WSJ Reporter on Baghdad & Iraq

Poynter Online - Romenesko

I checked with several places, and this is a true email. It is a depiction of everything that could have gone wrong going wrong in Iraq.

Among the more potent statements:

• if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote


• One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral.


• He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards.

I never thought this was anything but the stupidest thing the US could do: go to war in Iraq against a non-imminent threat. What is imminent? On the verge of attacking within the next 3 months. Iraq was no where near that. Yes, intelligence was flawed about the WMD. But even the intel that said that there was WMD stated that it was years away from being a threat. So, now we have Afghanistan with the Taliban back in charge, and Iraq becoming the biggest US disaster since the Southern Rebellion (thats the Civil War).

Vietnam was already destabilized when we went there. We botched most of that by thinking we knew what was going on, when we were leagues off the mark. Iraq was at least stable. Hussein wasn't a good guy, but, neither are a lot of dictators. So, we continue to mess up Iraq, while pandering to other dictators, thinking that they are our friends. In the 80s we thought Hussein was our friend.

What a disaster.