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Bush Wars Title: Iraq Is a Disaster - John LeBoutillier slams Bush Only 25 percent of the American people — according to the latest Newsweek poll — are now "optimistic" about the direction of the war in Iraq; 65 percent are "pessimistic." Why have so many Americans, only now, come to realize that this war has gone bad? Here are some of the reasons: 1) The original rationale for a post-9/11, pre-emptive invasion — that Saddam had nukes and other WMD aimed at us and we had to get them before he used them — has proven to be knowingly false; this has devastated President's Bush's credibility abroad and here at home. 2) The oft-stated notion that the Iraqi people would throw flower petals at our troops and welcome us as liberators has proven to be yet another misreading of Muslim people. 3) The Bush administration has purposely confused the American people over the conflict in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, and Rummy start off talking about 9/11 to get their audience's dander up and then allow this anger to morph over to Iraq. Let us be clear about two things: A) Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Period. B) Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization despised Saddam Hussen and always viewed him as a Muslim heretic. They were not allies and did not work together. Yes, Saddam was a mean, cruel, and awful man, but he was from the other spectrum of Muslim thinking. 4) So — before we even get to the war on the ground — we, as Americans, cannot even agree on who the enemy is and where he is! As an example, two women were on "Hardball" Friday evening debating the war — and they yelled at each other over al-Qaida in Iraq. One claimed that the main enemy in Iraq is al-Qaida; the other correctly claimed that al-Qaida is a sideshow in Iraq — that the real fight there is an internal Iraqi/Muslim civil war. 5) Iraq indeed is in an escalating a civil war — among three Muslim strains that have hated each other for centuries: the Shi'a, the Sunni, and the Kurds. Saddam, a monster himself, knew that there were hundreds and even thousands of other monsters in his country and the only way to keep things under control was to apply brutal force. Then we removed Saddam — and unleashed these other monsters to go on killing, maiming, torturing and kidnapping sprees all over Iraq. A good example is the odds-on-favorite to ultimately run a coup and take over Iraq: Muqtadr Al Sadr — a vicious, wicked Shi'a who had a death warrant on his head and was allowed by the American military forces to avoid arrest and ultimately join the government! And now we have learned that Sadr — as part of this coalition government — has control of the Health Ministry. What does he do with this? He has his Shi'a forces in the hospitals murder Sunni patients at night and dump their bodies in mass graves. 5) So we Americans, including an inexperienced and lazy G.W. Bush, are woefully ignorant of the history of Iraq, the forced-into-one-country-by-the-British nature of these three peoples who do not want to live together. Furthermore, we do not even agree on who we are fighting — or why. 6) Now we get to our military and our nation: It is nutty to have a small, tiny even, percentage of the American people shouldering the burden in this war. The all-volunteer military is fine in peacetime; but in a war, we all should share the burden and sacrifice for the common good. As soon as the Congress votes to put us in a war, the draft should be instituted. And no more college exemptions; everyone is drafted or joins. Men and women of draft age. Rich and poor, black and white. Period. That may make the Congress and the president think twice before they cheerily launch a war. 7) The president has repeatedly called the Iraq campaign an "integral part of the War on terror." If so, then why aren't all of the American people a part of a national effort to win this war? What have most of us sacrificed? A family member gone off to war? A war tax? No. Nothing . . . nada . . . not a thing. We live just as we did before the 9/11 attacks and the March ‘03 invasion of Iraq. 8) The Bush administration has handled foreign policy with the same level of competence they handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The incompetence from the top down has been shocking. And it is our soldiers and their families who are paying a steep price for this. 9) The president says we are staying until "we achieve victory." OK . . . that sounds great. What exactly is this victory? Who do we want to win? The Sunnis of Saddam? Or the Shi'a of Iran? 10) All of this is why only a quarter of our fellow Americans remain steadfast that things will go well in Iraq. And make no mistake about it: the crumbling of the GOP lately is not due to Mark Foley's perversions, it is due to Iraq and the realization that this war is a disaster for our country. 11) The Democrats were willing partners with G.W. Bush and the GOP in getting us into a war we need not have started. Containment would have worked; after 9/11, all the world was with us. We could have done to Saddam what we did to the Soviets for 40 years: starved him out until his rotten regime crumbled from within. We could then have spent our resources in getting Osama and wiping out the Taliban and al-Qaida. 12) All of this will be a key factor in who our next president is; he or she should not have been a willing accomplice in this self-created national embarrassment.
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