The Iraq War

My opinion and thoughts of the Iraq war:

After the first war with Iraq, we ended the battle after accomplishing our goals of removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Many have argued that we should have pressed on and removed Saddam from power. I honestly don't know if that would have been wise even today as we are faced with one of the toughest challenges America has faced. We probably would have had a difficult time keeping the Sunni, Shia and Kurds together as one country then as now.
The Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north needed protection from Saddam's forces and we provided help as part of Operations SOUTHERN and NORTHERN WATCH. As in our timeliness in getting aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina, we were slow in protecting them. We went on for years dealing with Saddam by flying US Air Force and US Navy missions in the southern and northern skies and the question was, 'how long are we going to put up with this guy (Saddam)'.
When President George W. Bush started his presidency, his team had several goals in mind and I believe that Iraq was a problem on their agenda. I don't think it was the top pressing issue, but they were not happy with the status quo of patrolling those skies and letting our pilots be targets. We could only imagine what mischief Saddam was up to in his country. All of us were unsure and we need to be honest on this point.
I was in Saudi Arabia on September 11th 2001. I watched countless hours of the same CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC reporting as the country did sans commercials. I soaked up Early Bird and Yahoo news every chance and I felt like most Americans -it's time to drop down their chimney with a few hundred nicely wrapped daisy cutters. Do I still feel that way? Do we still collectively have that anger? No, we do not. If we did, we would not accept this lackluster effort to capture Osama Bin Laden. 'Oh, he's probably somewhere on the Pakistani-Afghan border'-ho hum.
In the summer of '02 around July and August, the news media outlets started to carry on nearly a daily basis the thought of taking it to Saddam. The Bush Administration would make it publicly known that they were huddling on important issues and leading the media to start talking up the idea that Saddam poses a threat and would be the next stop on the terror war express. We know that Secretary Powell was pushing the UN route and the hawks were concerned that we would be wasting time with that approach. After all, we were attacked on 9/11 and the scope of this attack was unprecedented and we had the justification to go after all threats to our nation, as some argued. The administration had decided to give the green light. The first objective (other than to get the American people on board by way of the media) was to have Congress bring to vote a declaration of war. The need of this declaration by Congress was vital in order to have any hope of getting the United Nations on board. Congress gave President Bush the authority as many Democrats did not want to be on the wrong side of the vote as some Democrats were with the very successful first gulf war. Sen. John Kerry comes to mind as a sad example in that he voted against the highly successful first gulf war and then voted for this war. The news media hyped the war and provided countless hours of speculation on going to war with the foreknowledge that war = viewers = revenue.
The next stop would be the UN and this was an agonizing step for the hawks. The UN step was irrelevant to whether we were going to war or not, but all desired UN backing and international support. They just didn't want the UN lack of support to stop the train in it's tracks. The decision had already been made and only Saddam could stop it by possibly going into exile. We put conditions on the inspection process that illustrated the obvious. A quick timetable and the strictest conditions on supporting and not interfering with the UN team. The administration was flat out determined to convince Americans, Congress and the world that we were justified, the proof is there of the weapons, the Iraqi people will embrace us as liberators and their oil will pay for rebuilding. This administration's full court press to convince the world they knew what they were doing and had a rosy scenario answer for every possible pitfall, could have re-channeled that salesmanship, and sold every lemon on every used car lot in America.
I have to mention the weapons of mass destruction. We thought he had them and so did the world. The only debate was whether it was worthy of going to war for this perceived threat. If Americans were led to believe that Bush was connecting 9/11 to Saddam, that is not the case. The media inadvertently may have led some to think along those lines. I believe that the point was that Saddam is our enemy and so is Al Qaeda. Naturally, the fear is the two would get together because of the logic that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The fear would be that Saddam would provide the weapon and Al Qaeda would serve as the vehicle. Sadly, we will always have this fear of a supplier for Al Qaeda because of unaccounted nukes from the Soviet era, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. I know that there were statements from the administration about a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection but that is NOT the same as saying there was evidence of a 9/11 -Saddam connection. In fact, I read for my own eyes the news ticker of a White House statement/release that their position is that they do not have evidence nor are suggesting that there is proof of a 9/11-Saddam connection. This statement came out around December '02 or January '03 as memory has it.
The execution of the war has been criticized as well. Clearly, the administration had thought that we would still be in Iraq but with fewer troops and needing less money to sustain the mission. We not only wanted to go in lean but stay lean and get leaner. Sadly, we approached the war like we seem to approach everything these days. We want everything to be easy and if anything gets difficult it's not 'we just have to knuckle down and work hard' but we must have done it the wrong way.
Lastly, it would be great if Congress would do something for our troops besides pay lip service. Can't we do something more for these troops? They are having to make 3-4 tours in Iraq and that is unprecedented. Our wounded troops have to struggle with the VA in getting help. If we are going to spend taxpayers dollars on something, let it be for them. We owe them!