06-10-2004, 08:04 AM
Quote:In hindsight, it might not have made any difference if they had waited. I don't think they believed there was any point in waiting, and only downside risk in letting Saddam prepare more.No, the real downside risk for the Bush administration was that US public opinion might recover from its 9/11-induced psychosis, realize that Saddam had no connection with 9/11, and turn against the proposed invasion of Iraq. Since the administration was determined to invade Iraq whatever the cost, they had go in before that could happen. The Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch scams.
It's surely futile to argue about this topic -- we all have our minds made up. But, for me, the dishonest justifications for this war were a complete breach of the trust in and obligations of any administration. The WMD arguments were transparently dishonest before the war, not only in hindsight -- the total lack of WMDs just highlights that fact. The Bush administration wasn't misled, they were only interested in using WMDs to justify what they wanted to do anyway. And, as we've seen, dishonest policies founded on illusion instead of reality tend to have many bad consequences.