September 26, 2003

Instant Gratification

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Talk of building up troops to quell an Iraqi threat started just more than a year ago. The president pushed the war machine through to Baghdad faster than anyone could decide if it was the right thing to do. Easier to beg forgiveness is the common saying.

The ultimate in governmental instant gratification: diplomacy on speed.

The Bushies couldn’t have timed things better had they scripted it. After the terror attacks two years ago barely anyone would come out as soft on defense of the United States. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) was one of the few willing to stand up to the tyranny of a republican White House set on avenging an assassination plot 10 years ago.

I’ll never forget those words.

“After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

They’ve been lingering in my thoughts since Dubya uttered them 365 days ago. That’s right. One year ago today was when those famous words fell from a loose tongue in Houston, Texas.

He didn’t refer to the target of that attack as a former president. He didn’t mention that former President Clinton bombed the crap out of the intelligence service in Baghdad in retaliation.

Since then, more than 300 American servicemen and countless Iraqis have been killed because Saddam was “the guy who tried to kill [Dubya’s] dad.”

And for what? President Bush suggested then that this war would bring more stability to the region, that Hussein and his war machine was an immediate danger to the national security of the United States. He asserted that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat to anyone they could be pointed toward.

It’s been ridiculous, really. What’s worse is that through a relatively good British economy, the Tony Blair is suffering the consequences of a “successful” military campaign with questions of its validity. My guess is that both administrations found intelligence to support their ambition to bring war back to Iraq rather than intelligence to form their policies over.

With the benefit of hindsight, no one has found any weapons of mass destruction and most of the world realizes that Iraq wasn’t really the threat the administration lead everyone to believe. Seems the wrong bully was identified over the past year.

- Rich