Once again, we remember the anniversary of George W. Bush’s larger than life “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner hanging aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. This of course was George W. Bush declaring to the world an end to major combat operations in Iraq, five years ago May 1st, 2003.

Fast-forward five years later: 4,000 plus US soldiers, sailors and marines have been killed in action. 30,000 plus US soldiers, sailors and marines have been injured. 80,000 plus thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed. The United States has spent nearly $650 billion dollars on the war. Based on the best information presented to the US Congress so far, there is no end in sight.

The war of course was to take few US lives, cost a few billion dollars and last no more than a year. Vice President Dick Cheney liked to talk about the masses of Iraqis who would line their streets greeting US forces with candy and flowers. US administration officials said revenue from Iraqi oil sales would help finance the cost of the war. To date, Bush wants another $100 plus billion supplemental for the war.

Then, let us not forget just how ill prepared the Veterans Administration has been in dealing with injured US forces. Just like the war itself, George W. Bush tried to manage this component of the operation on the cheap. Little planning went into dealing with massive number of injured. Then we hear recently of how US Administration officials lied to news organizations about the high numbers of US forces with ties to Iraq and Afganistan who have or have attempted suicide.

Never in my life have I disliked a politician as much as I do George W. Bush. I try not to get emotional about it, but I really despise this man. His caviler attitude about human life and the telling of the truth should make all moral persons shutter. Given his many attempts to couch this effort as a righteous cause, I fail to see it. In no way is this a worthy cause, and in the end, our country will be worse for it.

I hope Bush doesnt read this message board, he might be upset knowing that you despise him.

Personally I like the guy. Would not vote for him again though, he made too many mistakes.

"Never in my life have I disliked a politician as much as I do George W. Bush."

Bush has me actually admiring Ronald Reagan, something I'd NEVER thought I'd do. While I disagreed with nearly everything Reagan stood for, he never lied to me while shoving it down my throat.

Bush is an arrogant imbecile from a wealthy family who can't run a big business let alone the U.S. Government.

He will be remembered in history as a warmonger, liar and an ecoterrorist. Reagan was bad, but Bush is worse. Nixon was the worst. Of these three though, only Nixon was a truly evil misanthrope.

Nixon was highly intelligent. Paranoid to a fault, but highly intelligent.

Dubya can't run a business much less a country. Heck, he probably can't run the TP to the crack of his ass.

Why do you think it is that so many people voted for "arrogant imbecile" twice?

What do you think that says about the democrats that they cant even beat him?

I think back to 2004 when one of the London tabloids had on the front cover a picture of Bush and the following:

"How could 56 million people be so stupid?"

Gore had more votes than Bush in 2000. It took the Supreme Court to hand the election to Bush.

It's debatable whether Bush won Ohio, and the electoral vote along with it, in 2004. Kerry capitulated awful quick, to avoid another 2000.

Both Gore and Kerry ran horrible campaings, and both needed to run BETTER campaigns to combat their lack of personality and perceived aloofness. Bush is a shitbag as a leader and a person, but he still comes across as a nice guy, the neighbor you'd like to have over to the backyard cookout. He took advantage of that twice, and the American sheeple fell for it.

" What do you think that says about the democrats that they cant even beat him? "

It says that they, the voters, were lazy and thought they had a victory in the bag. What it DOESN'T say is that those who voted for Bush are glad they had Bush to vote for. Just ask them today if they are glad, happy, proud, thankful. No. They are full of disappointment and embarrassment.

Now, let's see if you can answer a question without a question;

What will it say if a Democrat wins this time around? With a record turn-out. What will THAT say?

It will say that the people want nothing that smacks of a third term of Bush.

Now, if McCain wins in November, I will be wrong and probably never post here again as I obviously have no idea what I am talking about and will be in serious need of reconsidering my place in this world. I will just assimilate. Resistance will be futile.

I will also complete my bomb shelter.

Relax, Celebrate Victory

Richard Perle
USA Today
May 2, 2003

From start to finish, President Bush has led the United States and its coalition partners to the most important military victory since World War II. And like the allied victory over the axis powers, the liberation of Iraq is more than the end of a brutal dictatorship: It is the foundation for a decent, humane government that will represent all the people of Iraq.

This was a war worth fighting. It ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq's cities, towns or infrastructure. It ended without the Arab world rising up against us, as the war's critics feared, without the quagmire they predicted, without the heavy losses in house-to-house fighting they warned us to expect. It was conducted with immense skill and selfless courage by men and women who will remain until Iraqis are safe, and who will return home as heroes.

In full retreat, the war's opponents have now taken up new defensive positions: "Yes, it was a military victory, but you haven't found Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." Or, "Yes, we destroyed Saddam's regime, but now other dictators will try even harder to develop weapons of mass destruction to make sure they will not fall to some future American preemptive strike."

We will find Saddam's well-hidden chemical and biological weapons programs, but only when people who know come forward and tell us where to look. While Saddam was in power, even a hint about his concealment and deception was a death sentence, often by unimaginable torture against whole families. Saddam had four years to hide things. We have had a few weeks to find them. Patience -- and some help from free Iraqis -- will be rewarded.

The idea that our victory over Saddam will drive other dictators to develop chemical and biological weapons misses the key point: They are already doing so. That's why we may someday need to preempt rather than wait until we are attacked.

Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, these and other nations are relentless in their pursuit of terror weapons. Does anyone seriously argue that they would abandon their programs if we had left Saddam in power? It is a little like arguing that we should not subdue knife-wielding criminals because, if we do, other criminals will go out and get guns.

Moreover, this argument, deployed by those who will not take victory for an answer, confuses cause and effect: Does any peaceful state that neither harbors terrorists nor seeks weapons of mass destruction fear that we will launch a preemptive strike against it? Who are they? Why would they?

Iraqis are freer today and we are safer. Relax and enjoy it.

Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, is a member of the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon on military affairs.

Link

I wonder if Richard relaxed today. Perhaps he was enjoying springtime at his home in Provence, France. Maybe he took 4046 rocks in his hammock to celebrate the fifth anniversary. Like many of his colleagues, Perle is still defending this nightmare.

Wow. Most of the time I read those kinds of things and just kind of go " OK. Thanks for the information - I don't apply it to this situation like you do. But thanks anyway."

That's a little tougher to do on this post though. It's like he could see the future and needed to address the very things to avoid.

These are not the droids you are looking for. Got it.

Lest we forget how we this horrific mess started, here is a classic sabre rattle from another chief proponent of the war. Like most agitprop of the time, it starts out with the possibility of war, throws the critics under the bus, and then slowly wends toward a foregone conclusion: "Our soldiers will perish..."

The Right War for the Right Reasons

By JOHN MCCAIN
Published: March 12, 2003

American armed forces will likely soon begin to disarm Iraq by destroying the regime of Saddam Hussein. We do not know whether they will have the explicit authorization of veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council. But either way, the men and women ordered to undertake this mission can take pride in the justice of their cause.

Critics argue that the military destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime would be, in a word, unjust. This opposition has coalesced around a set of principles of ''just war'' -- principles that they feel would be violated if the United States used force against Iraq.

The main contention is that we have not exhausted all nonviolent means to encourage Iraq's disarmament. They have a point, if to not exhaust means that America will not tolerate the failure of nonviolent means indefinitely. After 12 years of economic sanctions, two different arms-inspection forces, several Security Council resolutions and, now, with more than 200,000 American and British troops at his doorstep, Saddam Hussein still refuses to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

Only an obdurate refusal to face unpleasant facts -- in this case, that a tyrant who survives only by the constant use of violence is not going to be coerced into good behavior by nonviolent means -- could allow one to believe that we have rushed to war.

These critics also object because our weapons do not discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. Did the much less discriminating bombs dropped on Berlin and Tokyo in World War II make that conflict unjust? Despite advances in our weaponry intended to minimize the loss of innocent life, some civilian casualties are inevitable. But far fewer will perish than in past wars. Far fewer will perish than are killed every year by an Iraqi regime that keeps power through the constant use of lethal violence. Far fewer will perish than might otherwise because American combatants will accept greater risk to their own lives to prevent civilian deaths.

The critics also have it wrong when they say that the strategy of the United States for the opening hours of the conflict -- likely to involve more than 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles in the first two days -- is intended to damage and demoralize the Iraqi people. It is intended to damage and demoralize the Iraqi military and to dissuade Iraqi leaders from using weapons of mass destruction against our forces or against neighboring countries, and from committing further atrocities against the Iraqi people.

The force our military uses will be less than proportional to the threat of injury we can expect to face should Saddam Hussein continue to build an arsenal of the world's most destructive weapons.

Many also mistake where our government's primary allegiance lies, and should lie. The American people, not the United Nations, is the only body that President Bush has sworn to represent. Clearly, the administration cares more about the credibility of the Security Council than do other council members who demand the complete disarmament of the Iraqi regime yet shrink from the measures needed to enforce that demand. But their lack of resolve does not free an American president from his responsibility to protect the security of this country. Both houses of Congress, by substantial margins, granted the president authority to use force to disarm Saddam Hussein. That is all the authority he requires.

Many critics suggest that disarming Iraq through regime change would not result in an improved peace. There are risks in this endeavor, to be sure. But no one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values. Saddam Hussein is a risk-taking aggressor who has attacked four countries, used chemical weapons against his own people, professed a desire to harm the United States and its allies and, even faced with the prospect of his regime's imminent destruction, has still refused to abide by Security Council demands that he disarm.

Isn't it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness? Wouldn't people subjected to brutal governments be encouraged to see the human rights of Muslims valiantly secured by Americans -- rights that are assigned rather cheap value by the critics' definition of justice?

Our armed forces will fight for peace in Iraq -- a peace built on more secure foundations than are found today in the Middle East. Even more important, they will fight for the two human conditions of even greater value than peace: liberty and justice. Some of our soldiers will perish in this just cause. May God bless them and may humanity honor their sacrifice.

New York Times

In Bush's own words:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html

I especially like the gratuitous Iraq/911 link from this paragraph (and yet he has denied ever so):

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed. (Applause.)

or this one (a blatant lie because there has never been proof demonstrating that Iraq was an ally of al Qaeda):

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We've removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. (Applause.)