It's worth looking at what the Brass was saying five years ago (and how on earth they all got voted in again, just three years ago):
"Defense of the American people is primary among the goals and objectives of U.S. actions in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon press conference today.
Further goals are to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and to liberate the Iraqi people.
To achieve these aims, the military coalition is focused of specific goals.
- Rumsfeld said the first is to end the regime of Saddam Hussein "by striking with force on a scope and scale that makes clear to Iraqis that he and his regime are finished."
never miss an opportunity to state the obvious .. - The coalition will identify, isolate and eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It will also eliminate Iraq's missiles and other delivery systems, the production capabilities and distribution networks, he said.
American taxpayers still have no accurate cost-accounting of how much the world's biggest search for nothing cost them. As I recall, it wasn't until late in the 2004 election cycle that the Administration was still promulgating a self-serving "search for the facts", after "weapons-related program activities" had supplanted WMD as the raison d'etre of American use of power ... - Coalition military forces will search for, capture or drive out terrorists who have found refuge in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Was Abu Nidal worth $1 trillion? [Don't answer if you are a neocon...] Of course, those who have watched PBS's "Bush's War" will wonder how this squares with Rumsfeld's later insistence that "clear-hold-build" was something the Iraqis had to do themselves... - The coalition will also collect intelligence related to terrorist networks in Iraq and beyond and will collect intelligence on the global network of illicit weapons of mass destruction activity. It will end sanctions and immediately deliver humanitarian relief to the displaced and the many needy Iraqi citizens.
What is most hilarious about this to you? That it never envisions that intelligence might be desperately needed to actually fight terrorist networks there and "beyond"? In any case, the seemless integration of 'intelligence' and boots-on-the-ground operations didn't come into force until early 2005, by my read of the tea-leaves. - The coalition will secure oil fields and resources, "which belong to the Iraqi people and which they will need to develop their country after decades of neglect," Rumsfeld said.
They have kept the oil flowing ... But Rumsfeld was parsimonious with US dollars from the outset and later-on, because it didn't make sense to build things that the insurgents would just destroy or dismantle ... Yet progress in living conditions is the key metric most Iraqis use to gage their affinity for US troop continuation. - Finally, the coalition will create the conditions for Iraq's rapid transition to a representative government "that is not a threat to its neighbors." The coalition is committed to ensuring the territorial integrity of Iraq.
Well, in the plus-up, now, the conditions are created (and the U.N. even has a role, as do some others).
General Petreaus, last year:"The fundamental source of the conflict in Iraq is competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources. This competition will take place, and its resolution is key to producing long-term stability in the new Iraq. The question is whether the competition takes place more – or less – violently.
Having "set the conditions", at great cost, we wait, at the $12b/month, go-it-alone cost in lives and treasury, for "success" to emerge in the form of a putative end to "conflict".
