Bowser is correct in his observations regarding the Germans and the US preserving the police and infrastructure intact in WWII. What we did in Iraq was incredibly stupid and it is the major reason the situation got out of control.

We were all gullible to some extent. I knew from day one that we had to be out in a year and I really thought we could pull it off. I never thought WMD was a justification for invasion and I would have been at least mildly surprised if they had found them.

I have said before that in hindsight we should have just bought Saddam and turned Iraq into a client state.

What did the US do in Japan – fire everyone who worshiped the Emperor? What are all those armed people going to do when the people don’t have services, are getting more and more bitter? Hint – Iraq.

Unfortunately the Bush-Cheney people didn’t read history, didn’t plan, and, frankly didn’t think.

Everything which would be needed to run the country was allowed to be destroyed. If there was any interest in “hearts and minds” the civilians would have been a concern.

Nope. Every American who died in that war is a hanging offence for Bush, Cheney and Rice, and life imprisonment without parole for Powell. There are many places in the world Cheney is afraid to travel even if his health allowed.

Conservative responses to this, as well as Obamacare, really belong on “Mysteries of the Multiverse”. They just don’t make any sense.

I’ve already spelled out in detail Cheney’s geopolitical reasons for invading. Mr Bush was not an evil man, and not as cynical as his VP, he may have really believed people seeing their country invaded woud greet us with open arms. He was wrong, and he should have guessed so. He was counseled by military and intelligence authorities and State Department pros what we were getting into, the White House just chose to ignore all those pointy-headed intellectuals. Bush was motivated by sincere but naive notions of “freedom and liberty” in a part of the world where those notions are alien, and perhaps even by his messianic and apocalyptic fundamentalist Christianity. He assumed the Iraqis would react the way he thought Americans would react under similar circumstances. He was wrong on both counts.

And of course, he ignored all the realities on the ground, of tribal conflicts, religious divisions, all the other factors that suddenly exploded once the dictatorship that kept these forces in check was removed. And immediately after the war, he dismantled the Iraqi army, police, security and state administration which led to immediate chaos.

To be honest, I would probably have done the latter myself, but I can be excused for my ignorance of Iraqi society. The President should have known better, he had access to intelligence resources that I didn’t.

You’re right, we were making good progress against Al-Quaeda. The CIA did a great job, mostly improvised on the fly, in Afghanistan and immediately routed Bin Ladin and the Taliban there with local help. I also give credit to the Bush team for the slow and meticulous but successful work they did in infiltrating Al-Quaeda communications and financial networks. This was important and virtuoso work, but by necessity, did not present the American public with the victory and revenge we demanded after 9/11. We wanted a Battle of Midway, and Iraq was going to be that. It turned into Operation Barbarossa instead. And even our successes in Afghanistan started unraveling due to DOD and CIA rivalry, and the withdrawal of assets there for the prep for Iraq. Invading Iraq had already been planned, Cheney admitted that, we had every intention of going there right from the start. We were going to plunge an oaken stake right into the heart of Islamofascism. We poked a hornet’s nest, instead.

And when we found out how wrong he had been about WMDs, and when it looked like that had been cooked up just to justify agression for ecoomic and strategic purposes, he lost the support of the bulk of the American people. At least, that’s when he lost me.

In the 60s, during my war, I got taken in by McNamara’s Domino Theory and LBJ’s Tonkin Gulf Incident, and here was a fight that was going to restore my faith in the honor of my country, its leaders and its arms. And I got taken again. Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Yeah, I was gullible too.

I’m done here.

The oil fields were preserved. The rest of the country, including museums and hospitals, were allowed to be looted. “Stuff happens.” As the law says, the actions speak for themselves. (This was at the same time Cheney was protecting the records of his “energy task force” from public knowledge, as if that wasn’t of interest to the public. And by the way, 9-11 was financed by Saudis and perpetrated by Saudis. Not one dollar of Iraqi money was involved, not one Iraqi.)

And, again, you were brave enough to answer!!

I think they wrongly believed that Iraq was a well educated secular nation that happened to be under the thumb of a despot. I think they believed they could “liberate” the country and quickly set it up as a democratic state, (puppet or otherwise), that would be seen as a positive example to the rest of the Arab world. Bush, (nor I), realized at the time that secularism only exists in the Arab region under a secular despot.

As for the war on Al-Qaeda not showing any dramatic victories, at the time I thought we were doing pretty good in Afghanistan. We had run the Taliban out of Dodge and appeared to be on the right track at the time. In fact one might suspect that our victories in Afghanistan drove the Al-Qaeda into the greener pastures of Iraq.

As for the rest, of course I don’t buy all the Obama praise and the BDS, but I basically agree with your assessment of the current state of affairs over there, and who the GOP will blame.