Ok, you are in the military and you capture 200 enemy forces. Perhaps 200 surrender. Your commander tells you to release them with their weapons because in 2 weeks they will be on your side and you think what exactly?????? No one, except a very select few at the top believed that one. Just think how those soldiers felt watching them walk away with weapons and ammo in hand...


>Actually there were 2 problems with that decision. The first was as you said, allowing people with a lot of extra time on their hands to be supplied with weapons. According to the Frontline story, another problem was the the military commanders had actually factored in those forces as support forces.
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>>Once the decision to invade was made (I'm skipping all the mistakes prior including that one), the sole BIGGEST mistake made was allowing every soldier and combatant during the invasion to walk away with their weapons. My god, I can't tell you the effect that decision had on the military folks...draws dropped across the globe.
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>>>>Many countries, prominently including Germany and France, wanted to let the UN task force find WMDs before assuming they were there. We were the ones who blew off the UN after a while and insisted on invading even in the absence of evidence. Lots of Americans were angry at our long time European allies at the time. In retrospect, we would have been wise to heed their prudence. It doesn't take that much longer to do it right.
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>>>I agree that letting the U.N. inspections continue would have been a much, much better idea. However, it seems that it was the conclusion of most intelligence agencies that Saddam not only had WMDs, but also had an ongoing WMD program. In other words, he had WMDs and was continuing to develop them.
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>>>Obviously, this was wrong. I think I understand to a small extent why so many came to that conclusion: Saddam wanted his enemies, both internal and external, to think he did have WMDs. It's pretty startling that we didn't figure that out. Hindsight is 20/20, but it seems like a lot of intelligence agencies were way off.