"I am still confused as to why they chose to lie"

[Straybow]

Ned, our intent was, and still is, to turn the country over to a working civilian government.

Yes, the shining beacon of democracy bit was pure crap. We'll be lucky if they're more than a brief candle.

[Arrian]

I appreciate your meaning, but that kind of thing wasn't (and isn't) going to happen without close cooperation of all the major Western powers.

I agree completely. And when it became clear that wasn't gonna happen, I decided the war was a bad idea. I believe my actual words were something like "I think this is a bad idea, and the only hope for success would require an Iraqi Marshall plan, which nobody actually intends to pay for. Plus, given the incompetance of our government*, they'll **** it up anyway."

* - meaning all of them, not just Bush, or Republicans, but the entire gummint.

We didn't have the human resources to organize, train, feed, and employ them. Just raising trustworthy, arabic/english-speaking human resources would've been more than the US and Britain can handle alone.

Right. And a competant US government would've seen that problem from the get-go and realized that the whole project was undoable without all that stuff (requiring the active aid of various other countries, including some in the ME).

But instead, we got "oh, it'll be easy! We'll go in, knock off Saddam, and they'll dance in the streets and then, aberacadabra!, democracy!"

-Arrian

[Ned]

Originally posted by Straybow
Ned, our intent was, and still is, to turn the country over to a working civilian government.

Yes, the shining beacon of democracy bit was pure crap. We'll be lucky if they're more than a brief candle.

If getting rid of the Baathists wasn't the most important concern, we could have been out of Iraq a long time ago. The way it is working out, though, the Baathist are now welcome back in both the army and the government, so we really accomplished nothing.

We should have kept the Iraqi army and the entire Baathist administration, pursuing only the very top leadership on the so-called deck of cards. We might have called for UN-sponsored elections. But we needed to get our army out sooner rather than later.

Nazi Germany descended into chaos for a number of years post war because we (the allies) got rid of all the Nazis. This did not happen in Japan as we did not dismiss the government, but kept it intact and used it to run the country. We arrested and put on trial only the very top wartime leadership, just a handful at best.

Most people don't know that the State department wanted to do in Japan what we did in Germany. State wanted to get rid of the emperor and the Japanese government and start from scratch. The army had a different view somewhat based on their experience in Germany. The army view prevailed eventually, primarily because two atom bombs still wouldn't get the Japanese to surrender unconditionally and give up the emperor.

We have to recall that Bremer was a creature of the State department. Despite all our hatred of Rummy for doing a bad job, it was really State that caused Iraq to fail the way it has.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

The only hippie here is you.

To expand a little on that: you're the one trying to pretend that things would've gone well if Chirac, Putin, etc just had been nice to Shrubby. The chief reasons Iraq is in such a sorry state is that a) it was horribly messed up beforehand and b) the American leadership bungled the initial occupation phase. Neither Jacques nor Vlady could've done anything about either.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Arrian
Straybow,

There is a reason I put "Iraqi Marshall Plan" in quotes like I did. I know that Iraq circa 2003 is not terribly analogous to Europe in 1946. The point is that I was envisioning a truely MASSIVE reconstruction effort resulting in the employment of millions of Iraqis (instead, say, of disbanding the army, failing to clear out the weapons depots, and having no particular plan to create employment. BRILLIANT!).

-Arrian

The reconstruction effort didn't really get going until the 1st or second quarter of 2004. Even then it was only as a response to the insurgency and prior to March-May 2004 it honestly seemed the administration was going to do exactly what they did in Afghanistan, namely, make a few speeches then not actually build anything. One of the main reasons the insurgency started was frustration that the utilities only worked 1/3 of the time, there wasn't security since the administration insisted on going in with 1/5 to 1/4 of the troops the Pentagon said we'd need to fully occupy the country, and because a year after the invasion hardly any bridges had been repaired.

I was in the country at this time and time after time people kept saying Saddam repaired everything in 6 months but but a year later the Americans hadn't fixed anything. This was largely because the administration didn't intend to fix anything. Later the insurgency forced their hand and they began to act but it was to little to late and by Nov 2004 when I left Iraq the first rebuilt bridge had finally been completed. By then the insurgency was well under way. This is what happens when we elect people because they preach hatred of gays, banning abortion, and being ideologically pure instead of concentrating on experience, competence, and intelligence. We got **** ups because that's what we deserved.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

To expand a little on that: you're the one trying to pretend that things would've gone well if Chirac, Putin, etc just had been nice to Shrubby. The chief reasons Iraq is in such a sorry state is that a) it was horribly messed up beforehand and b) the American leadership bungled the initial occupation phase. Neither Jacques nor Vlady could've done anything about either.

I dare say if Blair, who honestly did try to speak reason to the administration, couldn't convince the Bushies to do things differently then what hope would someone like Chirac or Putin have?

[Drake Tungsten]

This is what happens when we elect people because they preach hatred of gays, banning abortion, and being ideologically pure instead of concentrating on experience, competence, and intelligence.

Bush's first term foreign-policy cabinet members and advisors were a dream team of experienced, intelligent people. The fact that even they turned out to be utterly incompetent just goes to show that even a team of all-stars can fall apart in the face of ideological squabbles and weak leadership.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

This is what happens when we elect people because they preach hatred of gays, banning abortion, and being ideologically pure instead of concentrating on experience, competence, and intelligence.

Bush's first term foreign-policy cabinet members and advisors were a dream team of experienced, intelligent people. The fact that even they turned out to be utterly incompetent just goes to show that even a team of all-stars can fall apart in the face of ideological squabbles and weak leadership.

...then there's that whole sticking their heads up their collective asses thing.

Like ignoring recommendations to go after al Qaeda
...or attacking Iraq when it had no al Qaeda
...or jettising our friends to do so
...or in invading in such a hamhanded way, we united our enemies.
..or lauching an "option war" with an insufficent number of troops with insufficient body armor and with no plan to win the peace.

[Drake Tungsten]

I believe their heads were already up their asses before Bush ever got elected. They are Americans, after all; they were probably born that way...

[Ned]

Z, I am sure Gore would have gone after Saddam in some fashion if he were president and not Bush. One could only hope that he would have done it the "old fashioned" way, with world support and with overwhelming force,

then turn the matter over to the UN and get out.

[Straybow]

The UN was prepared to let Saddam skate. They weren't going to go after him. They would declare Iraq WMD-free, remove inspectors, lift sanctions, and by now he'd be reconstituting his WMD programs.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Straybow
The UN was prepared to let Saddam skate. They weren't going to go after him. They would declare Iraq WMD-free, remove inspectors, lift sanctions, and by now he'd be reconstituting his WMD programs.

Saddam wasn't going to give the inspectors the access needed to declare him WMD free so once Bush had pushed the world into keeping the sanctions regime in place which he did he could have declared victory and sent the troops to Afghanistan and Oerdin would be forced to sing the praises of W.