Ditto on weapons of mass destruction supposedly held by Saddam.

When the head of the CIA says its a "slam dunk" case, who should argue with
him?

Please point us to some documentation that head of the CIA says its
a "slam dunk" case.

That's what Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" says.

After the UN and IAEA inspectors found nothing to support any of
the US/British 'intelligence' and plenty to disprove it was
clear that the 'intelligence' was wrong and possibly deliberately
falsified.

Apparently by the Director of Central Intelligence.

Dismissing the Iraqi army. We could have paid them $200,000,000 for three
months (vice 5,000,000,000,000 a month that we are spending now) and not
had
hundreds of thousands of military trained men hanging around unemployed.

Hind sight is a beautiful thing huh?

Dismissing Ba'ath party officials. It's now suggested that at least
some
Ba'athists be brought back.

See above..

Thse were obvious mistakes at the time.

This was one of the worst. And they all together are getting our guys killed in
Iraq in greater numbers than necessary, even if you bought the administration
rationale for the war.

They've done -everything- wrong it was possible to screw up.



Clinton ignored the
advice of the military in Somalia in 1993 and got dozens of Americans
killed in
the process. I'm willing to bet you were silent on that one.


I wasn't. Nor am I silent IRT the observation that George H Bush
sent those troops to Somalia and left them there to spite
Clinton for winning the election. See also LBJ and his decision
to unilaterally halt bombing of N Vietnam after Humphrey lost.


Good points both.



Focusing on Iraq when Al Quaida is in Afghanistan.

The number of A-Q in Afghanistan is very small, and even if you include
Pakistan, the numbers are much smaller than their existance in other
countries.

Clearly it was smaller in Iraq than in any other country in the
region.

All this unlovely factoid can do is suggest that this is in fact a war for oil.



The focus on A-Q must be global, not just in one country. This is what
President Bush is doing.

No. He pulled troops out of the hunt for Al Quada in places like the
Horn fo Africa and sent them to Iraq.


Bears repeating.


Afghan countryside is now
run by the warlords.

The problem is not nearly as bad as you would expect and this was always
going
to be a problem. ...

I agree that there still is hope for Afghanistan.


And, yes. He still is ultimately responsible for the mistreatment of those
Iraqi POWs.

No matter how you stretch command responsibility, no matter how bad you
twist
it, Bush is not responsible for the mistreatment of the PWs.

Under his direction this Administration has flouted the rule of law.
I daresay that the abuses of foreign prisoners in American-Run
overseas prisons are a direct and forseeable consequence of the
climate he created.



Great comments. Don't expect to sway locksteppers like BUFDRVR

Walt