Do you care about our military and national security?

[Dill]

(06-14-2020, 10:04 AM)hollodero Wrote: I see some reasons to believe that. First, the whole weapons of mass destruction narrative was not inherently based on 9/11 (or say could have been followed regardless of 9/11). Sure there also was the "al qaeda is in iraq" narrative, but I don't know if people in the US believed that. Most NATO members did not.
Also, Bush had picked Cheney as his VP. If you initially intend to be all peaceful, you do not choose the devil as your running mate. Also he went with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who already had advocated violent regime change in Iraq back when Clinton was president.

Of course, I don't know what would have happened if 9/11 hadn't occurred, but imho these are some hints that the Iraq invasion would have happened anyway.

Just a very quick clarification here.  I have seen no evidence that Mullen bought into the Cheney claim that Al Qaeda was in Iraq and working with Saddam Hussein in 2001.

However, you know that there was an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Jordan in 2001, led by Zarkawi. AFTER the US invasion this group moved into Iraq and became known to us as Al Qaeda in Iraq, Jama'at to themselves. They spun up the insurgency and eventually became ISIL.  That is the connection to Al Qaeda that Mullen is referring to in his speech. Part of the surge strategy was to get Iraqis themselves to turn against this group. Mullen understood very well that the invasion of Iraq was a gift to Al Qaeda, expanding their recruitment and giving them a "twofer."

One more clarification: About that advocacy for violent regime change in Iraq. The Iraq invasion happened largely because Bush pulled a bunch of guys from the Project for a New American Century into his administration.
https://www.rrojasdatabank.info/pfpc/PNAC---statement%20of%20principles.pdf  AND because of 9/11.

From 1996 onward, the PNAC had publicly groused that H.W. had stopped short of toppling Saddam in the Gulf War, called that a great mistake, but assumed (correctly) they would never get the country and Congress behind them to "finish the job" unless there were, in the words of their 1997 Report, some "catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."  You know this movement as "neoconservativism"--the Neocons.

Then came 9/11--an OPPORTUNITY to get the job done, if only they could link Saddam to Al Qaeda. Hence all those embarrassing overrides of intel professionals. The creation of the "stovepipe" for funneling their unvetted intel to Congress and eventually the press.  It is EXTREMELY doubtful that Gore would have ever invaded Iraq, or even another Republican NOT so explicitly affiliated with the PNAC. It is doubtful (near impossible, really) that the country could have gotten behind an invasion of Iraq had not 9/11 happened.

Yet for all that, BEFORE 9/11, Bush himself had settled on a very MAGA-like foreign policy. He wanted to build up strong US military at home, but thought the US was spread to far, wasting money on unnecessary foreign wars. He and his base were reacting to "Globalist" Clinton's policing in Bosnia and Kosovo, and they wanted drawdowns in Europe and the Middle East. Bush and they were NOT on board with the PNAC, one reason the Bush team paid little attention to warnings about some terrorist group planning to hijack jets and fly them into buildings.