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Originally Posted by Trex
Rebuilding the country was critical, and the coalition muffed it.
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And that, i'm afraid, is the unforgiveable nub of the matter.
For some the reasons and the rationals were critical, fair enough. For me it was too opaque, and unclear wether it was intrinsically right or wrong. It was never all about the WMD. It was obvious at the time that when we said we have "proof" we meant we had "an educated guess". (And it is logically provable that it was only a guess)
When Scott Ritter said the inspections had dismantled the systems he was laughed at and subjected to a campaign to discredit him. When the Iraqis ponied up the full description of the elimination of the weapons program a couple of weeks before the attack, it was also laughed at and dismissed because of course the whole thing was not really all about the WMD, so why would we stop, or even pause the timetable because of that?
So it was a gamble on Bush's part (the buck stops there, right?). When you gamble and lose, a man pays his debt. I expect had the WMD been there to find, he would have claimed all the rewards he could.
But I don't care about all that. For me the proof of the pudding was in the eating. Was Iraq going to be better, was the middle east going to be better? Was Britain going to be associated with foresight and competence, and thereby have an improved standing in the world?
When it became completely obvious that all post-war planning had been consigned to the department of wishful thinking, we really showed the world who we are (I'm British and this goes triple for Americans), and you Americans really showed everyone what it means to tie your fate to the success of American military adventurism circa early twentyfirst century.
And on this matter, I'm deeply, deeply p!$$ed off. I incurred lots of stress among my friends and family for my pro-war stance, and here we are 5 years later with every cycle of relative promise being loudly and constantly hoorayed by resident right-wingers before they turn around and start blaming the Iranians (yes, blaming your publicly announced enemy!) for their own lack of success. Boy, times must be bad when that represents your best argumentative line of defense.
My God! The American leaders are the guys that sit in the same chairs as those who led the Free World in WW2 and then led the incredible reconstruction after that awesome cataclysm - and look at them. A bunch of incompetent lightweights, snivellers who exploit weasel words and a highly partisan fanbase to try at any cost to portray folly as brilliance.
And do you know what really ticks me off the most?
I have been left with the impression that the war on terror has been since 2002 a single front in the real war against the American left, like i should give a cr4p about that.
And this is what i supported British involvment in back in 2003, apparently. Can't say i'll encourage us to do anything like it again, anytime soon.