I would agree that they pissed away the sympathy, to the extent it was actionable. But I'd say the dickering around on Iraq, rather than the eventual war, was the main culprit. Had we launched in March of 2002 rather than waiting a year, it would have gotten much more support. The memory of 9/11 was cold by then.

U.S. policies and actions toward the many other nations around the world besides Iraq where there are human rights violations would seem to prove that invasion/regime change is not the sole means with which to deal with such issues, thus I have to question criticizing what a Gore administration would have done in Iraq in saying that it would have left a brutal dictator in power in Iraq. The list of brutal dictatorship regimes that the current Bush administration has left in place is a long one. In their defense, the U.S. can't be going everywhere with troops all the time. However, that's true in general. Administrations need to use skill, diplomacy, etc. to solve problems and need to have a sensible set of priorities. The priority should have been to have taken what's the most directly, factually meaningful to U.S. security into consideration and to have completed the task against the folks who actually did attack this country and the regimes who have an actual meaningful connection to them first and to have gotten involved in wars of choice, such as the invasion of Iraq has been in reality, second.

Otherwise, I just counter Albright's rather strange assertions. I suspect that things would have gone largely the same either way, except that we'd likely not have gone into Iraq. Albright and others seem to imply that Gore would have avoided 9/11, which is absurd. Likewise, the assertion that Gore would have found OBL by now is silly.

To the thought that the consequence of a Gore administration not having invaded Iraq would have been Saddam's continued tyranny, I detest sounding like I don't care but isn't deciding not to invade a despicable North Korean regime, as the Bush administration seems to be content to do, just as reprehensible as deciding not to invade Iraq? Or deciding not to invade and topple the regime of, say, Zimbabwe? Considering the number of tyrannical regimes around the world that the U.S. has supported over the years and continues to support or at least leave alone, I don't see that the Iraq war hawks are in much of a position to criticize on that basis others who questioned going to war in Iraq. Questioning any war where there's not a threat to U.S. security is fair as far as I'm concerned and dealing with the real threats has to be first priority at all times. Maybe the whole theory that the Bush people seem to be espousing that toppling the Iraqi regime will cast long-term ripple effects that will eventually enhance our safety and security will turn out to be valid but I still have to see invading Iraq as a sort of luxury, an 'optional war,' if you will, and not a war of high-priority pure necessity like Afghanistan was, and that's what I see as the essence of Gore's recent statements, along with that the Bush administration has not been honest and straightforward with the American people about this.

The U.S. can handle and enjoy success in both Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time? Well, are events really bearing that out, with more troops desperately needed in Iraq, the Taliban re-emerging in Afghanistan, terrorism warnings in the news and bin Laden yet to be found?

I think administrations can walk and chew gum simultanously. I agree that missile defense was a high priority and not one I was ever really sold on in the post-Soviet era. I disagree on the 9/11 warnings/attention argument. It really seems silly to me. The personnel are the same at all but the very highest levels and, indeed, Tenet was and remains a holdover.

North Korea was what actually finally sold me on this war being non-optional. We essentially CAN'T use the military option there now because they are nuclear. I agree that you have to pick and choose your evil dictators to topple (I'm not sure I'd have bothered with Milosevic, for example). I think Saddam was enough of a potential threat to make it in our national interest; the fact that the people were liberated is a huge bonus but, I agree, would be insufficient on its own.

And, yes, I think we can clearly do Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time. Honestly, manpower per se isn't the issue.

It all may well sound like silly conspiracy theories, but there are some serious questions about either the competence of this administration or their willingness to place an agenda based on ideology above what pure objective analysis would seem to guide them to do. For instance, how much thought did they really give to occupying and rebuilding Iraq? If they were/are truly competent then they surely incuded that cost and effort as part of the overall cost/benefit analysis in decision of whether or not to invade. However, all evidence seems to be indicating that they barely considered that at all, and they definitely barely discussed that aspect of the operation with the public at all.

One would think, on the face it that the entire group of the administration inner circle would be very competent indeed, given their experience and background, but it seems to me that the realities of current events are leaving more and more surprising room for doubt on that. For instance, it seems to me that more and more questions are emerging about the effectiveness of the effort to deal with al-qaeda, as evidenced by the long report on NPR this morning. In view of all of that, I wouldn't be so quick to casually dismiss the idea that the administration dropped the ball leading up to 9/11/2001.

We should all be very interested in seeing the final result of the blue-ribbon investigation, now under way, of intelligence/law enforcement failures leading to 9/11/2001 and to see the *complete* report of the recently-finished congressional investigation.

As to the comparison of North Korea and Iraq, if a another nation can be considered a potential threat, then 1.) that means that that nation is not an actual, imminent threat and 2.) it's possible and indeed very wise to assign a grade on how much of a potential threat a nation is. There's no way that Iraq was a serious, imminent threat to the U.S. No long-range bombers, long-range missiles, no ballistic missile subs, no aircraft carriers. Even if they did have all of these weapons, they had no means to deliver them. Thus, even if Iraq is some kind of potential threat, the grade you assign to that threat is not a high one. Saddam might work with some terrorist organization to do something which he doesn't have the means to do in a more conventional fashion? A possibility, yes, but, really, how much of one? It's still very hard to say. The assertion that this was something bound to happen is still a rather tenuous one. I think something that was and is more of a serious possibility to be concerned is that of al-qaeda doing something on their own or al-qaeda infiltrating a government to obtain weapons and/or intelligence. I don't see that al-qaeda is very dependent on a particular government necessarily helping them. I also don't see that Saddam was necessarily very likely to just out of the blue turn to al-qaeda or someone and pull some stunt. Even though he has made some mistakes in his time his actions seem more to indicate that he's someone who calculates things as opposed to an utter zealot like bin Laden. He would have had plenty to lose by launching some kind of attack through non-conventional means and there was already the whole business of the containment policy that the U.S. and U.K. were conducting. Thus, it's really hard to see that the potential threat there was objectively something of a high grade. The truth which I believe history will eventually record on this is that the Iraq threat as of 2002-2003 was hyped up dramatically.

Al-qaeda OTOH is definitely a high-grade matter.

I haven't completed the book, but some interesting facts I had forgotten were the initial identification of hijackers included 5 people who were still alive, and whose identities had been stolen.

So far, the book also discussed the role of deception and diversion in normal intelligence activities and makes a good case that "clearing" Iraq of any complicity in the attack was premature at best. If 5 people were misidentified among the hijackers, it begs the questions, "Just who were the real hijackers?" and even, "Were there really 15 Saudi's among them?"

I am not a conspiracy junkie, but so far the book hasn't made the bold assertion of conspiracy so much as criticized the CIA and State Departments for bureaucratic inertia. It's an interesting read anyway, and may help explain some of the Administration's reticence to unload on Saudi Arabia.

given : a) dead Americans and world sympathy
or
b) no dead Americans and pissed off Arabs

give me b) every time!

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