In Our Name; "Oops", is no excuse for war. 

The invasion of, and resulting war in, Iraq should not have occurred.  Bush told us we were in eminent danger due to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.  He said we must go to war to protect our country from an attack.  The latest report says there were no wmd in Iraq at the time the US invaded and began its occupation.  The media, in lockstep with the administration, will try to lay the blame for the miscue on the intelligence agencies.   You can blame it on the Bossa Nova or the devil or whatever, but blame and ignorance is no excuse when the result is death.  "Oops", is no excuse for war.  The bottom line is, it happened on bush's watch, therefore it's bush's problem and he must deal with it.  You can't change the rules after the game begins and you can't change the goal after the game is over.  This war in Iraq is still a war, and to change the reason at this point, based on new information, just will not wash with the American people and certainly not with the rest of the world.

Don't you wonder why so many Americans were against this war in the first place?  Not all Americans who were against this war are against all wars.  Many weren't anti war.  They were anti invasion based on what they perceived to be anti truth.  Many of us were against this war, because before the war began, the UN weapons inspectors reported that they had not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  We, unlike the President, watched the inspector's reports on tv.  It's just as simple as that.  When Powell appeared before the UN with his aerial photos of trucks near buildings and his recordings of conversations, the UN inspectors, in so many words, reported that all of Powell's evidence was useless and unfounded.  I, along with you, believed them, and apparently everyone else should have as well.  The longer the inspectors searched the less they found.  Perhaps the administration felt that the public might actually notice that no weapons were being found, and perhaps that was why they rushed into this war when they did.  The obvious was becoming more obvious with every report.

Maybe when Saddam sent his report regarding his weapons, and the US demanded to have the report before other countries were given their copies, maybe there was something in that original report that would have shown that he had nothing.  I don't know.  What I do know is that as a result of a US invasion, over 500 of our soldiers now lay dead, and many, many more lay wounded.  Soldiers from other countries now lay dead, and who knows how many thousands of innocent Iraqis now lay dead.  What should the US say?  Do we say, "I'm sorry, I guess we got some bad info, but remember, Saddam also killed a lot of people"?   Is that enough?  If this war was fought because Washington didn't believe the UN inspectors, is it enough to try to justify it now based on new reasons?  Is it enough if the new reasons sound good but are not true reasons?  Do we invade countries, kill thousands and then change our reasons for doing so?  Is that America?  Have we become so hardened that we really don't care why we killed thousands of human beings?  Is that the result of what 9-11 did to us?  Did the attacks of 9-11 turn us to the same sort of mindset as the terrorists.  Do we now kill human beings and worry about the reasons later?  The attacks of 9-11 were Osama's way of making a statement.  Did we invade Iraq just to make a statement?  That's not the way we do things in the United States, and, I don't believe we would condone or tolerate these same actions if they had been taken by any other country.  We didn't condone Saddam's invasion of Kuwait did we?

Imagine, with the history of this war, that  another country, we'll call that country Lieland,  had done the very same things that we have done in Iraq, and that all Lieland's actions had been condemned by the US from the beginning.  Just imagine that Lieland had invaded Iraq, based on the declaration that Iraq was a threat to Lieland. The administration of Lieland said  that Iraq possessed wmd.  These were declarations that we Americans believed to be untrue.  Imagine how we would have felt if we had seen Lieland dropping the shock and awe bombs.  Imagine how we would have felt as we thought about the innocent Iraqis as they were being murdered from above.  Imagine that we heard that there were no weapons found in Iraq and that Lieland's leaders were simply blowing that news off and instead bragging that they had freed the Iraqi people.  Imagine that we saw the conditions in Iraq today and heard that the soldiers from Lieland were going door to door in Iraq, crashing down the doors of homes, and arresting thousands of Iraqis.  These Iraqis were being kept in prisons based only on a suspicion and there was news that the prisoners were being unfairly treated.  Imagine that the very first thing Lieland secured after their invasion was Iraq's oil fields.  Lieland allowed Iraq to be looted, but protected the oil fields.   Lieland would look like a heartless opportunistic country to us and to the rest of the world.  Just imagine seeing all of that.  Now try to imagine how other countries are seeing us today. 

Keeping your imagination going for a moment, please imagine what you would think of Lielanders if they re-elected the same President who had led them into that atrocious war.  By re-electing this same President, they would be telling the rest of the world that they endorsed his actions.  By supporting this president, Lielanders would tell the world they had no remorse regarding what their leader had done.  If you had wondered about the citizens of Lieland before, you would feel that by their re-election of their President, that they were just as dangerous and heartless as their President.  You would feel that if their leader presented himself as a man guided by religion, it must be the kind of religion that endorses and condones war and murder based on lies.  Lieland would appear to be a danger to all people.

We are Lieland and we are at a pivotal point in history.  If we re-elect bush (and yes, I know he was never truly elected), we will be telling the world that we support what he has done to our country, to Iraq and to the world.  I don't want the world to think that we are, in any way, akin to bush in either thought or deed.  I want to show the world that we are wiser and kinder than the president.  I don't want us to be Democrats or Republicans.  I want us to be Americans who stand up and show the world that we recognize what has taken place in our name, and that we will take action to see that it never happens again.  We owe it to ourselves and to our forefathers to demand honesty from our leaders, especially when the consequence of dishonesty is death.  We have a debt and a responsibility to protect our soldiers and to see that they are never forced to enter into a contrived or a preventable war.  Our country is headed down a frightening, ugly and dangerous path, and we must do everything in our power to change directions before we completely lose our way and discover that there is no turning back. 

patricia