Fitzgerald And Lebow's Argument Analysis

The article by Fitzgerald and Lebow criticizes how the US government, driven by arrogance and naive belief in absolute power of democracy, assumed that Saddam Hussein could be easily dismissed and “replaced by a pro-American regime” (Fitzgerald and Lebow,2006: 884). The major intelligence failure in Iraq resulted from the combination of two arguments: neo-conservative ideas and the failure to apply critical government analysis in the decision-making process. Therefore, intelligence was manipulated into achieving political goals.

The evidence throughout the article supports either of the two previously mentioned arguments. Fitzgerald emphasizes that 9/11 enhanced the concerns about terrorism and pushed the US to engage in a military conflict with Iraq. However, invasion of the latter was also a mean of spreading the US power throughout the globe. In its turn the possession of WMD was just a necessary excuse for Bush to start planning the invasion and Rumsfelds’ military transformations were a mean to achieve the Iraq’s conquest. The US government promoted falsified stories, such as existence of mobile biological weapons, secret meeting of Iraq and Al Qaeda in Prague and the link between Niger and Iraq to manipulate the public. Fitzgerald and Lebow imply on the weakness of the US government …show more content…
Failure to choose the right troop level, born from the idea that Iraq “could be defeated and pacifies by an invasion with a small force” (889), led to the incapability of the US to stabilize Iraq during the aftermaths of the invasion . According to Lebow Saddam was the only authority holding the country together and in the absence of such authority there is disorder (891). However he ignores that in 1988 Hussein turned chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds in the north of the