As bad as this is I hope that Iraq is not a training ground for something else: Iran (or North Korea)

More of the context in <i>The Financial Times</i>. How did Powell bite his lip for so long? What would have been different if his plan of, say, 400,000 troops and a sweeping taking of territory rather than narrow attack had been used? If administrative control had been part of the scheme? Twice the losses or half. Me no know.

The flaw, I believe, in your thinking is that the political/religious indoctrination for this to happen has been ongoing for the last quarter century. A lot of countries ... Egypt and Saudi Arabia come to mind ... are essentially blowing off steam that would be internally directed by allowing the preaching of hatred toward an external enemy: Jews, Freemasons, Christains, Westerners, and of course, Americans.

My support for the progress of the GWOT is because I believe this system/cycle/ideology needs to be undermined and eventually destroyed and Iraq was the only real viable starting point for making that happen.

For the most part, terrorists and the paramilitary death squads that have invaded Iraq to fight the US have been destroyed, which is a good thing or humiliated, which is even better (cf. Osama of the merits of horse strength). Thus, they're hardly coming back to where they started to spread the revolution.

The other singular characteristic of Islamic terrorism and violence is brutality, not intelligence or committed leadership. A sustainable leadership class is not necessarily being formed out of thuggery to establish (more so than now) thuggish regimes.

I think the flaw in my thinking is encapsulated in the phrase:<blockquote class="smalltext"><i>Me no know</i></blockquote>I would have preferred a Gulf War Powell-style thousands of tanks invasion which would have I suspect created less likelihood of the resistance getting the foothold it did. The expansion of the actions from those trained in Al Queda camps (for surely most of them are dead or in jails now) to others - Ba'athists, criminal gangs, pissed off Sunnis - is something that is not being addressed and, I think, you are implying does not really exist. I think that passing of the torch it is the main success of the insurgency. How will that expand is only a question if you think that torch passing exists. <p>But, of course, me no know.

I'm going with the assumption that all the suicide bombers are Al Qeda types; the others are likely to be as you say. You'll also note the major identified leaders are all non-Iraqs.

We might be able to narrow our disagreement in terms of Al Qaeda if there was a way to know how many had moved through the camps before they were shut down. For me that would be a workable definition for Al Qaeda or maybe the leadership and if they train others then they are not. Is that fair or is Al Qaeda continuing to add and drop members and can include Iraqis. My problem is Al Qaeda is something of a boogieman and if there is a Iraqi base to the resistence or a part of it that should be not call insurgent as it did not "surge in" (maybe mixing etymology here) but were native.

My personal belief (here we go again!) is that there's no real thing as Al Qaeda; it truly is one of those decentralized operations where lots of people are claiming to be members and whoever the startup guys (Bin Laden, etc.) are happy to get credit. I.e. more being an Anarchist than a member of the mob.

I don't like the word "insurgent" because it's meant to have positive or romantic overtones, plus there's the semi-racist aspect of "they all look the same to me" thinking; if what was going on in Iraq was purely Iraqis, I'd have less of a problem.

So, weirdly, my thinking is exactly to opposite of yours. I think of surge up when I think of insurgency (as perhaps one might picture a toilet backing up). If it's surging in, perhaps the US forces should be given the title also. Even if one thinks the Iraqi invasion was entirely illegitimate, it hard to see how some Morrocan or French guy coming in ununiformed has more of a claim to be there.

Saving starving Somalias from the clutches of the warlord Adid when the U.N. stood back and did nothing, and 300,000 died, saving thousands of Muslims from ethnic clensing in Bosnia, aid to earthquake striken Pakistan and tsanami ravaged Indonesia,saving Kuwait from the aggressor Saddam...all did nothing but anger spokesmen for the Islamic world about American involvement.

To apply rational thought, the reaction by those aligned against the west to the bringing about of democracy to the Middle East might be anger and add fuel to the insurgency.

My question would be, what doesn't??

I think you are right. From Websters on line:<blockquote class="smalltext">Main Entry: 1in·sur·gent<br>
Pronunciation: -j&nt<br>
Function: noun<br>
Etymology: Latin insurgent-, insurgens, present participle of insurgere to rise up, from in- + surgere to rise -- more at SURGE<br>
1 : a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent<br>
2 : one who acts contrary to the policies and decisions of one's own political party</blockquote>The "in" is more like the "within" of English.

I've got a few problems with how this is progressing.
1) It's entirely vertical thinking. Your isolating it from the context of everything else. What does NorKor do while all these extra troops are deployed to Iraq? Or does the PRC attack ROC while the bulk of the USN is caught up working in the Persian Gulf?
It doesn't take into account that the world is a large number of simultaneous actions that repercus on each other.
More troops. Fine. Does England have more? The US used a military maxim: economy of force. The least necessary to attain victory. I'm sure the stiff upper lipped Brits did the same.
You're ignoring operational tempo. Fine, we send half a million. How long can we keep them deployed before it all falls apart because the training and purchasing schedules are tits up?
2) It may just be the discrediting of a theory of warfare. Namely, effects based warefare. I'm not sure it does though. The US tried mass numbers and border interdiction in Vietnam too, and it didn't work.
Nope. I think it's remaining commited to building the institutions in Iraq that will solve it. Anything beyond the forces necessary for toppling the state are superfluous.
The insurgency won't go away until institutions, like police and rule of law, are accepted by a critical mass of the Iraqi populace. That's the tipping point, and that requires the gumption to keep calling the insurgentcies bluff.
TPM Barnett says that time is on the side of the state actor on his blog. I believe him. It fits in with the writings Cluaswitz, Sun Tzu, and Ceasar.

The plan, and yes, there was a plan, assumed that taking out the leadership was enough(and given what's in this link I don't think they can be taken to task over it much either: http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html . Yeah, before the invasion defense intellectuals were thinking hard on the problem of cultural differences in warfare. Seems that we learned the wrong things from the social scientists about cultural differences in light of what deAtkine writes, IMHO.).

As always, feel free to shred me. You can even take me back to John's, tell Sanger what I've done, and I'm sure they'll make me sit in the corner with the dunce cap on.

The conventional wisdom and history of war supports your preferred plan, Alan. It in fact was the preferred plan of most of the people who had to plan the ground campaign.

Rumsfeld and his brain trust wanted to try something different. To achieve big-war effects without going to big war efforts and *possible* attendant collateral damage.

I think the short-term history shows that, in short term effect, it works. But your post-war planning has to actually be much more different than before.

The US hasn't had to administer a conquered country since the end of the WWII occupations. Obviously, a lot of institutional knowledge was lost - but lets be honest... most people solving problems tend to assume the old ways are, well, old - and Rumsfeld et.al, especially prone to feel that way.

My gut and wholly unscientific feel is that a big attack would have been better... except that it would have taken at least a third as long to set up... and I'm guessing that they didn't feel their window to strike was that long.

A key weakness in the doctrine of pre-emptive war waged by democracies, especially in the current media environment - and by that I don't mean putative bias, but pervasiveness.

I wish Ry's comment had posted before I did mine...

Ry raises some good points, and actually has the advantage of *not* having the cultural baggage some of us (like me) bring to this discussion.

My partial response to your comments Ry is I *still* would have preferred a larger going-in force, which I then could have drawn-down to go back to staring at the other contingencies you are concerned about.

But food for thought - China is essentially a naval problem in any way we are likely to run into them short-term. The Navy was available. North Korea is more an airpower problem than a ground force problem... and the Air Force would have been available.

But the truth is, post-conflict was harder than we anticipated, and we didn't really have the institutional knowledge needed - and, given the realities of politics and budgets, unless we develop a need for that sort of thing a lot, we're not going to maintain it in the future either. Unused capability tends to wane.

One real difference between Iraq and Germany/Japan/Afghanistan is that fewer of the Big Players are being truly helpful... largely, I think, because they don't like the fact we did it, and are quite frankly willing (even wishing) for it to fail, consequences be damned, too bad for the Iraqis, so that the US is chastened. But that's a different rant I'm not prepared for at the moment, being way to underformed an opinion at the moment.

I agree with this:<blockquote class="smalltext">The insurgency won't go away until institutions, like police and rule of law, are accepted by a critical mass of the Iraqi populace. That's the tipping point, and that requires the gumption to keep calling the insurgentcies bluff.</blockquote>But I think that the bigger force would have got that going quicker which, in turn, would have reduced the scale of the resistence/insurgency and caused, again in turn, greater after the fact support. Earlier this month we talked about why Iraq was the lynchpin in the larger (or separate) war on terror - which is important now that is it clear given that the "no WMD therefore no invasion" crowd was proven correct. That is important as, by going with invasion lite, a greater turning circle to reassess and readjust the plan was required. It depended on being correct despite the critics. But the critics were right.

Can you identify some members of the "no WMD therefore no invasion" crowd? I don't seem to remember who they were.

France, Canada, Germany, Russia. The Folks Powell's presentation was made to but did not sway.

Here is a handy contemporaneous graphic from CNN in February 2002.

This sort of thing.

...and this is very handy...

A useful reminder of the contemporary insterest in WMD and not nation bulding or terrorist training is here including these quotations:<blockquote class="smalltext">In particular, various figures in the George W. Bush administration went so far as to express concern about nuclear weapons:<blockquote>"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." —Condoleezza Rice, US National Security Advisor, CNN Late Edition, 9/8/2002<p>"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." —Dick Cheney, Vice President, Meet The Press, 3/16/2003</blockquote></blockquote>

I'm never particularly impressed by postdictions -- what I'd like to see is someone in 2000 or 2001 saying "Iraq's WMD capability is non-existant". You won't find too many of them; certainly not from France or Germany in which their leaders on are record of making WMD in Iraq claims, plus pretty well all the democrats in the states, etc..

"Iraq has less WMDs than PRNK" is not "Iraq has no WMDs". Not even remotely.

The 1:32 post is interesting; it's the let's pile through everything someone has said and when they mispeak, or precis, or sum up; take it out of context. It's argument by "gotchya", which isn't much of an argument. Here's the Dick Cheney interview:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.htm

>> And over time, given Saddam’s posture there, given the fact that he has a significant flow of cash as a result of the oil production of Iraq, it’s only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons.

That's hardly a claim that he _has_ nukes; as a matter of fact, it's a definitely claim that he doesn't. Keep looking the article for nuclear

>> We know he’s used chemical weapons. We know he’s reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War. We know he’s out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization.

All true and born out by evidence uncovered post invasion. Here's the quote you provide with the context:

>> We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

He missed the word "program"; there's no way anything else in that interview makes sense.

>> We’re now faced with a situation, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, where the threat to the United States is increasing. And over time, given Saddam’s posture there, given the fact that he has a significant flow of cash as a result of the oil production of Iraq, it’s only a matter of time until he acquires nuclear weapons.

>> And there’s no question but what it is going to be cheaper and less costly to do it now than it will be to wait a year or two years or three years until he’s developed even more deadly weapons, perhaps nuclear weapons.

A little PRNK context -- they knew they had nukes and Iraq didn't

>> Colin Powell was recently there to try to put together effective international approach to North Korea to make it clear to them that it is not in their interest to proceed with building more nuclear weapons.

--

If you look at the Bush II's argument (the state of the union address is a good place to go) was that Iraq _was not_ an imminent threat, but would develop into one once the boot of the US was removed from that country. Their argument was based on past behaviour and was held out even when Mr Magoo went looking for WMDs.

You'll note he never came back to the UN to report that Iraq had no WMDs and that he needed more time. Magoo consistently exceeded his granted mandates; in particular, he was charged with going to Iraq are reporting whether he had their full cooperation in proving Iraq had destroyed their WMD stockpiles. He did not report so because Iraq consistently blockaded and obstructed his search.

Listen - you want scientific proof that there is an absence of something before you are satisfied there is an absense, you are waiting a long time. Maybe it is because those in favour of the war were either not listening or didn't want to but the opposition to it was about the lack of available evidence and the persuasiveness of that lack. It was not compelling to those who were not compelled. You can hash it as you like in hindsight but the "No WMD" set wanted more persuasive proof and there wasn't any forthcoming from the US. Turns out the reason there wasn't any...was there wasn't any. I really don't know where idea comes from that the war was over "one day in the future there may be nukes". John above was in the planning and he has said there was a rush. If there was no immediate threat why the rush?<p>Plus no "postdictions" - the links under what I linked to pre-date the war so don't confuse that. You may not like the picture it paints in hindsight (and the problem it makes for giving the people you do not respect silly names) but that is not re-creation of the facts.

Due to our common personality trait of uncommen generousity and fairness, I would commend you to the CNN transcript of Powell's presentation to the UN which indicates that the US thought the biological WMD were present but the nuclear were pending.<p>As usual, after fact finding, it appears we are both right.

Let me argue the Cheney speech a different way. Where were the "No WMD" people the next day. Why wasn't the Daily Show (or whatever) whooping it up saying "Vice-President CooCooNuts claims Iraq is trying to build nukes". Why wasn't there editorials in the WaPo and NYT calling for Cheney's resignation. Why wasn't Chiraq or Shroeder or the foreign minister of Botswana saying that the US was off it's rocker, that Iraq has no WMDs?

Because it was "common knowledge" that Iraq did.

Re: your 208 post: I'm not arguing for scientific proofs of negatives. The UN never asked for it either. They asked ... after a long series of other failed tests ... for a specific goal of full cooperation and left it up to one man to define what that meant in practice. He did not report it.

There was no "rush"; if Iraq was worth invading, why not now? 14 years too late, in many person's opinions.

The rush argument is another way of saying that Western nations should "never invade unless attacked". That's a reasonable opinion. One that I disagree with but I see it for what it is on it's positive and negative merits. But the argument for the "strike while the iron's hot" is there and has merit also, especially in view of Western inaction against Germany in the 1936 through 1939 period.

Yet Germany was a danger. That is the difference. There were people saying that there was no evidence in Iraq but maybe they were not taken seriously. But they were there - look at the 1:16 pm link. It is a 2003 story about a 2001 conference.<p>My take and it (I think) has been consistent is that you either invade to administer as it is evil and a danger (but not a terrorist base) and need dislocation to change the status quo or you seal it up and fly jets over it. The Rumsfled plan turned out to be the worst of the three. If the jets were still flying over and the inspectors crawling it would be boringly the same but no greater risk. If Powell had been listened to, I think there would be by now 1,000 fewer US casualties 10,000s fewer Iraqi less Sunni anger and a firmer faster transition to Iraqi power and less chance of Civil War '08. <p>But me no know nuttin'.

Well, you have an opinion; so do I. I certainly would have preferred an earlier invasion by 6 months and if I used extra troops it would have been to threaten Iraqs neighbours into keeping their borders closed. But back to the main point ... that's war. You do stuff and some things work and some things don't.

In 1936, the situation was very similar to 2002, with Britain playing the role of France and France playing the role of the US, Germany playing the role of Iraq (obviously) and Italy playing the role of the PRNK (and the US playing the role of Canada :-). The argument very much was that Germany was no longer a threat to its neighbours.

Agreed it is war and a bit of a mugs game except to the dead.<p>BTW, who played Carmen Miranda?

Oh - and an international tribunal would have been nice, too.

Ooo, I so disagree with you; funny that those calling for an international tribunal stand so much to gain from it in terms of power. But the discussion of victor's justice and what to do with Saddam is for another day.

I was just referencing the fact that I don't think any of Slobo's defence lawyers have gotten a bullet in the head. Holland could not have provided a better venue and better security. I don't really care how the court is run. Use Iraqi justice and lawyers anywhere you want.

Same place next friday?<p>
<center><img src="http://www.nonstick.com/wpics/sr1.jpg" vspace="20"></center>

Your coding needs a little work. I'll give you a week.

Comming in late again.

John gives me too much credit. I may not have much baggage, but I have educational holes too.

'God is on the side with the bigger battalions.'--Napolean.

Sure John, but since it looks like the Iraqi intell and Muhajideen Saddam just melted away in front of what we did send to set up one part of the insurgentcy I'm not convinced 'bigger battalions' would matter(but then again, I do admit to some level of ignorance on such matters). It's starting to look like Hussein may have wanted to go guerilla as a plan B(Joe Klein's Time article 'Saddam's Revenge,' but other things too. Like the prevelance of the BEdhouin as hero in Arab literature and how the Bedhouin have historically fought. Also, the deAtkine article).. Would really have helped him with his crafted Saladin image had he stayed uncaptured and the US left.
Maybe. If we'd sent more along the CA/MP or SOF unit lines. Combat troops I'm not sure would make much difference considering how they went to ground and how regular infantry isn't trained to play cop.

Alan, the US had 26 reasons for going into Iraq. Not the singular WMD argument. Read the war authorization bill(HR something or other. That's the House bill that laid out the case for COngress). 26.

I don't know what Britain used to justify it, what reasoning the Canadian gov't had for NOT going, but the US had 26 reasons for going. Not just WMD. WMD may have been what caught the media attention, got people all lathered up, but it was not the only reason the US decided to invade. So, one of the 26 reasons is shakey, what of the other 25? (Crooked Timber did a bit on whether or not any combination of the 25 being right was enough to overcome the WMD intel failure--if you're looking for a rebutal to this line of reasonning.)

This is why the No WMD, No War argument is tragically flawed---it ignores that there were far more than just WMD, which at the time was not a slam dunk in either direction in real time(Saddam's Bombmaker, The Gathering Storm. Both books about Hussein's weapons programs. The latter has a story about PRC giving Iraq chemweapons help, which we later learned to be true when a defector brought the stuff over, and finally the cement filled SCUD in GW1 made sense. It was Hussein telling us in GW1 what he could and would do. UNSCOM never found the production site, but we knew he had it from the Chinese defector.).
Seems you're also forgeting the follies of the inspection regime before Clinton ordered air strikes, or the Beligian threatening to report non-compliance two or three times once inspectors were back in place in '02 to the UNSC, which eventually lead to BAghdad Bob getting on TV to ask 'How many times must we do this?'.

In real time this was not obvious. There were those who adamantly 'knew' that there were, and those who adamantly 'knew' that there weren't. Neither side was able to put up a trully convincing case.

Rice said it best. Better to be on the side of caution here. The burden of proof the No WMD, No War crowd wanted was ultimately a mushroom cloud, or more likely a seismic tremor, before hand. Much too late. And what of the ramifications of Iraqi/Syrian ties or Iranian/Iraqi ties once that happened? War between them would be harder to 'unfuck up' than US/UK war against Iraq. You have to look at the costs of not going too(and include the likelyhood of the embargo against IRaq going poof).

No WMD, No War is far too simplistic a way to approach this given The 26, the real time nature of it all, and the likely horizontal pathways possible if we hand't gone. No, ends don't justify the means, or make up for bad arguments. But you have to honestly look at the arguments first as well.

Nor do we know conclusively if DPRK has a working nuclear weapon. They've never tested it if they have constructed one. The same guessing game going on w/DPRK is one we put up with Iraq: do they or don't they? Foreign Policy had some nuc experts arguing about how much Plutonium DPRK could actually hav processed a few months back, and these experts couldn't proove one way or the other whether DPRK did infact have enough for one A-bomb, much less several. Nor could either side proove that DPRK did/didn't have a weapons program.

But why not invade DPRK then? One really big problem. Never get into a land war in Asia ;). More seriously, this is a question that shows pure vertical thinking. What's the PRC's reaction to something like this, eh? Pure paranoia. They entered into the Korean War against an enemy they didn't think they could beat to keep that buffer state. You think they're going to give it up now? Nothing in the white papers that PRC has put out over the last 5 years leads me to believe so. That's why we aren't going into DPRK. We don't want to chance angering the PRC, especially now that they do have serious regional power and could beat the US if the fight occured in their backyard.

What happens if DPRK see's us comming with our airstrikes to take them down? Why, they flood Seoul with artillery fire, using both chem and conventional shells(Sanger's Germany deployment nightmares come to life), and basically try to take South Korea down with them. Is it worth doing given that? I dunno. I'm in favor of trying anyways. I've seen a scenario whereby someone shakes a carrier or three loose, to launch airstrikes to cripple all that arty even though it is dug into the sides of hills and mountains. Might be worth it, but the current leadership doesn't think it is---and that's the critical determination,that the PTB don't think it's worth it.

Iran? From where? Afghanistan doesn't have the infrastructure to support the logistical needs. An amphib has serious problems given the geography(very narrow Gulf of Aden and somewhat sympathetic countries lining it to give warning to IRan linning it.) combined with Silkworm ASM(thank you PRC), Russian torpedoes on French built Scorpene deisel/electric or AIP powered subs(thank you France and Russia), and the ability for small combatants like the Lightning boats that IRan took from the Brits last year--which Iran already had an abundance of--in USS Cole like suicide attacks or the high speed attacks used in 1986 by Iran during the Persain Gulf Crisis. I'd rather wait 'til Iraq or 'Stan is stable and we've built up the infrastructure to handle feeding an invasion force than to amphib.

But more importantly, look at how NP(non-proliferation) has exploded the last several years as a result. The pressure being put on Iran, which has been a nuc concern for years, not just the last five but decades(a friend says the Reagan admin gave up on keeping Iran nuc-free). The ramp up of NP patrols around DPRK? These are legacies of US invasion. People are taking NP serious again, because someone who can go whap up side someone else's head is serious about it. It sucks that it takes US action to do this, but that's what it looks like from where I sit(cheese eating college boy that I am).
Rant over ;)

I appreciate that, ry, but yhere was a UN presentation on one cause. The 25 others were not pivotal for the rest of the world. So from an internal US position it may appear simplistic but it was the lynchpin of the yea or nay for our government up here.

Isn't this a bit of goal post moving? The rest of the world rejects the other 25 reasons we want to go, claiming the only issue is WMD, and then when the US makes a case appicable to that requirement it's somehow neffarious all of a sudden?

I understand that for much of the world the issue was only WMD. Don't get John started on how myopic that is 'cause if I get going it'll be pure spittle frothing. ;)
BUt, again, was it an open and shut case either way? I don't think so. Good cases, based on the intelligence available, were made on both sides. You didn't buy the case the W Admin put forward, and now that post-hoc study shows that our worst fears weren't realized it somehow is lying or bad faith?
And no, we didn't know for sure until the US teams got in there to look, not even during the Hans Blix regime, for sure what Iraq had. Blix had his impressions, but he had damn little data.

I think you're missing something, maybe not as I'm a poor judge, but the threat to the Western World was existent. Not terrorism out of Iraq, though that did exist thru funding and sanctuary to some really bad hombres, but in how messed up Iraq could farq up the region, and by extention the world economy, if it ever got back on its feet with Hussein/Baathists still at the reigns.

Twenty years ago a stupid little war between IRan and Iraq required the USN to go in and protect everyone's oil supplies flowing out of the Persian Gulf while costing thousands of Arabs and Persians their lives for nothing(no territory changed hands). The threat posed by this didn't go away simply because Iraq had no working WMD, though it did have latent capability, at least chem warfare wise. It didn't go away simply because Iraq had had an embargo on it for 12 years. It was still there. It was getting worse as Iran got tougher and built up their unconventional weapons arm. Oil-for-food seems to have been oil for arms and palaces, and when the embargo got lifted(nice PR work that, playing up the human toll that use of soft power had) it was going to get worse. It didn't go away when Hussein sent his airforce to hide in Iran during the Gulf War of '91 Then toss Baathist Syria, vying with Iraq for leadership of Baathism, into the mix. That's a powder keg waiting to happen.
I've always hated the use of the WW2 analogy as Iraq was not a physical threat to anyone outside of the ME. Nope. It was more like pre-WW1, with nations making little moves here and there to screw over an enemy, but ultimately leading to one groteque orgy of destruction. I'm abusing Kagan's On The Origins of War here in case anyone wants to know where I'm getting this.
I'm basically a punk kid, and I put this together. I saw the long term threat. Why couldn't my far more enlightened and edumafied Continental 'betters' see it?
(note: I left the Canadians out of this. You guys are a good lot. I don't suspect Canada of ulterior motives. A little lack of vision maybe, but good eggs who made up their minds to sit this one out. I cannot say that about France, and the rest of NATO, excepting Britain, though).

Sometimes to keep the peace, REAL peace and not just the absence of the ultra-violence, tough choices have to be made in anticipation of mid term and long term threats. And, no, I don't think I'm Hari Seldon.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if WMD was your only issue and you feel vindicated that there weren't any then great. But it never should've been the only issue as the threat of a rather large conflict that could engulf the entire ME, bringing about a global depression, was in the near term future. Being so pre-occupied with WMD was rather myopic. Many nations said that was the only thing they cared about. The US needed the reconstruction or follow on capabilities they possessed(that's the way the 'jobs' were divied up essentially). A case was made to get you to come in. Fine, were the Corrinthians, making a bad argument because it was designed to play on your fears, during the run up to the 1st Peleponesian War. YOu didn't see the threat. You didn't want to see the threat. We needed your help and we attempted to get it in the most expeditious way we had available. Would you have come otherwise?

No, you just have to go back and look at the time why nations like ours said no - though to be fair I really don't think about "like" too much as I only concern myself with what Canada dis and has done and still is doing. But that being said, the case was not made for WMD and the US was presenting on WMDs. Nothing myopic. That was the key and as it turned out there was not the threat that was being alleged. That being said, we (as I think you know) did everything else where the threat existed like we still are in Afganistan, our navy was in the Gulf and our 250 secret killers in black are crawling around somewhere doing what they do.