host

If Bush really understood and thought through the sacrifce that he set the troops up for when, as Commander-In-Chief, he ordered them (and continues
ordering them) to "serve" in Iraq, the only just way to "thank them" and to
honor their service, is to only send them into harm's way when it is absolutely
necessary. To order these troops into service that leads to their deaths in a
war that was pre-ordained at least since his first cabinet meeting in 2001,
and then to feign that it is still a necessary and justified war after the 9-11
commission and the weapon's inspectors' reports, is an outrage,

Our American families have paid a cost so far of 1050 dead, several thousand
more grievously wounded and permanently disabled, and more than
$100 billion dollars.....for what ? I hear the same platitudes that politicians
30 years ago used to explain away the deaths of 58,000 American troops
in a war to defend the Viet Namese people from a brutal dictatorship.
The majority in this country decided 30 years ago that such a noble mission
to protect a foreign people from oppressive dictatorship did not meet the
criteria of meeting the "absolutely necessary" criteria required to order our
troops into harm's way. Bush personally avoided putting himself in harms way
back then, yet he has the gall and the hypocricy to order other's sons and
daughters into harm's way now.

In his zeal to go to war, Bush did not even consider waiting until the UN
weapons inspectors, who asked for more time to complete their inspections
in early 2003. He did not follow the direction of congress (that Kerry voted
for) to exhaust efforts to seek a UN resolution authorizing an invasion of
Iraq. Bush promised to go to the UN one last time before going to war, and
then did not do so. He failed to build a coalition that conceivably would
have resulted in troops from other countries standing in for the 90 percent
American force that ended up in Iraq. If Bush's rush to war cost one additional American life than would have been lost if he had expended the
effort he promised the country in going to the UN on last time, after agreeing
to give the UN inspectors the additional time they had asked for, dead
Americans and Iraqis would still be alive.

If you allowed yourself a less parochial and partisan mindset, would you not
have asked yourself (it's still not too late !) why Bush, so soon after the
shocking 9-11 attacks, with a supportive and empathetic attitude still
permeating the diplomatic atmosphere of the western world; Bush.....the
son of a recent U.S. president who, only 12 years before had assembled a
broad consensus among nations and a coalition of troops to fight a war
against the very same enemy, could not obtain approval from the UN to
invade Iraq, or to build a coalition anywhere near the size and scope of the
one his father had assembled, maybe you would at least consider that the
evidence to justify an invasion of Iraq was not convincing enough to persuade our former Gulf War coalition allies to join us, and the words of
Bush's father, (which he admits giving no consideration to) were too strong
to ignore:

‘‘We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq,’’ Bush wrote. ‘‘The coalition would have instantly collapsed. ... Going in and thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.
‘‘Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.’’

So, now what ? We will pull out of Iraq in failure, just as we did in Viet Nam.
How many more American troops will die so that politicians like Bush, as
Nixon and Johnson before him, can attempt to "save face" ? I think that
1,050 is quite enough, but I doubt that Bush or his apologists can quickly
come to my conclusion. They will, inevitably order thousands of other American families' children to fight and die in Iraq before they will conclude the obvious and retreat from their failed imperialistic expedition!