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Originally Posted by pgardn
This is interesting for me because this is about the fourth person that has implied that Cheney has become much more combatitive than he used to be. All have worked with him in the past.
And I still must repeat my impression of the war.
1. We went to war to eliminate WMD's, not to free anyone.
2. AFTER we found no WMD's, we undertook this "get rid of Saddam free the people line" and we were woefully unprepared. We had a very large number of people spread out looking for WMD's. But we had nowhere near the manpower to accomplish "lets get the Democracy machine working apparatus ready to go". If there was, we would have had many more troops ready to take over institutions and prepare ASAP to handover the institutions to Iraqis.
3. By the time we realized what a huge task we had undertaken, we had released chaos by creating a huge power vacuum.
4. The thought now is we cannot leave immediately because we have caused a huge mess. We must make an attempt to create some sort of government that can bring some sort of order and let the Iraqi's take over from there.
This is why I dont get the war was a mistake. The mistake was there were no WMD's. So mission accomplished. We feared an attack, and there was no hint of an attack against us. Leave and let the greatful Iraqi's take over the collateral damage of removing Saddam. And thats where it went amiss. There was no real exit plan because we did not intend to free anyone in the first place. That became the new purpose after we found no WMD's.
What am I missing? I was living here reading the papers... Am I the only one that witnessed the shift in purpose?
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I think there were actually numerous reasons why we invaded Iraq: 1. I think they thought Saddam had WMDs. 2. I think they thought Saddam was a long-term threat to the region, even if he wasn't an imminent threat. 3. I think they thought he was trying to develop nuclear weapons. They didn't really know what the time-table was for him geting them, but even if it was 10 years, they figured we would be much better off taking care of him now because it would be too late in 10 years. 4. Another reason we invaded was because Saddam was not agreeing with the terms of the cease-fire of the first Persian Gulf War. He was shooting at our planes over the no-fly zone. He wasn't cooperating with the inspectors. Etc.
Anyway, there were numerous reasons as to why we invaded Iraq. 5. We thought that a democracy could work in Iraq and having a democracy there would be a huge positive for the region. 6. I think the human rights element gave them an additional justification for invading. You had a guy(Saddam) who was murdering tens of thousands of people.
So I think there were numerous reasons for wanting to get rid of Saddam. I think that all these reasons were in fact mentioned. However, when you're trying to sell something, it can be more effective to focus on your most powerful selling point. Focusing on your most powerful selling point is usually more effective than focusing on 8 different selling points. I think the Administration thought their best selling point to the Amercian people was the WMDs. And I think the Administration believed there were WMDs. But I don't think that WMDs were the only reason they went into Iraq.