Thinking through Iraq

Heard part of the Condi Rice testimony in front of the 9/11 commission. It seems that people who testify in these public hearings usually come across sympathetic as committee members often time start playing for the camera and start sounding rude and unfair.

Rice was on top of her facts and didn't seem to allow the more aggressive inquisitors to rattle her.

In the run up to the invasion, this blog space spent a lot of bandwidth citing web pages and sharing my own views. I figure it is time to look at things as they are now. As I see it, we must remain steady and not go wobbly. A free and functional Iraq is in the national interest of the USA and for the whole region.

I was certainly disappointed in the WMD intelligence shortcomings. There were other reasons for the war but WMD was widely cited and thus the lack of finding them has harmed the credibility of the effort.

Now, the question of credibility is on the line once again on the issue of how extensive is the resistence. The Administration line is that the resistence is serious but limited. If indeed the opposition is just some die-hard Baathist Sunnis and extremist Shiites and are defeated in short order, then the US position remains credible and the June 30 hand-over will be a substantive as well as symbolic day for the Iraqis.

If the intelligence on the depth of resistance is wrong and understates how many radicals there are then US forces will be in for many more battles and support for the effort will wane and Bush winds up a one-term president.

There is no doubt in my mind that opponents of a free Iraqi will try their best to disrupt things leading up to and into the June 30 handoff. I'm hoping that such opponents are relatively few and will be defeated shortly. However, facts are facts and US public support will be influenced by the degree of conflict in the next three months and how accurately the Administration describes what is happening in Iraq.

The US public may be faced with this choice in November: Bush who understated the difficulties of the Iraq war or Kerry who sounds very much like he would pull the US out of Iraq.

I don't know if Kerry has made that explicit claim but his constant calls for internationalizing the effort is essentially a call for the abandonment of the effort in Iraq.

The USA has over 100,000 troops in country. No other nation nor combination of nations could send 100,000 troops into Iraq. So calling for internationalization of the military effort is a straw man position.

I suppose internationalization could take the form of replacing the CPA with a UN-approved body of officials. However, would the UN flee if it encounters resistance? When their HQ was car bombed, the UN left Iraq.

The US maintained a strong presence in Japan and Germany post-World War II.

We need to do so for the freedom and future of Iraq and the region.