On May 1, 2003, in a spectacle televised worldwide, President George W Bush portrayed himself as a brave fighter pilot when he strutted across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce mission accomplished and an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
Bush put on a flight suit, strapped himself into a jet, flew off for a 30-mile jaunt before making a dramatic landing on the aircraft carrier and a speech under a banner with the words mission accomplished superimposed across stars and stripes, which he claimed was made by the sailors on the ship.
Everything about that theatrical event was a lie. Bush was never a brave fighter pilot; he was an AWOL draft dodger during his term in the military. The mission in Iraq was nowhere near accomplished, and the sailors revealed that the banner was made in the White House.
The truth is the mission in Iraq, whatever that mission might be, is an utter failure. Its now four years since Bush televised his tax dollar funded infomercial to the world claiming a victory in Iraq, and more daily attacks on Americans occur today than in 2003.
In the year 2000, in attempt to convince Americans to vote for Bush as the next president, the Republican Party Platform specifically stated: "Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale."
"Even the highest morale," the Republicans stated, "is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness."
In regard to dealing with WMDs, in 2000, the Republicans said:
"A comprehensive strategy for combating the new dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction must include a variety of other measures to contain and prevent the spread of such weapons."
And they went on to say: "We need the cooperation of friends and allies," and the intelligence community should not "be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments."
The Halls of Congress now sound like an echo chamber with Democrats using the exact same phrases to describe the disaster in Iraq and the conduct of the Bush administration.
The claims of WMDs, mushroom clouds, linking Saddam to 9/11, and an alliance between Saddam and bin Laden, turned out to be lies, which were known to be false at the time they were uttered, but the Administration lies some more and blames the CIA for providing faulty intelligence.
The few allies that were conned into going to war with us are leaving Iraq. Saddam was put to death, but the Iraqis are worse off today then they were when he was in power. As the President asks for another $100 billion, our troops are getting sucked even deeper into a bloody quagmire, without even a hint of an exit strategy in sight.
The blame for the failures rests squarely on the White House doorstep. Bush insists that the problems will resolve if we "stay the course," in Iraq
But the question remains, how much longer should Americans agree to stay on a course that has already resulted in deaths and injuries to thousands of Americans and Iraqis with no benefits to anyone except the war profiteerers who are making billions as tax dollars roll off the backs of our dead soldiers?
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