Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
Its the people that say, becauase Bush did this we are in the situation we are in. If he had done this we would be in such and such a situation. We can't win this now. It is a broken egg and increased troops can't fix it. Any one who makes statements like that is totall full of it.
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Sorry for the tone. It was late last night and I was generally crabby.
I agree that we can't know with certainty what would have happened had we acted differently.
I agree that we don't know whether or not we can still "win" -- and that we have to still try.
Increased troops might help in some ways, and maybe we could try that if we come up with a useful plan for them. But it is useful to remember that there are important things they could have done in 2003 that we can't do now because it is just too late (e.g. securing WMD sites and protecting them from destruction; stopping looting and intentional destruction of government ministries by Saddam's forces; minimize/reduce infrastructure destruction).
As the situation has deteriorated, our options have narrowed. But it really wasn't the point of the Iraq Study Group to focus on what _should_ have been done. As Blair said when he and Bush discussed the issue at the press conference (paraphrase): "the situation in Iraq is not really debatable, the issue is to find a way forward." That is what they are trying to do.
So, I'm a bit surprised that you keep busting on the Report of the Iraq Study group (which neither of us have read in full) -- and I think it is for political reasons.
No one should have expected anything other than high-level summary reccommendations from what was/is a blue-ribbon bipartisan panel of non-subject matter experts aessentially asked to just think about it and report back.
S_A_M
