Friday, April 10, 2015

Friday April 10, 2015...Afterthoughts of Iraq

We're hearing the war hawks speaking again about war - with Iran.

They are once again saying how easy it will be and how necessary it is.

We've heard this all before.

Before we invaded Iraq, all of the Bush administration cronies and war hawks in Congress were saying that the Iraq War would be easy, quick and relatively painless.
In March of 2003, Dick Cheney told Bob Scheiffer on Face The Nation that, "I'm confident that our troops will be successful, and I think it'll go relatively quickly ... Weeks rather than months."
Just a few months later, Condoleezza Rice proclaimed that, "I do not mean that we will need to maintain a military presence in Iraq as was the case in Europe."
And, then-Chairman of the Defense Policy Board and current Senior Fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute Richard Perle said that, "And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation."
Well, first of all, there is no "grand square" in Baghdad right now named after George Bush.
But more importantly, every single comment made back then about the Iraq War was wrong.
As we all know, the war that was supposed to last a few months AT MOST has been dragged out for 12 years.
Since the Iraq War began on March 19, 2003, there have been 4,493 US military deaths in Iraq, and at least 32,021 soldiers have been wounded.
And those numbers don't include the tens of thousands of Iraqis - civilian and otherwise - who lost their lives during the war.
Simply put, the Iraq War wasn't easy, it wasn't quick and it certainly wasn't painless.
Instead, it's been one of the longest and deadliest wars in US history.

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