Mike,
Here's where I am on the whole thing.
I supported the war before it started because I believed Iraq had WMDs. I believed Iraq had WMDs long before Bush made any mention of them. We've been hearing about them for years from so many sources that it was hard not to. Saddam's very actions and statements lead many of us to believe that. Certainly me. I believed that 911 was such a tremendous change in the way the US must think of its security that acting preemptively on that knowledge is justifiable. Now, with no substantial sign of WMDs in Iraq to date, this has to be rethought. Though I believe force should be used to enforce countries acquiring or developing WMDs in violation of any treaty or organization rules, the difficult is going to be in proving that they are. What to do? There is no reasonable solution.
Oh, and I think Bush has not done a very good of explaining what our new policy is to our allies. Maybe this is because he bet on the CIA Intelligence being right and it turned out to be, future finds notwithstanding, just wrong. What was the real deal with Tenet resigning anyway?
How will history judge this war? Well, I think most Americans will judge it on the merit of the results. If people feel the US won, it will be viewed more positively than negative. Some things have gone wrong. Many have also gone right. What will winning mean? Getting out with a reasonably low number of casualties and a political result that everyone looks back and is happy with. Vietnam was a failure because there were too many casualties and the political result was wrong. According to Gallup, people have a less negative view of Korea. I think that is because even though there were a lot of casualties the political result was acceptable. There are other reasons too like a lot of movies about Vietnam.
We shall see.
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