Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
Iraq has always chafed my....whatever.

Neo-con hawks wanted regime change as a geopolitical lever against Iran. I get it. So where did all those bright bulbs come up with the "after Saddam it will be flowers and an eruption of republican democracy" scenario? Which is the only level for which we were staffed and prepared initially. Still galls me a decade plus later.
What got me was the pointlessness of it. There we were, living in a post-Cold War world, with the US far and away the only superpower on the planet. Yet they were picking a fight against a fourth rate power in order to effect change in third rate powers.