John Glenn quote (warning, some content may incite anger)

I've got a real problem with starting an argument like this. How do you know that the administration saw the war as the defining point of the "Bush legacy"?

Were you in the strategy meetings? Have you interviewed top administration officials and determined this? Or is it just pure conjecture?

Regardless of their motivations, which only they know, the whole thing was ill-advised and flies in the face of centuries of military history.

I fail to understand why people can't learn from history...it's like this generation thinks history doesn't apply to us.

It's the type of argument that leftt-wing liberals make about Bush. They can't possibly fathom that Bush and his Administration actually had good intentions but were simple wrong and/or incompetent. They'd rather make the arguments that they lied, misled, perpetrated incomprehnesible evil and so forth. It is an emotional argument based almost entirely without fact. And it makes actually discussing issues with them almost unbearable. It has led to the notion that Dick Cheney is evil when every objective piece of information I can get about him is that he is not. Same with Bush. When it comes to Rumsfeld I have found information that leads me to believe that he is less than honest and had intentions outside the well being of our country and I despise him for it. As for Bush and Cheney I just don't have a hatred but a huge feeling of disapointment. I still lay proper responsibility at their feet but my feelings towards them in general are much more tempered than towards Rumsfeld. I can't get over the notion in my head that had Powell been given a bigger voice I think we'd not be in the situation we are now. If anything, Bush lacked the ability to find and listen to the right people to execute his vision. I certianly don't think he went forth with some evil intentions and I find people who continue to speak of such things as off the reservation or simply naive to the the modern day political propanganda machinations of seek and destroy without regard for reason and truth.

I think a strong case could be made that if we had not deposed Saddam in 2003, the Iranians may have eventually called his chemical weapons bluff and the Clerics in Tehran would today be the world's largest oil producer. It seems clear now that he was not forthcoming with the inspectors so as to make his position seem stronger than it was or to at least create confusion in the minds of his enemies. Bush should have asked the CIA to make the case that Saddam didn't have WMDs. That evidence would have been even flimsier than the evidence on the other side and it would have made the situation more clear to the world. The problem wasn't merely the possibility that Saddam had WMDs but that no one seemed able to say for certain one way or the other. He behaved as though he had them. Everybody can poke holes in the case for WMDs in hindsight, but I don't remember anyone boldly proclaiming at the time that Saddam was clean. Nobody in any intelligence agency anywhere ever made that case so far as I know. There were people who oppossed the war, but they did so in spite of the strong possibility that WMDs were there.