Merrimack River Current
By Michael Cook/ Sitting In
Friday, July 8, 2005
Six.
That was how many times George Walker Bush invoked 9-11 in his speech to the nation and the world on June 28.
What is difficult to understand is why so many Americans still believe there was a connection between 9-11 and Saddam Hussein's regime.
They forget that in September of 2002, bonny Prince George himself said he had seen no substantive evidence linking Saddam to the attacks on NYC or the Pentagon.
They forget the 9-11 Commission found Saddam had no involvement in Dark Tuesday.
They forget that, after being told by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson no credible evidence existed to support the administration's charge that Saddam tried to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger in the late 1990s, George Walker Bush told the American people just the opposite in his 2003 State of the Union address.
They forget that, when Joe Wilson finally publicly asked why the president would tell the American people something he knew to be untrue, someone in the White House illegally exposed Wilson's wife as a clandestine CIA operative.
They forget, or perhaps don't want to admit, that this administration was planning to go to war with Iraq long before 9-11 occurred.
And they, apparently, are paying little attention to the recent "Downing Street Memo."
The British document makes abundantly clear the purpose of intelligence relating to Iraq was not to determine whether or not war was the only option. The purpose of the intelligence was to reinforce the policy decision to go to war that had been made long ago.
The irony of hearing bonny Prince George speak of Iraq in his speech as the "front line" in the war on terror should be lost on no one. Prior to Bush's misguided march of folly, Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorist activity.
In fact, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden loathed one another. Saddam's neo-fascist secularism was anathema to bin Laden's Islamic fundamentalism, and vice versa.
This war in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster built on lies that exceed even those told by Lyndon Johnson about the fictional Gulf of Tonkin incident 40 years ago.
Why so many Americans cannot see that reality is a huge mystery.
It is little wonder so many people from other countries look at us incredulously.
After all, William Jefferson Clinton lied about fellatio with a chunky chick in a blue dress and was impeached.
George Walker Bush has told so many lies about this war in Iraq, it is difficult to keep them straight.
But, one thing is certain. His lies have brought pain and suffering to untold thousands of American and Iraqi families. They have tarnished our reputation abroad. They have further destabilized an already dangerously unstable region of the world.
If only he'd lied about sex, you know, something really important! Maybe then the word impeachment would be getting the attention it deserves.
Mike Cook is a Newburyport native who, after spending some months on Plum Island during his mother's final days, recently returned to his adopted home in Puerto Viejo de Limon Costa Rica, C.A.
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