To Jason S: Well, well — one of the regulars here actually got something right: yes indeed, invading Iraq to take out Saddam was indeed regime change, as the PNAC letter to Clinton pretty clearly stated. Saddam was useful to US interests in the 80′s, but not so much after that Kuwait business and his support of Palestinian terrorists (which were the *only* terrorists he supported, despite lying ass toadies like Stephen Hayes claiming otherwise. Not good news to Israel, but really of no concern to US security.)
But that’s not exactly how the invasion was sold, was it?
Remember when almost 70% of the US public thought Hussein had something to do with 9/11 thanks to all the BS “associations” Bush and his people were making? In a Newsweek poll from just last year, 41% of Americans answered “Yes” to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?” And that same poll showed that most of these people had no clue that most of the hijackers were Saudis. Remember when former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said that Bush was exploring removing Saddam early in 2001? And how both
former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward said that Bush started drawing up invasion plans shortly after 9/11?
All that talk about WMD’s and ties to al-Qaeda was just utter, deliberate lying. Clinton didn’t know because the US didn’t have many resources in the area at the time, and Hussein wanted to make Iran think he still might have WMD stockpiles (Saddam considered Iran to be his real enemy). But thanks to the war in Afghanistan and the return of the UN inspectors, as well as a big ramp up in covert ops, Bush was getting far more intel and all of it was pointing away from both WMD’s and al-Qaeda ties. (Oh, by the way — do you know why Hussein kicked out the inspectors in the first place? He discovered that the US had planted at least one spy among them.)
But we still invaded. Maybe Bush thought that once we had the full run of the country, we’d find WMD’s and al-Qaeda hidden in the bushes and under rocks or such. That didn’t work out, although with all the ensuing disorder and chaos, al-Qaeda did up coming into Iraq, but I do believe that was not the point.
But then the war itself went badly and the lies just piled up further. The civilian casualties are much, MUCH higher than anyone realizes, despite at least two studies having the number at about million, and this is info the Pentagon has but is apparently considered confidential. And you know how right wingers are now claiming how the surge worked and that war was somehow a success? No. The surge was about as successful as fireman who get a house fire under control only after the house had burnt down to its foundations (and with the fire itself being started accidentally by the firemen.) And also I doubt many of you know that the true reduction in attacks was not caused by the surge (which was not that much in additional numbers, percentagewise) but by essentially bribing Sunni insurgents to leave the Shiites alone and help instead with defeating al-Qaeda and their supporters (whose bloody and brutal arrogance was not exactly helping to make new friends in Iraqi neighborhoods.)
Lies upon lies upon lies, compounded by gross incompetence and causing insane amounts of death and destruction — that’s Bush’s legacy.
