Gotta wonder what influence Cheney and Rummey had on the whole attack on Iraq under 43. If they were the instigators then I say they deserve criticism
It completely influenced it. Rumsfeld’s journal from 9-11 included the handwritten notation “Iraq?”
And he’s even the one that said “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Tehran.”
A BIG reason why we went into Iraq was to send a clear message to other nations that we WOULD do “regime change” if we determined it to be in our interests.
As I mentioned, this had some success in Libya and probably elsewhere. We won’t know how it would have worked elsewhere because Obama took a different tack.