Trump is right about the invasion of Iraq. It was massively stupid and disastrous
Trump on Iraq: “One Of The Worst Decisions In The History Of The Country”
Realclearpolitics. Feb 17 2016
At a town hall event in Bluffton, South Carolina today Donald Trump expounded on his remarks about George W. Bush, his handling of the 9/11 terrorist attack and the invasion of Iraq. Trump said all he is doing is telling the truth and he doesn’t care if Bush is insulted because he made “one of the worst decisions in the history of the country.”
“You know, if Bush is insulted, I don’t care if he’s insulted,” Trump said Wednesday. “It was a horrible mistake. We should have never been there. Somebody says, oh, that’s not good to criticize? I say criticize? It’s one of the worst decisions in the history of the country. We have totally destabilized the Middle East.”
My very first posts on Free Republic were me getting hammered because I thought it was stupid to open a second front in the War on Terror before Afghanistan had been resolved. Not to mention invading a “non-fundamentalist” Muslim nation that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
I was attacked relentlessly and called every name in the book here on this site.
That being said, the moment we had boots on the ground in Iraq I supported them 100%.
“It’s one of the worst decisions in the history of the country.”
Disagree here.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks” in the 9/11 Commission Report. Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, leading al-Qaeda’s propaganda operations from around 1999 until late 2001. Getting him was a direct link to Bin Laden who was receiving aid, to include NBC, from Iraq.
We know, or are admitting, of contacts between Baghdad and an Islamist Al Qaeda affiliate group, called Ansar al-Islam, based in northern Iraq in the late 1990s. Starting prior to 2008, AQ-I leaders (known as Al Qaeda in Iraq” were relocating from Iraq to join Al Qaeda leaders believed to be in remote areas of Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border. That perception suggests that AQ-I now perceived Afghanistan as more fertile ground than was Iraq to attack U.S. forces. The relocation of AQ-I leaders to Pakistan could also have accelerate the perceived strengthening of the central Al Qaeda organization. So catching them in Iraq was instrumental in slowing down the Bin Laden machine from further attacks on the US. And that included the shutting down of the Saddam/Bin Laden weapons trade that contained NBC.
Iraq has never told the truth about their programs and has misled as much as they could. They have covered their tracks very well and, as of 2012, still had stocks of NBC that we knew about as we supplied some of it starting in the Carter administration. Our major contributory efforts were toward chemical weapons.
So there’s a lot the people here don’t know that has surfaced a little at a time, but not all is completely out in the open. Most don’t know about the Iraqi tank hiding in the desert near Syria or the two dozen “holes” that were discovered, each about the size of Manhattan Island, outside of Baghdad that is admitted to storing H.E. But they are not saying what else.
rwood