Five years ago today...

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." - "President" George "Flightsuit" Bush - May 1, 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

and I see the world in a nice shade of rose...

Keep in mind:

• Days since Bush's speech under the 'Mission Accomplished' banner: 1,827
• Days 'til Bush leaves office: 263 and counting...
• Bush’s favorability rating: 29% according to Pollingreport.com
• U.S. combat deaths before 'Mission Accomplished': 139 according to icasualties.org
• U.S. combat deaths after 'Mission Accomplished': 3,924 according to icasualties.org. Meaning that more than 97% of total troop deaths occurred after ‘major combat operations ended’
• Percent of Americans who believe invading Iraq was a mistake: 63% according to Gallup
• Current cost of the war in Iraq: $516,000,000,000 according to National priorities project

That tears it…

I’ve been keeping my mouth shut about the blathering and lying that former Undersecretary of Defense and Iraq war architect Doug Feith has been doing the last few weeks to help pimp pump up sales of his new book… but after reading this post on ThinkProgress, I can’t do it anymore.

In the last couple of weeks he’s blamed others for the war, either by blaming former Secretary of State Colin Powell for not speaking out against the war enough…

Yesterday though was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

Appearing on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC yesterday, Feith dismissed Lehrer’s insistence that the American public was told the war “would be a cakewalk” saying; “You weren’t told that by the administration. Absolutely not.”

I call bullshit…

Almost every significant person in the White House said, at one time or another, that the war would be quick, easy, and painless.

Case in point with a HT to ThinkProgress:

Press Secretary Ari Fleisher, October 11, 2002: “My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003: “I’m confident that our troops will be successful, and I think it’ll go relatively quickly…Weeks rather than months.”

Then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, August 7, 2003: “I do not mean that we will need to maintain a military presence in Iraq as was the case in Europe.”

Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, March 22, 2003: “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.”

Anyone with a brain can ascertain from these quotes that the administration was under the impression that this war was going to be a ‘cakewalk’ and that the US would be viewed as liberators and celebrated and that the war would be short.

Oops.

Now, I understand that hardly anyone on the right pays any attention to Feith and his book tour is probably more beneficial to Liberals as we can point to Feith as an ideal example of the level of stupidity of Bush’s cronies.

What IS troubling though is this continuous re-writing of history that this administration partakes in, apparently hoping that the American people weren’t and aren’t paying attention and will accept this new version of the situation.

January 20, 2009 can NOT come soon enough…

A-ha!

I’ve been saying it for years… the Bush(whacked) Administration looks at the Iraq war through rose-colored glasses… well, today they finally admitted it.

During a White House press briefing earlier today, deputy spokesman Tony Fratto responded to a question about the rising violence in Iraq and said;

“I think we have thrown out all of the rose-colored glasses in how we look at Iraq and try to look at it through clear lenses as to what is going on in the country.”

Ignoring for a moment the fact that this administration has no idea what the hell is going on in their own country let alone a country thousand and thousand of miles away, how is this in any way acceptable? The US government should not be looking at anything through rose-colored glasses, especially something as important and as deadly as a war…

The fact that they have not been looking at the war with any objectivity to success or failure (with the glasses Iraq was always going to be a success), is not only downright shameful on the part of Bush and his administration, but, dare I say, negligent.

I think we may finally have a wholly-impeachable offense…

No grasp of reality

Vice President Dick “President” Cheney was on Good Morning America this morning, spouting off about how he’s confident the US will achieve victory because

“I've worked over the years with both the Iraqi people that are involved, as well as the Americans that are involved.”

So there ya go, the US will win because Cheney was involved.

Come on now, stop the snickering or you won’t be able to read the rest of the post…

Not surprisingly, Cheney continued to shoot off his mouth (let’s hope there weren’t any attorneys around) and said;

Cheney: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
Cheney: No…

(Ladies and Gentlemen, your Vice President of the United States! The man who doesn’t care what the American people think...)

Cheney went on to say that people can’t be swayed by fluctuations in the public opinion polls about the war… unfortunately the interviewer didn’t have the intelligence or the balls to mention that opposition to the war is not a “fluctuation” in public opinion as a fluctuation means

What’s going on with public opinions about the war is a steady turning of the tide and according to a new poll (which, for those of you who think polls are not legitimate barometers of opinion nor fact, is how one keeps abreast with the thoughts of the American public) a scant 36% believe that “the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over” a number that was at 68% the month the war began.

What does this mean? It means that in five years the number of people who believe the Iraq war was worth starting has dropped 32%... a drop unlike one we’ve ever seen before.

Unless or course you count Bush’s incredibly low 32% approval rating...

Five years on

On March 19, 2003, “President” Bush announced; “My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.”

Each year on the anniversary of the US-led invasion, Bush has given a speech full of rhetoric and spin, this year was no exception (HT to Daily Kos):

Year One: “There are still violent thugs and murderers in Iraq, and we're dealing with them.” U.S. Fatalities: 583

Year Two: “Iraq's progress toward political freedom has opened a new phase of our work there.” U.S. Fatalities: 1,522

Year Three: “We are implementing a strategy that will lead to victory in Iraq.” U.S. Fatalities: 2,319

Year Four: “There's been good progress.” U.S. Fatalities: 3,224

Today, Year Five: “No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure ­ but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq .” U.S. Fatalities: 3,990 U.S. Casualties: 40,229

Over the course of five years, Bush has changed his goal of saving the world from (nonexistent) dangers of Iraqi WMD's to a desire to not losing...

Remember; when the war started, the administration predicted that it would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order and install a new government. Five years on, the cost of the war is “roughly $600 billion and counting” per the Pentagon, with economist Joseph Stiglitz putting the “long-term cost at more than $4 trillion” an estimate he says is “excessively conservative.”

And that’s not the only things that supporters of the war have gotten wrong… consider these disastrous quotes:

“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof---the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” - President Bush, 10/7/02 (hard to create mushroom clouds without WMD’s, isn’t it?)

“We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” - Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03 (Yeah, not so much… and now we’re like the house guests that couldn’t get the hint to leave)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals.” - Charles Krauthammer, 4/19/03 (or people that AREN’T lemmings and can use their own brains…)

“[Liberals] can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly.” - Paul Mirengoff, Powerline, 4/26/03 (wanna bet we can’t deny it? The Taliban and al Qaeda are back in force in Afghanistan, and the insurgent violence in Iraq is increasing again…)

And the best ones come from ‘The Decider’’ himself; “I believe that the success will be fairly easy.” - 9/24/02 (I guess that depends on what your definition of ‘fairly easy’ is…)

“We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” 1/22/03 (I refuse to snark this as a means to honor all families that have lost loved ones in this misguided war)

And then there’s this March 24, 2003 quote from the man who vows to continue Bush’s wayward ways in Iraq; Sen. John McCain: “[T]here’s no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators.”

If McCain gets elected, we probably will be in Iraq for 100 more years… if it’s Clinton or Obama, we will start pulling troops out within six months of them taking office… we all know that a complete pullout would do more harm than good, but it’s time to start reigning in the amount of troops we have over there.

Not only would that protect our soldiers, it would also force the Iraqi’s to act and move forward. I think, and this is merely my opinion, that the Iraqi government has been slow in making any progress because they know the US-led coalition is there to prop them up.

We shouldn’t be… not anymore.

It's the economy stupid

Once again our fearless commander in chief is acting like we’re the idiots when, clearly, it’s him…

Appearing on NBC’s Today Show, this morning, “President” Bush denied that the there’s any link between the current recession and the Iraq war; he even went as far as to claim that the war is actually helping the economy.

That’s right, you heard me…

He said the war, the $10 billion were spending each month for the war, is helping the US economy… here’s the exchange between him and Ann Curry;

CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing do with the economy, the war — spending on the war? BUSH: I don’t think so. I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs…because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting.

Too. Many. Houses? Seriously… that’s your reasoning Mr. Bush?

… it’s people like Bush that make me feel ashamed to have a MBA…

Sure, the war has created jobs for some companies (cough cough; Halliburton..,. cough cough Blackwater)… but over the five years since we invaded Iraq, unemployment has risen, with an increase of 13.6%.

That’s not even taking into consideration the fact that 68% of the American public believes that redeployment from Iraq would help fix the country’s economic woes.

Bush will never admit it because republicans are supposed to be about fiscal discipline, but he and his administration are anything BUT disciplined… in fact, they’re not only undisciplined but disruptive as well.

1/20/2009 can NOT come soon enough…

Can we blame the Iraq war for the looming recession?

With a hat tip to ThinkProgress...

Knowing about this afternoon's agreement on an economic stimulus package, it's now time to think about how we got to this point...

Before Bush decided to avenge his father’s shortcomings and the war in Iraq started, a plethora of economists predicted that soaring oil prices could possibly send the US economy spiraling into a recession, and during yesterday’s press briefing, White House Press Tool Dana Perino was asked about the tie between the current U.S. economy and the Iraq war.

Not surprisingly Perino quickly dismissed the reporter’s question and stressed that the U.S. economy has been “very strong” (it hasn’t been strong for a couple of years Dana, wake up and smell the recession!) and added that the money for the Iraq war was necessary to “take the fight to the enemy” after 9/11 (despite the oft-repeated FACT that Iraq had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11!!!!!)

Want proof?

CBS MarketWatch; “If war with Iraq drags on longer than the few weeks or months most are predicting, corporate revenues will be flat for the coming year and will put the U.S. economy at risk of recession, according to a poll of chief financial officers.”

Robert Shapiro, Commerce Undersecretary under President Clinton; “If the conflict wears on or, worse, spreads, the economic consequences become very serious. Late last year, George Perry at the Brookings Institution ran some simulations and found that after taking into account a reasonable use of oil reserves, a cut in world oil production of just 6.5 percent a year would send the United States and the world into recession.”

If you read those and have a brain of your own to use, it’s safe to say that the Iraq war is, at the least, partially to blame for the looming recession.

Now if only this administration, and this Congress for that matter, had listened to them years ago, maybe we wouldn’t all be bracing for hell…