Iraqification

Submitted by Leo Charendoff (United States), Nov 19, 2003 at 11:25

Your comments on the sudden and understated change in the Bush's posture on Iraq are well taken. However you ignore the obvious: the reasons the Administration went into Iraq in the first place and the fact that it has cost us over 400 American lives and many thousands of injured (and still counting) not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and injured.

Your article tacitly implies that we are there because of an overwhelming need to help the Iraqis rather than the multiple and mostly unsupported reasons that were offered by the President in the not too distant past. I call that approach the Maxwell Smart approach to the war: "Chief would you believe that we are here because Saddam has...? No? Well Chief would you believe that we are here because...? No? Well would you believe..."

I supported the war because Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man capable of almost anything that I could imagine. We are in Iraq because he was a threat to the world and Israel. Mr. Bush should have stuck to this instead of making one false assertion after another and alienating the whole world as well as most of the American public. We were never in Iraq because of a need to democratize Iraqis which is the latest Maxwell Smart attempt to convince us that we are doing the right thing. However the American public is not buying these rationalizations and now that we are in the quagmire isn't it convenient that we plan to be out of there by next June just in time for the next election? Or am I being too cynical?

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