Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
JaTo: further to your many quotes which you undoubtedly attribute correctly.

Assuming that the assertions made about Iraqi WMD by the various authors of your quotes are all true (many are debatable, I think) then the undisputed outcome of the military exercise in Iraq IMO must be considered a massive failure - either with respect to the intelligence upon which the original decision to launch was made, or with respect to the actual execution of the invasion plan.

Unprecedented military success, but a massive intelligence failure.

I won't call it endgame on WMD, as many European countries still stumble across sizeable caches of Zyklon-B and other munitions; all in areas that are MUCH more densely populated than Iraq and where a half-century of time has passed...

...though it would be foolish to insist upon readily-available and easily-deployed masses of WMD that Iraq had access to. This simply isn't reality and hasn't been since we first invaded in March of '03.

Again, an administration's decisions (more often than not) are only as good as the intelligence they have on hand. The quotes by the individuals HAVE to be taken in light of the time they were said. At that time and with what we knew, Iraq was the NEXT threat (after Afghanistan) that needed to be addressed.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
Because if the object of the invasion was in fact to render the Iraqi WMD harmless, the fact that to date none have been found and are now likely in someone else's possession, is the exact opposite of the desired outcome - and by definition the military exercise is a failure.

True, but sample this: knowing ONLY what we knew up to February of '03, would the RESPONSIBLE position to take have been the one of doing nothing, given the rampant security concerns that we faced after 9/11?

If you accept that Iraq has been a military failure up to date (I dispute this to a degree, but for the sake of this particular point, I'll digress), then I would counter that you accept that UN weapons inspections were a failure, in that to this day there exists no complete tally of WMD in Iraq in February of '03 (or even today) and that the concerns of US security after 9/11 resting in the hands of a UN Security Council vote that was rife with politics and financial concern was an option that any US President could not have made in good faith, and in having the best interests of the US at heart.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
IMO, the true purpose of the invasion was, to quote John Kerry here (ironically) " ... to disarm Saddam Hussein" - which is distincyly different than rendering his WMD harmless.

IMO "disarming Saddam Hussein" is nothing more than a thinly veiled euphemism for "regime change" and therefore the principle of imminent danger as rationale for invading a sovereign country, did not apply.

I would submit that you are grasping for straws here. While regime change was of interest and had been (from what I've read) for 3 administrations here in the US, the bulk of the concern with Iraq didn't necessarily lie in Hussein himself after 9/11; it was with the total blanks we still had on WMD volumes and that Iraq hadn't come anywhere NEAR clean (according to even the kindest of UN reports).

Again, up until 9/11, actual regime change was the "pipe dream" of analysts (or the nightmare, depending on how one viewed it taking place; Qusay Hussein would have been much worse and only an assassin's barrage of bullets kept him away from succession). I think most Democrats and Republicans that pushed for closure on Iraq after 9/11 had MUCH more concern over what Iraq had in it's possession, than who was leading the country.

Both were a concern, but which was the overriding concern?

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
The subsequent disclosures about the content and "value" of the intelligence accumulated prior to the invasion; and the undisputed facts about what has subsequently been discovered about Iraqi WMD IMO fully support this position.

I would strongly suggest reading up much more completely on Iraq before making such unfounded accusations. Again, regime change was something that WAS wanted and by 2 previous administrations; in light of 9/11, how can you position that this was the bulk of the cause behind our invasion of Iraq?

Should I frame this method of thought as Mysti-Kens Razor?:

In light of intelligence failues, the least likely and most absurd scenario is the most relevant.

I find your input interesting and thought-provoking, though this latest thesis needs to be tossed into the bog.

Nothing I've run across positions the removal of Hussein as being an overriding concern, especially after our rampant fears over what precisely Iraq felt they had to hide for a decade and WHY the felt they had to do so.

JaTo e-Tough Guy Missouri City, TX 99 Contour SVT #143/2760 00 Corvette Coupe