“Wade – do hope you get to Bing West’s book. Think it will be help you get your warm & fuzzy feeling for Rummy (and Bush) Nobody on either side of the Iraq War debate looks golden right now…Hmmm – Seems like this pudding acquired a theme.”
With the single exception of McCain on the GOP Ledger, and Brian Baird on the Dem side. I don’t look at the review of what went on as a means of seeking someone to blame, but rather as a means for figuring out what went wrong. While not yet in the middle of revitalizing our military force doing the hard work that was put off doing by President Clinton, and restructuring and rearming in a way that made sense to the mission, the manner and method of taking Afghanistan down was probably a god send. What was happening in Iraq, which I recognize as accurate in Bing West Book, had a number of causes, sojme were honest mistakes others were failures of humans to just suck it up and do their job. I think the critiques evident and very well sourced in the undersecretary for Defence in policy, shows that process in the CIA, State and in DoD which should have been working cooperatively and sharing information, were outright lying to one another, about what had and had not been accomplished and tried. The info on WMD is IMO only a small sampling of the garbage the leaders of government were being fed by careerists. How can you lead with such nonsense ongoing from administration to administration. From the group that was supposed to be ready to assist with identifying and organizing local leaders and local government, a state operation that was in effect never started, to contacting Kurds about the stance and likely reaction of other Iraqi leaders, a task which CIA and FBI both bear some responsibility for never having conducted thoroughly nor reviewed beyond the author of the reports individual preconceived bias.
The actions of folks in defying what amounts to a direct order is to my mind incredibly reckless, and cost more lives than the leaks this same vile sort of soul let go to news and other sources just to undermine a policy decision of which they did not approve.
Most of this was before Gardner or Bremmer has the opportunity to put their own mark on the mess. Escalation of the SNAFU occured once decisions made based on flawed intel were put into operation. That much I think is very obvious. Committee hearings that are worth a damn would have hung the miscreant Members of State and CIA by their thumbs. Instead we got Falluja I and II. There will be no “three”.
