Dictatorship 101 alone might have allowed Saddam to survive.
* Attacked two neighbors with intent to occupy and annex them.
* When he got his butt whipped he promised to behave, then didn't.
* Proved his possession and willingness to use wmd by murdering his own people, then led the world to believe that he had more and would use them again and that he was developing nuclear arms.
* Defied the UN repeatedly on issues that he had made promises about.
* Attempted to have POTUS assassinated.
* Regularly attacked US aircraft enforcing no-fly zones.
* Stole billions of dollars intended to feed and care for his people from the oil for food program.
* Paid bounties to the families of terrorist suicide bombers.
Those aren't Dictatorship 101, they are Death-Wish 101.
Yep, he was a bad guy. No doubt about it. He was in a box, and he was not then, in 2003, a threat to the US. We had other priorities at the time, mainly getting OBL and his cronies, who was responsible for 9/11 and who is still free.
I agree that it was a mistake not to anticipate and prepare for the anarchy that followed Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the "insurgency" that followed that, or the inter sectarian carp going on now.
No battle plan survives after the first shot in any war. You make mistakes, adjust and do what needs doing with what you have to do it with.
But under Rummy, we have not fixed the plan. The mantra has been "Stay the Course" We abandoned the Powell Doctrine which says go in with overwhelming force and win, in favor of the Rummy (and Cheney?) doctrine of assuming the best happens, and if that is not the case, do it on the cheap with enough force to at least tie.
We made mistakes in WWI, WWII, Korea and Nam. In the first three we fixed them and went on with it.
In Nam we allowed the media's lust for sensationalism to brainwash the American public into forcing us to abandon our ally to the occupation and annexation of a foreigh invader.
We are at grave risk of the same thing happening to Iraq. If we bug out on a published schedule it will be a theocratic satellite of Iran in 3 years and what credibility we have left will be history.
