The Iraq Boondoggle, Ten Years After

Photo by Faleh Kheiber/Reuters

Ten years is a long time, but apparently not long enough for some wingnuts to apologize for the largest foreign policy disaster in the history of America. Dick Cheney is still out there pushing the same bullshit that got us into his massive quagmire. GW Bush occasionally pops his head up to remind us that he still thinks so highly of himself that he paints himself wash himself, maybe some psychological attempt to get the blood of millions off his hands. Other assorted neo-con adventurers managed to sign on with Willard Romney's failed bid to become President and lie us into another multi-trillion dollar war.

So, if you haven't apologized for supporting that war, and calling people who opposed it, like me, a traitor, then here's your chance for a little soul searching. Since most of you warmongers also happen to be deficit hawks, except for Dick Cheney who famously said deficits don't matter, maybe you'll take a look at the new report from Costs of War.

Total US federal spending associated with the Iraq war has been $1.7 trillion through FY2013. In addition, future health and disability payments for veterans will total $590 billion and interest accrued to pay for the war will add up to $3.9 trillion.

Add it up, warmongers, if your math skills will let you. That's a total of $6.2 Trillion for the boondoggle you helped lie us into. And you assholes have the balls to bitch that Obama, who has lowered the deficit every year since he got in office, and almost halved it now, is a profligate spender? Wow. Just wow.

See, at this point, if you still want to defend the Iraq War, then I have two things I can think of to say to you. One, please, keep talking, wingnuts. And two? Fuck you. Just fuck you and the Supreme Court you and the traitors Bush and Cheney rode in on.

A Letter to My Local Editor

In the past few months, I have seen letters stating that "everyone" thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is a blatant lie.

Many people, including people in the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, and Congress, were trying to tell the administration that the "intelligence" they were leaking to the press was wrong. Many people, including former weapons inspectors, tried to tell them that they were cherry picking the bits that made their case, and ignoring the evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, many members of the United Nations, including France, Canada, Germany, Russia, and many others were trying to tell the Bush administration that they were getting bad intelligence.

Of course, this is not the first time that the cabal of neo-con hawks in the Bush administration had gotten "intelligence" wrong in order to spend billions on military endeavors. During the Ford Administration, a group known as "Team B" (team A was the CIA) was making a case that the Soviet Union had thousands of ICBMs. They claimed the Soviets were spending almost their entire GNP on their military. They claimed the Soviets had a particle beam that could blow our warheads out of the sky. They pressured Ford, who caved in, to let them examine the "intelligence," which they then manipulated and leaked to the press, resulting in billions being spent on weapons to counter weapons that didn't exist.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's because Team B consisted of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, among others: a who's who of the neo-con architects of the Iraq War. Most of these men became members of the Project for a New American Century, which wrote in 2000 that "the process of transformation [in the middle east], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Even more ironically, during the Ford administration, CIA Director William Colby dared to disagree with the Cheney crowd. He was fired and replaced with George HW Bush, who agreed with them. Anyone keeping up with the Scooter Libby trial can note the ominous similarities to the outing of Valerie Plame, who's undercover operation, Brewster and Jennings, was gathering actual intelligence on nuclear proliferation. So it seems that this cabal of Cheney's has now gotten rid of a possible impediment to WMD intelligence from Iran.

This same gang of neo-cons were wrong about the Soviet Union in the 70's, and they were wrong about Iraq in 2003. Now they are telling us about the threat from Iran, without showing anyone the supposed evidence. Bush says he doesn't have to explain anything. He says he is the decider. He has boldly claimed that congress can do nothing to stop him.

Well, congress can. They can impeach. In fact, considering the lives and treasure we are spending on this fiasco (much of the treasure going to the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about, and for whom so many in the Bush administration have worked or will work), it is the constitutional duty of congress to look into the facts leading up to the Iraq war. When they find a high crime or misdemeanor, it is their duty to impeach.

So, the next time readers of this newspaper hear the same old lie about how Bush was working with "bad intelligence," run to the cabinet and get a BIG grain of salt. Everyone did not have it wrong. Shame on anyone, Republican or Democrat, who supported a war based on the word of a bunch of proven liars like these. If we do not impeach Bush and Cheney, then we will know for sure that the American pledge of "justice for all" is as much of a lie as those that got us into this mess.