So who's part of the 29%?

RebSaint said
You paint a really nice, neat scenario which might possibly exonerate Bush on Iraq. You're right, from a historical point of view the jury is still out because Iraq has yet to work itself out.

40 years from now it might come out more that his administration manipulated and misinterpreted faulty evidence more than what's been proven as fact now. 40 years from now we now may look back at a middle east no better, more violent after having been hit by terrorists several times because of his error in judgement. We don't know.

From where I'm sitting based on what we do know about the history of long, costly occupations and nation-building, not to mention what's happened on the ground in the past few weeks--Iraq doesn't look good. A democratic Iraq is supposed to be the cure-all tonic to pave the way for peace in the middle east. We'll have to see where we are 40 years from now. We do know that hatred of the west emerged out of Imperialistic designs of Europe in the region in the early 20th century. Yet the United States is military occupying a Muslim country in the middle east. Definition of insanity? I think so.

I also think we can fall into this trap of "we don't know anything about a presidency, so we shouldn't criticize" because of the lack of a historical record. I think these exercises have their limitations, like all counterfactual history.

Hey, don't get me wrong. Criticize away. But there is a gap between that and the "worst president in history" label, or worse, "chimpy."

What DD's story tells us is one more reminder of how close to the brink we have come on a number of occasions. Usually there are multiple scenerios that can play out from a number of these; clearly we have been lucky in some respects and had good leadership in others. But it takes two to tango, as my mother used to say, and had Kruschev not backed down himself, had he tried to run the blockade, we only now know what the consequences would have been. On the other hand, most recently, Saddam had the chance to back down, and didn't. In fact, he may have been playing a deadly game of brinksmanship himself, pretending to have weapons he didn't have. We could sit, and wait, running the risk the UN inspectors could do their job(the same outfit, by the way, that had grossly underestimated Saddam's nuclear programs in inspections the decade before), running the risk the oil for food program would fall into such a morass of corruption its desired effects would vanish(and arguably already had), running the risk a weapon of mass destruction did not fall into the hands of someone who would use it on our interests at home or abroad, or we could take action. The argument over Iraq has been distilled down to such a simple one, we forget the terribly complex scenerios present in 2002 and the less than desirable shape of our intelligence agencies on whose advice our leaders have to depend.

The easiest thing is to do nothing, Sometimes it's the right thing. But I am not so quick to fault decisions without all the facts, and I'm afraid it will be a long time before we have all the facts.