 "Photo:")
While energy and the state of the economy are the hot-button issues dominating the presidential election, the Iraq War is still a major issue with voters - and it should be. There are striking contrasts between how Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain will handle not only the Iraq War but also foreign policy in general.
The Iraq War is one of the grandest mistakes of our time, costing nearly $200 billion a year and over 4,000 American lives, not to speak of the massive Iraq civilian causalities. Decisions in the federal government deserve to be made only after every possible option and angle is debated and considered, especially when those decisions involve putting American citizens and innocent civilians at risk.
My hope is that whomever moves into the White House next will learn from the blunders carried out by our current commander in chief and uses all available resources to make decisions. While it is the president who should ultimately make White House decisions, he should have as much counsel as possible.
The lack of counsel within the Bush administration was painfully apparent in the lead up to the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, as the White House shut out many key experts, including Gen. Anthony Zinni.
Zinni, a four-star general, served for more than 30 years in the United States Marine Corps and finished his illustrious career as the head of United States Central Command (CentComm) which oversees the Middle East, East Africa and Central Asia.
During his time at CentComm, Zinni helped craft the policy of containment used in Iraq by President Clinton, which - while clumsy and decried by conservatives - has proven in retrospect to have been massively successful in further isolating Saddam Hussein's regime.
Zinni also organized the 1998 operation Desert Fox, which was a four-day bombing campaign that proved to be successful in loosening Hussein's grip on power and almost destabilized Iraq to the point where Hussein could have been overthrown.
Before leaving for retirement, Zinni, who endorsed the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2000, wrote up an invasion strategy. Zinni correctly foresaw that any invasion of Iraq would include a protracted military presence. He also saw the need to shift the United States military's focus from conventional warfare to counterinsurgency.
One would think the recommendations of a four-star general with extensive experience dealing with Hussein's regime and the Middle East would be looked at closely by those planning the invasion of Iraq, but they were not implemented - they were not even given consideration.
Ideologues like then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Deputy Paul Wolfowitz immediately struck down consideration of Zinni's plan because they were not expecting a drawn-out conflict.
In other words, telling the American people the conflict is going to drag on makes it difficult to garner support for an unnecessary war.
But while Zinni, who became a vocal critic of the Iraq War, is just one example, this kind of management within the Bush Administration was apparent throughout planning the war.
The Bush Administration did develop close ties with Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraq opposition politician, who believed the Coalition of the Willing forces would be greeted as liberators and claimed he had intelligence linking Hussein to Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Chalabi used his position to feed documents to the New York Times and L.A. Times detailing the existence or attempted procurement of WMD. While the CIA always remained skeptical of the authenticity of Chalabi's information, pre-war planners used him to sell the war to the American public and pegged him to eventually lead the new government in Iraq.
But, Chalabi's information was proven false and his standing within the Department of Defense crumbled.
There were also numerous occasions where sound information from professional level employees at both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency never made it past their desks because political appointees screened it out.
Elections are our chance to change who is screening information regarding this war.
The Democratic and Republican nominating conventions will take place soon and will be followed by debates between Obama and McCain. My hope is that at some point the moderator asks the nominees how they plan to staff the White House and what each candidate would do to ensure that people like Zinni are not left out in the cold while those like Chalabi are given a prominent seat at the table.
Stofferahn is a junior studying journalism and political science.
