Bush on Iraq: the view from the ground

Milo rang last night to suggest I repost this piece written a few years ago. He thinks new readers might still find it relevant. Milo believes that Bush administration policies on Iraq never really go out of style, as I too discovered in the past. So without further excuse, "The view from the ground" (lightly revised).

I don't want to badmouth anybody, but I think he was misleading you. It's much worse than he's letting on. The whole situation is a mess. It's not going to just get better by itself, you can see for yourself that it's broken beyond repair. It's up to you of course whether you want to trust him. But I think he's leading you down the path, making you think you can get off easy, then dropping the bad news on you later.

It's just not possible to do it his way. And they won't let us anyway even if it would work, which it won't. He's already wrecked so much of the...well, I don't want to badmouth anybody, but take it from me it's beyond repair.

You see those pipes? That's your leech field and they're all clogged. You've got to replace the entire septic. Dredge all this muck out and put in a new system.

But once you do that, you're all set.

Just like in Iraq. Cut out the terrorists, drop in a new army, and you're ready to go. You've got to listen to the generals. Just let the experts do their work, you'll get the best results.

I'm with the President a thousand percent, don't understand what those Democrats want from him. Did you see his speech yesterday? Made sense to me. So what if Iraq's a mess now? Let'm backfill and landscape, and you're all set.

Just too many bodies exposed at the moment.

It's all Saddam's fault anyway. He's the one who chose to go to war against us, we didn't attack him. He kicked out the inspectors. If he didn't want war, he shouldn't have done that.

What's that? They're all smashed right through here. If you ask me, some idiot drove a truck right over the yard and crushed the pipes. You've got an oil fill pipe over there. I bet it was an oil tanker backing up to the house instead of parking at a safe distance.

Idiot, if you ask me.

It was up to Bush to decide whether or not to go into Iraq, it wasn't Congress's decision to make. Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in, so what could Bush do? He couldn't let'm thumb his nose at us. Course if he let them in, they'd've found the WMDs so he slammed the door in their face.

Can't believe the French couldn't even see that.

They go straight down the hill. Bet they polluted the stream. Even back then there were rules. Can't believe they got away with it. You know some money changed hands. That's the way this town council has always been.

Can't trust politicians about anything.

Bush admitted the WMD intelligence was bad, you gotta admire his honesty. Of course it was bad, the CIA just didn't do its job.

You can't fault Bush for that.

Gotta come out too. I know he tried to convince you he could save it, but you can see for yourself it's all fouled up. I've got some expertise here, so I think you gotta take that seriously.

Never seen anything quite this messed up. They did everything wrong, including a few things I've never seen before.

Amazing, really.

Not that any of it matters. Saddam was a danger and we had to take him out first before he hits us with WMD. Even if Bush got everything else wrong, he got that right. You don't want to see a mushroom cloud over Cincinnati or wherever.

Aluminum tubes? No, I'm going to use PVC. Never use aluminum that way, it would be all wrong for the job.

The people who are accusing Bush of lying just aren't telling the truth. There's no evidence he ever hyped the evidence for WMD, and it doesn't matter how many times the Democrats say it, it just isn't true.

Besides every other country saw the same intelligence, and they all voted to give the President authority to overthrow Saddam. You can't just go back and rewrite history.

It's always been about giving the Iraqi people freedom and democracy, simple as that.

This is just preliminary. I'll come back next week to take exact dimensions and measure your gradient. It'll take a few weeks to draw up a plan and get estimates back for materials and fill. This is a little tricky, I want to get everything right at the outset and give you folks an accurate idea of what you're getting into here.

As I said, I think you have to give Bush credit. He's admitting that not everything went according to plan in Iraq. You won't hear many presidents admitting that mistakes were made.

Especially when they're really big mistakes.

I'm gonna put in a tank triple the size of the current one. I'd put in a bigger one but there's no room. It's much more than you probably need, but it really makes sense to go with a bigger size than necessary so you don't have problems down the road when maybe you have kids. Trying to cut corners can really cost you in the end.

The generals in Iraq say they have everything they need to win. In fact they're already winning. They don't need any more troops.

Probably start bringing them home soon, maybe, but only when there's a complete victory.

If you ask me, Bush is right to refuse to explain when that'll be. That would be artificial. We don't want the terrorists to get any ideas.

I'm pretty sure I can begin this job in three weeks, if the permit comes through. It's complicated so count on it taking at least five days. I'm thinking more like seven. Eight at the outside.

My God, look at how fast he's going on this road. No concern for life and limb.

Can you believe they're even criticizing Bush now over civilian casualties. What did they think would happen when we went to war?

It's pretty irresponsible.

Better turn my engine off. Gas is so expensive now I can barely afford to fill up. What was I saying.

crossposted from unbossed.com