In line with this topic, here's an article which discusses Bush's Harvard MBA education and how it probably influenced his decision-making, including making decisions while having imperfect knowledge.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3378

As someone who supported the war, but looks back in hindsight with mixed feelings.

1. I consider the war to remove Saddam and free Iraq morally legitimate even without WMD's. I now question whether it was a wise use of our military resources.

2. It was presented as a near-certainty that Saddam had WMD's (probably not nukes, maybe not bio, but certainly nerve gas). The lack of them raises questions of competence and judgement. Even most war opponents assumed that Cheney et. al. knew what they were doing, but now,it seems, nobody knows nuthin.

3. It seems like the President cried wolf. The loss of credibility now means that we may be overly-cautious in the future.

So we--meaning everybody--overestimated Saddam's capabilities. So what? Does that mean that we give Kim Jong Il the benefit of the doubt? Restore Saddam to power? Pay him reparations for whacking Uday and Qsay? Help him reestablish the secret police? Compensate TotalFinaElf for the loss of oil bribes?

The results of the Iraq campaign are almost universally good--26 million people have been saved from tyrrany. How does the revalation of "intelligence failure" de-legitimize that?

The inquiry should focus on the failures of the CIA as caused by a disfunctional operational model. Find the root causes of why the CIA fails in its job. Many past agents know why and have complained about it (like Marc Reul Gerecht). We need a substantial reformation of our intelligence services.

If the inquiry is only about this specific issue, it's useless.

Well, as Rick (of the CC) notes in his point one, the only problem raised by Iraq's (apparent) lack of WMD's is a question of strategy -- ought we to have used the military differently. I'm not at all sure that smacking Iraq wasn't the right thing to do anyway, WMD or no.

As for Rick's point two, the problem of intelligence competence seems to be pretty universal -- I'm not aware of any significant international player who didn't think he had WMD. The U.N., European nations, Britian etc. all thought he had him, and he did have them at one point. Plus, there's no disputing (via Kay's report) that he maintained his capacity to produce WMD's.

Now that Libya's capitulation on WMD's has brought to light the international black market in nuke technology, we know that our intelligence is even worse that we thought -- but again, it's not just us -- Libya's revelations & the consequent exposure of Pakistan's role seems to have taken everybody by surprise. Bush may look like he cried wolf on WMD's in Iraq, but what we know about WMD in consequence of Iraq is even more disturbing than what we thought we knew before!!

The question is posed as if there was a null alternative.

But there wasn't. The sanctions were becoming untenable, both due to Saddam's efforts to make his citizens suffering poster children for the sanctions, and our good friends the French and Russians doing their best to undermine them.

So. What do you do?

Give up the sanctions as lost, allow Saddam to freely regenerate to his heart's desire, then deal with the problem?

Or do you deal with a sure eventuality before it gets out of hand?

Those focusing on the WMD intel demonstrate only their utter inability to grasp the least of two manifestly bad alternatives.

Which should be grounds for barring them from anything more to do with National Security than watching the X-games. Tape delayed.

Rick -

No need to look back with mixed feelings - the cease-fire in the Gulf War lasted 12 years, and we resumed it.

Wars aren't over until somebody loses big; Saddam just withdrew and lived to fight another day. Those who thought our work was done there in 1991 were kidding themselves. Especially in light of the nuclear proliferation problems we see now, with Pakistan running a long term nuclear black market, it is just flat out dangerous to stay with the policy of playing games in the UN while patting ourselves on the back because we avoid armed conflict.

Hussein took a big gamble by assuming he could wait out the UN sanctions. He lost. Too bad for him and his evil government, and hooray for 24 million people who live free now. Where is the moral uncertainty?

The real problem with "foreign policy" or "international relations" right now is that a substantial number of people do not want to do anything at all about problems like Iraq. 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, client states did a lot of the dirty stuff, but those days are over. We are now a prime target, and what is to be done about that?

Perhaps the pre-emptive position is in the minority, but the Kerrys and other UN-followers offer no alternatives, either for our safety or the improvement of the lives of tens of millions of terrorized citizens in probably 30 or 40 countries around the world. We saw the hollowness of the Human Rights Watch last week, and serious people know the UN just enables tyrants and crooks, so what is to be done?

George W. Bush has taken this argument further than any other American President, and it will set the mark for any future President in terms of security. An major attack on America in 2010 will have to be met with at least the same level of intention, or whoever is in the Oval Office will have to face some very difficult questions.

Rick --

1. Removing Saddam without using our military resources (is this what you would have prefered) would have qualified as a major miracle. Doing it (having already vanquished the Talian) so expediently, at so little loss of civilian life, having spared the world upteen potential disasters of war, and yes at a relatively light loss of civilian life, a minor miracle. Not to give credit for this is simply unfair.

2. Saddam had all those weapons at one time. He appeared to have had them as early as 1998 when he kicked the UN out and we did nothing. He did the best he could to continue fostering that view. Everybody wanted to know for sure, and the established processes (intelligence plus inspections had reached a stalemate). Military action was the only was to restore credibility to the process. By the way, what is credibility? Not in a "thought experiment" but in a democracy? It is which side of the argument was more credible. I truly don't think you need to be reminded of the far worse gaps in credibility coming from the alarmist anti-war experts, the Arab Street Cassandras, the vacilating do-nothings, the bribe-motivated Saddam clients, the disingenuous supporters of the status quo...

3. What will this mean for future actions? I actually started to believe that future pre-emptive action, the threat of American discipline amidst vacilation, etc was doomed from the moment the media, the Democrats, and the anti-American intelligence decided they would rather side with a tyrant than with the President of the US. (Exaggeraion. Let's really listen to what they were saying; what they were doing.) Against this, I thought a mere man would just take the easy way out. Kick the can forward, like Bill would have, and claim that next time you will do as you say. Bush and Blair were far bigger men than I would have been. They did as they said they would. And the message has been absorbed (in various degrees and through various channels) by Libya, by Sudanese rebel factions, by Tamil Tigers, by Mr Assad, by Mr Musharraf, by Ms Arroyo...So far as we have leadership in the White House, our enemies know they are essentially "dots to be connected". Is their call whether they remove themselves from any trail.

Speaking of WMD:

I find it interesting that liberal pundits have spent the last few years treating N. Korean and Iranian WMD as a strong reason NOT to go to war with them; and yet treating Iraqi WMD as the only allowable reason to go to war with Saddam. Are WMD a reason to go to war, or not?

I personally think WMD should be neutral in our war calculus - they increase the threat, but they equally increase the cost of eliminating the threat. The compelling reasons are (a) liberating the subject people and spreading freedom, and (b) ending the terrorist threat to us. In Iraq, we had a compelling case.

I consider getting Osama bin Laden to be job #1. Not just for retribution, but because I am personally anxious over what he may be plotting.

It seemed to me strange in early 2002 that we were shifting our attention to Iraq, but I went along because of the potential that Iraqi WMD's together with Al Qaeda tactics could be devastating to us.

But without there being WMD's, that logic falls apart. In hindsight, it seems we unnecessarily diverted resourced from the hunt for Al Qaeda. I don't think Bush lied, but I think he and others were mistaken. It would have been much better for the President to come to grips with this when it first become a problem, rathern than let left-wingers project their worst motives onto him.

Rick --

What exactly have we not done vis-a-vis Al Qaeda (which was always increase their "cost of doing business" from zero to very high, not the apprehension of any one terrorist) that we could have done had we not liberated Iraq?

Similarly, are there no meaningful costs to Al Qaeda/Global Terrorism or benefits to those who must deal with it that accrue from the liberation of Iraq? (Take an often forgotten side benefit. By removing Saddam form power, we have been able to remove our military presence from the Holy Land of Islam -- Al Qaeda's number one gripe. But of course there are many other benefits.)

Are Iraqi WMD stocks the only nexus between Al Qaeda/Global Terrorism that worried you?
If so, were you not scared stiff of what this combination could produce? Given that we only know that we have not found WMD stocks to date, are you now sure that the problem is that we did not find them soon enough? Why isn't that a bigger problem?

A verious serious question that deserves a serious answer. OK. So Bush didn't get right in your book. Can you tell me, even with the (unfair) benefit of hindsight who "got it right" in spite of having made a better case. I have to assume that you have done all this soul searching for a reason, and I am curious about it.

Rick:

Isn't it great that we can focus on bin Laden?Fortunately for you (and the rest of us) you needn't be anxious about what Saddam might be plotting because we have him in custody.

And to propose that you weren't just a little anxious (and probably more) about WMD and Saddam's willingness to use them before March of last year is simply not plausible. The LACK of evidence and cooperation which would prove the means to create the weapons no longer existed was the final straw.

The entire world agreed less than 3 years ago that Iraq was WMD capable. We know Saddam had WMD at one point in history and used them. Subsequently he stonewalled and refused repeatedly to prove their complete destruction.

Suggesting that we shouldn't preemptively strike oppresive tyrannical dictators who *MIGHT* suddenly be telling the truth about their ability to murder millions is ridiculous.

If Saddam had simply told you, "Trust me, I don't have WMD." Would you believe him?

While I've never bought the notion that Iraq was behind 9/11, I was concerned that Iraq could potentially ally with Al Qaeda in the future to deliver WMD's to the American homeland. That was enough for me to support the war.

We have had some successes against Al Qaeda in the last year, but I have read a number of reports describing the drawing down of assets in Afghanistan to help out in Iraq (too sleepy to look for links)

I'm not concerned about the affect the Iraq War has had on relations with our so-called European allies. They're not really players. It's the affect its had on cooperation from our estwhile Arab allies that bothers me, because they are the ones who could possibly infiltrate agents into Al Qaeda.

If it turns out that we can walk and chew gum at the same time (i.e. get both Saddam and Osama) then fine by me. I hope it works out, but we may have taken on too much.

Rick:

I'm afraid I don't understand your point at all. Even the Sau'ds and the Pakistanis are cracking down on al Qaeda--how much more co-operation could you conceive of?

We are getting some cooperation now from the Pakistanis and the Saudis. I think we might have gotten more and quicker cooperation if that had been the sole focus of our efforts, without the Iraq War complicating relations.

The counterargument to what I've just said is the notion that the Saudis are cooperating not as a result of pressure from us, but only in reaction to terrorism within their country, and that Musharraf is cooperating more because of the assassination attempts.

I don't know which of these is true, but if there has been no new mega-terror attack from Al Qaeda before November, Bush's policy will most likely be considered a succes.

Rick:

And al Qaeda has apparently had to turn inwards and attack their own precisely because we've so crippled their capacity to strike abroad.

Re: Iraq and 9/11

Try Googling "Salman Pak" + Mylroie sometime. Foreign terrorists - ie, non-Iraqis - trained in Iraq and learned how to hijack airplanes using small knives. Hmmmm. No connection? I find that view to be ignoring stark realities on the ground.

Rick:

Do you suppose the Saudis have more room for cooperation because our success in Iraq has enabled us to virtually eliminate our presence in the Kingdom?

It is far easier for them to cooperate now without appearing the toady.