It's May 2005 in Iraq...

Amongst the other things that can be said about the bloodthirsty, jingoistic, devil-may-care attitude that the hawks espoused and defended during the run up and conduct of this war is that eventually the kids get wise and don't want to play your game. All the right wing horseshit about eschewing torture being a pussy's game and tying our military's hands is coming full circle. Torture should be avoided 'cause it's counter-productive, 'cause it endangers our soldiers and needlessly makes us look like assholes thereby weakening our position in the battle for hearts and minds. Similarly, lying about why we were going to war, switching rationales mid campaign, still not having a clear cut goal for the war or an exit strategy is unlikely to encourage recruiting even amongst the most blindly patriotic. It's one thing to be willing to kill and die for your country, but who wants to do it in a war police action as muddled and uncertain as this one?

One of the more quietly (for now) worried voices about all this has been one Mr. W. F. Buckley, who probably looks in at the Corner each day in NRO world and wonders how much crack they're all on. A recent piece:

There are two burdens in America, one of them ascribable to our conscience. We can’t “desert” those who enlisted in our proclaimed cause. We did exactly that when we deserted Vietnam, but we are unlikely to do it again in the Near East, because too many people are looking directly on and would understandably react against U.S. nonchalance with rage and contempt.

But the burden we took on as the military agent of regime change is legitimately moderated by the passage of time and the achievement of proximate goals. We said we’d remove Saddam Hussein, and we did. We said we’d train non-Baathist security personnel, and we have not only done so, we’ve left in place reserves that can maintain institutional batteries of reform. We said we would introduce popular rule, and we did so: parliamentary government at least exists.

The day has to come, and the advent of that day has to be heralded, when we say that our part of the job is done as well as it can be done, given limitations on our will and our strength. It is an Iraqi responsibility to move on to wherever Iraq intends to go. Our job depends heavily on being done when we declare it to have been done, not by the legerdemain proposed thirty years to get us out of Vietnam, but by reasonable talk about reasonable but limited commitments to Iraqi reform.

I was eager to remove Sadaam back in the 90's for the sake of the U.N.'s authority and reputation but I opposed the Bush admin's war 'cause I thought we needed to be thorough in Afghanistan, a country we had recently let drop, and do not only a better anti-terrorist/Taliban job but also a better positive job of improving the woeful Afghani infrastructure and in so doing, win some goodwill in the Muslim world. (BTW, read Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars")

Instead, I get the impression that our national security expert neo-cons are fighting two wars badly, decreasing what should be a natural, patriotic wellspring to serve in the U.S. military, and inadvertantly fostering a divisive political climate at home that will hamper any future presidents from using military force no matter how well justified it is in future.

which bodes really well for the future of democracy in Iraq, dunnit...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4548393.stm

From the article:

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL ? U.K. EYES ONLY

... Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy... There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

... It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

These notes, taken for Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2002, seven months before the launch of the Iraq war, and confirmed by a former Bush official as an " absolutely accurate description of what transpired" are about as close as you can get to a smoking gun on Iraq.

Source:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7318016?pageid=rs.Politics&pageregion=single2