On March 19, 2003, I was in snowy Banff, Canada, enjoying a nice holiday. My husband and I watched BBC news (quite different from the coverage by CNN) with horror as round the clock reporting of the invasion of Iraq filled the TV screen with video game like imagery. (I have repeatedly wondered, if amateurs like me and my husband knew the war was wrong, why didn't the experts?) We all know how that game unfolded and where the score stands four years later. The chest thumping, self-serving lies and misleading braggadocio by the Bushies are now mostly history as are some of the major players and planners of the criminal undertaking. But George Bush is still averse to admitting mistakes in Iraq. He is desperately looking for that elusive "victory" and threatening Congress to act on behalf of US "national security" or else! From the macho and fraudulent "Mission Accomplished," his claim now has transmogrified to a pathetic and wishful "the war can be won." Whom is he speaking to and who's listening?
Asserting that the war in Iraq "can be won" with U.S. resolve, President Bush appealed to the American people today for patience as he pursues a plan to tamp down violence in Baghdad, and he warned that national security would suffer a "devastating" blow if U.S. troops were to withdraw from Iraq next year as demanded by congressional Democrats.
In a brief televised speech to the nation on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Bush hailed what he said were signs of progress in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation to secure the Iraqi capital from mounting insurgent and sectarian violence.
"Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult, but it can be won," Bush said toward the end of his five-minute speech. "It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through."
He cautioned that the Baghdad security plan "needs more time to take effect," and he warned that there will be "good days" and "bad days" as it unfolds. But he said the Iraqi government was making "good progress" toward meeting political and economic benchmarks aimed at achieving national reconciliation, although he acknowledged that "there is a lot more work to be done."....
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Listing the "devastating" consequences that he said would flow from a pullout of U.S. forces, Bush warned that "a contagion of violence could spill out across the entire country," eventually engulfing the rest of the Middle East.
"The terrorists could emerge from the chaos with a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan, which they used to plan the attacks of September 11, 2001," Bush added. "For the safety of the American people, we cannot allow this to happen."
I don't understand why the Al Qaida would bother to move with bag and baggage to Iraq to seek safe haven. It is already operating with much comfort and impunity from a place called "western Pakistan" just outside the reach of the US miliary. Read the rest of Bush's delusional and deceitful address here.
Update: Today's Houston Chronicle has reprinted an editorial, from four years ago expressing doubts and concerns about Bush's invasion of Iraq. It is amazing that a regional paper like the Chronicle saw through the deception and the New York Times shilled for the war.
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