>Doug wrote:
>
>>Marvin Gandall wrote:
>>>I also think it's mistaken to consider the invasion of Iraq an act of
>>>"stupidity" so much as of miscalculation
>>
>>Almost everyone who knew anything about Iraq predicted what would happen
>>if the US invaded, and the Bush admin ignored or fired them.
>>Miscalculation seems too kind a word for that.
>===========================
>I didn't mean to be kind, and it was a stupendous miscalculation - by people
>who may be lacking in character or humanity but, outside of Bush Jr.
>certainly not wanting in political sophistication and experience: Cheney,
>Rumsfeld, Feith, Bolton, Libby, Perle, Fukiyama, Wolfowitz, etc., not to
>mention liberal imperialists like Pollock and Packer and Ignatieff right
>through to our old friend Hitchens on the socialist left. None of these
>folks are fools, however else you might describe them and however much
>others, including myself, characterized the invasion of Iraq as reckless and
>adventurist in terms of the US's larger strategic interests.
But I'll say it again - regardless of their IQ, none of the people you name knew anything about Iraq other than where to find it on a map, that its capital is Baghdad, and that it has lots of oil. Country experts in the CIA, the State Department, and academia were ignored. People take more care researching vacation destinations.
Doug