Hoo-boy. Look out, world, here comes King George the W, all saddled up on his war pony, decked out in his Commander-in-Chief outfit, and hollering about going to war in Iraq to kick ol’ Saddam Hussein’s butt!
Wait a minute. I thought it was the September 11 terrorists we were after—Osama bin Laden and his horrific al Qaeda network. Just a while ago, Bush was beating his chest, promising to “smoke ’em out,” and declaring that he would not rest until those who had attacked America were brought to justice “dead or alive,” remember? A year later, George still doesn’t have a scalp on his political belt—Osama can’t be found, and al Qaeda reportedly is already regrouping in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and who knows where else. They’re still out there, and still a threat to our national security.
So George has turned from chasing the hard one to try to bag an easier one, one that he knows where to find: the Beast of Baghdad. In September, full of his characteristic frat-boy bravado, Bush suddenly shifted our nation’s military and media focus from stopping the crashbombing terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on a single day to mounting an invasion of Iraq for the purpose of “regime change.” We’ve gotta go to war and take out Saddam, he began bellowing.
“We,” white boy? George has always been a warmonger, not a warrior. During Vietnam, he enthusiastically supported the war—but, alas, couldn’t personally go to battle. Getting student deferments, he was busy being a cheerleader at Yale, after which he got the helping hand of an oilman neighbor who intervened politically in Texas to keep the Bush boy on the home front, defending Houston from the VC.
Bush’s own family is not at risk from his pounding of the war drum. Nor are the families of the other war-whooping politicos, pundits, political consultants, media executives, or think-tank theorists. None of their sons, daughters, or other loved ones will be shipped off to Mr. Bush’s vicarious war adventure.
Others will pay the price. And it will be heavy. The British general who commanded the renowned “Desert Rats” in the 1991 Gulf War forecasts a casualty rate of 15% among our troops invading Iraq. If we deploy a force of 250,000, that would mean more than 35,000 soldiers killed, shattered, maimed, or disabled—not to mention those who will die later from battlefield-poisoning syndromes, as happened in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. Nor does it count the hundreds of thousands of Iraq’s 23 million civilians who’ll die. Nor does it contemplate all sorts of nasty scenarios involving chemical and biological weapons, nukes, an Israeli offensive, a Muslim world explosion, and . . . well, war is hell.
Bush’s B.S.
Why Saddam? Why now? Let us count the assortment of absurdities that the Bushites have trotted out in the past few weeks to rationalize George’s Iraq Attack:
Saddam is a terrible man. Golly, yes he is. But what’s new? He was terrible last year, five years ago, and long before that.
He was known to be a murderous thug way back in 1983, when Ronald Reagan and Poppa George Bush officially cozied up to Saddam, dispatching none other than Don Rumsfeld as a special envoy to woo the Beast. ... [ read more ]
What the hell's happening here? Why is my bank in the tank? And my house and job? And my retirement money? Even my state's teetering on the brink of broke! Who did this to us? Fair questions, but we're not getting honest answers. 
