an easy society to conquer

A society that has gone through 8 years of war with its neighbour, that has gone through 12 years of sanctions, that has gone through 30 years of a brutal dictatorship, is an easy society to go in an conquer, and occupy, and impose an outside will on. And this is exactly what we have done. We have essentially put the Iraqi society in meat-tenderiser, so to speak, and when it was absolutely weakened and brought to its knees, after decades of brutality, of war, of sanctions, we went into that same society and we did as we pleased. We dismantled the infrastructures. we dismantled governmental institutions, we dismantled the military, we dismantled the law-enforcement forces, and we let anarchy reign. And in that atmosphere of complete anarchy, we were able to establish our foothold in the region, for what I believe to be generations to come.