political note

[anotheranon]

Well, duh! (similar stuff here). I will concede that maybe in this case Wolfowitz might have been taken out of context, but still, I think it demonstrates that the differences between dealing with N. Korea and Iraq depend at least in part on Iraq's oil fields.

What amazes me is that Wolfowitz says it aloud, because the war was supposed to be about Weapons of Mass Destruction (TM), right?

..Right??

Comments

Re:

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

I think war with Iraq was the right choice.

I think there should have been a stronger troop presence, though; I believe it was Stalin who said, "Quantity has a quality all its own".

I think there should have been a more thorough plan for what to do during the later stages of the war and afterwards. There seems to have been some piss-poor planning on getting MPs in, along with other rebuilding resources, and making decisions and following through is supposed to be one of this administration's strengths.

I believe that we should have made sure the administration was all on the same page -- they shouldn't have to "toe the party line", but there needs to be more unanimity between, say, the Pentagon and the DoD and the State Department. There still seem to be some people who want to just pack up and skedaddle, and it needs to be made crystal clear that we're going to stay as long as it takes, and give some idea of what things will actually look like when it's time to go.

I think that some of the potential benefits of winning should have been at least mentioned -- for example, we're drawing down in Saudi Arabia and reexamining our relationship with them. While we shouldn't oversell (or even "sell" at all, in some senses of the word), we have to make a case, and the case shouldn't be oversimplified by leaving out potentially important things.

I'd be happy to discuss it further, but I suspect that beer would improve the quality of the discussion. :)

Re:

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Well, here's my take on it.

I do not think that the Iraq war was a good choice. While any humanitarian efforts are commendable and Saddam was certainly a bad guy, the U.S. simply could not afford the war, and the occupation (for that is what it is) is sucking even more and more money away. I am not convinced that the U.S. did much good over there apart from ousting Saddam. In addition, I question whether Iraq had/has biological/chemical weapons, and if they could have attacked the U.S. with them if they had.

I also think that this war drained $ and manpower from the search for the terrorists who actually attacked the U.S.

Having said this, once they were over there, I agree with you that the planning and preparation could have been better. I'm no military expert, but it seems like the troops were undersupplied and the ground assault wasn't well planned.

Now that we're there, it only makes sense that we should stay and clean up our mess, but I question whether the remaining troops are a capable peacekeeping force, and whether Iraqi democracy is really the U.S. government's aim.