Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency says Iraq War a big mistake.

[JDPriestly]

Cross-posted from World Forum.

That the Iraq War was the biggest foreign policy blunder the US has made since maybe the Treaty of Versailles if not much earlier is not news to anyone on DU.

What is news is the fact that someone who may have been part of the decisions behind the invasion and its aftermath is now admitting it. I don't know what Flynn's role was in proposing or deciding strategy to do with Iraq, but this article on the origins of the Islamic State and on how we can best fight it is interesting.

Here is just a snippet from the article:

. . . .

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Islamic State wouldn't be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret ...

Flynn: ... yes, absolutely ...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... the Iraq war?

Flynn: It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/former-us-intelligence-chief-discusses-development-of-is-a-1065131.html

[madokie]

1. Guess what

most of us here were screaming out heads off about this

[daleanime]

3. +1

[7wo7rees]

2. Too little, too late. Thks assh#@'*! I will never forget February

2003. 25 million around the world, on the streets saying NO! We were a "focus group".

[JDPriestly]

6. Nice to have confirmation that you were right.

If only the powers that be listened more to those who are more intelligent than they are. But ?????? Never to be I think.

[7wo7rees]

9. Confirmation we were right and no one look listened! No,

it was an incredible heartbreak. Never have recovered from that moment in time.

[leveymg]

4. Flynn and DIA were also right to push back against Syrian regime change

for precisely the same reasons. The destruction of Iraq and Syria destabilized the entire region but played into the ethnic cleansing agenda of Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Iran overthrow fantasy of Israel. In both cases, these foreign agendas became US policy that failed at high cost to us.

[JDPriestly]

5. I agree. I was very opposed to our supporting these rebel groups in

Syria precisely because we do not know and did not know who they really are. That was a very naive policy.

I agree. I warned about that on DU.

[leveymg]

7. And I said Syria regime change would spill over into global terrorism

Sometimes it really stinks to be proven right, doesn't it?

The only thing that's worse is seeing those who are proven wrong nominated to become President. We just know they're going to prove themselves wrong again at the expense of the rest of us, and thst the politic process in America is about to fail even more disastrously.

[grasswire]

11. THIS

Don't participate in that frame "mistake." The intention from the beginning was clear. Break the egg, W. That was his task.

[leveymg]

13. Regime change and ethnic cleansing are really just a soft soap terms for genocide.

The US had been supporting the Saudis and Israel in a long-standing agenda of genocide and threatened nuclear extermination of Iran and serial regime change against its Shi'ia allies. With our blessings.

[Gods Slayer]

10. Better still: the Republican hopefuls admitted it

I watched their debate on youtube.

Somewhere around in the 6th quarter hour (between 1:15:00 and 1:30:00),
one of the contenders explicitly said the Iraq War had been a disaster. Amazing.

[gratuitous]

12. Welcome to the Traitors' Club, Mr. Flynn

Too bad the dirty fucking hippies didn't make a boatload of money off the Iraq war so we could be asked our opinions about the next excellent foreign adventure. Instead, we get to listen to the fawning media coverage of the people who were so lethally wrong but who also made a financial killing off all the killing.

[leveymg]

14. Not treason. The J CS also pushed back against Bush neocon plans to spread the Iraq war into Iran

The head of the JCS, Pete Pace was effectively fired for publicly denouncing that escalation in 2007. Traitor or hero?,

[gratuitous]

15. I know I was called a traitor in 2002 and 2003

But I guess that this year's fashion has come around at last, none dare call it treason . . . now. I really, truly wish my principles were as adaptable as Mr. Flynn's.

[leveymg]

17. I truly wish there were more top officials with principles. Period.

Last edited Wed Jan 6, 2016, 09:12 AM - Edit history (1)

[anigbrowl]

16. Good grief. This guy was head of the DIA *under Obama*, not under Bush.

Looking at his Wikipedia bio, I see nothing whatsoever to suggest he had anything to do with the decision to invade Iraq: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_T._Flynn

From 2004 he was head of the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade, which is a training unit. From late 2001 to mid-2002, he was seconded to Afghanistan where he headed part of the military intel operation there. When he talks in the Der Speigel article about how 'we' made the wrong decision in invading Iraq, it's abundantly clear that he's referring to the United States as a whole, not admitting some sort of personal responsibility.

All the people upthread rushing to condemn the guy are blithering idiots. It took me only 1 minute to look him up on wikipedia and realize that he couldn't possibly have been responsible because he wasn't senior enough to be involved in such decisions. Shame on you OP for suggesting he 'may have been part of the decisions behind the invasion' just because he happened to be in the army at the time.

Look things up folks. It only takes a few seconds.

[7wo7rees]

18. If he knew it was wrong he could have done what a very few brave others did Refuse.

Last edited Wed Jan 6, 2016, 01:14 PM - Edit history (1)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehren_Watada

Had the pleasure of meeting his parents as they traveled the country on behalf of their son. Lt. Watada.

Also, Anne Wright.
Edit
Wright submitted her resignation letter to then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on March 19, 2003, the day before the onset of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Her letter was published on the internet the following day.

In her resignation letter, Wright listed four reasons she could no longer work for the U.S. government under the Bush administration:

The decision to invade Iraq without the blessing of the U.N. Security Council
The "lack of effort" in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
The "lack of policy" in regard to North Korea
The curtailment of civil liberties within the United States.
Wright was the third of three State Department officials to retire from service in protest in the month prior to the invasion of Iraq, the other two being Brady Kiesling and John H. Brown. Wright says that she did not know the other two, and had not read their resignation letters at the time she submitted her own

Also have had the pleasure of spending hours with her. She is one amazing woman!!

[anigbrowl]

19. I think you mean resign?

While he could certainly have resigned from the army, that still doesn't make him responsible for the invasion in any way as people were suggesting. Maybe you think everyone in the armed forces who didn't resign in 2003 is an asshole but I don't believe that is true.

My bigger point is that a lot of people in this thread clearly got the notion that this guy was somehow involved in the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq - to the point of calling him a traitor and so on - without any evidence whatsoever. I posted because I think people should do a little more fact-checking, so as not to waste energy and political capital on chasing mirages..