America’s hubris in Iraq: the history –
On Thursday, the US Army War College published a monumental and authoritative history of the Iraq War. Peter Bergen called it a devastating portrait of blunders — by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other American officials — that cited “an emboldened and expansionist Iran” as the only apparent victor. “Wishful thinking and ignorance were the key drivers of the early decision-making about the conflict,” Bergen wrote. Nearly 4,500 American military personnel died, another 32,000 were wounded, with somewhere between 200,000 and more than a million Iraqis killed. The cost to the US: $800 billion to nearly $2 trillion.
Reported by CNN Digital Sunday, January 20