Postscript

Sonny points out that I was unclear in my earlier post: I’m talking about the WTC bombing of February 1993, hence the reference to attacking Afghanistan in 2000 or 2001. A good part of why we ended up where we got is that President Clinton failed to make good on his promise to bring those responsible for the original attack on the WTC, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the U.S.S. Cole to justice.

As for whether the war with Iraq accelerated the Iranian nuclear program, I’d say so. Former long-time CIA case officer Burton Gerber related at an event at SAIS a few months back that he’d heard Iran planned to begin expanding its uranium refining operation from about 4,000 centrifuges to about 10,000, which in his estimation put them close to the magic number.

If I were one of the mullahs, and I saw the U.S. do to Saddam in three weeks what I couldn’t do to him in eight years, I’d have concluded pretty quickly that I needed a stronger deterrent.