Not sure of that just yet - again we cannot know if it was actually a good thing to happen or the worst. I fear the latter, but hold hope of something vaguely resembling the former.
Yeah, George Sr. Should have NOT listened to the cowtowing liberal BS and finished the job the first time.
Whether "the World" is less safe or not is another issue for debate. It takes time, a lot of time for a culture, society and its peoples attitudes to come around. Oh and how were the Iraqi civil liberties eroded? They have'nt had any under Saddam!

The catch 22 is that the intelligence that Bush 1 might have brought in to the invasion is what kept him from becoming an occupation force in the first place.

Intelligence as in smarts - if so I disagree, however if you mean information - I think our entire nation & the coalition forces got caught up in the wonderment of kickin Iraqs ass so easily that we lost sight of the poor civilians we left behind to fend for themselves.

I mean smarts. The reasons he gave for pulling out were shown to be pretty compelling once his son ignored them.

If there was some good way he could have supported the civilian uprising without it turning into a US occupation, he probably should have. I'm saying he's smarter than his son, not that he's perfect.

Better advisors, less God given mandate?:D

A better politician and he definitely had better advisors!

no no, i mean American and British civil liberties.

Perhaps a little speculation and, dare I say it, foresight, might have prevented rather a lot of bloodshed.....oh sorry, there was speculation and an attempt at foresight, but it was ignored by the American and allied governments in their headlong rush into a 'desirable' war.

How many people predicted exactly this? How many intelligence and military experts argued that this was a mistake? How much intelligence was found to have been erroneous, and worse still, known to be erroneous?

Actually quite a few, but they were shouted down. No, not shouted down. Pressured down? Threatened down? Squashed. :(

Many. From my experience, the numbers probably are most. But remember, these guys are not allowed to talk publicly. My 2002 opposition to "Mission Accomplished" did not come from speculation. All intelligence is erroneous if it cannot be placed into perspective. Cheney is so mistrustful of intelligence analysts that he reads only raw intelligence. IOW he finds what he wants to find because intelligence MUST be put into perspective.

To blame the intelligence as erroneous are how those without perspective now blame others. The intelligence was correct. People such as Chalabi were known to be scam artists. Curveball was the ONLY source for Iraq's mobile biological labs, was never interviewed by any Americans, and was a known alcoholic. As David Kay noted after reading the massive file on aluminum tubes, his own comment was, "Is that all there is?"

The intelligence was correct. But the administration read it for a political agenda rather than to be a patriotic American.

There was very good reason why my 2002 opposition to "Mission Accomplished" was so adamant and so accurate. Even the intelligence did not say Saddam had WMDs. Many (and rightly so) suspected he might. But not one intelligence source could define a single WMD after 1996 - for obvious reasons. They did not exist.

Next, you should be answering why those administration people had a political agenda. The answer has been provided often, but somehow I suspect many never grasped the significance.

The 'erroneous' intelligence I was refering to was stuff like the 'dossier' on WMD which formed such a large part of the British government's argument and was found to be a graduate's thesis they'd swiped from online, and then 'sexed up'.

Actual intelligence was generally telling them a story they didn't want to hear, so they started making it up. I absolutely do not believe that Tony Blair was unaware of the status of the 'intelligence' he was drawing from.

Do you think the CEO of British Petroleum knows the attendant at the BP station is scratching your paint when he fills your tank? He may know how much that station is selling, if he digs deep enough into the reports, but he'll never know the truth like the man on the scene. That's why he relys of the slant, of the reports from the field.:cool: