[CaptainCrunch]

QUOTE
misconception. the war worked pretty much fab. the after war effort has been dismal.




Holy damn, that is a bizarre statement. They are one and the same. If the goal of the war was to make the US safer, make the region safer or whatever, it is very clear that seizing some territory is not all that important. No offence to yourself, but to me, this shows a military centric attitude that admires the execution of a initial battle plan and the deployment of some fancy killing toys in an efficient manner. Makes for good TV, but does little wrt achieving any of the actual aims of the war. My take is that the initial attack went well, the war is still ongoing and is doing miserably from about week 2 onwards. The only way you can say the war went well is if you narrow down the aim to toppling Saddam's gov't. If the war had any broader goals, it has failed.

There are mutiple phases to any war. The initial buildup of equipment, supplies and people. The actual execution of the war plan. the post game or post war phase. The initial buildup was handled very well, the actual warplan was executed very well with very little in the ways of casualties on the allies side. the post war phase has been a disastor plain and simple. All of the pre-war requirements for entering the postwar phase were met.

Thats how I think, and yes it might be millitary centric, but so be it. If the American's had come up with a proper post war strategy this whole debate would be about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, and the failure of the allied intelligence community and not what it is now, where the American's are suffering more casualties in the post war scenario, where the American Military is being investigated for its mishandling of prisoners, where the American's are struggling with a terrorist threat.

QUOTE
Weapons inspections weren't working because Saddam was only allowing them to see what he wanted to see.



Dither over protocol all you want; I won't dispute Saddam made the inspection process hard. Nonetheless, the core goal was to keep Saddam from obtaining said weapons. As such, it seems the mission was accomplished. I came out a realist in that worldview test, and I guess it's showing up on my take here. Results are all that matter, and the UN got results despite difficulties and doubts along the way. The US has yet to get results despite throwing I don't know how many times the resources at the problem, so I call it a failure.

I don't get how you can say that the UN got results. Thier weapons inspections were incomplete, they had gaping holes in thier inspection requirements, and they refused to put thier footdown. They also mismanaged thier own food for oil program by allowing it to become a cash for oil program, a program put into place to pressure Hussein into coming clean on his development programs. My question is that the inspections had taken 14 years with no conclusive end in sight. How much time were we going to give him 20 years, 30 years, do you want to take the chance that this guy might have had a program going, and we would only find out when a gas warhead fell on his own people or Israel?

The search for the weapons of mass destruction was one of the key points with the UN negotiated cease fire on Iraq, since Saddam never lived up to his word, its not unreasonable to assume that eventually his time would run out.

Like I mentioned before, a lot of the failures here has to do with the world wide intelligence community, did he or didn't he have these weapons, we didn't know, but its better to be sure then not sure.

I honestly believe that the American's were heavily surprised by the lack of evidence when they got to do thier own inspections. However on a counterpoint

It took the UN 14 years to look for any kind of evidence, logically in my mind the American's should have an equivalent amount of time to reach thier own conclusions, its only fair.

The fact that the American's didn't even attempt to fabricate thier own discovery of WMD especially in an election year tells me that they are honestly surprised by the failure of the the CIA, the FIS, the DGSE and even the UN intelligence community.