Though the war in Iraq has virtually disappeared from the headlines and from the Democratic presidential candidates' stump speeches, Americans should not forget that it is still raging and is still wrong. It is the most deceptive, irresponsible, reactionary and morally corrupt war in which the American nation has ever engaged in.
America's president and CEO, George W. Bush, deceived the nation into supporting his war in his 2003 State of the Union address wherein he stated \Before Sept. 11, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained."" Though he did not say outright that Saddam was the perpetrator of the Sept. 11 attacks, the implication was so clear that even an illiterate Texan could have caught it.
Immediately after the address, polls came out showing that as many as three quarters of Americans believed that Hussein was behind Sept. 11. It is no wonder that so many of them supported a war against a dictator implicitly linked to the greatest tragedy on American soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Unfortunately for Bush's diminishing chances at re-election he was forced to clear his little implication up in September 2003 when he stated that ""We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11 attacks.""
Bush further justified his ridiculous unilateral rush to war in his 2003 address by listing the scary weapons Iraq had at its disposal: ""25,000 liters of Anthrax ... 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin ... 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent ... 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents ... several mobile biological weapons labs,"" and, ""an advanced nuclear weapons development program.""
After months of inspections and military occupation, this doomsday arsenal seems to have disappeared like Bush's approval rating, into thin air. Chief weapons inspector Kay confirmed this in his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee during which he said that with regards to WMDs ""It turns out that we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing.""
Bush backed off his rash claims about Iraq's weapons in his 2004 State of the Union address and revealed that instead of actual WMDs inspectors had unearthed ""dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."" This statement stood in stark contrast to the list of weapons he presented to America just one year earlier. Thus the president left his second reason for war invalidated, and most Americans wondering just when they might see this vast cache of dangerous, ""weapons of mass destruction related program activities.""
Although the president revealed that his justifications for the war were anything but, war hawks, Republicans, and Fox News fans alike still insist that the war is justifiable. According to many of them, America did Iraq a service when its troops ""liberated"" the country, and freed its citizens from the rule of a harsh dictator.
While a dictator was indeed deposed, over 10,000 Iraqis were killed in the process. It is not and never will be the perogative of the United States to tell Iraqis how many of their countrymen's lives the removal of their dictator is worth. Imagine if one were to ask an Iraqi whether they would prefer to have their mother or father, or son or daughter still alive and Hussein still in power, or have them dead with Hussein gone. They would invariable answer that the former would be preferable.
Furthermore, over 500 American soldiers have died. Supposedly they went to war to eliminate a threat to the nation, and anticipated casualties were rationalized as necessary in order prevent further casualties from terrorism and WMDs. The young Americans who died in Iraq were not sent there, as today's pro-war crowd says, to depose a disgruntled dictator with no real power or weapons. If they were, and if that kind of action was justifiable, then they better warm up the tanks because there is a long list of crotchety old dictators to go after next.
The Hussein-Sept. 11th link is false, the WMDs do not exist and the Iraqi people are dying unjustifiably. Americans should not forget what has happened and is happening in Iraq. To do so would be to dishonor the memories of those brave soldiers who have died and to condone ludicrous, ill-conceived, poorly planned, and dangerous military action in the future.
