...one has to do a cost analysis before taking on such an endeavor. If you wind up wrong then you have to endure the criticism from those one third of Americans who said things might not be so easy.I frankly doubt that any President has completed an accurate "cost analysis" on the expense associated with any potentially protracted military adventure, whether a declared war or action taken with or without prior Congressional approval.
I believe that Bush thought Iraq would go much like say Bosnia or the Falklands War. Had it, we would not be having this discussion. You and others would have been correct and myself and the other one third of the country would have been wrong.
Originally Posted by WTF
(That's not even how the Government finances significant military operations.)
I suspect even you end up spending more on building a house than you "budgeted" and "projected" in your "cost analysis."
Speculation from snippets of conversations for the purpose of defining motive is flawed, particularly when the conclusions are based on psychological conditions and attitudes, since neither is a "science."
My personal belief was, and is, that BushOne should have finished the job started when pushing the Iraqis out of Kuwait, but he didn't. (Did the Allied forces stop at the German border? The Japanese border?)
Every protracted military action since WWII in which this country has been engaged has been politically controlled with arbitrary "lines for boundaries" beyond which the U.S. prohibits itself from pursuing with limitations on responses, which have bitten the U.S. in the ass. Every country around the world knows the U.S. people lack the "stomach" for protracted military engagements, so the U.S. plays into their hands and drags them out in some "politically correct" game of chicken. Guess who has lost. The U.S.
Bill Clinton: 1998
"Now, let me say to all of you here as all of you know the weightiest decision any president ever has to make is to send our troops into harm's way. And force can never be the first answer. But sometimes, it's the only answer.
You are the best prepared, best equipped, best trained fighting force in the world. And should it prove necessary for me to exercise the option of force, your commanders will do everything they can to protect the safety of all the men and women under their command.
"No military action, however, is risk-free. I know that the people we may call upon in uniform are ready. The American people have to be ready as well."
The "American people" are not. We now have a President who never was.
The World's attitude, including those who have been our "traditional" allies, know that full well and act accordingly in response to the belief that we cannot be relied upon to respond if they are attacked themselves.
