Loathe is right on this one. Read the book called American Soldier by Gen. Tommy Franks. In it he talks about how GW and Rummy told the Generals to scrap the old Iraq contingency plans that included sending in hundreds of thousands of troops for a leaner force, the very one that we went in with. This was before 9/11 during the time that Saddam was continually taunting us by shooting missiles at our planes that were merely enforcing the no-fly zones (the zones were in place so that Saddam would stop sending in his helicopters to gas and kill the Kurds in the North and the Shi'a in the South, btw). And for anyone who thinks he was not doing this, I beg to differ. I saw these atrocities with my own eyes during the cease fire after Desert Storm. And he was in total violation of the oil for food program as well. Corruption was running rampant in that fiasco. Now I am not going to say that mistakes were not made after the invasion. Once of the biggest was the immediate disbanding of the Iraqi Army. All it did was create hundreds of thousands of disgruntled former soldiers, some of who turned into insurgents. Instead we should have kept the military and re-trained them into our way of fighting instead of the soviet way, which is how they fought and subsequently lost twice. There were many other mistakes, but the short of it is that invading Iraq was long over due. In fact, the very first mistake was ending Desert Storm so soon. Believe me we were all surprised. One day we are getting our marching order to go all the way to Baghdad, the next we are standing down heading to Saudi Arabia to go home. Talk about a total downer.
Bruce Loathe wrote: >> I also mostly agree with this. But it still does not change the fact that >> GW had every intention of going in and taking out Saddam long before 9/11. >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;160198600;22374440;w Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:252431 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
