Latest Thoughts

Althought much has been happening in Iraq, I haven't been writing about it.

I thought I would spend a few minutes reflecting on the whole thing.

Seems like our pre-war intelligence on WMD was cooked up. Everyone suddenly admits that the Iraqi expatriots were willing to 'sex up' the data in order to manipulate the U.S. into invading. While I have no love for the former regime, no WMD, means low urgency in Iraq. If Iraqi dissidents and exiles cooked this whole thing up, can we send them a bill or at least charge them with fraud?

Perhaps our real goal was to destabilize Iraq.

An Iraqi civil could certainly mean an Iraq unable to threaten it's neighbors. This might be useful, but it seems likely to create a haven for anti-western forces and could create a hard line Iran theocracy.

A stable Iraq, if one appears, could mean a spread of free market and democratic liberalization in the Middle East, but this just seems so unlikely.

I always supposed that the rush to Iraq was part of a larger strategy or a result of intelligence information which wasn't being shared. Since neither of those seem to be true, I don't know what rational explanations I have left. It's so inconvenient that Iraq is situated on so much of our oil.

The world is better off without Saddam. But are we simply on a mission to rid the world of leaders who are oppressive murderers? Who's next and when do we stop?

Did the Bush administration lie about WMD, or were they misled? If they lied, why did they? I want proof one way or the other.

Speaking of the Middle East ...

What about the Saudi's? Something seems to blow up there weekly. Each time the perpetrators narrowly escape, leading me to believe the police are either incompetent keystone cops or somehow collaborating. If this keeps building it will become a civil war. (BTW, my favorite blog on Saudi Arabia is http://muttawa.blogspot.com/ )