Keith Devens .com

Are you serious when you say it was a good thing americans went to iraq ?

Yes I'm serious.

Isn't it astonishing how many people like "Arnaud " have a top secret security clearance..? Are people so unbelievably naive that they actually believe they were privy to the same info that the President and his inner circle were. When Peter Jennings says something, do they really think that's the whole story..? You can bet your pay check the people that need to know.. "know" Nations make moves based on classified material, and they do what they need to. The gereral piblic needs to come to grips with the fact thay they are not in the "loop". They will always sit in front of the TV and wonder why things happen. There are things going on everyday that "Ed" from Ed's muffler N brake would never fathom...and doesn't need to fathom. People like David Kay and Hillary sit on their little committee's and think they're in the loop....they are not. You would not believe what an int' agency will do to protect a source. I'm not saying it's wrong or right, but that's the way the game is played...and it's the oldest game in history. Welcom to the human condition.

The trouble is, the justifications that we were given for going to war were false. There are other justifications (Saddam is a bad guy, etc) that are reasonable justifications for war to many people, but that doesn't change the fact that a) a great number of the public were opposed to it or misled, and b) those justifications can be used to invade about a dozen other countries who are worse off than Iraq. Misleading the public to go to war to spread the ideals of democracy is just about the most hypocritical thing I can imagine.

To shadow, of course they have access to confidential information. That this information maybe false is also possible, being classified does not make it holy.

Jim, when I started to read your comment I thought your position was more reasonable than when I finished it. There is no sense in which you can say that the administration misled^[1] the public. It does seem that our intelligence was faulty (it's not the first time in recent (or non-recent) history that's happened, unfortunately), though so was every other intelligence agency's in the world. I also don't think the case is closed on this issue yet. It's probable the administration made a misjudgement by focusing so heavily on WMD's as a justification for war. From what I've heard, the Pentagon and Dept of Defense wanted to focus more on other things but the state department pushed the WMD issue as the main justification because they felt it'd be the only "legal" avenue to pursue.

My point in this post, however, is that as Bush has always said, Iraq truly is central to our war on terror. I really agree with Steven Den Beste's strategic overview of the war on terror. Both the "flypaper" and "domino" strategies seem to be working, and much of the payoff from this war has yet to come.

Keep in mind that the "great number of the public" who were opposed to the war were definitely in the minority. A large majority of Americans supported this war. As for the "dozen other countries"... Iraq is a special case, and I'd really recommend you read Den Beste's essay where he enumerates many of the reasons why. Other countries are being dealt with differently, and we'd like to avoid more wars if possible. Finally, we didn't do this just to "spread the ideals of democracy". The major reason for this war is/was because it's extremely important for our national security.

Footnotes:
[1]: when people say "misled", I can only think that they'd really want to say "lied" but they know deep-down that's false so they take it back a notch