It's Time for a Change

The media seems to have concluded that we should ignore the president’s defiant proclamation that knowing what he knows today he’d still order the invasion of Iraq. Things said under pressure often come out quite differently than we’d have liked. I’ve said more than a few things in this life that I’d like to take back, and I’m sure that you, dear reader, have done the same. But then we’re not the President of the United States.

In this case, we must parse Mr. Bush’s words very carefully. Although uttered in response to what was clearly a hostile query in Philadelphia yesterday, the question (Now that we know there were no WMDs and that Saddam and al Qaeda were not cooperating to join forces against us, do you have any regrets for having invaded Iraq?) has been asked a thousand different ways in the media, so we cannot give the president the point that he answered without time to reflect on all of the ramifications of his response.

The sum and substance of his statement leads me to conclude that he wanted to invade Iraq regardless of what the intelligence showed. Long before the invasion, Mr. Bush asserted that his goal was to enforce United Nations mandates designed to assure that Iraq not inflict upon its neighbors attacks using weapons of mass destruction thought to be in his arsenal. In retrospect, it is absolutely clear that Iraq was no longer to be feared from a WMD point of view and UN sanctions were indeed working to contain Iraq.

Another argument used by the president and his neocon buddies was that Iraq was conspiring with al Qaeda with the probable intent of providing Osama bin Laden with Iraqi WMDs to use against his enemies of which the U.S. is clearly number one; we are the Great Satan. That argument too has been debunked. The main source of the information was a suspected al Qaeda operative who was tortured in Egypt to provide the tidbit.

So, we, the U.S., no longer press the case that there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda. Of course, under political pressure, Vice President Cheney still broadly hints he has special sources that assure him that that is still the case.

We have to conclude that our rationale for the invasion to enforce UN resolutions, to prevent Saddam from using WMDs on us or our allies, and to prevent transfer of these weapons to al Qaeda was wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong!

Since those revelations have become public knowledge and the weight of public opinion has swung against us, the United States, the president trumped up new reasons for the invasion. These include making the US safer by spreading democracy throughout the Middle East and indeed the world, and that Iraq was the best place on the planet to start the quest. He also is intent on spreading democracy throughout the Muslim world during the remainder of his term, although not necessarily by means of military invasion. Further, he says that by fighting the terrorists in Iraq we won’t have to fight them here. That, despite the fact that killed and captured insurgents in Iraq are almost all Iraqis, is always going to be unprovable.

In addition to this litany, the right wing, including the president, is abusing our troops by continually saying that they support the mission and by having soldiers state for the record that things are improving in Iraq and that they want to finish the mission so that their dead and wounded will not have sacrificed in vain. The questions for these poor young folks are: What is the mission? What have your comrades sacrificed for? How long will we have to stay? How much more blood and treasure will be expended? For what? Etc., etc., etc.

As I see it, the American ground troops are overstretched; too many tours have been served by too few soldiers and marines; there are or were too few of them to occupy the country; they weren’t adequately equipped; our attention was diverted from the war in Afghanistan where the Taliban and al Qaeda were on the run; we really don’t have a mission in Iraq for which these troops were prepared; China is taking advantage of our position to gear up as a rival in the Pacific; we are neglecting our own hemisphere and problems are proliferating; The billions being wasted in Iraq could have been used to heal the problems that the president is ignoring on our own Gulf Coast.

I could go on and on but I believe my points are made. The President is unrepentant and plays to his base on a daily basis. The government has been in the hands of a single party and their power and hubris have corrupted it and its elected officials.

It’s time for a change!

Blog on!

Wild Bill