RomeoMike369's Blog

Even if you didn’t vote for President Bush, you have to admit that immediately after 9-11, he had the backing of the American people and the world behind him.  Why he allowed Bin Laden family members spirited out of the country immediately after 9-11, is still a question that needs to be answered.  Anyone who held a foreign passport, especially from an Arab Muslim country in the Middle East, should never have been allowed to leave without being first interrogated by either the FBI, CIA or both.  The invasion of Afghanistan was justified, however one wonders why more troops weren’t put on the ground to go after Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden.  A three-pronged attack on Tora Bora from different sides my have yielded better results.

Then Bush started talking about invading Iraq, and I couldn’t believe he was serious.  After all, most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia or Yemen, and one would think that these countries would be high on the list of those to attack.  So, I decided to investigate as much as possible into why Bush wanted to invade Iraq.  What I found was that the idea of invading Iraq preceded 9-11, and was discussed with his security staff as soon as he took office in 2001. Now I understood why more troops weren’t put on the ground in Afghanistan in 2002, because they were being held in reserve for the future invasion of Iraq.

It appears now that 9-11 was all the excuse the administration needed for the invasion of Iraq as long as they could make it stick.  By manipulating intelligence data to suit the mission and deliberately selecting that which supported their goals, the administration was able to go to the United Nations with half truths and innuendo that was compelling enough to support their claims that:

A.                 Iraq was trying to get radioactive material from Africa.  This was proven false by Joseph Wilson, whom the Bush Administration tried to discredit and violated the laws of this country by outing his wife who was a CIA agent.

B.                 There were Weapons Of Mass Destruction (WMD) on the ground in Iraq.  (Even though the inspectors such as Scott Ritter disagreed and said the inspections were working).

C.                 When no WMD’s were found, the reason was changed to: that Saddam had ties to Al-Qaida.  This was later proven false as well.

D.                 When ties to Al-Qaida was admitted by Bush himself to be false, the reason for the invasion was the removal of Saddam Hussein, and regime change in Iraq.  Bush stated that Saddam had tried to kill his father, and that it was personal to him to take out Saddam Hussein.

Because of poor planning and not thinking this through to its inevitable conclusion, all of the above lies couldn’t stop the Iraqi people from fighting back against the invaders.  Not all Iraqis, especially the deposed Sunnis, welcomed us with open arms.  The removal of the one stabilizing force in Iraq (Saddam and his army) resulted in the breakdown of civility between the Sunnis and the Shiites.