I'm so tired of Bush and his administration lying about his failed invasion of a sovereign nation that did not attack us and about the reasons Bush went to war. We know the reason. We are not fools. Bush and his administration have lied themselves into a deep hole from which there is no ladder out and they keep digging it deeper with each additional lie. Now Bush, after morphing through a whole series of lies about why he invaded Iraq, is finally saying, well, if I'm a fuck-up, then so are the Democrats who voted to give me the authority to invade Iraq. But that itself is another lie.
The 1998 legislation Bush refers to gave the president authority "to support efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein" by providing assistance to Iraqi opposition groups, including arms, humanitarian aid and broadcasting facilities, not a green light to go to war. Although by giving Bush that authority those Democrats who voted for it knew full well that Bush would indeed invade. They are culpable in that regard despite what they are now saying.
Quite frankly, there were a number of our elected representatives, millions of US citizens and many millions of people from other nations that did not accept the evidence that was provided and hyped by Bush as proof that Saddam had secret stockpiles of WMD and all of the various other charges. Saddam in fact was on his way to becoming another Qudaffi, a dictator on his way down - not up. Gore himself, if he had been allowed to take his rightful seat in the White House, had agreed that Saddam needed to be removed but I doubt seriously that Gore would have lied to the American people, manipulated and fabricated intelligence and preemptively invaded a sovereign nation. Gore has a good heart and an intelligent mind - he also is a man of great integrity and a sense of morality that would have not allowed him to violate the principles upon which this nation was founded.
The first reason Bush gave was because Iraq had not complied with UN Resolutions to disarm. But the UN was not convinced and would not sanction the invasion. Instead they recommended further inspections and continuing sanctions. Then Bush said it was because Iraq was developing nuclear weapons to provide to terrorists and that he was manufacturing stockpiles of biological weapons. So after he invaded and no weapons of mass destruction were found Bush said it was because Saddam had cooperated with the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. When that was disproved Bush said it was because Saddam was an evil dictator who tortured his people and was a threat to peace in the middle east. Then after that reason wasn't accepted by the American public Bush now claims the reason he invaded Iraq was to establish the seeds of Democracy in the region that would soon spread to all the middle east.
How ironic that the US invasion of Iraq has created an ongoing conflict, unrest and has been the catalyst for greatly increased terrorist activity not only in the middle east but around the world. It was not Saddam but Bush who has caused the escalation of conflict, death and suffering. How ironic that although Saddam was a brutal dictator who coldheartedly murdered and tortured his own countrymen, he kept a lid on conflict between the feuding Muslim factions within Iraq's borders. Add to that irony the fact that in Washington's eyes, Saddam was not always an enemy. In fact, three Presidents counted on him to keep Iran's brand of Islamic radicalism in check, Reagan, Bush I and Bill Clinton.
What's amazing is that historians and all of our middle east experts knew that the ruling faction, the Sunnis to which Saddam belonged, represented only 25% of all Iraqi's, the Shiites representing the most at about 64%, and the Kurds the remaining percentage. They knew the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were historic enemies of each other and were thrown together by the British back in 1918 as they drew a border around three distinct tribal territories and called them a nation state. They knew the Kurds in the north have always wanted their own state as did the Sunnis of the central section and the Shiites of the south which are political and religious kin of the Iranians. Bush and his warlords should have realized that establishing a democracy and forming a government from the same group hated by the other two factions would be no simple task and might possibly never work. Shiite control would mean an alliance with Iran - our sworn enemy and also Sunni Saddam's enemy. If you allow unimpeded voting in an Iraqi democracy who is going to control it - the Shiites, the Sunni's or the Kurds? The Shiites, who were persecuted by the ruling Sunnis under Saddam, are sure to gain control and how do you expect them to react to the decades of persecution by Sunnis? How do you expect the Kurds to act towards both Sunni's and Shiites?
Under this scenario Bush apparently fantasized about how he would be received as a great liberator by the Iraqi's just as the French received American troops who liberated Paris. With no plan for how we would control this mess that only a brutal dictator had been able to keep a lid on, Bush and his band of greedy pirates blundered their way into the biggest mess since Viet Nam. Why does it appear the people who gain power seem to be the most stupid and screwed up?
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Hans Blix who headed up the UN's WMD inspection team, and Scott Ritter, UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, all disagreed with Bush and his gang of warhawks that were searching for any excuse to invade Iraq. Anyone who thinks this was not about controlling Iraq's oil and gaining a powerful military foothold in the middle east is as wrong-headed as Bush and his corporate profiteers. This is an arrogant and brazen attempt to extend empire and to stake a claim on the world's largest oil reserve and none of the other nations on this earth think otherwise.
Unless we find a way to remove Bush and Cheney from office between now and 2008 our nation is going to suffer more lies and a deeper hole of debt and world turmoil. Short of Bush and his nefarious cabal orchestrating a serious terrorist attack on the United States or instigating a threat of greater proportions than now exists, there is no way I can see that the Iraq situation will disappear or be mitigated with Bush in office. It is reasonable to fear the election just held in Iraq will not even come close to solving the problems of the middle east and instead may lead to increased civil strife and war. Bush will spend the rest of his presidency trying to lie his way out of this mess with the goal of salvaging the Bush family name (impossible, it's already tarnished by Bush's father and his father before him.) and of receiving favorable treatment by historians. This will take a cooperative deception like none we've ever seen. I seriously doubt Bush can find a way to accomplish this or that America's and the world's historians would ever cooperate. It would take the creation of an illusion of grand proportions - and despite the illusionary world Bush lives in - Bush is no Houdini.
