Freedom's Fidelity

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

10 Lies We Were Told About Iraq Porphyrogenitus offers them up, here's a few:

Here are the whoppers they want you to forget while they focus your attention elsewhere. All of these were frequently bandied about by huge numbers of people and were the conventional wisdom of many:

1) The Iraqi Army would fight much harder to defend its country than it did in Kuwait.


Most Iraqi soldiers deserted at the first opportunity, having no desire to defend the Ba'ath National Socialist regime.

2) Iraq is not Afghanistan - it will take half a million American troops and at least six months to capture Baghdad, resulting in 50,000 American casualties (of which approximately 10,000 would be deaths).

As with the earlier "Afghanistan is not Iraq" prediction, this one likewise failed to materialize. It took half that number of American troops, less than a third as much time, and a tiny fraction of that casualty estimate.

3) Iraq will draw Israel into the war, leading to a larger Middle East conflagration.


Didn't happen.

4) There would be massive resistance from the Iraqi population defending their country from invasion.


Hardly anyone lifted a finger to defend the Ba'ath National Socialist Regime. Aside from the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard, Ba'athist thugs, and foreign volunteers, the bulk of the population simply stayed out of the way.

Even now, if one looks at the pattern of attacks, they are by and large restricted to a region north and west of Baghdad, where Saddam drew his greatest support, and carried out by Ba'athist death squads (typically the same sort of people who were used to terrorize the Iraqi population) and foreign auxiliaries from other Arab states. The vast majority of the Iraqi population, rather than supporting these attacks, are mainly concerned that we end them and produce security.

5) There would be street by street, house to house fighting in Baghdad that would destroy the city, cost thousands of American casualties, and drag on for six weeks or more.

Didn't happen that way. (Full disclosure: I thought this was a distinct possibility and it was something I worried most about).

Now go read the rest. I would add to the list the projected costs of war. House Democrats offered a low end estimate of $93 billion, and a Yale economist estimated a cost of $1.92 trillion, this number is inflated by his projections of rebuilding costs as well as projected damage to the US economy, curiously he allowed for nothing good to possibly happen. But it did anyway, the actual cost is estimated at just under $64 billion, and it's worth noting that a good chunk of that cost, close to half according to a USA today, would have been spent anyway on inspections and a enforcing the policy of containment the anti-war crowd preferred.... yearly.

In fact three University of Chicago profesors put together a remarkable study "War in Iraq versus Containment: Weighing the Costs" that considered financial as well as human costs of each side. They concluded that a policy of containment would cost around $630 billion in total. If you don't want to read the full 20 pages of the study, Eric Olsen at Blogcritics wrote a succinct summary of the results back in April.

And don't overlook that some in the media lied about Bush lying:

The bottom line is that someone has been running a con on me for 20 some years and I fell for it like a little old lady in a pigeon drop scheme. I've spent the last two hours going through the database of Capitol Hill Blue stories and removing any that were based on information from Wilkinson (or whoever he is). I've also removed his name, quotes and claims from Tuesday's story about the White House and the uranium claims.

Erasing the stories doesn't erase the fact that we ran articles containing information that, given the source, was probably inaccurate. And it doesn't erase the sad fact that my own arrogance allowed me to be conned.

The bottom line is I feel lied to about the reasons for not going to war!! I demand a full congressional investigation!!! But how can I trust these Democrats that authorized Bush for war several months ago? Don't some of them sit on the intelligence committees? Did they just take his word for it, or did the "bumbling idiot" Bush manage to use a Texas variation of the jedi mind trick?

For more on this see John Hawkins who writes that Bush's critics are rewriting history. Instapundit, in typical fashion, has covered this question quite thoroughly as well.

UPDATE If you still need help, please see Bush Lied (TM) for Dummies

posted by Paul  permalink | |