Originally posted by JaTo:
Unprecedented military success, but a massive intelligence failure.


You seem to be defining military success as the capture of Saddam, the killing of his sons, the incapacitation of the Iraqi army and the destruction of Iraqâ??s military/industrial complex.
The ability of the U.S. armed forces to achieve these things was for the most part a foregone conclusion. But these achievements should be considered nothing more than a means to the true end which should have been rendering Iraqâ??s WMD harmless â??? an objective not yet achieved, and therefore, to date, a military failure. An especially egregious failure, given the capabilities detailed above.
Originally posted by JaTo:
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.


But the fact is that NO Iraqi WMD have been found at all; nor have they been accounted for. Thatâ??s entirely different, and much more dangerous, than suggesting that some remnants may yet be found years from now.

Originally posted by JaTo:
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.


Politically perhaps â??? talk is cheap. But militarily the only way to be assured of the removal of the threat of WMD was to have a very high degree of confidence about where they were. The â??letâ??s invade and hope we find the WMDâ? method you seem to be espousing, has already proven to be a failure; and IMO was an easily foreseeable one. Moreover, not only have they not been found or accounted for, we no longer know who now possesses them.
Originally posted by JaTo:

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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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.
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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?


While you agree that by definition the military exercise is a failure, you then go on to suggest than even so, to not invade would be tantamount to doing nothing. The corollary to invasion was not â??do nothing.â? The responsible position would have been to produce a military plan that leveraged the overwhelming force of the U.S. military into the successful elimination of the threat of WMD. I understand that all the elements were not in place at the time of the invasion (ie: location of WMD), but that does not excuse a decision to go forward with an invasion while lacking key information critical to the success of the mission.
Originally posted by JaTo:
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 failureâ?¦


Agreed, to that point they were. One would argue however that the cost of that failure was relatively paltry, because we are no further ahead despite the cost of thousands of lives and $ billions in the meantime. Whatâ??s more, there may yet be additional costs (human and other) created by the very same WMD that were ostensibly the target of the invasion, but are now in who-knows-whoâ??s hands as a direct result of the military action.

Originally posted by JaTo:
â?¦, 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.


You enter into this equation â??politicsâ? and â??financial concernsâ? â??? which is the point I am making; and additionally â?¦

Originally posted by JaTo:
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.



If you read the entire text of Bushâ??s address to the United Nations White House transcript it seems clear, especially in light of what has transpired since, that the cumulative references are in fact about â??regime change.â??

Originally posted by JaTo:
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?



On the one hand you assert that â??regime changeâ?? in Iraq was consistent with foreign policy under Bush sr and Clinton, but you also maintain that my asserting that it remains so under Bush jr. is â??unfounded.â? My reading on Iraq is incomplete to be sure, however, my understanding of U.S. foreign policy provides more than enough ammunition for my assertion to be thought reasonable, even by those who disagree with it.

Originally posted by JaTo:
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.



Mysti-kens razor is no different than Occamâ??s.

Far from being absurd, the premise that the military invasion of Iraq can be seen as a success only because the real objective was regime change and not rendering WMD harmless â??? is in fact the simplest explanation of the current state.