Like A Dog On A Bone

++My rightwing e-mail today is impassioned defenses of the Iraq War. Isn't it right that we overthrew Saddam Hussein? After all he tortured dissidents,kept a block by block secret police and waged chemical war against the Kurds. All true. Terrible man with a terrible system in place.

++BUT what the Iraq War apologists are missing in their e-mails is any discussion of a threat to the United States, even after we attacked Iraq in the Gulf War. 

++What did we know at the time? There was no nuclear weapons. This was low on the CIA's belief-o-meter. There was no delivery system for nukes or chemical weapons. There was only the last vestiges of terrorism with him harboring aged and inform members of the PFLP. There was absolutely no connection with Al Qaeda,even the CIA got that right but the Bush White House elaborated a whole scheme on this with the testimony of one Al-Libi who was tortured in Egypt and made a connection with Bin Laden and Saddam--two people who loathed each other.

++So we are left with a horrible dictator like many horrible dictators, who once was a friend of the United States. That just means that we went to war against Saddam because we could--no other reason. 

++What was the lesson? Certainly the Iraq War has to be seen as the worst strategic error by the United States in my lifetime. Trillions spent,ballooning national debt,the rise of ISIS, more Americans dead than in 9/11,hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, hundreds more displaced, a complete destruction of a country's infrastructure. Certainly someone can figure out something to say about this with a little bit of honesty.

++And, I forgot, when the war started only 6-8 Americans involved spoke fluent Arabic. We literally did know what the Iraqis were saying throughout the war.

++I am sure the e-mails will continue. Louie Gohmert says that George W. Bush would have reconsidered Iraq if he knew Barack Obama would be President. Jeb says today that when his brother left office Iraq was stable. 

++I was hoping someone would say something wise and smart after all these years. But it looks like you have to draw around the wagons.