Originally posted by Mysti-ken:

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.

In so many words, yes.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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.

If an objective is given to troops and they reach the site of the objective, only to find that objective missing and nowhere to be found, you insist on calling it a military failure instead of an intelligence failure?

This doesn't make sense. Finally, how can we render something harmless that we still can't find?



Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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.

My point is that the search (though definitely scaled back) still continues; holes in intelligence are still being worked on so we get the complete picture (or as complete of one we can get).

Most of the information we have in hand today points to the fact that just about everybody had Hussein's capabilities wrong.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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 scouring that occured after the invasion shows that the military had a methodical plan of searching existing and presumed WMD sites.
Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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.

Again, if we KNEW where Hussein kept things, invasion would not have been needed, would it? All we would have to do is point things out to UNSCOM (like we did in the past) and UN Weapons Inspectors would ply their trade.

Then again, weapons inspections turned out to be a compounded failure, as they never managed to give a full accounting, either...


Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
Moreover, not only have they not been found or accounted for, we no longer know who now possesses them.

True, though detective at one point or the other has to take place at the "scene of the crime".

Since weapons inspections existed for a decade and failed to secure a full accounting, what faith existed in that they would have magically turned up anything different anytime soon?

Are you suggesting that by not going into Iraq, our odds for discovering anything back then would have been greater, instead of less?


Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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 military portion of Iraq hasn't been a failure. The intelligence portion has been.

Not invading was tantamount to doing what we had been for a decade and seeing NO definitive results on obtaining a complete tally.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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.

Again, if we had that key information, then wouldn't it have been more appropriate to go throught the UN?


Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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.

Hindsight is 20/20; given the information we had at the time, the risk and cost of failure was FAR too high to pay and continue indefinitely. Again, the events of 9/11 profoundly changed the way that the US has to look at it's security.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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??

I've read this twice and I see more attention paid to the concerns that lead up to missing WMD, which seem to serve as the cornerstone of our argument against Iraq. There are ancillary issues (as there always have been), but I didn't see tons of attention paid to UN Human Rights monitoring in Iraq like I did UN Weapons Inspections (for obvious reasons).

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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?

It was wanted, though not pursued. From what I've read, this was consistent with Bush, Jr., until 9/11. The events of that day spawned concerns about Iraq that had lain dormant and unaddressed across 3 administrations.

If we really wanted regime change, then why go through the UN continually for support on our efforts, until a select few backed out of UN 1441? I find it absurd that we would push for someone else taking the place of Hussein, while leaving the question of WMD totally unanswered and unaddressed.

Originally posted by Mysti-ken:
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.



I'll refer you to Occam's razor, then. When regime change would in no way accomplish what we set out to do (address our concerns of WMD in Iraq), why would we send in the military to do such a thing and THAT alone?

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