Mmmyeah, I’ve sometimes thought about how we went into Iraq too…..What would I do if I could roll back the clock to 2003? Of course, if I did that, I’d have to eliminate all the knowledge that we have gained since then. At the time, we bought in to the whole “weapons of mass destruction” thingi because Saddam himself had so convincingly told that story (mainly because he wanted the Iranians to believe it). In 2002, Bush sent Joe Wilson (Valerie Plame’s husband) to see if Saddam had attempted to acquire yellowcake. Wilson came back and said that he hadn’t found evidence of that (which isn’t exactly a denial of the claim). However, he also wrote a 2003 NYT OpEd which ended with this….

…I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program—all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed. But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America’s foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor “revisionist history”, as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.

So which is it? If intelligence and research cannot be 100% certain, then how is one to decide?

Should we have gone into Iraq? Like almost every American back then, I was a supporter of the decision, but today, on retrospect, with the clear lens of 20/20 hindsight, I’m less convinced. But today, I have to recognize that despite whatever I may have learned from our Iraq experience, I still do not have 20/20 foresight.

Is the intelligence community “incompetent” or do they call balls and strikes the best that they can, knowing that sometimes they’ll be wrong? A case can be made for both viewpoints. And with Trump, especially, we cannot dismiss that large swathes of the intelligence community have been out to get him….call that the Chuck Schumer Rule.

Tangentially, I think that the American public’s reluctance to use our military, and the ambigious nature of our intelligence, has lead our opponents/adversaries to believe that they can get away with more than they ought to.

I too would like Trump to present an old-fashioned presentation of all the facts as we know them and then have Congress, as representatives of the American people, vote on whether we should engage in hostilities (as Congress did in 2002). But those days are done. That’s not going to happen any more. The President will weigh the facts as we know them, the military’s plans, and the public’s views on the matter, and decide the question alone.

I just don’t understand how any sane person today can place any credence in the most criminal enterprise to ever exist in human history – the us gov’t.

None of them act on my behalf and if push comes to shove my allegiance will be elsewhere.