Bush, on the CIA's recent bleak assesment of Iraq

[mburbank]

W's administration is packed with the folks from his father's administration who though Poppy made a big mistake by not invading Iraq when he had the chance. They all wanted to invade Iraq from the go, not for any national security reason but because they felt they had unfinished business. Like schoolyard bullies he got pulled off a beating, the hung around after school until the got another chance.

The main reason we invaded Iraq was that the Neocons wanted to invade Iraq. Pure and simple. They wanted to flex a little muscle in front of the world, show everybody who the big dog is, and Iraq was always the target. If there'd been no 9/11, W woould have spent his entire presidency trying to engineer a situation in which the county would find it palatable to invade Iraq, and if the country hadn't gone along with him, he'd probably have done it anyway.


The tragedy here is that the war in Iraq pretty much neutered the war on Al Quaeda before we even put troops in Afghanistan. All the Money, all the intelligence work, all the translators were already being held back for Iraq. In fact, we even discouraged other countries from contributing to the reconstruction and drug policing of Afghanistan becuase it would have meant we'd have to help, at least logistically, and we didn't want our transport capacity getting tied up in anything but Iraq.

Afganistan is generating more drug money for Terrorism than when the Taliban was in power. Al Quaeda is still in Afghanistan, and active. Bin Laden is still at large and active. And we're busy in Iraq. HOW is W even running even, let alone getting crushed? It boggles the fucking mind.