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Michael, I was opposed to the US invasion of Iraq. Once we had launched, I hoped for success, including minimal casualties. After the major combat operations, after we overthrew the government, I thought it our responsibility to try to help in bringing about a replacement government. During that long period, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives were lost. The US decision to invade Iraq, which had neither attacked us nor plausibly had any capability to do so nor plausibly any nuclear capability, is partly to blame for that calamity.
I was actually surprised at the slowness with which Iraq inched towards all-out civil war. Whatever sense of a unified nation they had, I still think it was a mistake in our assistance to their transition to a new government for the US to have imposed the requirement that the country remain one country, not divide itself into a handful of different ones. Be that as it may, whatever happens to them now (and however much Persian power increases in the region), it will have been partly the result of our invasion and overthrow of their government.
Jules and Dean, I would anticipate any attack we make against Iran would be limited to destroying their nuclear enrichment facilities. Like that destruction, whatever defenses have to be overcome to accomplish that destruction would proceed only by air and sea. I do support such an attack if and when the time for alternative nuclear stop has run out. I do not regard it as purely for defense of the US, though in a somewhat remote way it includes that. It is, rather, a special responsibility the civilized world takes on itself to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems by additional, bellicose countries (cf. a, b).
(Edited by Stephen Boydstun on 2/09, 1:15pm)
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