Whenever anyone -- left, right or center -- talks about Iraq, in the mainstream media, they inevitably end up saying something like this, "We can't afford to get it wrong in Iraq." Which implies that anything other than a US imposed solution and Iraq will descend into chaos. The chaos they usually refer to is civil war. This to me is just like all the other arguments this administration and the talking heads make. If we all say it then it must be true. Now I'm no Iraq expert nor a Middle East expert or anything like that but just think about this, what if they are all wrong? Saddam had no WMD, he was not a threat, had no Al Qaeda ties and had nothing to do with 9/11. Is it possible, just possible they could all be wrong about this too?

Here is the article that reinforced my thinking
Iraq's Political Puzzle, Piece by Piece
Our media tell us that it can't happen. The Iraqi factions can never unify themselves. Ever since Saddam was chased from power, mainstream U.S. journalists and pundits have assumed that Iraq, if left to itself, would dissolve into chaos. One way or another, the U.S. must teach the Iraqis how to govern themselves and bring order out of chaos. The journalists and pundits debate fiercely about the best way to do it. But they all agree that the Iraqis must be treated like little children, gently but firmly guided on the long road to maturity by kindly grown-up Americans.

None of this really matters because William Rivers Pitt says...
The War is Lost
This war is lost. I mean not just the Iraq war, but George W. Bush's ridiculous "War on Terror" as a whole.

I say ridiculous because this "War on Terror" was never, ever something we were going to win. What began on September 11 with the world wrapping us in its loving embrace has collapsed today in a literal orgy of shame and disgrace. This happened, simply, because of the complete failure of moral leadership at the highest levels.

We saw a prime example of this during Friday?s farce of a Senate hearing into the Abu Ghraib disaster which starred Don Rumsfeld. From his bully pulpit spoke Senator Joe Lieberman, who parrots the worst of Bush?s war propaganda with unfailingly dreary regularity. Responding to the issue of whether or not Bush and Rumsfeld should apologize for Abu Ghraib, Lieberman stated that none of the terrorists had apologized for September 11.

There it was, in a nutshell. There was the idea, oft promulgated by the administration, that September 11 made any barbarism, any extreme, any horror brought forth by the United States acceptable, and even desirable. There was the institutionalization of revenge as a basis for policy. Sure, Abu Ghraib was bad, Mr. Lieberman put forth. But September 11 happened, so all bets are off.

Thus fails the "War on Terror." September 11 did not demand of us the lowest common denominator, did not demand of us that we become that which we despise and denounce. September 11 demanded that we be better, greater, more righteous than those who brought death to us. September 11 demanded that we be better, and in doing so, we would show the world that those who attacked us are far, far less than us. That would have been victory, with nary a shot being fired.

Our leaders, however, took us in exactly the opposite direction.
- posted by Mom/Dad @ 2:13 PM