20 Years Ago on March 19…

 

Smoke covers the presidential palace compound during a massive US-led air raid in Baghdad, March 2003…US President George W. Bush ordered air strikes on Baghdad, launching the war for “regime change” and the ousting of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies. Such a belief is now deemed to have been false, although the length of time between Colin Powell’s February 5 address to the United Nations, in which he laid out the case, and the subsequent Allied invasion – exactly six weeks later – left plenty of time for such efforts to be covered up, dismantled, or moved.

And so, with apparent evidence on both sides to support their respective cases, the conspiracy theorists, and the conspiracy realists, continue to joust over the truth, which is likely never to be fully known.

Regardless, or irregardless as the case may be, I remember the television coverage of those aerial attacks on that day exactly two decades ago. It was awe-inspiring, and thrilling.  The subsequent initial phase of the land war – which lasted just over a month and was spearheaded by the United States with support from the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland, and the following “quagmire” years resulted in the deaths and wounding, both physically and mentally, of tens of thousands of Allied troops, and in consequences that we, and they, still live with today.

As cowards do, Saddam Hussein ran away and hid from reprisals, remaining undiscovered until December 2003, when American soldiers found him, filthy and deranged, hiding in a hole in the ground near ad-Dawr. He was subsequently interrogated, tried, and executed (by the interim Iraqi government) on December 30, 2006. Sic semper tyrannis.

Today, I remember not the meretricious crapweasels of the various governments on all sides who have been – ever since – revising the rather clear history of the war, those who started it, and even, sometimes, those who fought in it. I choose rather to remember the valiant soldiers from all services and all nations who fought, and those who were wounded and who died in the cause of freedom and to keep us safe.

From February 7, 2001–just a month into the first Persian Gulf War:

And from the UK:

Australia:

And Poland:

Thank you.

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  1. mildlyo Member
    mildlyo
    @mildlyo

    Thank you, @She, for opening this discussion up for dissenting views.

    I despair sometimes when hearing the “Bush lied, people died” narrative for the lost context of the (second) Iraq war that began in 2003. There is the matter of the first Iraq war, fought by George Bush 41 in 1990 to reverse the invasion of Kuwait. That war ended without any settlement, an armistice ended major military action without any resolution. It is a fact of history that this war continued all the way to 2003 as a low-scale conflict. I think we bombed a border post or some such every day of the Clinton administrations.

    After the 9/11 attacks, George Bush 43 relaunched the Iraq war to clean up the mess he inherited from his Father and predecessor. In common with his Father, Bush 43 was a decisive man with mutable principles and limited intellectual gifts. These limits played out in his response to the sudden crisis he faced.

    Bush 43 faced a shocked and vengeful public that demanded that something be done. To fulfill this mandate he launched the special forces attack on Afghanistan, a quick response with global support from regional powers like Russia and China. His wish to finish off Iraq was immediately stimied by NATO member Turkey, which signaled it would not cooperate with an attack by European-based US army troops. The United States had spent decades and untold Billions building a military force that could move from Germany to the Iraq border on paved roads thru NATO allies the entire distance, potentially relaunching the war in days or a very few weeks.

    This did not happen. Turkey balked at letting US troops transit its borders, requiring a naval war circling the globe and transiting the Pacific. This diplomatic failure delayed the second Iraq war by a year, leading to questions of the necessity of this expense and effort. Bush 43’s lack of principle faltered during this point and instead of laying out the facts clearly he adopted the question of weapons of mass destruction as a selling point with widespread political appeal.

    The question of weapons of mass destruction is complicated. Remember that the first atomic bombs were built with 1950’s technology. Fifty years later the technical requirements to build a bomb were well known: you needed precision detonators to set off explosives surrounding a mass of fissionable material. Saddam Husein had explosives and bought timers on the black market. He was negotiating to buy Uranium ores from sources in Africa. He had “scud” ballistic missiles that might be able to deliver any bomb his people could come up with. All of the components were in hand to run a bomb program. The technical steps to convert natural Uranium to plutonium are only difficult if you care about the lives of your workers, not a common concern of tyrants.

    All the pieces were in place, but no finished bombs. Thus Bush 43 is condemned as a liar.

    • #61
  2. GlennAmurgis Coolidge
    GlennAmurgis
    @GlennAmurgis

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Actually, the war was premised on:

    The only problem is what W sold it on – WMD is what the Administration sold it on. 

     

    • #62
  3. She Member
    She
    @She

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    Only two national anthems in the world reference another country. And of those they reference each other. Poland’s talks about Italy.

    Italys talks about Poland. Weird huh.

    That is weird.  

    I think, for sheer bloodthirstiness in a national anthem, nothing surpasses the French.  Via Encyclopedia Britannica, in one of the rather more tepid translations:

    Let us go, children of the fatherland,
    Our day of glory has arrived.
    Against us the bloody flag of tyranny
    is raised; the bloody flag is raised.

    Do you hear in the countryside
    The roar of those savage soldiers?
    They come right into our arms
    To cut the throats of our sons, our comrades.

    To arms, citizens!
    Form your battalions,
    Let us march, let us march!
    That their impure blood
    Should water our fields.

    Sacred love of the fatherland,
    Guide and support our vengeful arms.
    Liberty, beloved liberty,
    Fight with your defenders; fight
    with your defenders.

    Under our flags, so that victory
    Will rush to your manly strains;
    That your dying enemies
    Should see your triumph and glory!

    To arms, citizens! etc.

     

    • #63
  4. HeavyWater Inactive
    HeavyWater
    @HeavyWater

    Saddam Hussain’s regime was brutal to the Iraqi people, especially the Kurds and the Shia.  When the mass graves were discovered as US troops conquered Iraqi territory and attempts were made to identify the victims, Iraqi people came out, knowing that their relatives were among those slaughtered by Saddam Hussain’s regime, and were wailing-crying.  In the Kurdish north, Saddam Hussain attempted to wipe out entire communities.  

    The US-UK no-fly zones did allow the Kurds to obtain some level of autonomy from Saddam’s regime after the 1991 Gulf war until Saddam’s regime was toppled.  

    We can debate the question of whether the US should have expended so much blood and treasure to toppled Saddam’s regime.  But one thing that isn’t debatable is that Saddam had no moral right to rule over Iraq’s population.  

    • #64
  5. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    She (View Comment):
    I think, for sheer bloodthirstiness in a national anthem, nothing surpasses the French. 

    Spent it all on their anthem and left nothing for the battlefield.

    • #65
  6. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    Instugator (View Comment):

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):
    Which is the “lie of the century”: WMD in Iraq or safe and effective?

    “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.” — Barack Obama

    That is a good one.   The death toll and expense are probably less (so far), but the existence ACA precludes any possible market-based reform of a $5trillion/year industry:(   I will note that the ACA would not have happened, if Bush had not so badly bungled the Iraq situation that we ended up with 60 Democrat Senators.    Woulda coulda shoulda.

    Bush also gave us the “abandon the free market to save the free market” lie.  What is the price tag of bailing out those gamblers bankers?   The whole QE and today’s inflation caused bank failures are the fruit of that falsehood. 

    • #66
  7. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    Al Sparks (View Comment):
    And that’s why George W. Bush’s attempt at Wilsonian Democracy failed, and why he decided to fool himself that 4-6 years of occupation duty was enough.

    The mistake was thinking/claiming that Iraq was a cohesive country in the first place.   It was an area drawn long ago by Britain with a groups of people that want to kill each other.   Removing the strongman that was oppressing everyone was not going to bring about peace.  Biden was right.  That answer was divide Iraq into separate countries and try to keep people from killing the next country.  Think Yugoslavia.   Instead it was like that scene from The Joker where he breaks the pool cue and says “we are going to have try outs”. 

    • #67
  8. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    She (View Comment):

    The “shock and awe” tactics on display in March of 2003 were intended to remove, quickly and once-and-for-all, Saddam Hussein and the Baathists in Iraq,  with the idea that they would be replaced at all levels of governance and the population, and without much effort on our part, with an immediate and spontaneous outbreak of flowering democracy and agreeable Western values, country-wide.

    If such a strategy is ever to succeed at all, it must be predicated–before anything else–on an absolutely bulletproof (literally) understanding of a nation’s people, its environment, and its culture.  In the case of the 2003 Iraq war, this simply wasn’t the case.  And the fallout, after the initial and brilliant deployment of technology and personnel, show that clearly in the price that the West, and the Middle East paid and continues to pay.

    I’m not sure how, following the events–including many catastrophic mistakes–of the last half of the twentieth-century, the leading Western nations can have been so dumb, or so hubristic.  Perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rapid adoption of relatively democratic governance by many of the formerly Eastern Bloc nations blinded them to the fact that those folks were, in many cases, Europeans with an existing Judeo-Christian heritage at the time of their liberation.  But that’s not the case with all countries, especially those of the Middle East and in Africa.

    I don’t think that democracy per se was the problem, the big mistake was failing to anticipate the scope and duration of the insurgency.

    Japan was not Judeo-Christian and had no tradition of democracy, but the occupation there went much more smoothly.  I think a key difference is that Japan had long been a unified nation, while Iraq was an artificial construction of colonialism held together (barely) by Saddam’s brutal regime.  It fell apart much like Yugoslavia did.  Perhaps in hindsight partitioning the country would’ve been the better option, though I recognize that was fraught with its own set of problems such as Turkey’s opposition to an independent Kurdistan.

    As for democracy, the government we installed is still standing, it didn’t collapse like the Afghan government did after we withdrew.  It’s actually proven surprisingly resilient so far.

    • #68
  9. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    GrannyDude (View Comment):
    The comparison of Iraq to postwar Germany and Japan should’ve made the futility  clear.  American troops were (and are) still on the ground in both those countries; there was no indication that Americans, however riled by 9/11, were up for a self-sacrificing project that would continue for fifty or sixty years. 

    Yes but basing troops in Germany and Japan (and Korea) is not particularly controversial since they don’t keep coming home dead or maimed by IEDs.

    I suspect that the Bush administration fully anticipated keeping troops in Iraq permanently, in fact they probably viewed that as a plus.  It would give us bases to use in any future operations against Iran, and make us less dependent on the unreliable Saudis.

    What they failed to anticipate (see my prior comment) was the scope and effectiveness of the insurgency.

    • #69
  10. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):
    Bush also gave us the “abandon the free market to save the free market” lie.

    Is that technically a lie?  It’s more of a paradox, or perhaps just nonsense.

    • #70
  11. Instugator Thatcher
    Instugator
    @Instugator

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):
    I don’t think that democracy per se was the problem, the big mistake was failing to anticipate the scope and duration of the insurgency.

    The insurgency was caused and abetted by Bremer and the idiots from the Kennedy School of Government.

    See the video for more

    https://encrypted-vtbn0.gstatic.com/video?q=tbn:ANd9GcSvhWSIWauiP-PAxQMsoQokfVwdv0u8cWZeYg

    • #71
  12. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    ToryWarWriter (View Comment):

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    JoelB (View Comment):
    I suspect that the length of the build-up to invasion gave Saddam plenty of time to haul most of them off to Syria and hide the rest.

    Iraq had chemical weapons that they used against Iran in the 80’s. But the nuclear program (yellow cake from Niger) and aluminum tubes was always a lie. We have watched Iran spend the last 20 years trying to refine uranium without luck. They claimed that yellow cake and tubes was an imminent threat.

    Oh I think they have plenty of luck and likely sitting on a few nukes by now. They like Isreal choose not to detonate them.

    Meanwhile…Iran and Saudi Arabia continue to bury the hatchet as Saudi moves further into the Russia/Chinese orbit.

     

    https://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2023/03/20/iranian-president-receives-invitation-from-saudi-king-to-visit-riyadh-official/

    When the Biden Administration is filled with under qualified LGBTQ-infinity folks, why would the Saudis trust them? 

    • #72
  13. She Member
    She
    @She

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    I don’t think that democracy per se was the problem, the big mistake was failing to anticipate the scope and duration of the insurgency.

    Japan was not Judeo-Christian and had no tradition of democracy, but the occupation there went much more smoothly.  I think a key difference is that Japan had long been a unified nation, while Iraq was an artificial construction of colonialism held together (barely) by Saddam’s brutal regime. 

    Good point.  I’d still suggest that there was a fundamental lack of understanding of the country and its peoples, one which, given the abounding examples of the reversion–with and without outside interference–into chaos of sundry former British and other Western colonies, many of which were similarly cobbled together across deep ethnic, tribal, and religious divides, should have been quite evident to the most casual of observers by the beginning of the twenty-first century.  To me, it seems like very much an own goal, stemming from inexperience, hubris, and ignorant or malicious meddling.

    Regarding the need for a brutal dictator to hold such parts of the world together, it was almost ever thus.  The formulation which I think entered the modern parlance via FDR that “[I forget which one] may be a sonofabitch, but he’s our sonofabitch,” was tried and true even before Roosevelt’s presidential tenure.  In modern times, I’ve applied it myself, at various points, to Saddam, Gadaffi, Big and Baby Assad, and a few others. 

    Sometimes, threading the needle properly, when it comes to pragmatism versus firm principles, is harder than it should be.

    Regrettably.

     

     

     

    • #73
  14. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Actually, the war was premised on:

    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    • #74
  15. namlliT noD Member
    namlliT noD
    @DonTillman

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    • #75
  16. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    • #76
  17. namlliT noD Member
    namlliT noD
    @DonTillman

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    CNN opinion piece don’t count.

    What percentage of our oil was supplied by Iraq after the war?

    • #77
  18. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    Bishop Wash (View Comment):

    We actually fight as we teach, I thought.

    The D. E. I. training will have have its impact.

     

     

    Could someone with graphics skill create a meme around a variation of the New Hampshire motto

    Live Free or Die

    edited to read 

    Live Free or DEI 

    • #78
  19. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    CNN opinion piece don’t count.

    What percentage of our oil was supplied by Iraq after the war?

    In truth I don’t know Don.  But I think the question should be: how much of Iraq’s oil did American companies make a profit from?  Whoever bought it.

    • #79
  20. John Park Member
    John Park
    @jpark

    I am late to this parade, but I don’t think the WMD claim was a lie. Our friend Saddam was bluffing; he didn’t want to get whacked, so he had tractor trailers drive around. He also played footsie with Al-Qaeda, disguising his approaches, but secure in the knowledge that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

    • #80
  21. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    CNN opinion piece don’t count.

    What percentage of our oil was supplied by Iraq after the war?

    In truth I don’t know Don. But I think the question should be: how much of Iraq’s oil did American companies make a profit from? Whoever bought it.

    If that was the actual motivation for the invasion, the administration was a heck of a lot dumber than I thought.  We could’ve saved a lot of blood and money by invading Venezuela instead.

    • #81
  22. She Member
    She
    @She

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    CNN opinion piece don’t count.

    What percentage of our oil was supplied by Iraq after the war?

    In truth I don’t know Don. But I think the question should be: how much of Iraq’s oil did American companies make a profit from? Whoever bought it.

    If that was the actual motivation for the invasion, the administration was a heck of a lot dumber than I thought. We could’ve saved a lot of blood and money by invading Venezuela instead.

    And certainly we could have saved a lot of oil, and/or gas.

    • #82
  23. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    CNN opinion piece don’t count.

    What percentage of our oil was supplied by Iraq after the war?

    In truth I don’t know Don. But I think the question should be: how much of Iraq’s oil did American companies make a profit from? Whoever bought it.

    If that was the actual motivation for the invasion, the administration was a heck of a lot dumber than I thought. We could’ve saved a lot of blood and money by invading Venezuela instead.

    You still could.  Never say die!

    (Actually wasn’t there some kind of Bay of Pigs type attempt?)

    (That Juan Guaido could still turn out to be of some use….)

    • #83
  24. Steven Seward Member
    Steven Seward
    @StevenSeward

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    I was for invading Iraq. I also thought that since we had a history, post World War II, of successfully occupying both Germany and Japan, we could successfully do so in Iraq.

    Well, we won the war, but lost the occupation.

    This idea that we lost the occupation bewilders me.  Iraq has been a democracy now for 20 years and has never reverted back to military coups and dictators.  Their average standard of  living has increased by something like five or six-fold.

    And one big reason we lost the occupation is that George W. Bush was not honest, either with himself or the country, that it would take a couple of decades of occupation to turn Iraq into a western style democracy.

    If you have the expectation that they are going to immediately become like Sweden and the Netherlands, you are going to be let down.

    • #84
  25. namlliT noD Member
    namlliT noD
    @DonTillman

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    Did we get any?

    A little

    https://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/index.html

    CNN opinion piece don’t count.

    What percentage of our oil was supplied by Iraq after the war?

    In truth I don’t know Don. But I think the question should be: how much of Iraq’s oil did American companies make a profit from? Whoever bought it.

    Well, since we have all of the world’s information at our fingertips, we can look it up:

    So… our oil imports from Iraq are not significant, either before or after the war.

    • #85
  26. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude
    @GrannyDude

    HeavyWater (View Comment):
    But one thing that isn’t debatable is that Saddam had no moral right to rule over Iraq’s population.

     Jerry’s odd defense notwithstanding, Saddam was a stand-out monster in a region with plenty of ’em, and Iraq under his reign was notably terrifying even in a pretty darned scary neighborhood. 

    I remember saying, back during the runup to the war that I could scoff at Bush, but I didn’t have to make the decision. And if it had been possible to relieve Iraq of Saddam (whose role models were Stalin and Hitler, BTW) and give the Iraqis space and time to come up with something at least a tiny bit better, that would’ve been a good thing. Wouldn’t it?

      And it seemed possible, didn’t it? It’s just that the project would’ve required so much more in the way of manpower, resources, dedication, focus, patience and time than America and Americans were likely to prove willing to sustain, especially when the early errors resulted in bad outcomes (e.g. looting, murder) and even worse t.v. 

    Having watched what has been happening in our own, American republic over the past decade, I’m no longer convinced that even a country with a long, robust  experience of freedom, self-determination and a reasonably stable and peaceful democratic governance, without even the excuse of  catastrophic economic problems or other unusual burden, can resist entropy. 

    • #86
  27. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude
    @GrannyDude

    Joseph Stanko (View Comment):

    GrannyDude (View Comment):
    The comparison of Iraq to postwar Germany and Japan should’ve made the futility clear. American troops were (and are) still on the ground in both those countries; there was no indication that Americans, however riled by 9/11, were up for a self-sacrificing project that would continue for fifty or sixty years.

    Yes but basing troops in Germany and Japan (and Korea) is not particularly controversial since they don’t keep coming home dead or maimed by IEDs.

    I suspect that the Bush administration fully anticipated keeping troops in Iraq permanently, in fact they probably viewed that as a plus. It would give us bases to use in any future operations against Iran, and make us less dependent on the unreliable Saudis.

    What they failed to anticipate (see my prior comment) was the scope and effectiveness of the insurgency.

    Good points. 

    Japan was also an island, rather than a cobbled-together county surrounded by interested parties with, shall we say, mixed motives when it came to whom they wished to be allied with, or appear to be allied with, and for how long…

    But these were, at least in theory, “known knowns,” in Rumsfeld’s phrase. 

    This, by the way, is the book my son wrote about one episode in the Iraq war. (Braggy mom).

     

    • #87
  28. Steven Seward Member
    Steven Seward
    @StevenSeward

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    So, cowards run away? Didn’t MacArthur run away?

    For that matter, King David ran away, more than once, didn’t he? Was he a coward?

    I like the post, Susan. I don’t like the gratuitous swipe at Saddam Hussein. Maybe he was a coward, maybe not.

    Americans tend to use the word “coward” when they can’t think of anything else more humiliating, whether the word technically applies or not.  Bill Maher was castigated when he noted that the 911 Hijackers/mass murderers were not really “cowards”  (and I think he was right).  However, I’m not going to lose any sleep if someone mislabels Saddam Hussein, one of history’s great mass murderers.  I’ll save my indignation for the criticism of more upstanding people.

    • #88
  29. GrannyDude Member
    GrannyDude
    @GrannyDude

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Iraq’s oil….was not a factor.

    It was, inevitably, a factor. But not only in explaining the U.S  interest in Iraq. Oil was also the reason that Saddam could cause so much trouble, and oil explains why some countries were unwilling to stand up to or condemn Saddam. (France, for example. )

     

    • #89
  30. Steven Seward Member
    Steven Seward
    @StevenSeward

    GlennAmurgis (View Comment):

    namlliT noD (View Comment):

    She: The war was premised on the belief that Hussein was manufacturing and staging weapons of mass destruction to be used against his enemies.

    Actually, the war was premised on:

    The only problem is what W sold it on – WMD is what the Administration sold it on.

    Bush actually covered most of those points in public speeches listed by Don above.  It is just that the majority public was kind of spooked by the 911 terrorist attack and Weapons of Mass Destruction is all they remember about Bush’s reasons to go after Iraq.  Even in more sedate times, nobody remembers a list of 12 foreign policy talking points.

     

    • #90
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