"My fellow citizens, at this hour American and coalition forces are in the
early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and
to defend the world from grave danger."
Three years ago tomorrow, George W. Bush said these fateful words and
started the campaign that, we were told, would be "a cakewalk". Three years
on, Iraq is a bloody mess teetering on the brink of civil war.
Happy anniversary Georgie!
The myriad of lies and half truths that were used to justify this neo-con
invasion, now lie around their ankles like a *****'s knickers.
Indeed, the whole neo-con philosophy is exposed as intellectually bankrupt,
deserted by even it's once most vocal supporters. The Prince of Darkness,
Richard Perle, the man who promised that "if we just do it, future
generations will write songs about us", now states that the Bush
administration got "the aftermath wrong. We should have understood that we
needed Iraqi partners."
William Buckley Jnr now admits, "One can't doubt the objective in Iraq has
failed ... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an army of 130,000
Americans. Different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the
acknowledgement of defeat."
Even neo-conservative icon Francis Fukuyama has joined the swelling ranks of
Americans judging Georgie's invasion of Iraq a disaster. Like the Leninists
of old, he writes, the neo-conservatives reckoned they could drive history
forward with the right mixture of power and will. However, "Leninism was a
tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when
practiced by the United States."
Conservative columnist George Will glumly concludes that all three members
of the original "axis of evil" - not only Iran and North Korea but also
Iraq - "are more dangerous than when that term was coined in 2002".
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld now stand alone, sounding slightly insane as they
continue to apply the sticking plaster of optimistic spin to the gaping
wound that is the reality of Iraq.
I wonder if Cheney would still stand by his proclamation of May 2005 that,
"The insurgency is in it's last throes"? Sadly, unable to admit the carnage
that their dreadful lies have led us to, he probably would.
Bush continues his rather deranged habit of insisting that he will "honour
the dead" by "completing the mission", obviously oblivious to the fact that
the mission has already failed and the war is long lost.
Having failed to find the WMD that was the supposed reason for the war in
the first place, Bush transfered his justification to the exporting of
"democracy" (WMD = We Meant Democracy) but even this has failed, resulting
in a Shia dominated parliament, naturally aligned to Bush's enemy Iran, and
unable to form a government.
Over two thousand young, vibrant, American lives have been snuffed out, tens
of thousands of innocent Iraqis lie dead. And for what?
There is no single measure in Iraq that is better now than it was three
years ago. There is less electricity, less oil and more violence. And,
despite all George's spin, despite all Rumsfeld's bluster, despite all
Cheney's sneering arrogance, that violence continues to grow with each month
that passes and with no end in sight.
And, of course, it is not only Iraq that has been destroyed by this neo-con
misadventure; the whole notion of the US as the world's sole hyper-power,
the belief that the US is so strong that she can take on any enemy, is
shattered by the undeniable truth that she actually lacks the strength to
impose order on a nation the size of Iraq, a nation that was already on it's
knees after twelve years of punative sanctions.
Inevitably, emboldened by this realisation, regimes like Iran and North
Korea defy world opinion and effectively give the US the middle finger by
openly pursuing their nuclear ambitions, safe in the knowledge that US
forces are too stretched to ever be used against them.
This weakening of American power is the reality we face on this third
anniversary of George's illegal and immoral war.
Acts of terrorism worldwide are on the increase, America is weaker than she
was three years ago - her enemies are emboldened - and Iraq is ablaze,
teetering on the brink of civil war.
Happy anniversary, Georgie.
http://the-osterley-times.blogspot.com/2006/03/happy-anniversary-georgie.html
http://the-osterley-times.blogspot.com/
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