What I and others have been saying is that before you go to war, you need to understand the geo-pollitics of such an invasion and plan for the worst possible outcome and not just the rosiest scenario ("we will be greeted as liberators") and reassess the worthiness of such an action.
The evidence is overwhelming that Bush/Rumsfeld had no understanding of the potential for an either an insugrency backlash or sectarian violence.
The results?
Quote:
Iraq's political process has sharpened the country's sectarian divisions, polarized relations between its ethnic and religious groups, and weakened its sense of national identity, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.
In spite of a sharp increase in Sunni-Shiite violence, however, attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces are still the primary source of bloodshed in Iraq, the report found. It was the latest in a series of recent grim assessments of conditions in Iraq.
But the report was unusual in its sweep, relying on a series of other government studies, some of them previously unpublicized, to touch on issues from violence and politics to electricity production. Published on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the GAO report was downbeat in its conclusions -- underscoring how Iraq's deteriorating security situation threatens the Bush administration's goal of a stable and democratic regime there.
"Despite coalition efforts and the efforts of the newly formed Iraqi government, insurgents continue to demonstrate the ability to recruit new fighters, supply themselves, and attack coalition security forces," the report says. "The deteriorating conditions threaten continued progress in U.S. and other international efforts to assist Iraq in the political and economic areas."
The report relied on a number of findings made earlier this year by the United Nations, the U.S. State and Defense departments, U.S. intelligence agencies and other sources to reach its conclusions. Unlike the majority of those agencies, the GAO, which reports to Congress, has no responsibility for forming or executing policy in Iraq.
The GAO said Congress must ask several questions as it considers what to do next. Among them:
• What political, economic and security conditions must be achieved before the United States can withdraw military forces from Iraq?
• Why have security conditions continued to worsen even as Iraq has met political milestones, increased the number of trained and equipped forces, and increasingly assumed the lead for security?
• If existing U.S. political, economic, and security measures are not reducing violence in Iraq, what additional measures, if any, will the administration propose for stemming the violence?
The report, citing the Pentagon, said that enemy attacks against coalition and Iraqi forces increased by 23 percent from 2004 to 2005 and that the number of attacks from January to July 2006 were 57 percent higher than during the same period in 2005.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/new...=kansas_nation
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What would I have done? I would have continued to focus all of our resources on al Queda in Afghanistan as well as agrressively pressuring Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to take out al Queda within their borders or diplomatically threatened to do it ourselves. Iraq was marginalized after the first Gulf war...its military was emasculated, two-thirds of the country was under a US-UK no fly zone, and he had no WMD. Saddam was certainly a threat to his own people, but not to us. Bush took his eye off the ball (ie focus on al Queda) for whatever reason and not only created a new quagmire in the Iraq, but lost the support of most of the world.
The more important questions now are those raised in this article. How do we make the best of this f*ck up? I dont have the answers, other than its not "stay the course".
The price of crude oil from 2001 - 2005
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/crudeoilprice01_05.gif
Follow the red line from March 2003 and the invasion of Iraq.
A direct corelation? Probably not. An influencing factor? Probably so, along with our deteroriating relationship with many Gulf states as a result of our invasion.