Parts I and II were published in "PolitiDose" in December of 2007 and laid out what President Bush really knew about Iraq's WMD. The war began in March 2003 over 13 years ago and the President in a televised speech in May 2003 aboard a Navy ship declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Bush's reasons for starting the war was Iraq's WMD (which did not exist at any time during his administration) and that Saddam and his military was a threat to the national security of the United States. (They were not and the Gulf War of 1991 proved that.)
Part III will examine what question the news media failed to ask in the 13 years after the star of the war. The answer will allow the average American to realize and understand what is taking place in Iraq and the middle east today and why. The news media also allowed the Bush administration to intimidate them and failed to ask the proper questions in the run up to the war. The question that was never asked of Bush or as an open question by the news media was: Why did not President Bush end the war during his time in office. After all he had 5 years and 9 months to do so. Iraq had no WMD and Saddam's military was defeated, the very reasons given by Bush for going to war in the first place. So why was he not able to end the war and bring our troops home.
The answer is the invasion and occupation of Iraq over WMD that did not exist destabilized Iraq and the middle east to such an extent it allowed terrorists and other groups to enter Iraq and the war left no government in place in Iraq. It became a killing field that took the lives of over 4400 Americans and wounded another 30,000 plus. And those casualties did not come at the hand of Iraq's military who were supposed to be the threat. It was the terror groups and factions of other Iraqi groups who inflicted most of those casualties.
President Bush's neocon friends said Iraq would be a cakewalk and failed to have a plan in place to run Iraq after the invasion. They said we would be welcome as liberators and we were not. The war was so badly handled that the man who started the war could not end it and leave. Terrorists started to operate freely in Iraq and other areas of the middle east that led to the unrest in Lybia, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the seed was planted for ISIS, the same group that are the most active today with their terror attacks.
Thirteen years later the U.S. and the middle east are still dealing with the fallout from that war and we still have some who are clamoring for sending huge numbers of our ground forces back to Iraq and the middle east to fight a ground war. Condi Rice who was Bush's national security adviser at the time said, IRAQ MIGHT BE THE KEY TO RESHAPING THE ENTIRE REGION. Yeah right, it reshaped the entire region alright but not in the best interest of the U.S. or the region itself and our men and women in uniform paid a heavy price for that mistake. The Bush administration thought they could play God in the region.
The American people can not let that happen again. Our future can not repeat the same mistakes of the past. A President is needed who understands war, its limitations and its fallout. President Kennedy understood that during the Cuban Missile crisis and solved that problem, a problem 1000 times more severe than Iraq. The President solved that problem without going to war and Cuba has been no threat to the U.S. ever since.
Our nation also needs a President with political understanding who knows the difference between fact and fiction and one who is capable of making rational decisions. President Obama has done a good job in reversing many of Bush's actions in the middle east and the next President should continue that policy and not start a new war. The crazies wanted the U.S. to go to war with Iran but President Obama had the wisdom to find a better way to deal with that nation. Two years ago some of the crazies were saying Iran was 6 months from producing their first nuclear bomb. They were wrong and were willing to risk American lives in a war to satisfy their ego.
The answer as to why Bush could not end the war, bring our troops home and the reason why we have the situation that exist today in Iraq and the middle east is very simple to understand. We just have too many crazies out there who refuse to accept the truth and the facts. And that really says it all.
This commentary written by Joe Lorio
