Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
The point is that we were led into all those conflicts by a Govt. which deliberately overstated the threats (e.g. WMDs) and understated the long term risks of what we were embarking on for reasons best known to themselves. I Never claimed that whatever Reid said was a promise, how could it be, but it was just another example of our politicians understating the reality in order to overcome opposition at the time. Given what has since happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, I hope we've learned some lessons from that.
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Despite the falsehood in which we went in, Iraq has been a fairly successful operation.
Afghanistan, however, not so good.
When we first went into Afghanistan we completely took the Taliban by surprise and we were pretty much very close to wiping them out, and if we had concentrated on that we may have a chance to come away with something like a successful operation.
But we didn't, we turn our focus onto Iraq, and instead of wiping out the Taliban we let them regroup and reorganise. That is the reason
Iraq was such a mistake.