The Iraq War

While it is certainly true that the left has worked hard, and to good effect, to make sure that we lose the Iraq War, there comes a certain moment when we have to put some of the blame for this on the Bush Administration. It is apparent that they made very serious mistakes on the occupation. Some of those mistakes were hard choices, such as whether to disband the Iraqi Army or not right after the war. No matter what choice we made, there might have been bad consequences.

Other choices were inexplicable errors--the refusal to seal the borders. At this point, this would still be a good call, but the damage is done.

I suspect that the pictures of the Abu Ghraib crimes were leaked as part of some attempt by the defense attorneys to get their clients off. As much as it bothers me to think of these sleazebags getting away with this, in the long run, letting them out of the military quietly would have been better than the enormous damage done to the United States and the Iraq occupation by having them publicly available.

I am wondering what the rules of engagement are now. One of my wife's students has a son in Special Ops in Iraq--and they are now obligated to knock on the door before entering when hunting for terrorists. Maybe there's a good reason for this, to build up good will among the Iraqis, but her son thinks this is crazy.