- Remember how we were told that this war would be a piece of cake. It would last no more than 6 months at most according to the sage Donald Rumsfeld. Pat Roberson even said that God told Bush that there would be no casualties. Well over 4000 American troops are now dead and over 30,000 have been wounded. We still do not know how many of our soldiers have come back with mental illnesses. Of course we have cut funding to the Veteran's Administration to deal with this problem. I guess commander guy did not realize that war is not a video game and real people die and get hurt by it. It turns out that God is a real kidder.
- We were told that we would create a stable democracy in the Middle East that would be our ally in the War on Terrorism. Who could anticipate that a country artificially put together in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire would fall into ethnic strife. Bill Kristol told us there was no reason to believe that Sunni and Shia would fight each other. We forgot the old axiom that power abhors a vacuum.
Furthermore we believed that the Iraqis would form political parties that crossed ethnic lines like the Democrats and Republicans. Now Iraq is dominated by a Shia Party close to Iran. While the Sunnis have temporarily rejoined the government, the Kurds have maintained their autonomy (much to the chagrin of our ally Turkey). Instead of creating a stable ally in the Middle East we have created an ally for Iran who now has more influence on events in Iraq than our military has as evidenced by the Basra cease fire.
- We would be greeted as liberators. In the meantime over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed and no one knows how many have been wounded. Over 4 Million refugees have been created by this debacle which includes most of Iraq's minority Christian Community. The Iraqi economy and infrastructure is in shambles. Meanwhile our contractors like Halliburton make a fortune with their shoddy work. Through the actions of the Bush Administration we have lost the support of the Iraqi people and the respect of the world.
- The War would pay for itself. In fact Bush's economic adviser was fired for suggesting that the war may cost $200 Billion. We should have been so lucky. We have now spent as much in Iraq as we did in Vietnam and the cost keeps rising. This war will need up costing us over $3 Trillion, which has devastated our own economy. By paying for this war on loan from China the Dollar has been weakened to a point that none of us have ever seen.
- The price of oil would drop to $20.00 a barrel by invading Iraq. Enough said!
- The war would create the conditions for Mideast Peace. Actually by invading we gave Iran incentive to speed up their nuclear program. They believe nuclear weapons will deter us from attacking them. We have also strengthened their hand to aid Hezbollah and other terrorists in the region. I do not believe that Hezbollah would be firing missiles into Israel and further destabilizing Lebanon. had we not invaded Iraq.
- Remember we went into Iraq because of the imminent danger of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. We had to make sure that the proof of their existence would not be a mushroom cloud. Well it is funny how that turned out. Iraq never had WMDs. Saddam was stating that he had them to keep Iran off guard. We fixed the intelligence to make a false case to go to war. Now our credibility is shot around the world.
- Finally we were going to weaken the terrorist network that attacked us on September 11th. Instead we created a recruiting vehicle for al qaeda by invading Iraq. Al Qaeda has been able to regroup in Pakistan and according to reports has regained its pre September 11th strength. By not finishing the job in Afghanistan the Taliban have regained power in much of the country. So the Iraqi War has made the terrorists who want to kill us stronger and not weaker.
Barack Obama is right. This war has been and continues to be a strategic blunder. So anytime a pundit tells you of the great success caused by the surge look at what really is happening and not some right wing wet dream.
PS I would like to thank spell check for making this diary possible. My "e" key sometimes sticks and I am legally blind which makes it hard for me to catch all of the typos; otherwise this diary would be gibberish.
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