Gerald Kleczka: “the Administration rushed into this war before they understood the consequences. Nearly half a year prior to seeking out…”

“the Administration rushed into this war before they understood the consequences. Nearly half a year prior to seeking out a United Nations mandate and two months before Congress even considered the resolution authorizing force, the war plans were already set. In fact, a recent Washington Times article tells of a secret report to the Joint Chiefs indicating that post-war planning had been insufficient. The administration clearly did not consider the enormous costs and effort that would be involved after the Iraqi army was defeated. Congress already appropriated $78 billion earlier this year. Now we are going to appropriate another $87 billion and undoubtedly there will be more requests to come. The taxpayers will have to pay billions to repair what we destroyed in the first place. There was not sufficient justification to start this war to begin with. To try to bolster their case for war, the administration had asserted that Iraq was an urgent threat to our national security and that we were at risk of an Iraqi surprise attack by weapons of mass destruction. But they offered no substantiation of these allegations, speaking only of hunches, probabilities, and suspicions. The administration also made dubious claims that there were ties between the 9/11 terrorists and Saddam. But in the months following the invasion, our intelligence community can still find no link between the Iraqi regime and the plot that led to those deadly terrorist attacks.”