A thought about Iraq: Almost all the controversies over Iraq revolved around the number of troops initially sent, the status of the Iraqi army in the aftermath, and the slow response to the insurgency and the subsequent tactics used. But I still maintain (ad nauseam for some), that our key lapse was privileging the WMD argument for Saddam’s removal, when the U.S. Senate had voted for over 20 writs for regime change, almost all of them as valid today as they were in October 2002.
Once the administration invested in WMDs, then all the other equally pressing arguments were simply forgotten; but they were considerable humanitarian questions dealing with the Kurds, Shiites, UN embargo, bounties for suicide bombing, etc., and continual reference to them would have made the Congress more invested in the war they voted to authorize.
How else to explain that when the WMDs were not found, and the insurgency began, suddenly droves of supporters claimed they were “misled” and were thus free to flip-flop at precisely the time public support was needed to support the troops in their radically changing battlefield–even though the once lavish subsidies to Palestinian suicide bombers, or the gassing of the Kurds, or the attempt to kill a former President, or breaking of the 1991 accords were never in question?