Five Years

Five years ago, the order was given to start one of the most ignominious military campaigns in the history of human kind. It smacked of over-eager beavers sitting in Washington who could not wait to get the ball rolling and were worried every day, that a final discovery, that Iraq really did NOT have WMD would thwart their grubby little plans to invade a sovereign country under the guise of freedom, the tatty umbrella of the war against terrorism and the absurd notion of installing democracy as if it were a 50” plasma TV one could just set down and hook up.

Seldom has so much stupidity been collectively exercised by such a distinguished group of moronic mass murderers as in the lead up to this war.

George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Paul Wolfowitz
Richard Perle
Doug Feith
Donald Rumsfeld
General Franks
Condoleeza Rice
Colin Powell
George Tenet

These are the criminals we have before us that set a charade in motion as see-through as Hitler’s attempt in 1939 to accuse Poland of having fired the first shots over the German border and starting the Blitzkrieg to flatten a country that fought his tanks with horses.

The shouts of bravado have grown quieter and the excited arm-chair would-be marines and weapons experts are no longer laughing at videos of American and British tanks destroying Iraqi houses, of planes dropping 500 lb bombs on people’s homes, of cruise missiles raining down on a populated city, at slogans like “Shock and Awe.”

Now, five years later, the Iraqi resistance is still giving pretty much as good as it gets. Faced with a 700 billion dollar war machine, they seem to be holding up pretty well with their sandals and scooters, their decade old Kalaschnikovs and their Chinese made RPGs. We have a David and we have a Goliath and David ain’t having any of it in this battle.

Today, on the fifth anniversary of the launch of the “days, maybe weeks, hardly months” long war, two thirds of Americans are opposed to the conflict and believe the cost in lives was not worth it. Cheney says “So?”

Now there’s a man either to be respected for being so headstrong that he doesn’t care what the people think because he’s forgotten that he’s in a democracy, or reviled because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, he’s lined his pockets, thank you very much.

Five years after the launch of the barrage of bombs on Baghdad that signaled the start of the war, Bush will be defending his decision to go into Iraq despite the high cost saying that it:

"opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror, making Iraq a place where Arabs fight alongside Americans to drive Al-Qaeda out."

You want to tell him or shall I? No one really believes this clap trap anymore Mr. Bush. You engaged the United States military in an intractable conflict which your successor will have to deal with. You have created a situation of barely comprehendible chaos where stability was of utmost importance. You have kicked out a secular tyrant only to have him replaced by a religious fanatical group. In short, you have thrown Iraq to the dogs and don’t know what to do.

Five years on, nearly 4,000 US service men and women are pointing their fingers from the grave. You and your demented, lunatic Administration, your idiotic guesses as to the costs of the war, your ‘slam dunks’ and ‘cake walks’, your ‘bring it on,’ are a testimony to your complete misunderstanding of the responsibility you had and that you squandered for personal gain and agenda.

Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis rotting in the desert sands bear witness to a crime for which you and your war-criminal friends should rightfully be incarcerated for life. You have destroyed a country and destroyed its people and are just itching to get your grubby little hands on that country’s oil. Five years later, as Iraqi children sit without parents, by the lights of candles as they wait for a generator somewhere to get more gas so it can provide a couple more hours of light, as widows still weep over lost husbands, parents cry over lost children, you can observe your legacy in their stories of horror, death and poverty.