The Downing Street memo says many things that those of us that can read between the political doubletalk already knew. Most of the justifications for the war are... shifting at best. Terrorism links to Osama? Nope. WMD? Maybe, but we haven't found any. Bringing freedom to the Iraq people? Why should we? Bring more freedom to the US instead. Haven't seen many gun laws repealed, nor any asset seizure laws killed. Seems like the government has gotten larger and some civil liberties are disappearing.
My counterinsurgency instructor beat a motto into my skull. "If the people do not rise up and take freedom for themselves, they neither deserve freedom nor will they keep it."
Saddam being a bad guy? Sure, but there are plenty of bad folks in the world. Why him? Also, Rummy visited Saddam. Rumor is that Rummy floated the idea of leniency or maybe even freedom if Saddam played ball and turned squealer. If we wanted to deal with Saddam, we could have intervened back during the Iran-Iraq War, during the many Kurdish insurrection, or immediately during/after the first Gulf War.
My favorite part was "No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections."
"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. " is amusing.
Again, it validates a lot of concerns by folks who think this war maybe was not the best idea. But it really doesn't bring up any new revolations.
