saudi influence in radical Islam started getting some scrutiny after 9/11, a lot of people began to wonder about something I've contended since 1990 -- that perhaps the U.S. was on the wrong side in Desert Storm.

Thank you for good explanation of things regarding Iraq.

I read that 550 tons of yellowcake was found and sold to Canada three years later, during Iraq War. I also know that we should have went to Iraq sooner instead of giving a notice, almost unheard of in previous wars....there was a convoy of trucks on Fox News that went into Syria from Iraq prior to start of Iraq War, I saw it on TV. Sadaam sent something in all those trucks for safe keeping??

I was upset when elder Pres Bush had a parade and claimed we won in Iraq, and I told a friend...we will have to go back! Premature. I agree with what you have said, and I haven’t tried to discuss it on FR.... Nice to see facts and not emotional drama! I also saw Pres Bush in 2006 state in a speech that the next President would need to leave a substantial force in Iraq, or it would create a vacuum, which would be filled by a caliphate. That speech exists!