Why did the war in Afghanistan quicky shift to Iraq after 9/11?

gregory_dittman

It's because Saddam supplied cash, arms and instructions to terrorists in the past. You can watch Al Gore list all the terrorist activities by Iraq on Youtube when Clinton and him were calling George Bush Sr. soft on terrorism way back when they were running against the elder Bush.

ConcernedCitizen

A lot of people here seem to be confused about that. There are still troops in Afghanistan, but they rarely make the news any more because all of the attention is focused on Iraq. I suppose that may have something to do with why so many people have the Iraq war confused with the war on terror, even though it isn't al Qaeda's base of operations.

JoeThatUKnow

Because a group of people had it in their heads to attack Iraq and impose regime change long before 9/11, strategy and national security played very small roles.

smartsassysabrina

Because the war in Afghanistan was failing to produce results- We were failing to find Bin Laden. The American people were getting restless, and began focusing on the failure of our president abroad and domestically, rather than focusing their hatred on a common enemy (Bin Laden). The current administration knew that they could not guarantee instant results in Afghanistan, but they knew they could in Iraq.

Iraq was an easy target, having a minimal army that was decimated in the first Gulf War, and no other method of attack (like WMDs). Iraq also had a "face of evil" equal to Bin Laden in Saddam Hussein, which could hold the attention and hatred of the American people. They failed to think ahead though, and got themselves in an even worse and more un-winable war.

They simply want people to believe the war has been won, because intelligent people know that the war has long since been lost, and can never be won. Don't believe everything that comes from the mouth of this administration, they have been proven liars for 7 years now.

superbad

Big talk about WMDs in Iraq, then surrounding their oil fields on arrival and mysteriously finding nothing but "black gold."
War or strategic placement? Btw, I believe were still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers are still being killed for no reason. I guess spending billions on digging for more oil instead of finding an alternate energy source is good enough for Bush.

Autobots - Transform

Greed, corruption, and the president new before the towers fell what his agenda was. I just hope it dies when he leaves

Kirk Neel

It shifted to Iraq cause that country Bush wonted to take over because they have a hit out on his Daddy.....

mom4peace

Because these wars are already written in a document titled PNAC(Project For A New American Century). do some research on it, then it will all start making sense. We planned to go to war with Iraq in 1998, I believe that's when they wrote pnac, Bill Kristol.

tru212reno

its a conflict or civil war now when one *** is moved everyone of every tribe is movin in cause all they know is dictatorship not poitics the war was over when all major cease fire was killed because the iraqi troops disbanned and went to gorilla tactics when we invaded everyone tried to move into position so their tribe would have more power over the other

The Navigator

I think you have several questions in the one question but i will attempt to answer the main one for you and that is "Why did the war in Afghanistan quickly shift to Iraq after 9/11"

In October 2002, Robert Grenier, a former director of the C.I.A.â€™s counterintelligence center, visited the new Kuwait City headquarters of Lt. Gen David McKiernan, who was already planning the Iraq invasion. Meeting in a sheet metal warehouse, Mr. Grenier asked General McKiernan what his intelligence needs would be in Iraq. The answer was simple. â€œThey wanted as much as they could get,â€ Mr. Grenier said.Throughout late 2002 and early 2003, Mr. Grenier said in an interview, â€œthe best experienced, most qualified people who we had been using in Afghanistan shifted over to Iraq,â€ including the agencyâ€™s most skilled counterterrorism specialists and Middle East and paramilitary operatives.

As a result this reduced the United Statesâ€™ influence over powerful Afghan warlords who were refusing to turn over to the central government tens of millions of dollars they had collected as customs payments at border crossings.

While the C.I.A. replaced officers shifted to Iraq, it did so with younger agents, who lacked the knowledge and influence of the veterans. There could have been a lot more achieved if there was more experienced agents.

A former senior official of the Pentagonâ€™s Central Command, which was running both wars, said that as the Iraq planning sped up, the militaryâ€™s covert Special Mission Units, like Delta Force and Navy Seals Team Six, shifted to Iraq from Afghanistan.

So did aerial surveillance â€œplatformsâ€ like the Predator, a remotely piloted spy plane armed with Hellfire missiles that had been effective at identifying targets in the mountains of Afghanistan. Predators were not shifted directly from Afghanistan to Iraq, but as new Predators were produced, they went to Iraq.

â€œWe were economizing in Afghanistan,â€ said the former official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. â€œThe marginal return for one more platform in Afghanistan is so much greater than for one more in Iraq.â€

The shift in priorities became apparent to Dov Zakheim, the Pentagonâ€™s former comptroller, as planning for the Iraq war was in high gear in the fall of 2002. Mr. Rumsfeld asked him to serve as the Pentagonâ€™s reconstruction coordinator in Afghanistan. It was an odd role for the comptroller, whose primary task is managing the Pentagonâ€™s $400 billion a year budget.

The fact that they went to the comptroller to do something like that was in part a function of their growing preoccupation with Iraq. They needed somebody, given that the top tier was covering Iraq.

In an interview, President Bushâ€™s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, insisted that there was no diversion of resources from Afghanistan, and he cited recently declassified statistics to show that troop levels in Afghanistan rose at crucial moments â€” like the 2004 Afghan election â€” even after the Iraq war began.

But a former Central Command official said: â€œIf we were not in Iraq, we would have doubled or tripled the number of Predators across Afghanistan, looking for Taliban and peering into the tribal areas. Weâ€™d have the â€˜blackâ€™ Special Forces you most need to conduct precision operations. Weâ€™d have more C.I.A.â€

â€œWeâ€™re simply in a world of limited resources, and those resources are in Iraq,â€ the former official added. â€œAnyone who tells you differently is blowing smoke.â€

An interesting insight into the transformation of war priorities to Iraq from Afghanistan. Cheers.

Lisa M.

All I know is Bush & Cheney helped orchestrate 911 with the help of President Bush's brother - Marvin Bush. I have no idea why they decided to invade Iraq. There were no WMD.

mikk

What planet are you from?

mustapha m

It definitely has something to do with the concept of the moving frontier,or else u need to learn the states history!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Chris S

one reason in '03 when the u.s. invaded iraq pres. bush thought there was weapons of mass destrouction in there plus it was about time saddam hussein got removed for his war crimes

mike b

Saddam broke 17 resolutions and he supports terrorist

Jean f

BUSH, BUSH, BUSH !!!

ArRo

You scare me! I'm not going to touch this one.

Mr_ektingyue

sadam was extremely corrupt and iraq was flooded with terrorists and sadam wouldn't let us get them out. So the first thing we did is get sadam and the terrorists out, now we have to train and equip the iraq soldiers well enough to keep the terrorist from coming back

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