Iraq democracy a dream, Bush told...

[Violet_Crumble]

US intelligence officials warned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime - as a model for the region - was so audacious that, as a CIA report put it in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible".

That assessment ran counter to what the Bush Administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war.

President George Bush said then that a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalised, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support and the Islamic world would be friendlier to the United States.

"A new regime in Iraq would serve as an inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he said on February 26.

The question of how quickly and easily the US could establish democracy in Iraq was the key to a larger concern about how long US troops would be required to stay there, and how many would be needed to maintain security.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/14/1060588524354.html

[wtmusic]

1. * should listen to the CIA

instead of those neocon nuts from the PNAC.

DYT?

[ozymandius]

2. The sheer audacity!

In retrospect, this sounds like the kind of policy written by people who strut in front of mirrors with their chests puffed out, wearing capes.

It is beyond me how they believed that military action in Iraq would precipitate an avalanche of support for their "chaos capitalism" and perverted sense of democracy.

[QuietStorm]

3. I have no credentials and I could have told them that!