that could have been the front page new york times headline this morning.
instead this article about the decision can be found on page 14.
it absolutely blows my mind how little the american public seems to care that the primary reason for invading another country has turned out to be baseless. the most frightening thing is the precedent this could set with this and future presidents. when there is so little accountability about the decision to go to war in the long term and given the inevitable boost to popularity immediately after hostilities commence, how can any president be expected to resist the temptation? it's startling how easily bush seems to be getting away with what, if measured by the goals he set forth pre-invasion, has turned out to be a total failure.
at least so far. i admit that the jury is still out on what kind of government the future iraq will have. but the invasion clearly has had no effect on keeping WMDs out of the hands of terrorists (in fact, if the hussein government actually had them in the pre-war days (which looks pretty unlikely now, but is a possibility that has not been totally ruled out) their post-war disappearance probably means they are in the wrong hands now. so in that sense the invasion could have facilitated arming terrorists groups. there has yet to be any non-discredited al qaeda connection even though the u.s. now controls all of the hussein government records. meanwhile, the dead keep piling up without any end in sight. meanwhile, the our relationship with our closest allies is shakey, al qaeda is resurgent (we provided it with a handy recruitment video in the form of iraq) and we have a brand new reason to lose even more credibility in the mideast. and foreign policy is supposed to be this administration's strong point! i don't understand why the president has more than an 8% approval rating right now. his half-brained policies have endangered us all.
