You should read Douglas Feith's book, War and Decision. It's the book historians will study to understand the Bush administration's reasoning on Iraq after 9-11. Feith was Rumsfeld's undersecretary and considered to be near the center of the "neocon" cabal by Truther types and leftists. The book includes lots of internal memos by Rumsfeld himself where he boils his arguments down to a few bullet points (one of the interesting things is that you see what a master of concision and ordered thinking Rummy was -- his memos rarely went over a few hundred words, even the really important ones). What is obvious is that the administration didn't use 9-11 as a pretext to go to war, and certainly didn't rely on the argument that Saddam was responsible for 9-11.
Instead, the reasons for war were primarily 1) a concern that Saddam would supply WMDs to radical Islamic al Queda types who would be willing to deploy them against the US homeland, and 2) a concern that a second attack involving WMDs would necessitate internal security measures that would seriously infringe individual liberties in order to prevent further attacks. The administration felt that aggressively taking the war abroad while implementing sensible security measures at home would minimize the risk to liberties at home.
Iraq was like a killing field in a way, it drew out the extremists from all over the middle east and we fought them on foreign soil instead of here. In that single regard the invasion worked like a charm, it may have solidified some support for Al Qaeda against us but it did far more good than harm. Where we blew it was after the invasion was of course not having enough troops in country and disbanding their military too quickly. I know its not a popular belief, but I still think we should have tuned north and toppled Iran's leaders also. Yes the world would have been pissed had we done so, but in the political atmosphere after 9/11 had we moved quicker and with more force the world would be in a much better place right now.
Hindsight is always 20/20...
Iraq was like a killing field in a way, it drew out the extremists from all over the middle east and we fought them on foreign soil instead of here. In that single regard the invasion worked like a charm, it may have solidified some support for Al Qaeda against us but it did far more good than harm. Where we blew it was after the invasion was of course not having enough troops in country and disbanding their military too quickly. I know its not a popular belief, but I still think we should have tuned north and toppled Iran's leaders also. Yes the world would have been pissed had we done so, but in the political atmosphere after 9/11 had we moved quicker and with more force the world would be in a much better place right now.
Hindsight is always 20/20...
Iraq was like a killing field in a way, it drew out the extremists from all over the middle east and we fought them on foreign soil instead of here. In that single regard the invasion worked like a charm, it may have solidified some support for Al Qaeda against us but it did far more good than harm. Where we blew it was after the invasion was of course not having enough troops in country and disbanding their military too quickly. I know its not a popular belief, but I still think we should have tuned north and toppled Iran's leaders also. Yes the world would have been pissed had we done so, but in the political atmosphere after 9/11 had we moved quicker and with more force the world would be in a much better place right now.
Hindsight is always 20/20...