The Iraq War and Stubborn Myths

Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter and editor and the author of The Story: A Reporter's Journey, offers a piece in the Wall Street Journal that dispels many of the myths about the Iraq War.

I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me.

OK, I had some help from a duplicitous vice president, Dick Cheney. Then there was George W. Bush, a gullible president who could barely locate Iraq on a map and who wanted to avenge his father and enrich his friends in the oil business. And don’t forget the neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon who fed cherry-picked intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, to reporters like me.

None of these assertions happens to be true, though all were published and continue to have believers. This is not how wars come about, and it is surely not how the war in Iraq occurred. Nor is it what I did as a reporter for the New York Times. These false narratives deserve, at last, to be retired.

There was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong. But so is the enduring, pernicious accusation that the Bush administration fabricated WMD intelligence to take the country to war. Before the 2003 invasion, President Bush and other senior officials cited the intelligence community’s incorrect conclusions about Saddam’s WMD capabilities and, on occasion, went beyond them. But relying on the mistakes of others and errors of judgment are not the same as lying.   

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iraq-war-and-stubborn-myths-1428087215

Toasting Victory In Iran Over U.S. Troop Withdrawal From Iraq

President Obama made the announcement of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq sound like it was his plan.

In truth, his administration was unable to broker a deal with the Iraqi government to allow troops to stay to train Iraqi troops, maintain security and keep the neighboring Iranians out of the country.

The Obama administration had plenty of time to make a deal, but they appeared to be more interested in eliminating the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy from the military than they were in preserving our influence in a country where we have achieved military victory over an evil dictator, spent billions there, and lost thousands of American lives.

This reminds me of 1973 and the withdrawal of American combat troops from South Vietnam. With the absence of American combat troops, the North Vietnamese communists invaded the south in 1975 and defeated the South Vietnamese troops.

We have troops in South Korea, which prevented the North Korean communists from invading the south. We also had troops in West Germany, which prevented the Soviet bloc troops from invading the west.    

In her column at FoxNews.com Judith Miller suggests that the Iranians are having a victory toast over the American withdrawal. I believe she is right.

 They must be uncorking the non-alcoholic champagne in Teheran today.

The Obama administration’s decision to withdraw by 2011 all but 160 U.S. active-duty troops to guard the American embassy in Baghdad is a strategic defeat for the U.S. that is likely to significantly enhance Iran’s already considerable influence in Iraq and throughout the region.

You can read the rest of Judith Miller's column via the below link:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/21/toasting-victory-in-teheran/