Avenging Saddam’s attempted killing of his father was never a major consideration in going to war. I should suggest that if you wish to understand the facts of the Iraq War matter you get a hold of Douglas Feith’s recently published book War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War against Terrorism. This volume might help to inform you of the careful analysis and decision making of the Bush administration before the war. Your actual knowledge of the decision making is based on rather scant information and crude assumptions.

One can in fact make a case for not fighting the Iraq War, though you don’t come close to making it.

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I have no doubt Hussein was an evil person. But please remember he was a secular ruler in an Islamic country who had been in power since 1976 and he never once threatened the U.S.

From an U.S. perspective (not Iraq) he might have been to best we could hope for in that area.

But really when is it going to occur to you that Bush attacked Iraq to avenge and/or show up his father who never took out Hussein in the 1st Iraq War? The American public never would have accepted that reason for going to war so Bush framed it as a WMD issue.

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Second, Gerecht stated, Whether America escapes another 9/11 or not, the president deserves credit for understanding that the region’s murderous anti-American extremists, both secular and religious, had to be confronted on the battlefield.

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Our “global war” seems to be house-to-house fighting in obscure Baghdad neighborhoods.

You mentioned earlier the soldiers join voluntarily. I guess those poor 18 and 19 years olds didn’t read the fine print in their enlistment papers. 3 and 4 tours of duty, longer stays during their deployment and then finding out that Uncle Sam can keep them in the military even when they thought their time was up.

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Let me see if I undertand this:

According to Mr. Gerecht if we are struck again Bush will seem “prescient and wise”.

But won’t Bush also get credit if we are not struck? Sounds like a no-lose for him.

And the author only mentioned 9/11 twice (in one paragraph) to justify Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Mentioning 9/11 to justify Iraq is a sure sign of desperation.

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An uneasy and healthy tension now exists between rhetoric and reality, guaranteeing that Americans will continue to debate what has gone wrong and right in the Muslim Middle East. Whether America escapes another 9/11 or not, the president deserves credit for understanding that the region’s murderous anti-American extremists, both secular and religious, had to be confronted on the battlefield. Sanctions, cruise missiles shot at rock huts and empty intelligence-service buildings, and close liaison relationships with foreign internal-security services were not enough. If the United States is brutally struck again by holy warriors, President Bush will seem prescient and wise–about the need for reform in the Middle East’s autocracies, about the strategic shortsightedness and immorality of pre-9/11 American foreign policy toward Muslims, and about the imperative to use ugly tactics against mass-casualty terrorists. Given the forces arrayed against him, his administration’s failures, and his own limitations, these are achievements even Ronald Reagan would envy.

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I thought Peter was talking about military service.

I believe Obama is at least consistent because while he may not have been in the military when he was young he will be less likely to send young people into combat.

I think it is unconscionable to ask young men and women to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those countries were a mess long before we invaded and they will be a mess long after we leave.

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