[andyfox]

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, the key foreign policy players, were all on public record of beingin favor of regime change in Iraq during the Clinton administration. Wolfowitz made a presentation at Camp David the first week after 9/11 proposing an invasion of Iraq before anyone knew who was responsible for 9/11. Bush cornered Richard Clarke and pressured him to look for a connection between Hussein and 9/11. The White House first denied that such a confrontation took place, then backtracked to admit it had. Rumsfeld asked Clarke for targets in Iraq and when Clarke asked him if he meant Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said, "No, there are no good targets in Afghanistan." Paul O'Neill says that getting Hussein was a priority in national security meeting from the beginning of the Bush administration.

I don't know if the troops are aware of what would be the appropriate steps to provide the means of victory, but certinaly our troops know how the American politial system works and that a country where all march in lockstep to whatever the leader says would not be a country worth defending. I would think, therefore, that debate and critique would be welcomed by the troops.

When the Congress voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq, they probably thought the administration would know what they were doing. The administration, however, deliberately failed to prepare for the occupation, thus jeopardizing the lives of our troops needlessly. Had the Congress knew that the administration would ignore the recommendations of numerous government and private groups not to disband the Iraqi army, not to dismantle the infrastructure of government, not to allow looting, not to prepare for the inevitable counterinsurgency, not to treat the Iraqis as partners in security efforts for a year after the fall of Hussein, not to attempt to seriously train and equip Iraqi forces for proactive sceurity and counterinsurgency imssions until 2004--well, it is certainly understandable that it is having second thought on allowing an open-ended occupation.

I hope that the world has indeed been made a safer place by our invasion of Iraq. I fear that is has not, in large part because of the incompetence and willful arrogance of the administration. Whatever irresponsible criticism of the president there may or may not have been, the irresponsibiility of the administration in not being prepared for the occupation is by far the bigger problem.