Two Months

Last week, days before the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq,
a group of us met with Hans Blix, the former top UN weapons inspector.
He reminded us that not only did the UN have hundreds of weapons
inspectors on the ground in Iraq before the invasion, but that he had
ready access to all of the Iraqi sites which US intel had targeted for
inspection. He reminded us that weapons inspectors had already checked
out some of the locations which Colin Powell would later refer to in
his UN Security Council testimony, and had found no evidence of WMD.
And he reminded us that, while weapons inspectors were not yet ready
to stipulate whether or not Iraq still had WMD at the time of the
invasion, he believed that another two months would have allowed them
to make that determination.

Instead of giving the weapons inspectors another two months to better
determine whether the rationale for the invasion made sense, President
Bush launched the invasion.

Four years, hundreds of billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of
dead and wounded later - with the Middle East less stable and America
less secure - the invasion and subsequent occupation have proven to be
a colossal foreign policy blunder for our country, with no end in
sight.

There were better alternatives to a precipitous invasion then, and
there are better alternatives to our ongoing occupation now.