Back                                                       The War in Iraq:

Lies that led us to War.   I can't believe it

War news since George Bush won his 2nd. term

4,150  American Soldiers have died in Iraq as of 08/28/08 There have been 4,464 coalition deaths.

4,464  - 4,150  = 314  Who is paying the price for the war?

More then 1,100 American Soldiers were wounded in August 2005. At least 30,561 have been wounded since the war began.

Early in the war Donald H. Rumsfeld told the White House Press Corp about the war "It may take, you know, six days, or six weeks, I doubt if it will take six months."  Talk about rose colored glasses

9/12/04 Unbelievable I just watched Patrick J. Buchanan (A Conservative Republican) use almost all of my arguments against the War in Iraq in an interview with Wolff Blitzer on CNN.

Are we better off because of it? I really don't think so & I'll explain why. You may not agree with me but at least hear me out.

1. There are many nations in the world that have despicable leaders: Cuba has Fidel Castro, North Korea's KIM Chong-il, Iran has the Ayatollah Khamenei, Some others now dead or disposed (All of whom were our allies) Francois "Pappa Doc" & Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier of Haiti, General Suharto of Indonesia, Anastasio Somoza Jr. & Sr. of Nicaragua, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Augusta Pinochet of Chile, and we all remember Ferdinand Marcos & his shoe loving wife Imaldo of the Philippians, to name a few. So just taking down a dictator isn't reason enough to go to war.

2. Although Saddam Hussein was a evil tyrant, he had the country under control & it was secular.

3. I don't feel he had important connections with al-Qu'ida & I'll explain  Here

4. Iraq under Hussein served as a buffer to Iran.

5. He was kept in check with a no fly zone & was boycotted by the U. N. So he really wasn't a danger to us.

6. There have been no weapons of mass destruction found & he couldn't have reached us with a missile or any other way.

7. Even if he had a missile that could reach us & an atomic weapon, do you think he would have used it? He has been proven to be a coward & he was never a good Moslem. Do you really think, with our known nuclear power, he would risk being annihilated, would anybody? He would have to know that all the world would be behind us. Remember that the threat of mutual annihilation keep us from a nuclear war with the Soviet Union for 50 years.

8. Most important of all is the fact that we have stuck our hand in a hornets nest. Where there was one Osama bin Laden there will now be thousands.

9.. Libya gave up it's Nuclear program. Why?

10.  Is Israel better off?

With the anarchy, that is now Iraq. The terrorists have not only a training ground but also place where they can hone their skills in real combat. Plus al-Qa'ida now has a great recruiting tool.

Are the people of Iraq better off? When you count the number of civilians who have been killed since the start of the war, I don't know. I don't think even Saddam Hussein would have killed that many people in the same period of time. Maybe he could have been taken out at a later date with less civilian casualties.

Can we pull out? NO! We can't leave till we've finished what we started and even though I feel, that with the largest population of Iraq being Shi'a, there's a good chance that when they have their elections they will vote for a Theocratic Republic, (After all, the most powerful people in Iraq are the mullahs) thus giving women less rights then they had under Hussein and putting us right back where we started. We have to at least end the anarchy that is now Iraq.

Not to mention the possibility of, after the withdraw of U. S. troops, a civil war. There are many groups, now in Iraq, that are grasping for power, if they don't get it what will they do. For example Muktada al Sadar.

We also have to remember that we pulled not only funds but troops out of Afghanistan to start the war in Iraq. I feel that if we had left the troops finish their job we would have been better off. See War in Afghanistan.

Why weren't we ready to keep the peace? I feel it was incompetence & I'll explain. First let me say it wasn't our troops, they did a fantastic job but our leaders especially Donald Rumsfeld & Paul Wolfowitz. Several of our top Generals said we needed more troops but the Pentagon disagreed & everything went great until we entered Baghdad.

There were riots, crimes, terror attacks & looting & our army not being trained in handling civil unrest were basically unprepared & undermanned. The Generals had been right.

Later I heard Rumsfeld at a press conference make a statement, with a smile on his face, that the news coverage was redundant. "You see people running down the street with a stolen vase. They (The news media) show that same scene so many times that you think the looting is widespread. Think about it, how many vases can they have in Iraq." or something on that order. The looting proved to be that widespread & though I deplore the loss of the historical & artistic treasures at the museums & palaces, the real problem was that a lot of looting took place at the armories & we'll be fighting against those weapons for a long time. We should have listened to the Generals & we should have had a plan for the aftermath of the war. In the Beginning of Oct. 2004 we found out that a large part of Iraq's mothballed nuclear facilities had been removed. This happened on our watch, now ask yourselves why we weren't we guarding these most dangerous facilities & were there any nuclear materials there that could be used in dirty bombs?

Later Wolfowitz when asked at a press conference how many Americans had died up to that time said he wasn't sure of the exact number but then gave a rough figure that was a couple of hundred less then had actually died. As assistant  secretary of defense he should have had that information down cold. He couldn't have been very well informed & he should have been.

Now about the alliance. In both the Golf War & the War in Afghanistan we had every major power including France & Germany plus a lot of Arab countries & the people in the streets were also behind our effort but because of the way we went into Iraq we have/had only Great Britain, Spain, Australia & Italy and a lot if smaller nations. The smaller nations only sent a minimal amount of troops & are not helping to fund the war. Spain has already pulled out as did the Philippians, South Korea and a few others. The people in the streets in most countries are protesting the war or their countries involvement in it & this could lead to a change of leadership in those countries at their next election. With new leaders, who might have run on a platform against the war, many more countries might abandon us. The election in Spain already turned on one of our allies & Tony Blair is in trouble in Great Britain, not counting most of the Arab leaders who face the possibility of being overthrown, and Pakistan is just an assassination away from being a fundamentalist Islamic state. We just didn't think this thing out very well. That's why I promote Strength with Intelligence. I really don't want to have a beer with the President, I want a man with smarts. I want John Kerry.

Now with all the upheaval in Iraq The administration says that the terror will end after the elections in January, but I can remember them saying that it would end after we turned over sovereignty. It didn't happen. The election in January will elect the 275 seat assembly which will draft a permanent constitution for a nationwide referendum by Oct. 2005. Will our administration then say the terrorists are still fighting because constitution the hasn't been ratified yet and will stop after it is accepted? And then, when it still doesn't stop, will we hear that they are trying to stop the election to enact it two months later or after a democratic government takes control by Jan. 15th 2006? What will be their excuse after that.

Find out why we didn't go after Saddam Hussein, during the Golf War, in George Bush Sr.'s own words Here.

8/15/04 George Bush on Larry King Live when asked by Larry why he thought some of the Iraqi people were fighting so hard against us? Replied "Some Ba'th Party members are out of power and are angry about it." Does he think that Muktada al Sadar is, or ever was, a member of the Ba'th Party, or was he just evading the question. I hope he has enough knowledge of the war & Iraq to know that Muktada al Sadar & his Mahdi army are Shias who were persecuted under Saddam Hussein's rule. We have to remember that the Shias are the majority population in Iraq & also in Iran.

8/29/04 CNN:  I found out something I hadn’t known. Right after the war on Afghanistan ended George Bush ask Tommy Franks to plan for a war in Iraq.

8/30/04 The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani recently brokered a peace with Muqktada al-Sadr. Something the interim Iraqi government couldn’t accomplish. Now what actually was accomplished & what do these facts tell us?

*First al-Sadr was trapped in Najaf and was losing forces, the only thing in his favor was that he was cowering in one of the most holy places in the Moslem world & we couldn’t attack without grave political consequences. Now he is free from the trap & has a chance to regroup & believe me he will. Many of his followers are still attacking in Sadr City in Baghdad. Most of the ones who were with him in Najaf left with their weapons but that’s not really important as weapons are easier to get then cigarettes in Iraq. If he doesn’t get his way politically we will face him again.

The Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani (Who is an Iranian) has more power in Iraq then the entire interim government. Do you really think that the government can hold the country together if the religious leaders decide to take the country down the road to a theocratic government like the one now in power in Iran?

9/1/04: Pat Buchanan on CNN "I think the war in Iraq was a mistake. Myself and a few other senators warned George Bush that he may be creating our own West Bank and it looks as if we have."

He is a republican so he's standing behind the president. I'm not, so I can ask . What miscalculations will he make in the future? Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis & worry.

9/3/04: Earlier this week John McCain Said to CNN when asked how long he thought we'd be in Iraq. "probably 10 or 20 years, That's not so bad. We've been in Korea for 50 years, we've been in Germany for 50 years." John McCain is know for his honesty.

He's not alone as Pat Buchanan said above "we now have our own West Bank". The Iraqis, like the Vietnamese will never stop fighting as long as they feel that we are occupiers and some if not most of them will think that as long as we are there.

It won't be like Korea or Germany.

9/6/04: CNN I didn't see but heard, so I'm not sure which General it was but I did hear what they said. "The enemy is losing way more troops then we are maybe 20 or 30 to one." So now were back to the Body Count that we used to judge our progress in the war in Vietnam. It didn't work then and it won't work now. He also said that there are certain areas we won't go into (Like Fallujah, or Kirkuk) (Above the 49 parallel in Vietnam sound familiar?)  "It's not that we can't but if we did it would only cause more people to resent us." something like that. What the H--l did they think would happen when we went into Iraq in the first place?

9/6/04: CNN See * under 8/29/04 above. I told you so. We fought a running gun battle with Muqktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army in Sadr City, Baghdad. The deaths of U. S. Soldiers during those battles took the death toll to 1,002. So much for the ceasefire.

9/13/04: CNN Out going Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway questions U. S. tactics in Falluja. How many military leaders are questioning decisions made during this war. It seems that everybody but the administration has concerns about the war or the strategy used to fight it.

9/14/04: I heard Michael Rubin telling Lou Dobbs on CNN last night, DOBBS: "Michael, if I may say, you suggest that the violence is rising because the insurgents understand they can't win. The other reason for rising violence would be because they believe they can win. In either case, violence is rising. What in the world can be done to stabilize Iraq to protect the government that we have put in place?"

RUBIN: Well, the key here is to convince the Iraqis that they have more to gain by siding with us than by siding with the insurgents. The insurgents don't have a great deal of popular support among those who know them.  The insurgents' popularity increases as a symbol. Those that live farthest away from the insurgents tend to support them the most. The key here, though, is we don't want to be in a situation where we are rewarding the violence. We don't -- we need more Churchill and less Chamberlain.

My question to Mr. Rubin is that if they "don't have a great deal of popular support among those who know them." how come more people aren't coming forward to let the Iraqi police or the coalition know where their safe houses are? and how come when a car bomb goes off and kills Iraqis the people around the area blame us.

9/24/04 CNN: I just heard a terror hostage talking about her captivity say that wherever they went they were given refuge, water & food. She said that the people in Iraq were extremely supportive of her captives. Where then are all the people that, Mr. Rubin was talking about that, are against the insurgents?

Let's look at a scenario. Terrorist move into the house next to your son's home & the Canadian air force drops a bomb destroying both houses & killing your son, his wife & your four grandchildren. Are you going to forgive the Canadian government? It wasn't their fault, they had to get rid of the terrorist, but would you forgive them? When innocent civilians die during a war, no matter who is to blame, their friends & family turn on both parties. No matter what Bush says we are making enemies just by trying to help & some of these enemies will join the terrorists. He can't tell me that the Iraq war is making us safer. I have common sense & I can use it.

CNN: Sept. 18th. KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine  In a phone interview with a newspaper, President Bush played down a U.S. intelligence forecast painting a pessimistic picture for the future of Iraq, including the suggestion that civil war could erupt there.

"The Iraqis are defying the dire predictions of a lot of people by moving toward democracy," Bush told the paper. "It's hard to get to democracy from tyranny. It's hard work. And yet, it's necessary work. But it's necessary work because a democratic Iraq will make the world a freer place and a more peaceful place. Is he living in a fantasy world?

9/21/04: George Bush went before the U.N. and ignoring his own C. I. A. commission's report on the situation in Iraq & the future prospects of the country, told the representatives that although the insurgents were trying to stop the elections we had everything under control & that they should help us with the elections. He played down the report by the C.I.A. that of the 3 possible scenarios the worst was a civil war & the best was a tenuous peace. He said that the C. I. A. was not looking at the situation with an optimistic view. He said if you don't think we are winning just ask Allawi.

It appears that George Bush sitting in Washington or on the campaign trail knows more then the C.I.A. (who are on the front line in Iraq). As for Allawi, he can only lose by not telling Bush what Bush wants to hear. I seem to remember another Iraqi, what was his name? Ahmed Chalabi who George Bush also believed.

I sure glad that George Bush has those rose colored glasses.

9/24/04 CNN: NEW YORK  -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Friday that he has little doubt that Osama bin Laden is still alive but denied that his own security service is aiding al Qaeda.

Musharraf was less enthusiastic in his support for the U.S. war in Iraq, saying the world is less safe in the wake of the invasion, but the Pakistani president stopped short of calling the invasion a mistake, saying, "I would say that it has ended up bringing more trouble to the world."  He is an ally of ours so he won't say mistake but he seems to implied that one was made.

9/24/04 AP: Baghdad - I told you. The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is insisting that we hold elections in January. It's not hard to see where the real power in Iraq resides. Meanwhile Secretary of State Colin Powell is saying that every Iraqi has to have a  vote, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is saying "So you have some places where the people won't get to vote. So what, nothing is perfect."

10/4/04: (CNN) -- Poland will reduce its commitment of forces to the war in Iraq by 40 percent by the end of 2005, the Polish Defense Ministry in Warsaw says.  Poland has been one of Washington's staunchest allies over the war in Iraq, and in last week's TV debate with Senator John Kerry, U.S. President George W. Bush specifically mentioned their contribution.

Not only can't George Bush build a real alliance but he can't even hold  together the one he did build.

10/4/04: Condoleezza backs off another reason that we we to war in Iraq. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice used Sunday's talk shows to defend President Bush's performance at last week's debate and counterpunch Sen. John Kerry's ideas about pre-emptive strikes.

A New York Times report Sunday cited Rice's comments and quoted CIA and administration officials as saying that Department of Energy experts told her staff almost a year before -- in 2001 -- that they thought the tubes were for artillery rockets, not for creating nuclear weapons.

Rice said that when she said the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," she "knew there was some debate out there but ... I didn't know the nature of the debate."

I don't knew about you but when my President takes my Country to war I expect our National Security Advisor to know what the Hell she is talking about. When one of the reasons for that war is a fact she knows there is a debate about, she should have found out what that debate was.

How come nobody has been held responsible for their mistakes? Is that why Bush's business went down the drain? Is our country going to follow George Bush's company?

10/4/04 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared Monday to back off earlier statements suggesting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had links to al Qaeda.

When asked about any connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, Rumsfeld said, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."  wasn't that one of the reasons we went to war?

Follow the links in the CNN stories to see just what Dick Chaney & George Bush said about the connections. I will say that Bush, Chaney, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz had reason to hate Saddam Hussein but that's not reason enough to not only lie to the American people, as they did on many occasions leading up to the war, but worse yet send American boys to die for their revenge.

He has since, after he had time to be confronted by others in the administration, Clamed that he was misunderstood. What's to misunderstand? His statement was "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."  For the life of me I can't see any way a statement that basic could be misunderstood. Oh! maybe he was talking about his ability to have knowledge.

I can visualize what happened. Rumsfeld walks into the oval office. Dick Chaney "Rummy, what the hell are you doing." "your killing us, what do think the people are going to think, are you nuts?" George Bush adds "You can't go around telling the people the truth. If they find out we went to war without proof, we may lose the election. Damn between you and Condi. Oh! you didn't hear, She just admitted that we had doubts about the aluminum tubes." Now get the hell out there and cover your ass." "Tell them you were misunderstood, they'll fall for it, you know how stupid those people are."  Well guess what maybe, just maybe, we're not.  I never said this happened, it's only a hypothesis but it's one that seems plausible to me.

Oct. 7th 2004 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them, a CIA report concludes.

This is something that not only the U.N. inspectors but our own

Oct. 9th. 2004: Were doing it again. Another ceasefire with Muqktada al-Sadr, this time he's going to give up his weapons. I thought he already did that? Is this the fourth or fifth time he has agreed to a ceasefire? Are we really this stupid?

Oct. 17th. 2004: CNN SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Australia will not dispatch additional troops to Iraq despite a U.N. request for more manpower for the country's elections, scheduled for January, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.   Now about that coalition?

Oct. 20th. 2004: CNN BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The CARE International charity has suspended its operations in Iraq the day after the aid agency's chief of operations was kidnapped in Baghdad.  People, when your Nation Building, Other countries aren't your only allies. International organizations are also allies, so when they pull out, somebody has to replace them, do the things they were doing, put up the goods or services that they were supplying. This pullout means that the coalition in still breaking down. Oh! Doctors without borders also pulled out.

Oct. 25th. 2004: I just heard on CNN that the administration had a chance to take out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the start of the Iraq war but didn't do anything. How many people have died at his hands or because of his leadership? Those lives are on their hands.

Nov. 12th. 2004: (CNN) FALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) -- As U.S. soldiers advanced into southern Falluja on Friday, violence and combat intensified across Iraq with battles flaring in Mosul, Baquba and Baghdad. Great, we're fighting them in Falluja & their attacking all around the country.

More to come.