Five Years of War

(Picture courtesy of Presidentially Speaking - DMOMA)

This post is one of many that are part of the March 19 Blogswarm. Please go there and read all the other posts about the War in Iraq as well.
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Today is the anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. Although President Bush declared in 2003 that the mission in Iraq had been accomplished, his words were lies, just as the reasons for going into this war in the first place were lies. This is what he said in his speech on the aircraft carrier in May of 2003 after his staged theatrical landing on the U.S.S. Lincoln. His words are in blue italics (in bold for emphasis on my part) - my commentary in bold red.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

(According to a recent Red Cross report, "...the humanitarian situation in most of the country remains among the most critical in the world. Because of the conflict, millions of Iraqis have insufficient access to clean water, sanitation and health care.")

...Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

(Iraqui deaths are now at nearly 1.2 million - including many, many civilians - see this link for more details).

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.

(Of course, the CIA reported no WMDs were found....
"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them, a CIA report concludes." )

We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

(The government isn't going so well. "The Iraqi government says a lack of trust between politicians is slowing progress on national reconciliation. Critics have warned the government needs to start providing much needed social services to Iraqis or risk losing recent security gains.")

...The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world...

(Of course, none of them came from Iraq).

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

(Of course, before we invaded Iraq, Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq, according to a new Pentagon report that the government tried to keep us from seeing.)

But there are plenty of terrorists, including Al Qaeda, there now, thanks to our illegal overthrow of the Iraqi government. And where are they coming from? Lots of other countries that we aren't bothering to invade, because they are our "friends."

I won't even go into the many lies told by Cheney and others to make us believe in the WMDs, or to warn against the recent build-up to possible war with Iran on the same kind of false pretenses.

Let's remember it is all about oil and paybacks to corporate cronies like Halliburton, and let's make sure it never happens again by electing a Democrat in November!