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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Don't say they can't justify why they invaded Iraq. What I get from your posts is that you don't agree with the justification given. To me that is an important difference.
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When you go to war based on false justifications (i.e. bad intelligence or intelligence you manipulate to suit your objective), two things are likely to happen:
(1) You increase the difficulty of winning the war because your justifications dont match the reality on the ground.
The sobering findings from the non-partisan GAO report last week reflect this:
The report 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.
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.
(2) You lose public support as more and more facts are revealed that your justifications were false.
Support for the war and the belief that it was a necessary component of the GWOT had steadily decreased to the point that over 60% of the public no longer believes it.
When its your war, and both (1) and (2) happen, you are only left with one option - to continue to steadfastly present your false justifications as if they were true and to manipulate the facts on the ground to make it appear that the war is progressing better it is.
Which is what Bush et al have been doing since the war started...and continue to do.
As late as last week, Bush, Cheney, Rice are still implying some sort of operational relationship between Saddam and al Queda when the most recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee affirms that there was no evidence to support this supposition.
The Defense Department admitted last week that it DID NOT count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks — including suicide bombings — when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders around Baghdad last month.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/stor...25-2095927.php