More on the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
Let's remember that the Washington know-it-alls - including my heroes John Kerry and Hillary Clinton - bought the weapons of mass destruction line that brought us the second Iraq war. I did not. Here is a chart - thanks James Fallows - and a quote from smart guy Paul Wolfowitz. Thirty years ago I heard Ambassador Paul Warnke say to a dinner audience "when they tell you to trust them because they know things you don't...they don't" - gwc
Let's remember that the Washington know-it-alls - including my heroes John Kerry and Hillary Clinton - bought the weapons of mass destruction line that brought us the second Iraq war. I did not. Here is a chart - thanks James Fallows - and a quote from smart guy Paul Wolfowitz. Thirty years ago I heard Ambassador Paul Warnke say to a dinner audience "when they tell you to trust them because they know things you don't...they don't" - gwc
By late December [2002] some 200,000 members of the U.S. armed forces were en route to staging areas surrounding Iraq.... Declaring that it was impossible to make predictions about a war that might not occur, the Administration refused to discuss plans for the war's aftermath--or its potential cost. In December the President fired Lawrence Lindsey, his chief economic adviser, after Lindsey offered a guess that the total cost might be $100 billion to $200 billion.
Then, official estimates as combat began a few months later:
On March 27 [2003], eight days into combat, members of the House Appropriations Committee asked Paul Wolfowitz for a figure. He told them that whatever it was, Iraq's oil supplies would keep it low. "There's a lot of money to pay for this," he said. "It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
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