CBS: What Iraq Has Cost Us - Ret. Col. Mitch Mitchell

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/16/opinion/main606713.shtml

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Intelligence failures led us into a war that had no justification.

Unable to produce a “smoking gun,” we chose to ignore the advice of the majority of the members of the world body of nations and go it alone.

Because we have the strongest and most capable military forces in the world, we were able to defeat the Iraqi military with inadequate numbers of forces and shortages in supplies and equipment. We surely took the hard road to do it.

With a weak and inadequately staffed recovery plan for Iraq, which greatly retarded Iraq’s short-term reconstitution, we have somehow managed to form an interim Iraqi government and move glacially toward improved quality of life for the Iraqi people. Practically every day, American lives are given to insure continued progress.

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We proved that the world’s mightiest nation could stand virtually alone and still have its way, but at what price? Can we afford to be reckless and independent gunslingers in future conflicts? Does such arrogance erode our leadership in the war against terror? If the Iraqis ever get around to thanking us for what we did, we would do well to remind them that they were the lucky recipients of a series of unprecedented political and strategic blunders that, at great cost to us, worked to their long-term benefit.