Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Chris.

I too am mindful of the fact we need to get the ratio of on-topic to off-topic posts ratcheted up, and have been a chief offender recently, so I'm going to make a last post on the subject, below, in a response to Brian, who raises some similar points.

Specific to your post, those soldiers were so tragically wrong. We had correctly identified the source of the 9/11 attacks, and, quite reasonably, attacked Al Qaeda's sponsors in Afghanistan, the Taliban. But the neocons already had, fully in place (thoroughly documented*) prior to 9/11, their plan to attack Iraq, and needed only time in order to bring public opinion around to support the necessarily much larger,and impossible to justify factually, invasion of Iraq. That the invasion had nothing to do with 9/11 is underlined by the fact that the Afghanistan effort, where Bin Laden and Al Qaeda actually were, was seriously depleted in order to support the Iraq effort.

I share your frustration and angst regarding our failure to eliminate Bush in 2004. In my response to Brian, I will touch on the subject.

* The plan was the brainchild of a group of neocons, tightly allied with Israel, including Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, Kristol Bolton, Abrams and Cheney. See Wikkipedia re Project For a New American Century. PNAC's goal is total global hegemony by the U.S. If you don't believe, me, Google "PNAC", or read the rather scholarly Wikkipedia article. Plenty of reliable sources. That the plan to invade Iraq, a necessary part of PNAC's plan, was already in place before 9/11 I refer you to a written communication from Rumsfeld written 5 HOURS after the WTC attack (uncovered by CBS News): "[I want the] best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at the same time. Not only UBL [Osama Bin Laden]. [He added:] "Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." URL below.

MW
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• "Invading Iraq"