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It has now been well established that Bush, Inc., knew going in that our "liberation" of Iraq was likely to go badly.
Bush ignored warnings on Iraq insurgency threat before invasion
Intelligence suggested country faced years of tumult
by Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The GuardianThe Bush administration disregarded intelligence reports two months before the invasion of Iraq which warned that a war could unleash a violent insurgency and rising anti-US sentiment in the Middle East, it emerged yesterday.
The warning, delivered in two classified reports to the White House in January 2003, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council, the same advisory board that warned the Bush administration last month that the violence in Iraq could descend into a civil war.
That forecast radically departs from George Bush's upbeat assertions that the situation is improving in Iraq, and he initially dismissed the assessment as a "guess"....
But, in fact, he was warned a lot earlier than that, if only he'd paid attention to what his father had to say.
Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles....Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome."
--"A World Transformed," George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, 1998, p. 489
The truth is, Dubya was going to invade Iraq, come hell, high water, or solid, considered, informed advice warning him not to.
Posted by brett at 01:12 PM | TrackBack