It's Not Just The Intelligence, It's The War

Cenk Uygur has a good article on The Huffington Post about Iraq.

Throughout the last three years we have been given three principle reasons for the Iraq War by the White House. 1. We had to launch a pre-emptive strike to make sure we hit Iraq before they hit us with their arsenal of WMD. 2. Iraq is tied into the Global War on Terror that was brought to our shores on 9/11. 3. By bringing democracy to Iraq we will stabilize the region and make it friendlier to US interests, thereby defeating terrorism in the long term. All of these reasons might have sounded good at some point, but time has proven that they are all terribly wrong.

He then goes through the details on each of the three. For the first he ends with "I don’t remember the Iraqi people, let alone the American people, receiving an apology for this grave error. In the best case scenario, the administration invaded a country – invaded a country – based on an error."

For the record, at the time I was buying into number 3 as at least a reasonable argument to consider and was one that couldn't be stated outright. I wasn't convinced it was a justification but I thought it could be discussed (as opposed to the knee jerk reaction that the war was wrong). Well I now feel differently. It was wrong, we did it badly (maybe it could have worked if we were better prepared but it seems doubtful), and things are worse now than they were. The effects of the US forcing it's will on another country has antagonized the rest of the world and weakened our position (see previous post).

I think Uygur goes a little too far at the end of his piece, but he may well be right.