You know the problem I've had here since the jump is that Intelligence reports seemed to be irrelvent.
The history of the countries, and the nature of the group (Al-Qaeda) should have told us 905 of what we needed to know.
We knew Saddam was a self-serving figure, unlikely to give up power at any level. He even attempted the murder of his own son because he thought he might usurp him.
We knew, as jibber said, that they had gone to war after the religious revolution in Iran becuase Iraq was a secular nation. This is history.
Why anyone wouldn't look at some of these reports we had, sketchy even to the lay man, and go with them blindly is beyond me. It flew in the face of the very history of the two countries and for whatever reason we choose to ignore that history, we have created a much more dangerous enemy for us.
It was the case that Saddam, fearing any challenge to power, killed anything resembling the religious revolution in Iran. What we had was, at the cost of allowing a mad man to run a country, and area where the extreamists could not gain traction. Now we have a veritable breeding ground.
|