Send Bush a message in November:
George W. Bush said on Tuesday night that he is often asked, "why we are in Iraq [if] Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat . . . Saddam's regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take."
Explain to me again, what was that "clear threat." What risk was posed to the United States by a fourth rate military with an annual military budget of less than a tenth of that of the Pentagon's? I think the president and his men owe the American people more than one paragraph of explanation for why he thinks we need to continue to referee a sectarian nightmare in Iraq for generations to come. Especially now, after all the reasons this administration came up with for getting us into this mess have been proven to be false.
In the president's world view, Iraq is the "central front" in his so-called "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." If this is so, then why hasn't he reinstated the draft? Why hasn't he put into the fight the full strength and power of the United States military? Since the war began in 2003, there haven't been more than 150,000 troops in Iraq at any given time. The number now stands at some 138,000, and these numbers are being maintained by preventing units that have already been there for over a year from leaving. There are soldiers who are going back to Iraq for their third tours, and yet all the president asks of the American people is that they keep shopping.
On July 26th, the president signed an executive order which could potentially call 35,000 Marines of the Individual Ready Reserve back to active duty. These are people who have already gone beyond the call of duty to their country, who are now being asked to put their lives on hold for perhaps years to come. And it's all because this president and his party in control of Congress don't have the courage to deal with the consequences of their high sounding rhetoric. If the president doesn't have the moral fortitude to carry through with the hard choices that have to be made, then the American people must, at the ballot box in November.
We owe it to all those who are being asked to sacrifice again and again to perpetuate the mistakes of the likes of Dick Cheney who said just this Sunday that, "If we had it to do over, we'd do exactly the same thing."
Explain to me again, what was that "clear threat." What risk was posed to the United States by a fourth rate military with an annual military budget of less than a tenth of that of the Pentagon's? I think the president and his men owe the American people more than one paragraph of explanation for why he thinks we need to continue to referee a sectarian nightmare in Iraq for generations to come. Especially now, after all the reasons this administration came up with for getting us into this mess have been proven to be false.
In the president's world view, Iraq is the "central front" in his so-called "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century." If this is so, then why hasn't he reinstated the draft? Why hasn't he put into the fight the full strength and power of the United States military? Since the war began in 2003, there haven't been more than 150,000 troops in Iraq at any given time. The number now stands at some 138,000, and these numbers are being maintained by preventing units that have already been there for over a year from leaving. There are soldiers who are going back to Iraq for their third tours, and yet all the president asks of the American people is that they keep shopping.
On July 26th, the president signed an executive order which could potentially call 35,000 Marines of the Individual Ready Reserve back to active duty. These are people who have already gone beyond the call of duty to their country, who are now being asked to put their lives on hold for perhaps years to come. And it's all because this president and his party in control of Congress don't have the courage to deal with the consequences of their high sounding rhetoric. If the president doesn't have the moral fortitude to carry through with the hard choices that have to be made, then the American people must, at the ballot box in November.
We owe it to all those who are being asked to sacrifice again and again to perpetuate the mistakes of the likes of Dick Cheney who said just this Sunday that, "If we had it to do over, we'd do exactly the same thing."
posted by William Duane at 7:11 PM
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