Originally posted by Ace
Core,
My honest opinion is that if we cut and run now we are screwed far more than if we stay. Things are not going well but the sky is not falling either.
If you read the reports Bush did not lie. I think the best observation I\'ve heard so far is that the people around him pushed him into this war but for good reason. I\'ve asked this question in another thread but it got overlooked.
Hey, I agree that if we leave now we are screwed. I said so above. I just don\'t trust Bush to make the correct decisions to get us out of this mess. His method of getting us into Iraq was shortsighted and ill conceived.
You say he did not lie, but what do you call it when he gives press conferences and speaks to the american public, and he always refers to the absolute worst-case presented in the intelligence reports, and then he exaggerates it further? That was their pattern. Take whatever was the worst, most extreme scenario presented in the intelligence, and then make it sound a little worse, and then use that as the justification for the actions they already decided they wanted to take. A thinking person would have realized that when you\'re dealing with uncertain intelligence information, the extreme scenarios are not likely to be true. The scenario in the middle of the curve is most likely to be the real situation.
So he and his team decided at some point that they wanted to invade Iraq for whatever reason. Maybe they figured "if there\'s ANY risk that any of this information is true, then we MUST invade because any risk is too much." However, they failed to consider that there\'s a risk involved in being wrong also. They didn\'t stop to think for one minute that they might be wrong, and what would happen if they were. This is one of Bush\'s big character flaws, in my opinion. He thinks he cannot be wrong, he is never wrong, and he doesn\'t devote one millisecond of time thinking about that possibility. If he is ever wrong, he has a ring of yes men around him to come up with justifications and rationales to explain it away.
Why was Bush unable to answer a question about what mistakes he has made? Every normal human being has to answer a question like that in almost every job interview, but Bush is somehow exempt from it? I don\'t know if he\'s ever questioned himself and his own actions in his entire life. He needs to acknowledge that he made a mistake, and take responsibility for it, not continue to blame the intelligence sources.
That in a nutshell is why I don\'t trust the man who CAUSED THE PROBLEM to now fix it. I don\'t care if Bush and Kerry\'s plans for Iraq are similar. Those plans are going to have to change based on circumstances, and Bush has proven that he cannot make rational choices based on information given to him.
