I get lost with the moat that was dug around the WH and the continuation of the path in Iraq as opposed to recognition of the failures and a new direction.

don’t mis-understand my process … I am not a let’s get out now supporter because I believe we have a moral responsibilty to “right our wrong”. That strategy would require MORE resources and I believe we should consider that path. I DON”T believe we can “do the right things” by operating like Enron. Rumsfeld has to go. Let the military take care of the stablization task and then work the political angle.

Fess up … be honest with the American people … show some humility … he would regain support by doing that .. as it is, he is in a spiral that will continue as long as there is no change in the strategy.

So, I am saying that HE needs to recognize the errors and correct them … that is what he gets paid to do. The resources of our great country are not there to be squandered in egotistical rationalization.

The most disappointing thing for me is that so many of the neo-cons and war hawks were too in love with the ideal of “spreading democracy and freedom through war� that they couldn’t step back to realize that if you gamble with our credibility and then screw it up, it’s going to hurt our long term chances to do it elsewhere in places where it’s really needed, like Sudan, et al. In other words, it hurts our credibility to actually fight the WOT effectively.

So you think our credibility in the world would be better if Saddam were still on his tyrant’s throne and Qusai and Uday in their rape palaces and the U.S. invaded impoverished Sudan instead?

With Iraq, everyone knew what failure would look like when we went in there to try to set up a democracy: either the country would revert to strong-arm rule (via a caudillo or a theocracy) or break apart into religious and ethnic enclaves.

That was understood on both sides. And the anti-war voices widely predicted both, but the ones I read leaned toward “another Saddam, backed by the U.S.,” since they assumed that would suit Bush best. So, no points for you unless you said, “break-up of the country” and never said “strong-man rule.”

many thought the pre-war planning underestimated the situation and that it would ultimately not go well.

Come on, it can’t be that hard to show me at least one anti-war post from pre-April 2003 that said this. I haven’t seen one. But it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

At rhe same time, show me what planning was in place to occupy Germany and Japan after WWII. That was improvised, on the fly, with constant shifts of purpose and goals, and never was a pre-planned coordinated effort. It worked, for reasons no one anticipated in 1944.

Now the key issue, the one we’re talking about here, the WMDs.

So Dems were worried that if no WMDs are found, our credibility would get knocked down quite a few notches.

Again, if you can’t show me where you said that, and you say you can’t, can you at least show me where someone you admire said it. It can’t be that hard to find if it’s true. If not, it’s just rewriting history.

I went looking. Here’s what I found.

Josh Marshall on March 18, 2003, described the looming
war in these terms:

At this point, obviously I hope this goes quickly and as cleanly as possible. Getting rid of Saddam will be a very good thing as will getting rid of his WMD and ambitions to get more. I was long for something like this. I changed my position because in the course of moving in this direction we incurred an even greater risk to our security than Saddam himself was.

Duncan Black (Atrios), on March 27, 2003, quoted this Josh
Marshall passage from Washington Monthly predicting
the situation six months after the war:

“Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border.”

Later (April 4, 2003) Atrios went on the record about Saddam’s weaponry:

For the record, I’ve never doubted that Saddam probably has some sort of chemical weapons.

Same thing at Daily Kos. Skeptical of specific administration claims and evidences, but not of the existence of Iraqi WMD. And willing to invoke them, if they could be used to make the White House look bad.

“How does the US know that Iraq has biological weapons? Easy. Because we sent them the equipment and anthrax spores to build them.” [Sept. 26, 2002]

On Jan. 17, 2003, he quotes approvingly a “Christian Science Monitor” piece that claims “Iraqi forces defending the cities could try to halt invading troops by shelling them with chemical weapons,” and predicts, “Americans will die — lots of them.”

On Feb. 12, 2003, Kos, who is a military man, laid out his own set of possible Iraq war scenarios. WMD figured in them: “And if Saddam is going to use chemical weapons, this would be a good time — with US
troop concentrations exposed in the open desert. … There’s no doubt that Kuwait is sufficient for staging purposes, but having a single supply line is problematic. Not only is it exposed to dehabilitating guerilla attacks, but Saddam could hamper the entire resupply operation by either detonating a nuke (if he has one) or contaminating wide swaths of the logistical lines with chemical and/or biological weapons.”

Here’s Daily Kos from 09/02:

“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? Join the line. About a dozen nations have such weapons these days. Only the US has deigned to use them, and that was when it was the sole nuclear power. The threat of annihilation through retaliation has checked any subsequent use of such weapons.”

Emphasis added throughout. And so on and so on.

So you all had insights into Iraq that people like Juan Cole (I could do a whole other post with his wrong predictions), Kos, Atrios, Marshall lacked? Didn’t you alert your fearless Web-leaders that they were wrong, wrong, wrong about Saddam’s WMD?

Some people doubted whether he had nuclear weapons or not. That always was the most deadly case and the most dubious. But I have yet to meet an anti-war person who said positively, before the invasion, Saddam has no nukes — only a prophet or a lunatic could have said that before we overthrew him and found out.

So far, the strongest statements I have seen to the effect that Saddam has no WMD, before the war, were made by Ralph Nader. And I don’t think you regard him as your political paragon.

Other than that, it was a guessing game. Maybe he has them. Maybe he doesn’t. We don’t have the proof. Are you willing to take the chance? And what baffles me is that so many people who thought there was a good chance he had such weapons were willing, in the post 9-11 world, to let a man with his track record keep them. That’s not “anti-American, terrorist loving, moonbatish nonsense,” and I never said it was. It is, however, a pretty damned stupid game of russian roulette.

Oh, and it’s inaccurate to say he had “no” chemical weapons. They’ve turned up here and there in the country since his overthrow.

And we could have a 70-comment thread worthy of an abortion post about whether that was, in fact, the whole point. Suffic it to say, I don’t think it was.

I don’t think it was either. I know Bush and company talked about liberating the Iraq people. But if you were to look at how many times the administration talked about WMDs and compare it to the times they talked about spreading peace, they would not be balanced. Not by a long shot. Listen, both you and I know that Bush couldn’t have sold a war on the basis of spreading freedom. In a post 9/11 world, wars are about getting rid of terrorism and Bush raised the spectre of WMDs being given to terrorists by Saddam to sell the war. Even former aides have said they leaned too much on the WMD argument. So can we agree that the war was sold largely (not solely) on the basis of WMDs?

In theory, I realize why he did this, but in doing so he played a risky game and lost. The cost? Our credibility.

Cal, you know I don’t think Bush acted out of any nefarious reasons. I think he earnestly believed what he was doing was right, is right and will continue to be right. But that’s the problem. Because if you continue to have wrong perceptions and act earnestly within the framework of those wrong percetions, you’re still doing the wrong thing. At some point you have to be honest with yourself and readjust. He hasn’t done that yet, and I’m getting tired of waiting.

Drawing conclusions from questionable perceptions is the plain fact of the matter, not a sign of madness.

Agreed. But it is a risk, and one we need to be more cautious about taking next time.

One last thing…I’d like to hear your thoughts about what I said here:

The most disappointing thing for me is that so many of the neo-cons and war hawks were too in love with the ideal of “spreading democracy and freedom through war� that they couldn’t step back to realize that if you gamble with our credibility and then screw it up, it’s going to hurt our long term chances to do it elsewhere in places where it’s really needed, like Sudan, et al. In other words, it hurts our credibility to actually fight the WOT effectively.

Any merit to this?

Very articulate comment on anti-Iraq war predictions. What is happening now is almost exactly what I was worried about as well. And no, Cal, I can’t prove it either, unless I can get some of my Repub friends to vouch for my complaints at that time. To add to it, I was still a Repub myself at the time, and I still thought it was a tremendously bad idea.

But even if you allow that it was so, perfect perception into a willfully secretive and historically mendacious regime is impossible. Drawing conclusions from questionable perceptions is the plain fact of the matter, not a sign of madness.

Is this super-accurate prediction of yours on record anywhere? Like, with a timestamp date before Match 2003?

Haha, well…maybe you were too distracted by the anti-Bush venom your coworkers were throwing around, but the things I’ve mentioned were THE counterpoints shared by many anti-Iraq War/pro-WOT Democrats during the buildup to March 2003.

WMDS
After Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN (illustrations?) and when weapons inspectors weren’t finding anything, we Dems started getting extremely nervous…especially because it appeared as if war was inevitable and Bush simply didn’t care about proving that WMDs existed. And regardless of what Bush said a few times in a couple speeches, the war was sold time and time again as a way to stop a madman from giving WMDs to terrorists. So Dems were worried that if no WMDs are found, our credibility would get knocked down quite a few notches. The most disappointing thing for me is that so many of the neo-cons and war hawks were too in love with the ideal of “spreading democracy and freedom through war” that they couldn’t step back to realize that if you gamble with our credibility and then screw it up, it’s going to hurt our long term chances to do it elsewhere in places where it’s really needed, like Sudan, et al. In other words, it hurts our credibility to actually fight the WOT effectively.

POST INVASION MESS
Again, Dems were concerned with our leader’s core philosophies and sugar-coating. Given the neo-cons talk about not needing many troops to keep the peace and the candy and the roses, many thought the pre-war planning underestimated the situation and that it would ultimately not go well. And what happens when wars don’t go well? America ulitmately pulls out because the truly important thing to American politicians is making sure they get relected, not doing the right thing. Forgive me Cal, but if Bush is anything, he’s a politician. This seemed like a no-brainer to me and many of my Dem friends.

CIVIL WAR
All you have to do is look at history to see how volatile Iraq is to know that there’d be infighting. The country has been in pretty consistent turmoil since 1932, both in their own country and in scuffles with neighboring countries. Also, to imagine a reality where the religious majority of Shiites would want to stomp on the Sunnis after Saddam’s bloody rule of the country since the late 70s is not a stretch. And to put the cherry on top of the civil war sundae, nobody seems to like the Kurds at all, so you’ve got a perfect setting for a three-way battle royale.

WHAT WE SAID BEFORE THE WAR
One last thing, remember these Democratic cautionary pre-war hits?
“Finish the job in Afghanistan.”
“Focus on the broader War on Terror and don’t get bogged down in one country.”
“Right war, wrong time.”
“Is Colin Powell trying to convince us with illustrations?”
“Let the weapons inspectors do their job.”
“Greeted as liberators? That’s not what your dad said.”

Those points were all ignored and dismissed as being anti-American, terrorist loving, moonbatish nonsense that hurt our troops and our resolve as a nation. Those who shouted us down were being intellectually dishonest and they knew it. But hey, anything to win the argument, election, et al…

So as far as a timestamp goes, well Cal, that I don’t have. But I think this rather lengthy explanation with information that was ALL available pre-war is more than enough to afford me the courtesy of trust.

I was thinking along the lines of Voltaire’s definition of madnee: “To have erroneous perceptions(beliefs). and to think correctly from them.”

This is where Mr. Bush has taken us.

We’d go in there, find no WMDs, Bush would look like an oil-hungry liar, our credibility to fight subsequent wars would fall under serious question in every corner of the globe, we would end up pulling out of Iraq before the country was TRULY ready and the three factions in Iraq would start fighting…ultimately leading to a civil war.

Is this super-accurate prediction of yours on record anywhere? Like, with a timestamp date before Match 2003?

Which is better, ranked in descending order:
1. Doing the right things right for the right reason
2. Doing the right things right for the wrong reason
3. Doing the right things poorly for the right reason
4. Doing the right things poorly for the wrong reason
5. Not doing the right things at all because you hate Bushie
6. Doing the wrong things

How does this translate to “President Bush vowed for the first time yesterday to turn over most of Iraq to newly trained Iraqi troops by the end of this year”? The President didn’t vow anything. He stated a goal.

It is my eternal hope that someone convivnces Bush to turn this entire operation over to Miltary Minds until it is stable, and then send in the diplomats. We are way beyond any talking points with factions at this time. We must establish unquestioned control. There is NO other solution.

What is better - doing things right -or doing the right things?

In this case I think they’re one in the same, but because of a gross lack of planning on Bush’s part pre-war, perhaps many see the “right” thing as simply pulling out as quickly as possible and letting the Iraqis hash it out for themselves. However, I don’t buy that scenario and I never will either. We broke this country and now we need to fix it. And contrary to what the President proposes as a good enough scenario to pull out, I think that’s doing the absolute bare minimum.

Frankly, I wish he would just fire Rumsfeld and clean house in general so he can get some new ideas for this war and this country. We deserve at least that much.

A strong argument could be made on escalation if clear ,etrics were in place to determine control. As it stands, if we leave without establishment of a reasonable agreement between all three factions, it is like saying “OOPS, sorry about that …ya’all have a good day now and remember …Democracy is good!”

And as for our brave troops, I wouldn’t want to be on …the last plane out under those circumstances. Sadly though, it smells familiar.

I think between the dead and injured we have changed the lives of 27,000+ soldiers so far.

Lastly, I have this question for any who would wish to tackle it.

What is better - doing things right -or doing the right things?

What’s so dishonest about this is that the forces he’s turning the country over to are effectively sectarian militia. Peshmerga in the Kurdish area and Shia militia wearing Iraqi government uniforms. This is not likely to reassure the Sunnis.

In fact I think consensus is growing among the more rational Sunni leaders that they need us to stay. They’re starting to do the math and realize that they’re outnumbered by Shia, with a bunch more of the same just over the border in Iran.