Oh Mr. Bush, What Have You Done?
The American military attack on the little country of Iraq was supposed to be a "cakewalk" as one
leader described it prior to March 19.
George W. Bush and his British buddy Tony Blair may have actually believed that Hussein was a tyrant,
and that the people of Iraq would welcome our troops with flowers and open arms. It was said that the people might even take
up arms to help overthrow the dictator Saddam Hussein once they realized they were finally being "librated."
Boy were they wrong.
Although the action was opposed by almost every other country in the world, could not draw support
in the United Nations, and triggered massive anti-war demonstrations not only in the United States but all over the world,
our "unelected" president sent the troops in anyway.
Now we have alienated ourselves from the world to a point where other countries are starting to
boycott the United States. If you don't believe that, try to buy some good French perfume. Our stores are starting to list
products they say are "temporarily unavailable" due to the war. Nonsense. It is boycott.
I cringed the night the first bombs fell on Baghdad in a pre-dawn strike designed to kill Hussein
while he slept. The palaces and military buildings were hit with elaborate computer guided ordinance, including those new
bunker bombs that burrow deep into the earth before exploding. One news report said that first attack alone involved $50 million
in elaborate bombs and missiles.
It failed of course. When Hussein appeared on the Iraqi television a few hours later, the Iraqi
people rallied.
At the time of this writing, the "war" is now a week old. Our troops conducted a quick march from
Kuwait straight north to the Euphrates River, just south of Baghdad, and there the battle went sour.
Instead of welcoming their "liberators," the Iraqi people suddenly took up arms and came out of
the little towns and cities all along the road our troops thought they had already taken, and launched an unexpected counter
attack. Their gorilla tactics, firing rocket launchers and machine guns from the back of pickup trucks and from behind sand
dunes, are making the supply route from Kuwait to the "front line" a deadly run.
Even though they are starving and deprived of water, the Iraqi people are even resisting efforts
by our troops to truck in these badly needed supplies. One convoy was surrounded by men, women and children chanting that
they would fight to the death for Saddam.
Not only did this happen, but the elite Republican Guard, Hussein's trained army, moved south from
Baghdad under cover of a sand storm, to meet our forces on the other side of the river.
By the time this story appears the U. S. and British forces will either be engaged in deadly conflict
in their tracks, or they will have driven Iraqi forces back into the city and faced with deadly house-to-house; building-to-building
warfare.
Mr. Bush now warns that the war will be long, he has called up another 100,000 troops for combat,
and informed Congress that he needs a budget of $75 billion to keep the war going for the next month. Will we soon see the
renewal of the draft?
That is the estimated cost of war for just one month. What will we spend if the war rages on for
the next year?
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter (who made waves saying that contrary to the government's
claims Hussein no longer had "weapons of mass destruction" in his stockpile) recently warned that he believes America could
lose its war in Iraq and go home "with its tail between its legs."
Ritter believes the conflict could become an "absolute quagmire" and that the British and American
advance will stall outside Baghdad. He thinks the Iraqis will fight so fiercely to protect their homeland that our forces
will be unable to capture the city.
Ritter probably knows Iraq as well as any outsider. He spent months there as a weapons inspector
after the 1991 conflict, and returned to Baghdad again this year for a new look when the war talk was going on. He was skillfully
driven from public view with a leaked story that Ritter might have been guilty of assaulting a child. It was an obvious lie,
but a skillful ploy to shut him up.
Shades of Vietnam come to mind as I see the estimated 23 million people of
Iraq suddenly stand up in support of their homeland. Instead of liberators, they see us for what we really are, aggressors,
and they appear to be willing to fight to the death to stave us off. One analyst said the Iraqi people probably have an estimated
seven million armed combatants prepared to do battle against our sophisticated military machine.
While this is going on, the world is reacting to our aggression.
--China's new leadership is concerned about "American Imperialism" and is preparing for what it
believes will be an inevitable war with the United States.
--North Korea is aggressively building a nuclear arsenal and making no secret about it. The North
Koreans have successfully fired several rockets and claim they now have the capability of hitting the United States coast.
--Because Bush is a professed fundamental Bible-thumping Christian, the rest of the Arab world looks
upon the Bush Administration's assaults on the two Moslem countries of Iraq and Afghanistan as the beginning of a 21's Century
crusade by Christians against Moslems. They are also bracing for future conflicts.
And what about those so-called weapons of mass destruction that brought our armies into that ancient
holy land?
The Iraqis are literally battling our tanks and bombers with pitchforks and guns. They have fired
a few scud missiles that failed to hit anything of importance. They are dying by the hundreds. If they have such weapons one
would think they would be showing up by now.
(I have no doubt that some kind of "weapon of mass destruction" will eventually be "found" after
we plant it. After all this expense, and the cost of the lives of many of our troops, Mr. Bush will have to save face.)
The U. S. media has made a big point of reporting a cache of Iraqi gas masks and anti-chemical attack
suits located in a booby-trapped hospital, suggesting they are proof that the Iraqis have such weapons. It seems to me they
acquired this stuff because they were afraid we would be using chemical and biological weapons against them.
After all, we were the ones who sold these weapons to Hussein back when Iraq was warring with another
old mid-eastern enemy, Iran. That is why Bush thought he had proof they existed in Iraq.
He didn't believe Hussein's report that the stuff was destroyed, as ordered, after the 1991 Gulf
War. But there is always the possibility the man was telling the truth.
I think Mr. Bush started this conflict without taking the time to knew for sure. And it was a mistake.
It has already cost us in world prestige, billions of tax dollars, and soon it will cost us in the lives of our soldiers.
The body bags are already starting to pile up.
