Freeing the Iraqi people is NOT why we went to war originally, no matter how noble that goal looks in retrospect. We went to war supposedly to protect ourselves, and we would do well never to forget that as either a truly valid cause or our original political rallying cry. The CIA published a major unclassified intelligence brief in October 2002 detailing “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs” that was used extensively in Secretary of State Powell’s February 2003 Speech to the UN to justify America’s bucking the UN Security Council and going to war. Other intelligence data about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions (later shown to be falsified) and not stories about abused Iraqi civilians was quoted by the President of the United States in the January 2003 State of the Union Speech. The chips just don’t get no more down than that, folks.
This is all about intelligence in more ways than one. What happens if intelligence services like the CIA gets the numbers wrong on an enemy that matters? What happens if citizens don’t have the intelligence and persistence of memory to realize that somebody has (and I admit, seriously, ***I*** don’t know who that is, just that I truly believe SOMEBODY has) successfully pulled a bait-and-switch? Answer: bad things.
We should always remember the oldest rule in warfare. When you go to war, make sure your weapons are truly aimed and stay aimed on your enemy and his infrastructure until he is destroyed. That’s how you win a victory and a peace worth winning.
