***Rumsfield Stepping Down***

[David H.]

One of two scenarios is true, most likely: Either Saddam was toying with the UN Arms Inspectors while they were doing the business from '91-'02 for reasons unknown, or he was, indeed, pursuing some form of illegal weaponry. There were simply too many violations, stand-off's, deceptions, equipment movements, etc, for one to conclude that nothing was going on.

Prior to the war, I wondered the same thing. After we gained control someone came up with the following analysis, which I thought to be right on in its simplicity; yet it had never occurred to me:

Saddam had to toy with inspectors, had to feint left and dodge right. He had to maintain the illusion that he still had chemical weapons while appearing to comply enough with the U.N. to keep the U.S. at bay. It was a shell game without the ball. The use of those weapons against Iran was the only thing that saved his hide in his war with Iran. Without them, Iran would have pulverized him, but with them Iran backed down. It would be get-even time on a grand scale if Iran ever sniffed out that Saddam no longer had those weapons -- knew that he had be defanged by the U.N.

Saddam actually believed he was playing the game close enough to the line that the U.S. would not attack. He believed the U.S. was bluffing, so he continued with his dodging.

--David

[JustinM]

Why don't you hold the UN members accountable for their corrupt behavior? The only reason they opposed the war in Iraq, is because Saddam bought them off. Let's get our priorities straight. If the UN hadn't been bribed and bought off in the first place and those members had a vested interest in helping the world, they would have voted to invade Iraq along with the US, because they also believed Saddam posessed nuclear knowledge, technology and illegal weapons. So, don't point your finger just at the President of the US. He did the right thing, the UN did not.

[JustinM]

You sound like you admire the butcher of baghdad.

[David H.]

It's all about operating under the law, instead of above the law, Justin, my friend.

The fact that the U.N. is a mess doesn't make it any more right for us to take things into our own hands, while using their sanctions to do it, than we, as U.S. citizens, are right to take the law into our own hands here in the U.S. just because we think Congress is a mess. There are a lot of stupid idiots in the U.N. just like there are a lot of stupid idiots in Congress. But, in that case, it was GB1 who was the bigger stupid idiot to have put our treaty with Saddam in the hands of the U.N. in the first place. However, we fought the First Gulf War with a huge coalition of countries, so we didn't have much choice. It wasn't just OUR war. Since Saddam's treaty is with the U.N., not the U.S., it is in the U.N.'s province to be the one to enforce its own laws, not ours, especially when they tell us to stay out of it. It's about working within international laws and treaties and not acting like you're above them or skirting them under false pretenses just because you don't like the way the U.N. is enforcing its own treaties.

Don't make silly presumptions about me, or I'll assume you're young. Saddam is a volcanic tumor on the nose of life, and I hope he dies soon. I wanted GB1 to take him out the first time when we were in a legitimate war so the nose cancer wouldn't return later. I'm only stating why Saddam was pretending to play shell games with the inspectors, not stating that it was the right thing to do. My point was that he was NOT doing it because he still HAD WMD. He was doing it because he had to keep his enemies guessing whether or not he still had WMD.

--David

Edited November 15, 2006 by David Haggith

[ted]

If Saddam was simply faking it, then he should have let someone know about the game. I think we would have actually helped him keep the secret, knowing how we feel about Iran (if that was his reasoning).

He did just enough to make everyone mad about it. The entire world was on our side, even with the latest resolutions. Congress also joined in. All of them.

So, either they thought Bush was bluffing and went along with it, or they wussed out at the very end once they knew we were serious. You can't go around threatening war if you are not ready to back it up with something more than threats.

And you are right, Most High, we would have been in the same boat today had we not went on in, except worse. How long would it have to go on. Wasn't 12 years enough?

The whole world, to include the UN and our own Congress believed Saddam was hiding something. If it was all a bluff on Saddam's part, then he now knows that it was a sad mistake.

Either way, he's where he should be today, instead of three more years closer to nasty weapons.

t.

[David H.]

If Saddam was simply faking it, then he should have let someone know about the game. I think we would have actually helped him keep the secret, knowing how we feel about Iran (if that was his reasoning).

And who would he trust on that? The U.S., who hated his guts with a passion (and deservedly so, just to be clear).

Does Saddam strike you as the kind of man who trusts anyone, more or less his enemy? I don't think so. And who would take his word on it if he said privately, as he did publicaly, "I don't have them, but I cannot let Iran know that." Would he trust the U.N. inspectors to come in and verify that he didn't have them and then trust that the U.N. would secretly tell the U.S. so that we would know we didn't need to go to war, while allowing him to keep the illusion publicly that he might still have them. I think the first thoughts in Saddam's mind would be, I let the U.S. know, and they'll let Iran know because they hate us both and would love to see us go at each other's throats.

So, Saddam was playing an impossible game. I'm not suggesting any sympathy for him at all. My only point is that the shell game was not to hide weapons that existed but simply to keep everyone guessing in order to keep Iran guessing. Saddam knew the perfect Christmas present for the U.S. would be to get Iran and Iraq to fight each other.

He did just enough to make everyone mad about it.

That's right. It was an impossible game for him to play, but with Iran ready to kill him the second they saw his underbelly, what else was he to do? He created the situation, so I have no sympathy for him at all. Again, my only point is that there were no WMD of significance remaining. That's not what the shell game was about. If there were WMD, the Bush administration would have spent the last campaign in which they lost miserably over this very issue, trumpeting all the proof of WMD they could marshal, which should be a snap once we had control of the country and could go wherever we pleased.

And, if WMD were transported into Syria under Bush's nose, all the more reason to light a fire under Bush and axe Rumsfeld for allowing it to happen. According to Bush, the whole reason we had to go to war was not because Saddam could launch chemical weapons at us but because he could get them into the hands of our enemies. So, if the Syria connection is true, then the worst scenario Bush promised happened precisely because of our impending war on Iraq; and Bush should have watched the roads carefully enough to make sure it didn't. It's not like you can sneak those kinds of missiles off in a briefcase over the mountains. They have to go by road in big trucks or across fairly flat, open, sandy areas.

The entire world was on our side, even with the latest resolutions.

Don't know where you get that notion. The U.N. voted against war in Iraq, that's why the U.S. "went it alone." The entire world, except Britain and a handful of others stood against us. Some of those who joined us appeared to do so reluctantly because they wanted to be good allies, not because they were for this war. But the word, as a whole, via the U.N., voted against the war. Remember how discouraged Colin Powell was about the outcome. It was not what he had hoped for.

Congress also joined in. All of them.

I agree. So, the Dems are not really sitting any prettier than Bush, EXCEPT that they are not in charge of running the war and can blame him, if they choose, for how long it is taking. Rumsfeld, who is our real subject here, told Congress the Iraqi's would welcome us with open arms as liberators. Rumsfeld was gravely mistaken. A minority of Iraqis greeted us that way, but the majority gave us the cold shoulder or worse.

So, either they thought Bush was bluffing and went along with it, or they wussed out at the very end once they knew we were serious. You can't go around threatening war if you are not ready to back it up with something more than threats.

I doubt they thought Bush was bluffing, but what do you mean they "wussed out"? They never indicated they were for war in the first place. I don't know what U.N. talks you were watching, but the ones I was watching, Ted, and the speeches I was hearing from Coffee Anon prior to the war were almost all against the war and in favor of endless sanctions. I'm not saying the U.N. was right not to enforce their sanctions more strongly. I'm saying, if we're a nation of law, then we have to live by law; and the U.S. does not have a right under international law to decide unilaterally that it is going to enforce U.N.sanctions for the U.N. just because we know best.

If you mean the U.N. was a wuss on dealing with Saddam all along, I agree completely. That being the case, my approach would be to push the U.N. (by non-verbal means in addition to verbal means) to either get serious about enforcing the sanctions, or the U.S. will pull out of patrolling Iraq completely. I don't think many Arab nations would have wanted to see Saddam given a free hand all over again. Remember, it was Arabs Saddam was attacking, not the U.S. We were THEIR allies, not the other way around (but with our own long-term interests also in mind.) We needed to put a lot more pressure by legitimate means on the U.N. to get serious; and we have ways of doing that.

we would have been in the same boat today had we not went on in, except worse.

Your words are exactly what I said when Bush folded at the end of Gulf War I and didn't take out Saddam. I know why he did it ... because he knew the getting Saddam would lead to the present mess. But I also knew we would only wind up with that mess down the road anyway; and history proves that right. I doubt the situation would have grown much worse, had we continued to rely on weapons inspections because it appears the inspections were fairly successful in curbing him. Eventually, we may have had to deal with him, but he wouldn't have been any stronger than he was when we went to war.

But the situation in Afghanistan would have been far better with all those resources sent that way. You or someone else pointed out that it would be a mess for many reasons, and I suppose those reasons are right, being first-hand observations. Even so, who cannot believe it would have been a lot better than it is now? Why are we even bothering to continue right now if pumping more resources into Afghanistan is going to make no difference? We might as well give up and go home if that is true. I think we would have had a much better situation in Afghanistan today and when we turned to Saddam, the world would see that... 1) we can do the job quickly with incredible resources; 2) that we don't leave the country devastated but leave it better than it ever was, 3) that we don't remain around as occupying forces; 4) that it's not about oil because there was no oil in Afghanistan, 5) that we waited until Saddam gave us a legitimate reason under international law to go in or until we could pressure the U.N. to stiffen its spine with respect to its own sanctions, 6) that our own nation remained solidly united behind the effort and suffered very little because of it. We would have had a strong, strong hand, regardless of what problems remained in Afghanistan.

How long would it have to go on. Wasn't 12 years enough?

That's a good question and one I asked a lot as things dragged out with the U.N. under Clinton. I think Clinton should have taken numerous steps to press (by legal diplomatic means) the U.N. to tougher action beyond endlessly arguing the point. And I think George Bush should have given the ultimatum above as the last straw when he inherited the problem that Clinton inherited from Bush I. "We'll pull out, and then look at the mess you Arabs will have to deal with." If we had to follow through on that threat and drop our fly-overs, Saddam would have eventually overplayed his hand anyway, and the Arabs would beg for us to return. But I don't think it would have ever gotten as far as our pulling out. Few non-Iraqi Arabs would want that. The rest of the U.N. wanted to have its cake and eat it too. Once they could no longer play that game, the U.N. wouldn't want to have to occupy Iraq with its own forces. And they all knew Saddam was a rogue that had to be watched and that he only complied with U.N. inspections to the extent that he did because of the U.S. threat.

The whole world, to include the UN and our own Congress believed Saddam was hiding something.

No they didn't. I'm surprised you would say that. Most nations at the U.N. stated that the evidence Colin Powell presented proved nothing, and most nations in the U.N. said they believed the inspections were successful.

If it was all a bluff on Saddam's part, then he now knows that it was a sad mistake.

Indeed.

Either way, he's where he should be today, instead of three more years closer to nasty weapons.

No doubt about it.

And we are where we are, which is having much of the world hate us more than they did before and less willing to work with us on the war on terror. Because we were so wrong in our military information about Saddam, we have lost all credibility for any future claims on others like Iran. The world is not going to dismiss our errors as easily as some here are willing to gloss over them. For the first time we have ally nations looking seriously at trying our people for war crimes. We don't need that. What we accomplished in Iraq has done us no good. No Arab ally is thanking us for it either. We were not at risk from Saddam because he had no WMD. To be sure, he's out of office, but that's his problem. I don't even hear the people of Iraq thanking us. Even the leaders who have benefited most from our being there seem to speak only critically of us. So, who cares that we got him out of power? It has made no difference in my life except that it has put our nation back into deficit spending, which could have serious economic repercussions. If the Iraqis would rather that we hadn't come, they could live with Saddam as far as I'm concerned. They are the ones who suffered under him, not me, and they seem a rather thankless lot right now, which is no surprise to me. I have no fear at all that Saddam had any weapons that would ever do me harm and no interest in helping people rid themselves of a despot when they are only critical of us afterward.

Contrary to what Justin says, I'm all for helping people who want and deserve our help. The U.N. inspections actually were working, and we have made ourselves as disrespected as we have been since Vietnam. Not where I want our country to be just so we can put a bandit away.

--David

Edited November 16, 2006 by David Haggith

[ted]

And who would he trust on that? The U.S., who hated his guts with a passion (and deservedly so, just to be clear).

Does Saddam strike you as the kind of man who trusts anyone, more or less his enemy? I don't think so. And who would take his word on it if he said privately, as he did publicaly, "I don't have them, but I cannot let Iran know that." Would he trust the U.N. inspectors to come in and verify that he didn't have them and then trust that the U.N. would secretly tell the U.S. so that we would know we didn't need to go to war, while allowing him to keep the illusion publicly that he might still have them. I think the first thoughts in Saddam's mind would be, I let the U.S. know, and they'll let Iran know because they hate us both and would love to see us go at each other's throats.

So, Saddam was playing an impossible game. I'm not suggesting any sympathy for him at all. My only point is that the shell game was not to hide weapons that existed but simply to keep everyone guessing in order to keep Iran guessing. Saddam knew the perfect Christmas present for the U.S. would be to get Iran and Iraq to fight each other.

If it was all a shell game and there was no WMD's, then it was a stupid plan on his part. I don't think he worried much about Iran, as much as they hated each other. He had the US/UN jets in his southern and northern boundaries. Iran was not going to invade or pose much of a threat to him while the no-fly zones were active.

Saddam may not have trusted anyone (no maniac ever really does, I guess), but even he had to know that the game would not last forever.

And, if WMD were transported into Syria under Bush's nose, all the more reason to light a fire under Bush and axe Rumsfeld for allowing it to happen. According to Bush, the whole reason we had to go to war was not because Saddam could launch chemical weapons at us but because he could get them into the hands of our enemies. So, if the Syria connection is true, then the worst scenario Bush promised happened precisely because of our impending war on Iraq; and Bush should have watched the roads carefully enough to make sure it didn't. It's not like you can sneak those kinds of missiles off in a briefcase over the mountains. They have to go by road in big trucks or across fairly flat, open, sandy areas.

I'm not sure where to find it just this minute, but I seem to remember reports of many trucks heading to the Syrian border just weeks or so before our invasion.

I'll have to look for those old reports and put them up later.

For one, we didn't have much on the ground near the Iraq/ Syria border, so we couldn't watch everything at all times. I still think it's a viable possibility that WMD's were transferred between the two. I also remember the extreme frustration of the UN inspectors when they were constantly turned away form suspected sites, only to be let in days or weeks later to what appeared to be recently cleaned out buildings. It wasn't until we decided to stop playing around did these inspectors change their tune. Up until then, they were pretty mad at the actions of Iraq as far as compliance went.

Don't know where you get that notion. The U.N. voted against war in Iraq, that's why the U.S. "went it alone." The entire world, except Britain and a handful of others stood against us. Some of those who joined us appeared to do so reluctantly because they wanted to be good allies, not because they were for this war. But the word, as a whole, via the U.N., voted against the war. Remember how discouraged Colin Powell was about the outcome. It was not what he had hoped for.

Yes, in the final days, the members of the UN voted against going in right then, but they were also authorizing tougher and tougher language just before that final vote. Surely you remember how they were all condemning Saddam and tightening up the ropes around his neck. It wasn't until right up to the last few weeks did some of them change their tune.

It's no big surprise that China, France, Russia, Germany, and a few others turned tail at the end. Seems to me there were many reports of possible contracts with Iraq once the sanctions were lifted. From a finacial stand point, I can see why they would be suddenly against us going in. Never mind the Oil for Food scandal. It's no wonder that some nations would be a little worried about what we would actually find once we went in.

Although this is sarcasm, I can almost imagine what was being his by Saddam, if not WMD's.....

I agree. So, the Dems are not really sitting any prettier than Bush, EXCEPT that they are not in charge of running the war and can blame him, if they choose, for how long it is taking. Rumsfeld, who is our real subject here, told Congress the Iraqi's would welcome us with open arms as liberators. Rumsfeld was gravely mistaken. A minority of Iraqis greeted us that way, but the majority gave us the cold shoulder or worse.

Yes, but the Dems were right there saying the exact same things that Bush was leading up to the war. Every last one of them. Even Kerry.

All of them were ready to hang Saddam.

What changed?

Well, I have this little theory: Perhaps the Dems were egging Bush on and waiting until we went in, only to suddenly switch heart just before the invasion. After all, they were going to hang the next Rep President as revenge for the Reps impeachment of their daddy Clinton. Either way Bush went, others would take the other side for the sake of making him look awkward. Their political revenge drove almost all of the voices.

But, all of that is simple speculation.

Then again, look at what happened to any Dem who dared support Bush on the war, like Leiberman.

I doubt they thought Bush was bluffing, but what do you mean they "wussed out"? They never indicated they were for war in the first place. I don't know what U.N. talks you were watching, but the ones I was watching, Ted, and the speeches I was hearing from Coffee Anon prior to the war were almost all against the war and in favor of endless sanctions. I'm not saying the U.N. was right not to enforce their sanctions more strongly. I'm saying, if we're a nation of law, then we have to live by law; and the U.S. does not have a right under international law to decide unilaterally that it is going to enforce U.N.sanctions for the U.N. just because we know best.

Perhaps you only saw the last few weeks of speeches then? Up until then, it was resolution after resolution condemning Saddam and tightening up the consequences. Each resolution brought language which called for military actions if he did not reverse his ways. What stunned them all was the fact that Bush actually had the guts to use those military options, rather than play word games for the rest of his life.

Sorry, but if they used such language, then they should have had the idea that they might have to actually back it up. I think the UN did a great job of looking tough, but failed when it was to the point of action.

Check out some of the language of the resolutions after each time the inspectors were kicked out or left out of frustration.

In the meantime, we kinda know why Russia, France, and Germany was against it.

It would mean killing their cash cow.

Your words are exactly what I said when Bush folded at the end of Gulf War I and didn't take out Saddam. I know why he did it ... because he knew the getting Saddam would lead to the present mess.

Actually, I think it was more like he would have lost the support of every muslim nation that helped us in the first war, including Saudi Arabia.

If we would have continued on and taken Saddam out, every muslim ally in that war would have walked away.

Facing this, Bush1 had no choice in the matter. So, he left it where it was after he fulfilled the UN resolution calling for Saddam to be kicked out of Kuwait. That's pretty much all we were allowed to do under that resolution: get Saddam out of Kuwait.

Things like the establishment of the no-fly zones were the results of either the surrender agreements or later resolutions.

The resolutions covering the UN inspectors were different. He had not yet invaded another nation, so it wasn't a matter of getting him out and leaving it be. These resolutions called for military actions if he continued to deny the inspectors complete access to areas that they felt needed to be looked at.

Obviously, bombing a few aspirin factories was no help.

But the situation in Afghanistan would have been far better with all those resources sent that way. You or someone else pointed out that it would be a mess for many reasons, and I suppose those reasons are right, being first-hand observations. Even so, who cannot believe it would have been a lot better than it is now? Why are we even bothering to continue right now if pumping more resources into Afghanistan is going to make no difference? We might as well give up and go home if that is true. I think we would have had a much better situation in Afghanistan today and when we turned to Saddam, the world would see that... 1) we can do the job quickly with incredible resources; 2) that we don't leave the country devastated but leave it better than it ever was, 3) that we don't remain around as occupying forces; 4) that it's not about oil because there was no oil in Afghanistan, 5) that we waited until Saddam gave us a legitimate reason under international law to go in or until we could pressure the U.N. to stiffen its spine with respect to its own sanctions, 6) that our own nation remained solidly united behind the effort and suffered very little because of it. We would have had a strong, strong hand, regardless of what problems remained in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a different baby than Iraq. The reason for going there was to get who we thought had a hand in the 9/11 attacks and the government which gave them support. That mission was a bit more simple, in terms of justification.

Here's what people who claim that we turned rescources away from Afghanistan for no good reason fail to see: Once Osama escaped through the mountains into Pakistan, it created an immediate block to further operations to find him with conventional, or even special forces.

We simply could not go in after him to hunt him down.

For however much blame there is to spread, we simply were at a stand off at that point.

The Taliban, in the mean time, were pretty much subdued and mop-up operations were the order of the times.

After a few months, it became apparent that we were not going to get permission from Pakistan, or from the local leaders of those mountain villages to go in after him.

We had to decide a few things at that point:

1. Go in anyway.

By doing that, we would slap the face of one of the only muslim nations to support us after 9/11. Yes, many of them gave us their official sympathies, but Musharrif (sp?) actually cut off support to the Taliban. This was huge because the Taliban basically came to power by the help of Musharrif. It was his money that funded them, along with Osama's, but in Pakistan, they had the ethnic support, which is needed over in that part of the world.

Some say we basically held his feet to the fire and made him choose our side when we went after the Taliban. Fair enough, but he made a huge decision by helping us, especially when you consider that he went against many of his own people in doing so.

To slap him like that would be dangerous. We are, after all, talking about a nuclear tipped islamic nation. We also needed his further help in southern Afghanistan with the remnants of what remained of the Taliban.

2. Even if Musharrif said "go", he doesn't even control that part of his own country. You have to understand a little about the area, but his own army rarely ventures into those mountains.

By going in, it would be only us participating. The locals were/ are the ones hiding Osama, so they wouldn't be of much help, anyway.

3. It would have been a slaughter house the minute we stepped into that area. It was simply not feasible to go in blindly, with no help of the locals or the host government, and expect to find him. Rewards mean nothing to these people, so we couldn't even rely on the greed factor.

Knowing all of this, decisions had to be made as to what was to be next. It was basically decided that we couldn't pursue him into the Pakistani mountains, so we pretty much decided to move to sustainment operations. Rebuilding became a priority, as well as attempting to help them form a halfway decent national government.

Operations also continued to hunt down the last of the Taliban. We didn't get every last one in the initial invasions, so we had to continue with that.

With Iraq looking more and more a reality to be next in this war on terror, we simply had to reduce a bit in Afghanistan to help out there. At the time, it made perfect stance.

I hate to hurt feelings or let people down in their arguments, but the sad truth is that our hunt for Bin Laden was pretty much reduced to him making a mistake and recrossing the border. We had all the corridors covered, and still do in fact, but it's a matter of him making a mistake now.

So, what would be the use of huge numbers of forces and piles of money for that? We have the bases covered there, but are in a forced wait. How long would people support huge amounts of money for a stakeout?

Turning resources to Iraq and away from Afghanistan is simply not a valid reason for why we can't grab Osama. The argument is simply not valid, but it does make Bush look dumb, and that's why no one cares about the facts of the situation there.

Now, we see a re-emergence of what the press is calling the "Taliban" suddenly in the past few months. Want to know a little secret? Afghanistan is now, and has been for almost a year, a NATO operation.

Nato took command of the operations some time ago, and now we see a little more heat. This is not an American failure, but a NATO one- recently, anyway.

No they didn't. I'm surprised you would say that. Most nations at the U.N. stated that the evidence Colin Powell presented proved nothing, and most nations in the U.N. said they believed the inspections were successful.

Yup.

But again, Powell's speech was late in the game. By then, everyone that was saying the same thing Bush was saying had already made their switch. Before that they were saying......well....just ask John Kerry. Look up what he was saying early on, and he'll let you know his feelings about the situation.

Gotta run.

Take care.

t.

[David H.]

A stupid game on Saddam's part, to be sure; but it adds up. After the invasion, his closest advisors told the U.S. that Saddam never believed the U.S. would actually start a war. He wasn't the smoothest cue ball on the table. And he had to think longer-term than the period of fly-overs by U.S. jets. At any rate, my only real point in explaining the shell game was to say that we were wrong in thinking he must be putting up all the blocks on inspectors to hide something he had. It explains why he would have done that if he had nothing to hide. It wouldn't be the most likely explanation for his actions, except that we got there and found out he didn't have much to hide.

It turns out there was an explanation for his actions that didn't match our assumptions -- unless of course, you're right that all the weapons were sneaked out of the country just ahead of our invasion. You are right about many trucks crossing the border, but I never heard how sound those reports were. If they did slip across the border, shame on Bush for letting something so important slip by right under his nose. Remind you of anything ... like maybe Tora Bora. And, in that case, maybe it is Bush covering up his own error by not saying they slipped across the border, thinking it's easier to say they weren't there than that it was the second huge thing he let slip by. I'm not against this explanation of why nothing was in Iraq; but I don't think it helps Bush's case any. All the more reason to have a Democratic congress so we can start investigating those things to find out what did happen. The Republicans sure aren't going to tell us.

We should have had MUCH on the ground and in the air to watch for that and satelites trained to watch day and night because the president himself told us it was possible they would slip into enemy hands and that that would be the worst thing that could happen.

I agree that the U.N. was authorizing tougher and tougher language right up to the vote, and that is exactly why we should have staid the U.N. route while we focused our military efforts on Afghanistan and our rebuilding efforts. The U.N. was starting to get tougher and really annoyed with Saddam, so I think it would have taken less than a year for the U.N. to get tight enough around Saddam that he would either cave or they would support a war to oust him, and then the U.S/ would not be taking all the political repercussions and would have had more help, especially in rebuilding, and full legitimacy in our efforts because we would simply be one of the forces in a U.N. coalition, albeit by far the biggest. Things were starting to go better in the U.N., and we should have staid that path.

I don't think the Dems baited and switched on Bush. That's a little too cynical -- that they would launch a war just to score poltical points. I think when the WMD didn't show up, they knew they could hang it around his neck so that it didn't go on theirs. It also hung more appropriately because it is not really the job of Congress to know intelligence information. That is primarily a function of the executive branch, and they were trusting what they got from the executive branch. Nevertheless, they should have seen the holes in the evidence if I could. So, when the WMD weren't there, they did all they could to make sure it went on Bush.

Again, I agree there was resolution after resolution getting tougher on Saddam, but NEVER any voice of support for war, except maybe from the U.K. and Spain. Even their support of war was less than enthusiastic. So, we should have kept pushing for tougher resolutions because things were moving in the right direction until we insisted war was the only option and made it pretty clear we were going with or without their support. In that case, why should they support it?

You're right about Russia, France, and Germany. I still wonder why Bush is hiding what they were up to. I'm sure there is more than we know, and I think Bush sometimes is a little too much of a gentleman when it comes to not saying bad things about others. It's his family's way. It's that kind of not saying anything bad and showing a little too much loyalty that caused him to stick by Tenant too long as head of the CIA.

As for Afghanistan, I think it was a clear-cut right to go to war, and the world was fully behind us. With all of the resources we've put in Iraq over there, instead, we could find every opium field and remove it and control every warlord with a large presence on our part. It wouldn't help us get bin Laden; he was already a lost cause because we cannot go into Pakistan to get him. I think you're equating too much of what I'm saying we needed to do in Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden. I fault Bush big time for Tora Bora because I knew we were wrong on the very first day to take that path. Trusting the job to warlords who are easy for millionaires to pay off was a clear don't do. I'm thinking of what we needed to accomplish with the Taliban and warlords once Osama was a lost cause. I agree completely that we cannot invade Pakistan. The last thing we need is a third all-out war, and it would disgrace Musharaf who has taken considerable risk that has nearly cost him his life several times. Once bin Laden made it there, our only options are good intelligence and a surgical strike to nail him when we find him.

The Taliban, as it turns out, were not nearly subdued enough. We're STILL fighting them, and that should have been wrapped up within the first year or two. But it would take A LOT more troops to do it because it takes a big occupying presence on the ground to keep the warlords and the Taliban out of action until they become irrelevant.

I'm mostly talking, however, about the resources we are pouring into rebuilding Iraq. We could have done a lot of rebuilding in Afghanistan, repairing damage by the Soviets and many others to where the people would have a very positive feeling about us. I think it would have created a lot of goodwill. Even now, the Afghan feelings do not appear in the press to be as hostile toward us as it in Iraq. In a country of warlords, what's one more war? By being the biggest warlord and the most benevolent, we might have succeeded in ending the hold of warlords over the populace. We'd have to hold the ground for several years until the Afghan army was sufficient to keep the warlords endlessly down.

Want to know another little secret. Afghanistan is a NATO operation because our troops are way overstressed holding down to major wars at the same time. We ARE stretched too thin for our own good. So, we were desparate to get NATO to take over in Afghanistan so our troops could start getting a tiny bit of R&R. I hear in Hawaii how reluctant they are to return for another tour of duty overseas. You hear it in the voices of individuals when they tell you they're going back. If we weren't in Iraq, we wouldn't have to rely on NATO, which is exactly what I'm saying has allowed the Taliban resurgence. We are spread too thin, so we are doing neither job well. Our troops are doing a great job, but they are way overburdened.

I also think Iran was a far bigger threat to us than Iraq. You, or whoever said it a couple days ago, are likely right that controlling Iraq may have helped us put the squeeze on Iran; but so far that doesn't seem to be working out too well.

Anyway, I probably better try to curb myself on this topic form here on because I'm spending way too much time on it, and we're not going to change the world here anyway.

Blessings,

David

[ted]

Anyway, I probably better try to curb myself on this topic form here on because I'm spending way too much time on it, and we're not going to change the world here anyway.

Blessings,

David

We may not change the world here today, but we are both better armed for the future after this.

Thanks, David, and have a blessed day.

t.

[David H.]

Anyway, I probably better try to curb myself on this topic form here on because I'm spending way too much time on it, and we're not going to change the world here anyway.

Blessings,

David

We may not change the world here today, but we are both better armed for the future after this.

Thanks, David, and have a blessed day.

t.

Thanks to you, too, Ted. I appreciated the civil exchange of thoughts.

--David