After Afghanistan, the winds of war were beginning to blow through Iraq. What were my thoughts before the invasion? I just stumbled across something I'd written on October 8th, 2002.
"Bush and his cronies are exaggerating the threat that Saddam poses. The international community isnt buying it, and thats why none of them, save Canada and Britain (?) have joined our little coalition. Rumsfeld claimed that Turkey was already signed up, but thats not true. Turkey is only going with us if the UN says its cool.
Bush also has been manipulating things, when he's been saying that bin Laden and friends are working with Saddam. (There was) a senior Al Qaeda (operative) in Baghdad but there is NO evidence that he was there to meet with Saddam, only convienient speculation.
Killing more Muslims and renewing the hatred that Middle Eastern peoples feel towards America is just going to create a new generation of terrorists; ones that will have ready access to weapons of mass destruction."
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I would today draw those same conclusions. I was slanted towards isolationism back then, but I've since become an ardent interventionalist.
Regardless, at the end of the day the question of "yes" or "no" concerning the war was irrelevant; nothing is so black and white. True in those days I was against the war. However, I recognized that there were some legitimately good reasons to invade. To put numbers on it, I used to say that I was 55% against the war, 45% for it.
Perhaps the one thing that nobody anticipated would be the incompetence of the Bush administration in the handling of the war. Clearly Bush and the right was determined to go to war with Iraq. Its a shame, being forced to that end, that we couldn't have at least done the job right.
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