I gotta' give it to you
Loopz those were some "Sound" reasons indeed. However, {and we'll have to agree to disagree on this note} I don't think GWB {while not the man I had voted for} did the wrong thing in the manner that the world wants to percecute him for. It could have been a different man in office that at this point in history had to be there to make the choice to involve our military into that region of the world. ---The U.N. is inept at it's job, and is always looking out for the interests of the European nations who had more to lose from the USA "Storm Riding" into IRAQ when Saddam kept dicking around with the WMD Inspections. This is why they kept dragging their feet when Saddam would renege on an "inspection". Nations like France, Russia, Germany and a few others {I tend to forget them all} had their own measures of influence in IRAQ and the general middle east itself, and in ways that contributed to the old regime that did not help the people who suffered under Saddam's rule.
...my issues with GWB and IRAQ Part II, along with the way the military is run is the unpreparedness of it all. ---You don't send in a military that is dependent on "Technology" who announces it's aims with surgical airstrikes being done as CNN and others within the affilliated press cover it, you take the time to have Cadres of former so and sos from the region in question along with SF troops train the Infantry on how to combat the situation at hand on the target soil in a manner that allows for absolute victory. ---Just like how the USA trained the first Airborne Units for 2 years before they made the jump into Nazi Germany on D-Day... the Cadre forms devoted units that would make up about two
2,500 manned Brigades. Each individual learns to live off the land he's going to the same way the people there do... eats as they eat, smell like they smell, sweat as they sweat and would be initially sent in with Soviet Bloc weapons and in parallel with standard "Basic Training" the doctrines and mindset of the target enemy. The problem we have right now more than anything is that our soldiers have pride in being the best because we are technologically advanced, but in truth we do not have the superior training in how to stay alive, nor are allowed to have PRIDE in what we're doing. The Eastern Armies {Russia. China, Germany, former IJA} all stress individual "Initiative" within the lower echelon that is actually in the feild combating things. Thus the Eastern and even Middle Eastern mindset has an Infantry man who is taught it's not impossible to Kill a tank with their bear hands... {not punching it, meaning rather to get in close and be able to take out what seems impossible}... They know how to see better at night than an American solider with NVGs on, which is the only reason the USA "OWNZ THE NIGHT" as it's stated etc. On our side of things, our soldiers face possibly going to federal prison if they at a Squad level got cut off from Sattelite Intel from a higher up or was not given direct orders to do something and they took the initiative and kicked ass. Eastern Armies might be killed for
NOT taking the initiative.
...thus I'm pissed that GWB and the brass overrall didn't plan this out a bit better not just for IRAQ or Afghanistan, but overall retrun to the "Brown Shoe" way of training with emphasis on the respective area of military operations. When our forces go in, they should be trained to survive without such reliance on air cover {which announces ground forces are coming, no more element of surprise}, the soldier should not be worried about "This Rule" or "That Rule" but be able to take the initiative as neccessary and the upper echelon actually listen to their Non Coms and grunts in the feild. Initial deployment with enemy weapons and munitions then alleviates logistic problems other than occassional night time "Air Drops" because most of the ammo is going to be OSP off the dead. Since Bush himself said the war on terror is ging to be a protracted war, then from this point on SPEC OPS members need to be assigned in small numbers amongst the regular ground pounders for better success, and training should focus more on "Guerrilla Warfare" rather than "Conventional" which is how we storm rode into there after aerial bombardments. People like to say that grunts are a thing of the past...
HAH! *Quite the contrary, they are still the backbone of what gets done. Thus the US Military needs to refocus and re-train using older "better" methods with emphasis on enemy tactics with the people coming in. But I guess the people within the DOD never bothered to read Major T.E. Lawrence's
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, do not heed the quote of Ho Chi Mihn in 1946 when the Vietnamese fought the French when he said:
"It will be a war between an elephant and a tiger. If the tiger stands still, the elephant will crush him, so the tiger nerver stands still.". If we're going to continue to commit ourselves to a "Protracted War" on Terrorism, then we need to restructure and re-train the men and women within the ranks before sending them out in harms way. We need the advisors from former
Spetsnaz and
French Foreign Legion members who are now "Mercs" to work with the designated Cadre. Hell with the training and knowledge I've had over the last 21 of 26 years outside the military I could very well help write the freggin manual and "Consult" in such a formation, but since the lower echelon isn't supposed to know anything, our people will continue to die in horrible ways to poorly equipped, non technological enemies... but I doubt the DOD is going to admit their son or daughter didn't really learn how their enemy thinks, wasn't put into a 6 month intensive crash course in the target objective's language, etc.
That's the travesty of it all to me. Everything that needs to be done is so obvious, but yet we rely on what we see not what we could know. We rely on Technology over common sense and self initiative at a smaller level within the bigger war machine! A "Chalk" {12 men} spread out into 3 Squads of 4 can do more damage than a Company of men charging in with tanks and Helo overhead announcing our intentions, but no one sees this! 
This is how the enemy operates and does things, and until we meet our target objectives with the same mindset, we we continue to have division back here in the states between the populace who see our men dying over there when if allowed to and with better understanding of their enemy, better understanding and usage of microterrain and more, might very well not be dead. That's the big cluster fuck that pisses me off about the nation, but I don't hate the whole country nor want to burn the flag because of it either.
MERCENARY X99
) is like "scared" of something.....but dont know exactly what