Monday, August 02, 2010

Multiple Choice: Why Did Bush Invade Iraq?

Don’t kid yourself, the real reason -– regime change -– is why the Bush Administration is responsible for more than 1,500 U.S. soldiers and countless Iraqi citizens, both civilian and military, who are now dead or maimed. I was amused I finally agreed with the Pope, who called Bush’s War a “defeat for humanity.”

Have you ever come across the term: Mission Creep? It describes Bush's perversion of the "war on terror." Remember how he kept making up new reasons for why we should attack a sovereign country? No WMDs? No problem. Bush will simply change the mission.

After an $87 billion misrepresentation for more than a year, Bush had framed Iraq as part of the "war on terror." And for more than a year, he had produced no evidence for that claim. No evidence of a link between Iraq and 9/11. No evidence of an affinity between Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and the fundamentalists of al-Qaida. No evidence of a terrorist presence in Iraq greater than in other Arab or Muslim countries. No evidence that Iraq ever had weapons of mass destruction much less ones that he offered to terrorists.

In an address to the nation, Bush offered two new arguments for declaring Iraq "the central front" in the war on terror. If you bought any of his arguments, which I didn’t for one minute, you only had to stop and think how far afield they would take us. I remember being stunned when I heard we attacked Iraq! That horrible little prick put us at war with a hapless sovereign country. That war would eventually kill so many of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis. Why, that little phuque actually wanted us to believe and support his postwar Iraq policy!

How was our action in Iraq part of the campaign against terrorism? The old argument, which Bush repeated incessantly was that Saddam "sponsored terrorism." Bush never offered evidence that Saddam had done what was/is being done in Iran, Syria, or even Saudi Arabia. Are we supposed to go to war with those countries as well? There is that other little thing: our oil is on their sand! Oops.

According to Bush, five months after we liberated Iraq, a collection of killers is desperately trying to undermine Iraq's progress and throw the country into chaos. Some of the attackers are foreign terrorists, who have come to Iraq to pursue their war on America and other free nations. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, they will run from a challenge. The terrorists are mistaken. We will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror.

Oh, by the way, Mr. Bush...WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY AND RESOURCES!

Guess what, Iraq? For your trouble you can have that garish embassy we built in the Green Zone. In fact, you can have the Green Zone! We’re outta here!