The Iraq War is strictly minor league stuff...

[Wetzelbill]

I don't mean it isn't important, right now nothing is as important in our country.

What I mean is, Iraq was a country that posed no threat. Was decimated by sanctions. Had a dictator with marginal military leadership skills at best. Was secured by two no fly zones. Iraq wasn't really a problem to begin with. Nothing remotely as significant as this administration made it out to be. Plus, it should have been a relatively easy situation to resolve. It could have been done diplomatically, in fact, in certain ways Bush almost walked into a resolution on accident such as when Saddam allowed Weapons inspectors back in late 2002.

But instead, Bush screwed up everything diplomatically, sought war as a first option, did not even plan that right and here we are stuck in a huge mess over there.

The way Iraq has been handled all around has been so amateurish and incompetent, you have to wonder if it was possible to have done it worse. Even if somebody tried they might not be able to duplicate just how bad this administration is.

I would have hated to see these guys during the Cold War. Imagine how a Bush administration would have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or going back further, imagine how a Bush administration would have handled the Great Depression and World War Two. Imagine Bush overseeing the Civil War.

Yikes.

Part of what helped Bush for so long is he followed Clinton and had 8 years of peace and unprecedented prosperity. Our reputation in the world had never been higher. Then he had 9/11 and was able to exploit that for years. He had a pass for quite a while and it allowed his administration time to systematically destroy everything it touched, with corruption, cronyism, ideology and outright stupidity.

He has failed miserably at every crisis from 9/11 to Katrina drowning New Orleans. He has turned bad situations into outright catastrophes. Bush could fuck up making a cup of coffee.

I just have to wonder why anybody thought this guy could ever handle being president in the first place.

[Dhalgren]

1. You know, one thing about the planning of the Iraq invasion and occupation

that has always bothered me, is how badly the military leadership performed (performs). This is not just a shock to me, but is very worrisome. If this is the best this country can provide by way of military brain-power, we are really, really fucked. One of the bad outcomes of this occupation has been the display of the poor military minds we have in control of our armed forces. These generals and admirals are bush-league incompetents and now the whole world knows it. The All Volunteer Military is a dismal failure - and it is basically one of leadership. I will admit that not having a competent CIC makes the poor military leadership more evident and that if the CIC were competent then the military's lack of good leadership might be less evident. Well, just an observation...