Report by former Rumsfeld adviser Joseph Collins reiterates what the majority of Americans have known for a long time.
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” the report’s opening line reads. “As of fall 2007, this conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over 28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead.”
Published by the National Defense Institute’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center, the report does not reflect the official views of the Pentagon or the Defense Department. But it delivers a scathing indictment from the key educational arm of the US Armed Forces.
The report was written by Joseph Collins, a retired colonel and former senior adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. It’s importance cannot be overstated, because it is based in part on interviews on former senior defense and intelligence officials who spoke candidly and played roles in preparations for war.
This is one of the reasons I will never vote for Hillary Clinton. Like Bush they sold the perception that Hussein had the means and resources to be a threat to our nation. Now we know it was untrue and our sons and daughters are dying for it.
If toppling the US was Saddam’s aim he has most certainly succeeded. All he had to do was watch as his country was invaded. What a canny fellow.
Bill Clinton, 1998:
We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. . . . They will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.