There are two great conversations about the war in Iraq going on right now. One revolves around the beginning and the other revolves around the end.
How the hell did we end up in this mess? Henry correctly sums up the debate.
The issue, as the Economist’s journalists know bloody well, isn’t whether the Bush administration believed at one point that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It’s whether or not the Bush administration mendaciously manipulated intelligence to make the public case for their beliefs.
My guess is that Bush pushed and pulled the evidence, as Henry said, to make a stronger case. He didn’t intentionally lie, but like Dan Rather, he approached the truth with ideological blinders. He had no doubt that WMD* were there. Somewhere. He wanted to get into this war so badly that he rushed things along and spun the meager evidence.
Are ideological blinders a punishable offense worthy of impeachment? I don’t know. There is so much blame to go around. We can’t deny that a whole lot of Democrats went along with this. And Tony Blair. And that guy from Poland.
I’m not ready to go down that road yet, because we still have guys in Iraq. I would rather figure out how and when to get out, and then start nailing the administration to the wall.
Do we just withdraw tomorrow leaving the country to swallow itself up and ditching our allies within Iraq? I don’t feel right about that. I’m with Andrew Sullivan on this one.
It’s not intellectually easy to continue supporting a war when you’ve lost faith in the honesty and competence of the president who’s leading it, but what choice do we have? There are other good people struggling to make this work: Casey, Rice, Khalilzad, McCain; and the thousands of troops who are risking their lives in this project. They key is to grasp how little we know, how badly we’ve screwed up, but also not to throw in the towel when, in fact, there is still a chance for leveraging the current situation to our and to Iraqis’ advantage. One thing I wish were more insisted upon. It’s not just that we have no interest in seeing Iraq degenerate into a brutal civil and possibly regional war. By removing Saddam, we created this vacuum. We own it. We have a moral responsibility to see this through.
Seeing through a disaster that originated in hubris. It really sucks.
* I always thought that WMD would make a great name for an 80s-style heavy metal band.
Apt. 11d 
Well, he kind of lost me at this one;
“There are other good people struggling to make this work: Casey, Rice, Khalilzad, McCain..”
Um. I wouldn’t call Rice “hey we saw the memo ‘Bin Laden determined to attack US,’ we just didn’t think it was relevant” good people, or McCain, insofar as he’s backpedaled every time he has shown some backbone.
I would prefer to stay and do as much repair as we can; I am highly pessimistic that our presence can actually accomplish that. In which case, why not pursue other avenues of influence, whatever we can find, and stop sacrificing our troops?
We are crippled by the corruption and incompetence of this administration, for the next 3 years, from doing any good there; we have no good choices while they remain in power. Sullivan’s proposed course of action will never happen unless there is a shift in who’s calling the shots in Iraq; even if the Dems get their majority in 06, they will only be able to exert indirect influence through budgets, etc. Actually deciding policy remains in the hands of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Rice, who are hopelessly compromised.
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Point well taken, emjaybee. I’m not really sure that Rice et al really know what the hell they are doing either.
I do think that we have a moral obligation to try to improve things, whatever way possible, and not just take off leaving the Iraq to implode and ditching those who have been good enough to help us.
That said. I want us out as quickly as possible. I know nothing about military matters or the mideastern history, so I don’t have any wise words, but as i find interesting stuff on the blogs, I’ll pass them on.
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