Up to this point, I think you are fairly accurate, except that we had no way of "controlling" Saddam Hussein from the outside. Our intelligence was shoddy to say the least, and what we did know (or think we knew) wasn't good. So, how do you effectively insure you have him under control? It's impossible, and it was a risk we simply couldn't afford to take after 9/11.
Saddam could have been effectively controlled by judicious use of military force without resorting to invasion. Instead, we were limiting ourselves to political force which Saddam was using for his own purposes.
No, Bush Sr. left him in power because the same weak-kneed mealy-mouth liberals who are screaming about the war today, were pleading with us to give him one last chance. You are right, we should have taken him out in '91, no questions asked. But Bushes seem to lack that certain something... that backbone or balls... whatever, that enables them to pull the trigger and do what they should do. Daddy got shot down because he hesitated, then got booted out of office because he backed down on his tax pledge, and his son followed the same pattern with Iraq. He followed Colin Powell through the UN maze, instead of executing executive authority and getting the job done. Do you think Clinton would've handled Saddam the same as Bush? No way! He would have taken Saddam out in the dark of night, and given a 10-minute press conference the next day, and that would have been the end of it.
I did not suggest the reasons Bush Sr. left Saddam in power. As for Clinton, he also left Saddam in power after writing an executive order making the removal of Saddam from power a national goal.
Again, it doesn't matter what we SHOULD have done in 1991. Because we should have done something years ago, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it now.
yes it does matter because the political and military environment were significantly different in 1991 indicating a significantly different result has we done so in 1991. The difference between 1991 and 2003 in political and military environment in 2003 was reason to NOT engage in a ground war/invasion/occupation.
The entire WMD thing was overboard, in my opinion. The "fault" I have with Bush is his incessant basing of the war on WMD's, which he had to be smart enough to understand, were never going to be found. How he let the media dwell on this, and his political adversaries thrive on this for so long, is beyond me. The basis, premise, reason, whatever, should have never been presented on the grounds of WMD's alone, and it often was.
Yes, Bush screwed the pooch by overstating the WMD situation in Iraq. In fact in several areas he and his administration flat out lied about how the WMD situation in Iraq translated to a threat to the U.S. And the reason for overstating the WMD situation is there was no other valid reason to support a ground war in Iraq.
The "international situation" was, the UN voted unanimously to support serious consequences for failure to comply, then wanted to back down when he didn't comply. Bush should have realized this was going to happen, the UN has never acted against any nation with "serious consequence" other than passing a freaking resolution. Woooo... that's serious! The Bush Mistake here was going to the UN in the first place. If the administration argument was based on CIA intelligence which suggested a direct threat to our security, the president need not consult the UN about action.
Problem is there WAS no direct threat to the U.S. from Saddam's weapons, even if they had existed. Saddam was in no way stupid enough to have even remotely contemplated a direct attack on the U.S. As justification for a ground war in Iraq, it was a flat lie. The real threat was Saddam allowing terrorists access to WMDs. And even that was not a direct threat to the U.S. because the terrorist factions Saddam supported were focussed on Israel.
For your information, and not a lot of people are aware of this, we had been routinely bombing "nefarious locations" in Iraq out of our bases in Saudi Arabia since 1995 under president Clinton. Each time we bomb buildings, there is a real possibility of collateral damage, and I am sure it did happen over the years, we just didn't hear about it.
I had your idea when all this UN inspection debacle was taking place, I said they should target a presidential palace each day until Saddam capitulated.
The bombing was minimal, and each mission WAS under scrutiny. Plenty of namby pambys were loudly complaining about the collateral damage of each and every bombing attack used. What should have happened is as I described: every time the UN inspection team was delayed or thwarted from inspecting a proposed site, we should have simply bombed that site within 12 hours of being told the UN was not allowed there. If Saddam was simply playing games, that would have ended his games after a couple rounds. If he was seriously hiding things from the UN inspection teams, those items would have been destroyed. Either way, Saddam would have lost his gambit without the need to resort to an ill timed and ill conceived invasion.
Here is another myth perpetrated by the left, we didn't make Afghanistan a "secondary effort" at all. This particular country is one of the most difficult battle terrains in all of the world, ask the Russians. We bombed the holy shit out of Tora Bora, for three days! Another critical Bush mistake, was trusting the bastards who made the deal in the desert, to bring Osama out of the caves. The reasoning was understandable, we couldn't easily get heavy artillery in there, it would have taken us weeks to do what they thought could be done in a day.
The motivation, rationale, and reasoning for the war were legitimate, and probably should have come in '91, or sooner, for that matter. The results of a liberated Iraq are not going to be realized immediately, or maybe not even in our lifetime, but I believe it will have been the right thing to do, when history looks back on it.
Yes we did make Afghanistan a secondary effort. The very reasons you mention are the reasons a full scale ground attack was necessary in Afghanistan. A few days bombings hardly constitutes anywhere NEAR a maximum military effort on our part - whereas Afghanistan REQUIRED maximum military effort. Instead we relied on a bombing campaign which was, of course, unsuccessful. We did NOT use a heavy ground force in Afghanistan because we had committed too much of our ground forces in Iraq. Of total ground forces committed, Iraq received 3 TIMES the ground force committed to Afghanistan.
Had we had our own ground units in place and in full force, we would not have had to rely on anyone but ourselves to bring OBL out of the mountains. We could well have herded OBL and his top cronies into an area of our choosing and THEN either gone in and dragged the SOB out by his left ear, or bombed the hell out of his caves sealing him inside where he could do no harm.
But without the ground forces we needed, we ended up missing the boat, the target, AND many of the long term goals in Afghanistan.
