Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
Except in 2002 the Administration made a full strategic argument. Repeatedly. And since then, the President has consistently echoed the same piece: failure to disarm Iraq, by force if necessary, will non-negligibly risk a Baathist regime--or whatever follows should it collapse--offering Islamic terrorists material support to improve on the record of 19 hijackers armed with box cutters. That is, the death of three quarters of the number lost in Iraq in a single day and the evisceration of half an annual federal outlay --or a third to twice the cost of five years in Iraq (depending on whose numbers you go by)--in a single quarter.

As for Perle and Feith, after five years of having their names dragged through the mud for a post-war everybody including State agrees they weren't allowed to muck around with, I can understand some of their resentment.
You've illustrated the crux of the administration's flawed argument: that the Hussein regime would or could provide WMD to terrorists. In other words, the argument pivoted on the probability of a regime which had never shown evidence of suicidal tendencies becoming suicidal.

Cogent strategy entails assuming some degree of risk when the anticipated costs of addressing the threat are greater than the probability of the threat coming to pass, or of the damage if the threat did come to pass. The administration skewed this logic by grossly overestimating the likelihood of a threat to the United States from Hussein, and grossly underestimating the expected costs of removing him by force.

I find the assertion that Feith "was allowed to muck around in" post-regime planning bizarre. If OSD wasn't who was? Do you seriously intend to make an argument that State somehow messed it up?